Lecture 4: Groups

What is a Group?

• A collection of individuals who have relations to one another that make them interdependent to some degree

  • Interdependence can vary

  • Groups harder to define, less interdependent

    • This class for example. Come each week, learn together, might feel you are a group and interdependent not how everyone feels

    • On a bus, are you a group then? 

    • Most people would say that individuals riding together in an elevator aren’t a group- but suppose that elevator broke down and those inside must figure out how to escape or summon help, then most would say that those people in the elevator now seem like a real group

    • People in functioning elevator don’t make up a group because they are not interdependent, but once elevator breaks down they must decide on joint action and become more interdependent and hence more of a group

• A collection of individuals who perceive some level of entitativity

  • Perception a collection has some common attributes & 

  • Greater entitativity can come from physical traits, from a cause a movement which might be one time meetup. 

  • Entitativity part of being a group. If people on bus there was a robert, greater entitativity

  • the psychological perception that a collection of individuals forms a cohesive, unified group rather than a loose aggregate of unrelated people
    
    

What are some advantages to group living?

• For our ancestors, group living offered: 

  • Protection from predators (safer with larger group than alone) 

  • Obtaining resources (food) 

  • Assistance in child-rearing

  • Defense against human aggressors

• Fulfills a psychological need to belong

What are disadvantages of groups?

• Intergroup competition and status differentials emerge between groups

  • Some groups higher rank than others

• Dominant & dominated groups emerge

  • Race

  • Socioeconomic status

• Intergroup Bias

  • Stereotyping

  • Prejudice

  • Discrimination

• While groups great, important for wellbeing there is darker sides

How does a group Influence the individual? Does mere presence of others make you better or worse at an activity?

What is Social Facilitation?

• Idea that another's presence increases arousal, energy level of physiological arousal you have. This strengthens your dominant response

  • Different in every situation, but whatever you’re most likely to do

  • Make you more likely to do what you would do anyways

  • Can have diverging effects on behaviour

• If dominant response is correct, enhances your behaviour.

  • Be better at that thing

  • For example to tie shoe & timed you, and had you do it again but everyone was watching. You would do it faster

• If dominant response incorrect, for things much harder, if what would naturally do isn't the correct response, difficult, hard 

  • For example do complex math problem on board by yourself. You would do an ok job, moderately fast

  • Then put entire audience, difficult, not great at it, having bunch of people around and arousal it brings will slow you down. 

• Depends if doing something easy vs hard for you. Is dominant behaviour your likely to engage in correct or not. 

Summary

• (1) the mere presence of others makes us more aroused- we therefore need to be more alert, aroused in their presence so we can react to what they may do

• (2) Arousal tends to make us more rigid & narrowly focused in that we become more inclined to do what we’re already automatically inclined to do

  • More likely to make a dominant response: the response that person is most likely to make

• (3) Increase in dominant response facilitates performance on simple or well learned tasks, as the dominant response likely to be the correct one. Presence of others, facilitates dominant response & improves performance

• (4) For difficult or novel tasks, dominant response likely not to be correct response, and the presence of others facilitates an incorrect response & hinders performance

What is an example of Social Facilitation?

• Cockroaches have a dominant response, run away from light, they do not like light 

• Researchers used this to there advantage, put them in a box and had them run away from flood light

• Very simple maze, run out other side, dominant response is the correct response

• In one condition had light turn on, 

• In other condition put other cockroaches, audience watch

• Cockroaches faster to get out the other side when they had audience, compared to when they were alone

• Arousal at presence of others, increases dominant response run away from light in straight line, made them go faster

• Also made a second maze, that was more complicated

  • If run straight wont make it out need to turn

  • Had them do it alone or put the cockroaches in audience boxes 

  • Slower with audience

  • Just like social facilitation model would suggest

  • Dominant response is to run straight, now that is not correct, have to do things that are not the dominant response

  • Arousal from audience increasing dominant response to run straight, that is incorrect, so taking them longer

Practice so the complicated becomes routine- Expert vs. Novice

Expert

• Lots of practice makes difficult response, dominant response

• Gymnast who spend hours practicing routine, that routine so deeply embedded, for them its their dominant response

• Putting them in front of audience enhance outcome, perform better 

• Difficult, but sheer amount of hours has turned that into their dominant response

Novice

• No practice means difficult response, NOT dominant response

• If haven’t going to be worse

• Karaoke analogy 

Does the mere presence of others make you better or worse at an activity?

