week 8 groups

Question 1

What is a group?

Answer 1

• Definition: two or more people who share some common characteristic (or goal) that is socially meaningful to themselves or for others
Groups differ with regard to how much interaction & interdependence exists between members

Question 2

what is interdependant of group

Answer 2

the extent to which each group member’s thoughts, feelings and actions impact the others
– Task interdependence: Reliant on each other for mastery of material rewards through performance of collective tasks
– Social interdependence: Reliant on each other for feelings of connectedness, respect, and acceptance

Question 3

Types of groups

Answer 3

 Primary or intimacy groups
• Family, circle of close friends
• Most concern for social interdependence
– But can solve problems and tasks together
 Secondary or task groups
• Work teams, committees
• Most concern for task interdependence
– But social interdependence can influence performance

Question 4

Group formation process

Answer 4

 Typical (not invariable) stages of efforts to coordinate task and social interdependence
 Tuckman (1965)
• Forming
• Storming
• Norming
• Performing
• Adjourning

Question 5

Forming

Answer 5

• Individuals come together to form a group
• Members try to understand the nature of interdependence, group structure (e.g., hierarchy) and group’s goals
• Often facilitated by group leader who can articulate the above

Question 6

Storming

Answer 6

 Once nominally formed, negotiation occurs around roles and responsibilities
 This can involve conflict (‘storm’)
• Task conflict – different views on content, structure and goals
• Relationship conflict – clashing personalities
• Process conflict – different views on strategies and tactics
 Conflict can impact later performance and commitment (de Wit et al., 2012)
• Relationship and process conflict decrease performance
• Task conflict can increase performance if managed well

Question 7

Norming

Answer 7

 Once (if) conflict decreases, group norms emerge
• Norm: general tendencies of expected behaviour within groups
 This stage is characterized by consensus, harmony, stability, commitment and cohesion and the development of a group-related social identity
• Disagreements are resolved into consensual norms
• Members feel sense of trust and liking
• Commitment to group is high

Question 8

Performing

Answer 8

 Members cooperate to solve problems, make decisions, or produce outputs
• Exchange of information
• Productive resolution of disagreements
• Continued commitment to group goals

Question 9

Adjourning

Answer 9

 Dissolution of group
• Group has fulfilled purpose or was set to end at a particular time
• Often marked by period of evaluating work, sharing feelings about group
• Dissolution of group can be stressful if commitment made it important identity for members

Question 10

Group socialization: joining pre-existing groups

Answer 10

 What if the group already exists?
 Group socialization: cognitive, affective and behavioural changes that occur as individuals join and leave groups
 Moreland and Levine (1988)
• Mutual processes
– Investigation: potential member seeks information about group; group seeks information about potential member
– Socialization: group tries to mold the individual into one of them – a ‘team player’; member acquires and internalizes group knowledge, adopts norms, becomes committed, form identity
– Maintenance: now a fully committed member, the individual takes on a specific role within the group

Question 11

Social facilitation

Answer 11

Social facilitation: increase in the likelihood of highly accessible responses (and decrease in likelihood of less accessible responses), due to the presence of others
 Triplett (1898)
• Presence of other improved task performance

Question 12

Whether the presence of others will help performance depends on the task at hand:Markus (1978)

Answer 12

• Familiar task: putting on and taking off one’s own shoes
• Unfamiliar task: dressing and undressing in new, unfamiliar items of clothing
• Alone vs. mere presence (present) vs. attentive audience (watched) by
• Mere presence and being watched improves performance of familiar actions, but impairs performance of unfamiliar actions

Question 13

Arousal and facilitation of the ‘dominant response’

Answer 13

 The presence of others can increase arousal
• Evaluation apprehension
• Distraction
 Increased arousal can lead to better performance for well-rehearsed, accessible responses (‘dominant responses’), but worse performance novel, complex, inaccessible responses (‘nondominant responses)

Question 14

Social loafing

Answer 14

 Social loafing: tendency to exert less effort on a task when done in a group than when alone
Latane, Williams and Harkins (1979)
• Clap or cheer as loudly as possible
• Alone or in a group

Question 15

Reducing social loafing

Answer 15

• Change nature of the task
– Interesting, involving tasks show less loafing
• Increase accountability
• Reduce group size
• Increase commitment to or identification with group
– Cross cultural differences
– People from collectivist cultures show less loafing than those from individualist cultures

