Chapter 11 - Groups and Individuals

Group

• Defined as a collection of people who perceive themselves to be bonded together or connected to one another (i.e, part of coherent unit)

Common-Bond Groups

• Individual group members are bonded (have attachments) to each other

  • Sports teams, friendship groups, workplace groups

  • Regular face-to-face interaction among group members

Common-Identity Groups

• Group members are linked together as a whole, rather than to each other

  • Face-to-face interactions often do not occur

  • Gender, nationality, race, age

Entitativity

• The extent to which a group is perceived as a being distinct (or cohent) entity rather than a simply mere collection of individuals

Characteristics of Groups HIGH in Entitativity

• Group members interact with each other frequently

• Group is seen as important to its member

• Group members share common goals and outcomes

• Group members perceive themselves as similar to eachother in important ways

Examples of Groups That are Low in Entitativity

• People waiting at the same bus stop

• Shoppers in store

Basic Features of Groups

• Status: One’s rank or position within the group

• Roles: The behaviour that people with a specific position within the group are expected to perform

• Norms: Rules that dictate how group members should (and should not) behave

• Cohesiveness: Forces that make group members want to stay in a group

  • We-ness

Benefits of Group Membership

• Sense of belonging

• Social rewards (ex. friendship, companionship)

• Help us reach our goals

• Help us accomplish social change

• Meet our need for security (e.g., safety in numbers)

• Groups are an important part of our social identity (“I am Canadian”)

Costs of Belonging to Groups

• Restictions on personal freedom must “toe the party line”

• Demands on your time and resources

• Groups may endorse a policy or position that you personally disagree with

Norman Triplett (1898)

• Asked children to wind up fishing line on fishing reel

  • In pairs or by themselves

• Results:

  • Children wound more line onto their reels when they were performing this task in pairs than when they were doing it alone

Social Facilitation

• The tendency for people to perform better on a task in the presence of others compared to when they are performing the same task alone

• Occurs when we perform better on a task when others are watching

Social Inhibition

• Decreased performance on a task while in the presence of others (i.e., being watched makes us do worse)

• Occurs when we perform worse on a task when others are watching

Robert Zajoc

• Drive theory of social facilitation (aka mere presence explanation)

• Mere presence of other people increases our physiological arousal

  • E.g., heart beats a little faster, blood pressure goes up, and so on

• This increases the likelihood of a dominant response (i.e., whatever response is most likely in that situation)

• In well-learned or easy tasks, the dominant response would be the correct response

• Higher levels of arousal lead to better task performance (social facilitation)

• On new or difficult tasks, the dominant response is likely to be an incorrect response

• Higher levels of arousal lead to worse performance (social inhibition)

• Study: watched university students play pool

  • Above-average players got better

  • Below-average players got worse

Nicholas Cottrell

• Evaluation apprehension theory

• We are concerned about being evaluated by others; we become apprehensive because we are worrying how they are judging our (or evaluating) performance and this increases our physiological arousal

• On well-learned or easy tasks, higher levels of arousal lead to better performance (social facilitation)

• On new or difficult tasks, higher levels of arousal lead to worse performance (social inhibition)

• Study:

  • College students given easy task

    • Alone condition

    • Observer condition… two students watching from about 6 feet away

    • Mere presence condition… two students present, but wearing blindfolds

  • Results:

    • No differences in performance between the “alone” and “mere presence” conditions

    • Facilitation effect in the “observer” condition (i.e., participants performed better when their audience could see them)

Robert Baron

• Distraction-conflict theory

• The presence of other people is distracting, even when they are not evaluating our performance

• When others are around, we divide our attention between the audience and the task at hand

• This leads to conflict which, in turn, increases our physiological arousal

• On well-learned or easy tasks, higher levels of arousal lead to better performance (social facilitation)

• On new or difficult tasks, higher levels of arousal lead to worse performance (social inhibition)

Additive Task

• All group members perform the same task and group performance is the sum of the efforts of the individual members

• E.g., tug of war

Social Loafing

• Reductions of effort when individuals work collectively in a group compared to when they work individually

• Why does social loafing occur?

  • Free ride effect

  • Sucker effect

Free Ride Effect

• The tendency to contribute less to a collective task when one believes that other group members will make up for one’s lack of effort

Sucker Effect

• The tendency to contribute less to a collective task when one believes that other group members are not going to be contributing their fair share

How to Reduce Social Loafing

• Make sure each individual group member’s contribution can be identified and assessed separately

• Make sure the task the group is working on is important, appealing, and meaningful to those performing it

• Don’t work with strangers

• Work with friends

• Work with females

• Work with someone from a collectivistic culture

Deindividuation

• A reduced sense of self-awareness accompanied by diminished self-control (loss of restraint) that can come over people when they are in groups

Factors Contributing to Deindividuation

• Energizing effect of other people

  • The presence of other people is arousing

• Stimulus overload

  • You become over-stimulated by external stimuli like loud noises, flashing lights, people shouting, loud music, etc.

• Anonymity

  • Unidentifiable

  • You feel invisible

• Diffusion of responsibility

  • “It’s not my fault, it wasn’t me, everybody else was behaving that way”

When these factors come together you become:

• Less self-aware (ex., you forget who you are)

• Less concerned about how you look, how you behave

• Less concerned about what others think of your behaviour

• Normal inhibitions (restraints) against engaging in behaviour that doesn’t fit with your internalized standards go out the window (i.e., you are less concerned with shame, guilt, fear)

Philip Zombardo

• Female college students

• Took part in groups of 3 in 1 of 2 conditions

• Wore shapeless overcoats and hoods that covered their faces to facilitate deindividuation (anonymous condition)

• Wore their regular street clothes (control condition)

• Results:

  • The anonymous participants administered two times as much electric shocks to the learner compared to those in the control condition

Summary

• Being anonymous makes us less self-aware

• We are less attentive to our internalized standards of behaviour

• We react more to cues present in the immediate situation

• Sometimes those cues might be negative, encouraging negative behaviour

• Sometimes those cues might be positive, encouraging positive behaviour

How Can We Enforce Self-Awateness?

• Mirrors

• Being in front of a camera

• Wearing a name tag

Decision Making in Groups

• “How does being in a group influence decision making?”

Group Polarization

• The tendency for group decisions to be more extreme than those made by individuals

What Causes Group Polarization?

• Persuasive arguments

  • During group discussion, group members hear persuasive arguments that support their own views, including points they had not previously considered

• Social comparison theory

  • Individual group members want to fit in and be accepted by the group, and be perceived favourably by the other group members

Groupthink

• A decision making style that is characterized by an excessive tendency among group members to maintain cohesion and seek unanimity or agreement, as opposed to making the best possible decision

Antecedent Conditions (Precursors or causes of groupthink):

• High cohesiveness

• Isolation from outside influences

• Strong directive leadership

Symptoms of groupthink

• Illusion of invulnerability

  • Incapable of failing

• Illusion of morality

  • It’s the right thing to do

• Stereotypes view of the opponent

• Pressure on dissenters to conform

• Group censorship of misgivings

  • Group members don’t want to “rock the boat”

• Illusion of unanimity

• Mindguards

  • To protect the leader from any disagreeable information

Preventing Groupthink

• Encourage group members to voice their objections and doubts

• Seek input from outside experts

• Appoints one member of the group to play the role of devil’s advocate

• Break group into smaller groups

• Have group leader initially remains impartial

• Hold a second chance meeting