• BETTER for simple or well-learned tasks 

  • Mere presence of others tends to facilitate performance of simple or well-learned tasks

• WORSE for difficult or novel tasks

  • Mere presence of others tends to hinder performance on difficult or novel taks

What is Social Facilitation

• The effect—either positive or negative— of the presence of others on performance

Is it just the mere presence of others that matters? What is Evaluation Apprehension?

• Evaluation Apprehension is the concern about looking bad in eyes of others

  • People’s concern about how they might appear or be evaluated in the eyes of others

    • When put people in audience,bodies of people there, but something psychological, evaluating concern of looking bad in front of others 

Evaluation Apprehension Task

• Pseudo-recognition Task

  • nansoma, paritaf

  • zabulon, calpito, joni, plaban…

• Researchers designed study mere presence of others vs. evaluation apprehension

• What they did was created pseudo recognition task: list of 10 nonsense words & then made participants practice 2/10 of the words more than other words 

  • If do that a bunch of times get comfortable with these words & those words will therefore come dominant response

• They are told same words they learned are going to appear on a screen, so briefly may not be able to see it. And the goal was to identify which word they saw from list. If they couldnt see word, they should just guess. (300ms)

• Had 2 words very comfortable with, in list of 10, trying to figure out which word on computer screen

• How many times accidentally guess words practice a ton: dominant response, by practicing them over & over again, trying to make it into their dominant response, if don;t know go toward dominant response

• Idea is are the guessing words training more?

Results

• Compared participants performance across 3 conditions: when alone, when in front of evaluative audience & when in front of audience but audience was blindfolded so they cannot evaluate the subject’s performance

• Interested in how often the participants gave a dominant response by guessing the most familiar word they had practices most

• Participants performing in front of an evaluative audience made more dominant responses than those performing alone did, but those performing in front of a blindfolded audience didn’t

• Study shows its not just bodies that cause increase in arousal, its this perception you’re being evaluated that is leading to it

  • Its the concern about others as a source of evaluation & not their mere presence that’s responsible for social facilitation

What is Social Loafing?

• Tendency to exert less effort when working on a group task in which individuals contributions cannot be monitored

  • Feel when people can blend into group and efforts not seen

  • If you’re helping friend move a couch up the stairs, might have been tended to hold less than fair share of weight

  • Group of people pulling on rope, did not pull as hard collectively vs. by themselves

  • Only one person, the rest confederate, see how hard pulling where they feel like they are blending in vs. when enough

  • Pull less hard in group, vs individually alone

  • See this in group protects, tendency to see this type of social loafing. 

    • Part of group, blend into what the group is doing

What is Deindividuation?

• Most of the time we feel individuated, we consider ourselves identifiable by others, consider ourselves responsible for our actions and concerned with the consequences of our behaviour

• However when we’re in a large group, we often experience a loss of individual identity- a sense of deindividuation (Exercise where shows people have dark thoughts)

• Reduced sense of individual identity and self-control that occurs in large groups.

•  Getting “lost in the crowd, diminished sense of responsibility for our actions

Conditions 

• More Anonymity

• Diffusion of responsibility

• High arousal & heightened activity

• Sensory overload

Internal State 

• Less self-observation & self- evaluation

• Less concern with evaluations of others 

• Weakening of internal controls (guilt, fear, shame)

• less concern for how others perceive us

Behavior

• Impulsivity

• Irrationality

• Emotionality

• Antisociality

Vancouver Riots (2011) Stanley Cup Loss

Deindividuation Study

• Halloween deindividuation, drinking, masks

• Had 27 homes, over 1000 participants in study

• Had setups for kids, kid can take one piece of candy from the bowk, also left some coins out 

• Will they disregard rule? And take more? And take some coins?

• Recorded whether tricker treating alone, or whether in groups & did manipulation where person would say to the kid what’s your name and where do you live.