Question 16

De-individuation: acting like a group member

Answer 16

 De-individuation: psychological state in which group or social identity completely dominates personal or individual identity so that group norms become maximally salient
• One acts as a prototypical group member (not an individual)
 Caused by anonymity, wearing uniforms, being in a crowd of group members
• By being just one among many similar others
 Increases accessibility of group norms
• Decreases accessibility of personal standards
• Can produce negative or positive behavior

Question 17

Acting on the basis of accessible group norms

Answer 17

 Johnson & Downing (1979): Manipulated norms (positive/ negative) and anonymity
• Dressed as KKK or nurses
• Some outfits covered faces; other did not (change in anomality)
• Asked to deliver shocks in a learning task to learner
-uniform does effect the chance of giving shock, exacerbated by anominity

Question 18

Why is social group important

Answer 18

• Influence what we think, feel and do
• Form one of the key bases of social perception

Question 19

Social categorization

Answer 19

• Process of classifying and perceiving people as members of social groups/categories rather than as unique individuals
• Based on shared group characteristics
This process can be quite efficient and automatic
• Especially for certain features age, gender, ‘race’
• But also status, occupation, sexual orientation and more

Question 20

Self-categorization

Answer 20

 Self-categorization: process of seeing oneself as a group member
• Social identities are accessible
• In extreme form: de-individuation
 This is likely when:
• Accessibility: We experience direct reminders of group membership (e.g., being called an Australian; University of Melbourne student)
• Salience: In the presence of outgroup members
– When in the presence of people who don’t belong to our groups
– In a minority

Question 21

Consequences for perceptions of inter and intra group structure

Answer 21

 Category differentiation model (Doise, 1978):
• Intergroup differentiation
• Within group homogeneity (especially for outgroups)
 ‘Group-ness’ is amplified

Question 22

Outgroup homogeneity experiment

Answer 22

 Cross-race identification bias (‘other race’ effect)
• Platz & Hosch (1988)
– Texas convenience store clerks
– Identification of customers
– Increased accuracy for own ingroup vs outgroups

Question 23

Stereotypes

Answer 23

Stereotype: cognitive representation of impressions/expectancies about a social group (probable behaviors, traits, features) (cf. prejudice)
– Associate a group with a range of characteristics
• Stereotyping: process of viewing an individual in light of a stereotype

Question 24

Stereotype Content Model (SCM;
Fiske et al., 2002)

Answer 24

Measurement based on warmth and competent

Question 25

Activation of stereotypes

Answer 25

 Stereotypes can be automatically activated
• Even the mere presence of a social category cue (e.g., category label, salient category feature) can be enough to activate (make accessible) a range of stereotype content
 Implicit Associations Test (IAT; Greenwald et al.,1998)
• Implicit measure of associations between social categories and other concepts
– IAT has also been used to measure attitudes (e.g., prejudice and self-esteem)

Question 26

Sterotype judgement

Answer 26

Stereotypes can bias judgments about individuals
• Change the way that ambiguous behavior is interpreted

Question 27

Duncan (1976) Sterotype judgement

Answer 27

• White American participants witness an ambiguous shove (aggressive or playful) between confederates of different social categories
• Stereotype of group to which shover belonged influenced interpretation
• Aggression was (and perhaps still is) part of the African American stereotype; here it shapes interpretation of the ambiguous shove

Question 28

Stereotypes, prejudice and
discrimination

Answer 28

• Stereotype: cognitive representations of impressions of groups that people form by associating the groups with particular characteristics (beliefs)
• Prejudice: positive or negative evaluations of a social group or its members (attitudes)
• Discrimination: positive or negative behaviour directed toward a social group or its members

Question 29

Ingroup favouritism

Answer 29

 We tend to have more favourable attitudes and behaviours towards the groups to which we belong than to groups to which we don’t belong
• Ingroups: groups to which we belong
• Outgroups: groups to which we don’t belong
 Ingroup favouritism, ingroup bias, intergroup bias, intergroup discrimination
• Preference (in attitudes or behaviours) for ingroups over outgroups

Question 30

Social Identity Theory (SIT),reason

Answer 30

® Our selves are composed of personal and group-related (social) aspects/identities.
® People prefer to have a positive self-concept (valuing me and mine) – in order to maintain positive self-esteem.
® We are motivated to increase the positivity of our own groups relative to outgroups.
Thus, we favour ingroups.
® In a sense, we value our group (mine) as a way of valuing ‘me’

