PY-372 Ch. 8 Groups

Social Facilitation

Triplett, 1898 showed a tendency for the presence of other people to improve an individual's performance on a task (happens more often when there is compaction)

What did the 1965 Zajonc study show?

The presence of others triggers arousal causing people to give their more dominate response (what’s natural to them.)

• (Michaels, 1982) showed that experts tend to shine in groups and midwits don’t.

Arousal (in a group context)

A state of heightened physiological and psychological alertness, energy, and readiness to respond

Social loafing

Tendency to match the skill level/performance level of the group

1. Why do people social loaf?

2. How can we reduce social loafing?

1. They are less motivated because there is less credit and less failure.

2. Giving people direct tasks, making the task fun/challenging, making the test important to them

Group polarization

Tendency for groups to make people more extreme on the safe to risky scale.

• Reasons why this occurs: You can learn more arguments from the group, people validate each other in the group

Group think

The of excess ideological thought that leads to negative externalities

Illusion of invulnerability

Overconfidence (thinking they are immune to harm) in The Group that results in risky behavior

Deindividuation

When in groups people feel less identifiable, less accountable, and therefore care less about the group.