groups

group

a collection of individuals who have relations to one another that make them interdependent to some significant degree” (Cartwright & Zander, 1968)

Interdependent

Outcomes of a group member depends
on the other members of the group

Very Group-like (High-level of interdependence):

○ Family
○ A Clique
○ A Gang

less group like

○ People in an elevator
○ People waiting for the bus
○ A large lecture class

Why Study Groups?

Individual predictors do not have to hold at the group-
level
○ A factor that predicts an outcome in an individual
may end up working the opposite way at the
group-level

Examples of Group-level outcomes in real-life

○ Satisfaction within an office
○ A research lab’s performance
○ Overall Criminal behavior in a city

Social Facilitation

how people’s performance changes with an audience

Social Loafing

how people’s motivation changes in a group

Groupthink

how the quality of people’s decisions changes in a group

Group Polarization

how the strength of people’s decisions/attitudes changes in a group

Deindividuation

how people’s sense of identity changes in a group

Social Facilitation:

the positive and negative effect of the
presence of others on performance

Distraction-conflict theory:

attending to the task at hand and to an audience is distracting.

Sports Psychology

○ A person just learning how to play tennis will do poorly when someone else
is around
○ A person who has been playing tennis for a long time will improve when
someone else is around

Racism

○ We saw in the previous chapter that people’s automatic responses is to be
more likely to classify Black people as dangerous.
○ What should arousal from an audience do to those responses?
▪ Social facilitation predicts that people are more likely to demonstrate these
bias in the presence of an audience

Social Loafing:

tendency to exert less effort when
working on a group task

When do groups make better decisions?

When presented with problems where there is a precise and factual answer,
groups are more likely to arrive at the solution than the average individual.

When are group decisions no better than individual decisions?

○ When group members have a high concern with being judged
○ When group members have a high concern about hurting other people’s
feelings
○ When group members are worried about being held responsible for an
outcome

Groupthink:

when groups do not give careful
scrutiny to the issues at hand because of social pressures to all agree

Shallow examination of information:

Spending too little time discuss the pros and cons of different perspectives

Narrow consideration of alternatives:

Examining too few perspectives or sides to the issue

Sense of invulnerability:

Feeling like a solution is perfect or that
nothing could go wrong with the current plan

Moral superiority:

Feeling that the decision made is the morally
right option

insistive leadership:

Strong, directive leaders who make their
preferences known

Self censorship:

withholding information or opinions in group
decisions

How to Prevent Groupthink

○ 1) Have the leader refrain from making their
opinions known at the beginning
○ 2) Do not be cut off from outside input
○ 3) Designate one person to play the group’s
‘devil’s advocate where the role of finding
problems is encouraged as rewarded

Modern view:

people’s decisions/attitude become more
extreme after group discussion

Group Polarization:

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

Reasons for Group Polarization

1) People are exposed to more arguments
that they were already inclined to take
○ 2) People feel that their positions are slightly
more on the extreme end, and when they are
not, they try to make them more extreme

Deindividuation:

the loss of individual identity accompanied by decreased self-
regulation
○ No longer feeling like an identifiable person
○ Feeling “lost in the crowd”

Three Step Model of Deindividuation

A model that describes the factors
that lead to people feeling
deindividuated, and then antisocial
outcomes that follow
deindividuation

1) For a person to be deindividuated, an antecedent
condition must be present

○ Anonymity
○ Diffusion of Responsibility
○ Social Arousal
○ Decreased self-awareness
○ Stimulus overload

2) Person feels Deindividuated (Internal State)

○ Has less self-evaluation
○ Has less concern with other people’s evaluation
○ Has less internal control

Behavioral Effects

■ Impulsivity
■ Irrationality
■ Emotionality
■ Antisocial Activity

example of Deindividuation

● Suicide Baiting/Encouraging Suicide (Mann, 1981)
○ 15 yrs of newspaper accounts analyzed
■ 21 instances of attempted suicide
■ Suicide baiting occurred 50% of the time
○ Two variables associated with baiting: Crowd Size &
Darkness

individuation:

focusing attention on the self

Self-Awareness theory:

when focusing attention inward, people become concerned with
self-evaluation and how their current behavior conforms to internal standards and values
○ People cheat less in from of a mirror (Diener & Walbom, 1976)

Spotlight Effect:

People’s conviction that other people are attending to them more than is actually the case

power

the ability to control another’s outcomes

Perceived Power:

people’s impression of their ability to control
another’s outcomes

Status:

a person’s evaluated respect and prominence

Power can originate from five different sources (French
and Raven, 1959):

○ 1) Authority
○ 2) Expertise
○ 3) Coercion
○ 4) Ability to provide Rewards
○ 5) Reference Knowledge

Authority:

based on the roles within a group
○ Example: A Father or Older Sibling

Expertise

Specialized knowledge
○ Example: Doctor

Coercion:

based on ability to use force and aggression
○ Example: a bouncer or person with a weapon

Ability to provide rewards:

based on benefit to group
○ Example: a college admissions director

Reference Power:

based on ability to serve as a role model
because people admire or look to them for guidance
○ Example: Celebrities, Social Media Influencers