Question 31

The minimal conditions of us vs.
them thinking

Answer 31

• Ingroup favoritism occurs under minimal conditions
• Tajfel et al (1971)
– Klee or Kandinsky
– Point allocation task
– Ingroup favoritism
• Mere categorisation (based on minimal group conditions) elicited ingroup favoritism

Question 32

Group serving biases

Answer 32

 Oskamp & Hardy (1968): it’s positive when the ingroup does it
 Ultimate Attribution Error (Pettigrew, 1979)
• Ingroup positive behaviors – disposition; outgroup positive behaviors – situation
• Ingroup negative behaviors – situation; outgroup negative behaviors - disposition
– E.g., Ariyanto et al (2009)

Question 33

Escalation

Answer 33

 Categorization lays the groundwork
 Other factors escalate us vs them framing into conflict
• Competition
• Threat

Question 34

Competition

Answer 34

® Realistic conflict theory (LeVine & Campbell, 1972) suggest that intergroup hostility arises from competition amongst groups for scarce (and thus valued) material resources.
® Taylor & Moriarty (1987) divided participants into two groups, and asked them to problem solve for reward (devise a marketing campaign). There were two conditions
– interdependent vs competitive. Ingroup favouritism was exacerbated under the competition condition

Question 35

Intergroup Threat

Answer 35

Integrated Threat Theory (Stephan & Stephan, 1985)
• Realistic threat: threats to the material well-being of the ingroup, such as their economic benefits, political power, and health
• Symbolic threat: threats to the ingroup’s system of values
• Intergroup anxiety: feelings of anxiety people experience during intergroup interactions associated with negative outcomes for the self (embarrassed,
rejected, ridiculed)

Question 36

Riek et al (2006) on threat

Answer 36

Meta analysis
• Aggregated across 95 studies
• Realistic, symbolic and anxiety positively associated with negative outgroup attitudes

Question 37

Methods of prejudice reduction

Answer 37

 ‘Contact’
• Extended contact
• Imagined contact
 Changing categorization
 Superordinate goals

Question 38

Optimal conditions of prejudice reduction

Answer 38

 The more contact one has with an outgroup, the less prejudice one expresses
 Contact is most effective when: equal status, shared goals, authority sanction, absence of competition
(Allport, 1954; Pettigrew & Tropp 2006)

Question 39

How does contact decrease prejudice

Answer 39

 How? (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008)
• Knowledge of out group
• Anxiety lower
• Empathy/perspective taking increase

Question 40

Extended contact

Answer 40

knowledge that other ingroup members have outgroup friends can reduce intergroup bias
 Wright et al. (1997)
 Phase 1: two groups formed (on the basis of “personality”) and labeled blue or green
• Phase 2: one participant from each group
• (both actually confederates) chosen to interact
– Friendly, Hostile, Neutral
• Phase 3: ingroup and outgroup evaluations– traits (e.g., intelligent, confident, inflexible, indifferent) and performance qualities (e.g., communicates effectively, effective problem solver)
-evaluation depend on the quality of interaction

Question 41

Empathy and perspective taking

Answer 41

® Putting oneself in another’s shoes emotionally (empathy) or cognitively (perspective taking) decrease group favouritism.
® Galinsky & Moskowitz (2000) formed groups based on the minimal group paradigm, and found that taking the perspective of an outgroup member reduces ingroup favouritism

Question 42

Changing categorization

Answer 42

® Involves changing the cognitive representation of outgroup members so that it is no longer simply ‘us’ versus ‘them’.
® Re-categorization involves ‘us’ and ‘them’ becoming a superordinate ‘we’.
® De-categorization involves ‘they’ becoming individuals.

Question 43

Gaertner et al., (1989) categorization

Answer 43

Participants initially form two 3 person groups (A and B) and interact within-groups (in spatial proximity)
• Come up with group names
 Next, come together to do a task
 Manipulation:
• Control: retain original two group structure and identity (aaabbb)
• Re-categorization: form one new, superordinate group with new structure and identity (ababab)
• De-categorization: separate individuals, with nicknames (ababab)
 Evaluations of original ingroup and outgroup members
Re>De>control

Question 44

Promoting cooperation
The Robber’s Cave (Sherif et al., 1961)

Answer 44

 Summer camp
 Two groups: Eagles and Rattlers
 Tournament (i.e., competition)• Intergroup conflict
 But then, cooperative interaction
• Superordinate goals: shared goals that can be achieved only if groups work together