Chapter Eight: Group Processes

Fundamentals of Groups

What is a group?

Group: A set of individuals who have direct interactions with each other over a period of time and share a common fate, identity, or set of goals
Collectives: People engaging in a common activity but having little direct interaction with each other
People tend to identify more strongly with more integrated, coherent groups and to get more satisfaction from them
Ppl in western cultures are more likely to define and identify with groups based on what members do
Ppl in eastern cultures are more likely to define and identify with groups based on how the group members relate to each other

Why join a group?

Humans have an innate need to belong to groups * Evolutionary pressures: ppls chances of survival and reproduction increased when they lived in groups rather than in isolation
Social Brain Hypothesis: We have large brains in order to socialize
Social Identity Theory: A large part of ppls feelings of self-worth comes from their identification with particular groups

Key Features of Groups: Roles, Norms, and Cohesiveness

Once an individual has joined a group, a process of adjustment takes place as the individual is socialized to how things work in the group * Explicit: Initiation / orientation, mentoring, documentation * Implicit: Newcomers observe how established members behave

Roles

Set of expected behaviors
Formal Roles: Roles designated by titles
Informal Roles: Less obvious, unstated roles
Instrumental Role: Helps the group achieve its tasks
Expressive Role: Provides emotional support and maintains morale
Groups function better when members are assigned roles that best match their talents and personalities
Group members are sometimes uncertain about what their roles are supposed to be
Role uncertainty, instability, and conflict are associated with poorer job performance
Group members can become so absorbed in their role that they lose themselves

Norms

Rules of conduct for group members
Formal Norms: Written, explicit rules
Informal Norms: More subtle norms. figuring out the unwritten rules of a group can take time and cause anxiety
Groups often exert strong conformity pressures on individuals who deviate from group norms

Culture

Cultures vary in how much they tolerate behavior that deviates from the norm
Tight Cultures: Strong norms and little tolerance for behavior that deviates from the norm * Greater ecological and historical threats, higher population density, and more restrictive governments encourage the formation of tight societies
Loose Cultures: Relatively weaker norms, greater tolerance for deviant behavior * More likely to thrive in environments that have fewer historical and ecological threats * Allows individuals to behave according to their own discretion

Cohesiveness

Forces exerted on a group that push its members closer together
Members of cohesive groups tend to feel commitment to the group task, feel positively toward the other members, and feel group pride
Groups whose members share similar attitudes and closely follow the groups’ norms are more likely than other groups to be cohesive
When a group is cohesive, group performance improves

Culture and Cohesiveness

Collectivist Cultures * Cohesiveness is associated more with social harmony, cooperation * Respect and obedience to leaders is more important
Individualistic Cultures * Recognizing member’s unique skills and perspectives is essential for group cohesiveness * More comfortable with conflict and debate among their members

Individuals in Groups: The Presence of Others

Social Facilitation: When Others Arouse Us

The Zajonc Solution * The presence of others creates general psychological arousal, which energizes behavior * Increased arousal enhances an individual’s tendency to perform the dominant response * Dominant Response: Reaction elicited most quickly and easily by a given stimulus * The quality of an individual’s performance varies according to the type of task * Easy Task: One that is simple or well learned * The dominant response is usually correct or successful * Difficult Task: One that is complex or unfamiliar * The dominant response is often incorrect or unsuccessful
Social Facilitation: A process whereby the presence of others enhances performance on easy tasks but impairs performance on difficult tasks
Evaluation Apprehension Theory: Performance will be enhanced or impaired only in the presence of others who are in a position to evaluate that performance
Distraction-Conflict Theory: Being distracted while we’re working on a task creates attentional conflict * We’re torn between focusing on the task and glancing at the distracting stimulus * When we’re conflicted about where to pay attention, our arousal increases