• Trying to individuate them

• 4 conditions: alone & take candy

• One person at house asking name and where they live

• Or same things in groups. 

• If look at alone conditions, lower individuated and alone

• In group when anonymous big jump up. 

• Effect even more reduced when person asking name and where they live.

• Counteract that through individuation

• The children who arrived in groups were much more likely to transgress than those who were alone, regardless of whether they were alone or not.

• Children who were anonymous were much more likely to transgress than those who were individuated, regardless of whether alone or in groups

• Anonymous children in groups were most likely to transgress

How can we increase individuation?

Individuation refers to an enhanced sense of individual identity produced by focusing attention on the self

• Leads people to act carefully, deliberately & in accordance with their sense of propriety & values

Self-Awareness- What is Self Awareness Theory?

• Predicts that when people focus their attention on themselves, they become more concerned with self-evaluation & how their current behaviour conforms to their own standards & values

• Activate or reactivate sense of self and self-awareness. 

• Spotlight effect

• Mirrors in store

• Many experiments have shown that people act in ways more consistent with their attitudes & values when they’ve been made self-conscious by being placed in front of a mirror or an attentive audience

What is the Spotlight Effect?

• Conviction that other people are paying attention to them (appearance or behavior) more than they actually are. 

  • Vision of yourself that you’re under a spotlight. 

  • Had food in teeth, embarrassing, but everyone prob didn’t even realize. 

  • Participation during class for example

• Participants asked to put on a Barry Manilow shirt

• Overestimated how many people realized they were wearing this shirt

• Seems deindividualization at play in very large groups.

How does the internet promote Deindividuation? Is this a good or bad thing?

Do we make better decisions together (as a group)?

Group Decision-making: Groupthink

• Faulty thinking by members of a highly cohesive group in which critical scrutiny that should be devoted to the issues at hand is subverted by social pressures to reach a consensus

  • Groupthink = when keeping the group in agreement becomes more important than thinking critically

    • Everyone wants to agree so make decisions to meet consensus 

• Both bad events

• Bombing of Pearl Harbour 

  • Messages coming in to DC, no one take it seriously

• Challenger Explosion

  • Information that there was a danger, disregarded

• Groupthink is the compromised decision making of a group, fueled by shallow examination of information, narrow consideration of alternatives & sense of invulnerability

Conditions 

• High cohesiveness

  • The group is very close and values harmony. Members may avoid disagreeing because they don't want conflict or to upset the group.

• Insulation

  • The group is isolated from outside opinions or information.

• Lack of procedures for search and appraisal of information 

• High stress

• Strong Leaders

Symptoms

•  Illusion invulnerability/moral superiority

  • The group becomes overly confident: “We're right. We know what we're doing. Our decision can't fail.”

• Pressure on dissenters/self- censorship

  • Pressure to not speak up, pressure to conform & silence themselves

• Collective rationalization

  • Rationalizing whatever decision making, at group level

• Stereotypes out-groups

  • The group develops oversimplified negative views of outsiders or people who disagree with them.

• Illusion of unanimity

  • Think all making same decision, but people who disagree but don’t know how to speak up

Effects on Decision-making

• Poor information search

  • The group doesn't gather enough relevant evidence before deciding.

• Shallow examination of information

  • Even when they have information, they don't analyze it carefully or critically.

• Narrow consideration of alternatives

  • They consider only a few options instead of asking, “What else could we do?”

• Bias in processing information

  • They favour information that supports what the group already wants to believe and discount contradictory evidence.

• Failure to work out contingencies

  • They don't develop backup plans for what they'll do if their original plan fails.

How do we prevent Groupthink?

• Leader refrains from making opinions known

• Introduce people into the group at different stages

  • Helps 

•  Designate a devil’s advocate

  • Tasking one person with bringing to the group’s attention any weaknesses in the group’s deliberations & plans

Group Decision Making- Group Polarization

• Tendency for group decision to be more extreme than those made by individual

  • Group decisions tend to be more extreme than those made by individuals

  • Being in groups can make group more extreme

  • Whatever way the majority of individuals in a group are learning, group discussion tends to make them lean even further in that direction

• Imagine position of each group member is like this 

• As a group make decision, all moved over to more risky decision 

• Can see on other end too, individual members on more conservative side, when all together, get even more conservative

  • Everyone has some agreement, then once get together makes everything more extreme

Political Polarization

• What can be happening here, is that as we get individuals together, on conservative side with other conservative and liberal

• We see this separation and extremism emerging 

How are Groups Organized?