Social Loafing: When Others Relax Us

Individuals exert less effort when they act collectively
Individuals demonstrated poor coordination when working together
Social Loafing: Group-produced reductions in individual output
Sharing responsibility with others reduces the amount of effort that people put into more complex motor tasks
Reducing social loafing * Limit the scope of the project - break complex projects down into smaller components * Keep the groups small * Use peer evaluations
Cyberloafing: A form of social loafing at the workplace that involves personal non-work use of online technology * Huge drain on workers’ productivity
Collective Effort Model: Individuals will try hard on a collective task when they think their efforts will help them achieve outcomes they personally value * Less likely to socially loaf * May even engage in social compensation * Social Compensation: Increasing one’s efforts on collective tasks to try to compensate for the anticipated social loafing or poor performance of other group members

Culture and Social Loafing

Less prevalent among women than among men
Less prevalent among ppl from collectivist cultures * They are still tempted to socially load if they’re working in a group that has established a group norm of low productivity and effort

Deindividuation

The loss of a person’s sense of individuality and the reduction of normal constraints against deviant behavior
Collective phenomenon that occurs primarily in the presence of others
Caused by: arousal, anonymity, and reduced feelings of individual responsibility
Environmental cues that make deviant behaviors more likely to occur * Accountability Cues: Effect the individual’s cost-reward calculations * When accountability is low, those who commit deviant acts are less likely to be caught and punished * Ppl may deliberately choose to engage in gratifying but usually inhibited behaviors * ex: being in a large crowd, wearing a mask * Attentional Cues: Cues that focus a person’s attention away from the self * People act on impulse
Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE): A model of group behavior that explains deindividuation effects as the result of a shift from personal identity to social identity

Group Performance: Problems and Solutions

Losses and Gains in Groups

Process Loss: Reduction of group productivity due to problems in the dynamics of a group
Some types of group tasks are more vulnerable to process loss than others

Additive Tasks

The group product is the sum of all the members’ contributions
ex: donating to a charity, making noise at a pep rally
Ppl often indulge in social loafing during additive tasks, which creates process loss
Each member’s contribution may be less than it would’ve been if that person had worked alone
Group performs less than its potential

Conjunctive Tasks

The group product is determined by the individual with the poorest performance
ex: mountain-climbing teams
The weakest link determines their success or failure
Group performance on conjunctive tasks tends to be worse than the performance of a single average individual

Disjunctive Task

The group product is determined by the performance of the individual with the best performance
ex: trying to solve a problem / develop a strategy
The more people involves, the more likely it is that someone will make a breakthrough
Group processes can interfere with coming up with ideas and getting them accepted, resulting in process loss

Process Gain

On some kinds of tasks, groups can show process gain
Process Gain: Groups outperform even the best members
Also known as synergy
Groups often perform better than the best individuals on tasks in which * The correct answer is clearly evident to everyone in the group once it’s presented * The work on the task can be divided up so that various subgroups work on different aspects of the task

Brainstorming

A technique that attempts to increase the production of creative ideas by encouraging group members to speak freely without criticizing their own or others’ contributions
Developed by Alex Osborn in the 50s
Groups can generate more and better ideas than could individuals working alone
Can be effective, but individual brainstorming is more effecting
People brainstorming in a group underperform

Making Brainstorming More Effective

Alternating types of brainstorming sessions
Training people in effective brainstorming
Giving the group a subset of categories to begin the brainstorming process
Using a trained facilitator during brainstorming sessions
Giving groups more time

Electronic Brainstorming

Using technology to allow groups to brainstorm
Can help groups brainstorm more effectively
Combines the freedom of working alone and not having to wait their turns with the stimulation of seeing others’ ideas

Group Polarization

Group Polarization: The exaggeration through group discussion of initial tendencies in the thinking of group members
Persuasive Arguments Theory: The greater the number and persuasiveness of the arguments to which group members are exposed, the more extreme their attitudes become

Groupthink

An excessive tendency to seek concurrence among group members
Concurrence: Agreement or uniformity
Emerges when the need for agreement takes priority over the motivation to obtain accurate information and make appropriate decisions
Highly cohesive groups are more susceptible to groupthink
Groups that are composed of ppl from similar backgrounds and isolated from other people are particularly likely to fall prey to groupthink
Stressful situations can provoke groupthink

Preventing Groupthink

Groups should consult widely with outsiders
Leaders should explicitly encourage criticism and not take a strong stand early on in the discussion
Subgroups should separately discuss the same issue
A member should be assigned to play devil’s advocate
A second chance meeting should be held to reconsider the group decision before taking action