• All groups have hierarchies, help keep groups stable

• At the top, people who have high power

Power

• Power is the ability to control one’s own outcomes and those of others

What leads someone to gain power?

• 2 pathways

• One more virtuous: gain power for doing things good of the group

  • Share power, share knowledge, mentor, help others

• More vice driven way: characterized by dark triads

  • Manipulative perspective (Machiavellianism)

  • Any means are justified to get to the end

  • Narcissism 

  • Psychopathy 

  • More dominance based structure 

  • Use charisma and charm to attain management roles despite poor performance & engage in more Machiavellian behaviours

• Can both lead to power

• Vice good at getting power, not good at holding onto it

• Those who use virtuous takes longer but tend to hold onto power

• Drawn to narcissistic leaders but end up falling. Dont last very long, dont help group as much as they should. 

How does power influence a person?

• Power corrupts

What is Approach/Inhibition Theory?

• High-power people tend to inclined to go after their goals & make quick (sometimes rash) judgments

• Low-power people more inclined to constrain their behavior & pay careful attention to others 

• High power approach oriented, have goals, want to get them, can go for them

• Low power people more inhibited, don’t have power, what others do determine their world, attentive to what people need, attentive to people

• Approach behaviour: tend to be less concerned about the evaluations of others & more inclined to act in goal driven ways

• Reduced power associated with increased dependence on others, as a result less power people show inhibition behaviour: tend to be more vigilant and careful in making judgements & decisions & more restrained when taking action

Empathy

• Power affects how one perceives others and reduces empathy

• Impacts empathy: how we feel other people’s emotions & feel their thoughts

  • Approach vs. inhibited mindset, how that may map onto empathy 

  • Across a bunch of these studies higher people less empathetic than lower

• High-power people inclined to go after their own goals, less careful and less systematic in their thoughts about others

  • High power individuals more likely to stereotype others than to carefully attend to individuating informationa bout them

  • High-power people are less accurate judges of others emotions

  • Often fail to respond empathetically to others as they are less careful in their judgements,,

What is the E Test?

• Put people in low or high power mindset 

• Had them recalled time controlled by someone or exerted control over someone

• Then had people draw E on forehead 

• Effortful mental rotation, how would this person see me

• Considers marker of perspective taking. 

• Had them complete a simple perspective taking test: drawing the letter E on their forehead so someone sitting across them could read it. Requires participants to take the other person’s perspective & draw the E in reverse.

• Higher power people did worse compared to low power

• Effect on how well able to do perspective taking rotation task.

Disinhibited Behaviour

• Influences how constrained behaviour is

• High power people do little things approach oriented, interrupt more, swear more, disinhibited

• Low power people do those things less, more constrained & inhibited so dont jump in or swear 

• Higher power more likely to act unethically

  • Selfish 

  • High power in approach mindset more likely to engage in selfish, unethical things to met their ends

  • Higher power people engage in appropriate acts more than lower power: more touch of other people, overestimate peoples sexual interest in them, lead to more sexual inappropriate behaviour 

  • Very unconstrained approach, reward seeking, disinhibited person thats what power does. 

• Power within a hierarchy 

• Correlated with power: more powerful they are = more likely they were

• Do unethical things, unconstrained behaviour when have more power

Inhibition: Low Power people more likely to:

• Inhibit themselves

• Constrict their posture

• Dampen expression

• Refrain from speaking up

• Safe behaviours

Power corrupts the corruptible

• Power doesn’t necessarily corrupt but makes us more like what we were originally

• If your someone on selfish side, more selfish

• Cases where people more prosocial, gain power, those people look even more prosocial when they have social, always vared about people, now unconstrained and uninhibited do more of that

• Right side what power doing, amplifying who we were in the first place.