Communicating Information and Utilizing Expertise

Information Sharing and Biased Sampling

Biased Sampling: A group may fail to consider important information that is not common knowledge in the group
Commonly shared info is likely to be socially validated by the group, making it more easily remembered and trusted
Validation also makes group members more confident in discussing and reiterating these pieces of info
Communication Network: Defines who can speak with whom based on a group’s structure
Conditions where biased sampling is less likely to occur * Leaders who encourage a lot of group participation * Group members had to make a plan of when and how they would review alternatives before settling on their ultimate decision

Information Processing and Transactive Memory

Groups are even more susceptible to bias than individuals
Transactive Memory: Helps groups remember more info more efficiently than individuals
Process loss * Social loafing * Groups may not distribute the tasks and roles among group members in a rational or efficient manner
Groups that develop good transactive memory systems have enormous advantages over other groups * Transactive Memory: A shared system for remembering info that enables multiple people to remember info together more efficiently than they could do so alone * Group must develop a division of knowledge * Members must be able to communicate and remember this info in the group * Group members must be able to trust each other’s specialized knowledge * Group members need to coordinate their efforts so they can work together on a task smoothly and efficiently

Goals and Plans in Groups

Groups, like individuals, tend to perform better on a task when they have specific, challenging, and reachable goals
Groups are most likely to benefit when there are incentives in place for achieving these goals
Group members can hold each other accountable and encourage each other to keep trying to achieve a goal
If a group doesn’t make a good, specific plan, it can fail to utilize the expertise that various group members have
Without the specific planning, the individuals’ expertise wasn’t used properly
Group Support Systems: Programs that help remove communication barriers and provide structure and incentives for group discussions and decisions. helps groups avoid groupthink

Virtual Teams / Dispersed Teams

Can be especially vulnerable to some of the factors that harm traditional groups bc of * Physical distances between members * Little interaction they have with one another * Harder time building cohesiveness and keeping membership stable
Offsetting these problems * Directories should be available and updated * Frequent teleconferencing sessions and occasional short visits to allow dispersed group members to spend some time together

Culture and Diversity

Diversity is often associated with negative group dynamics * Miscommunications and misunderstandings are more likely to arise among heterogenous group members * Cliques and conflicts often form in diverse groups, causing some group members to feel alienated
Positive effects of diversity on patterns of socialization, creativity, and the complexity and inclusiveness of group discussion
Multicultural groups perform better if their members or leaders have relatively high cultural metacognition
Cultural Metacognition: Awareness of their own and others’ cultural assumptions
Multicultural Engagement: Adapting and learning about new cultures

Collective Intelligence: Are Some Groups Smarter Than Others?

Factors that predict collective intelligence: * Average social sensitivity of group members * Tendency to allow the various group members to take turns participating in the discussion * A higher proportion of women * Women have higher social sensitivity than men

Conflict: Cooperation and Competition Within and Between Groups

Mixed Motives and Social Dilemmas

The individual can gain something by pursuing their self-interests, but if everyone in the group pursues self-interests, all of the group members will ultimately be worse off than if they had cooperated with each other
In a social dilemma, what is good for one is bad for all
If everyone makes the most self-rewarding choice, everyone suffers the greatest loss
Prisoner’s Dilemma
Resource Dilemmas: Dilemmas concerning how two or more ppl share a limited resource * Commons Dilemmas: If ppl take as much as they want of a limited resource that doesn’t replenish itself, nothing will be left for anyone * Public Goods Dilemmas: All of the individuals are supposed to contribute resources to a common pool
Individuals who tend to feel that they can’t depend on others were significantly more likely to cooperate on a social dilemma if they received a dose of oxytocin
Collectivists tend to cooperate more when dealing with friends or in-group members but compete more aggressively when dealing with strangers or out-group members
People with a prosocial, cooperative orientation seek to maximize joint gains or achieve equal outcomes
Those with an individualist orientation seek to maximize their own gain
People with a competitive orientation seek to maximize their own grain relative to that of others
Groups tend to be more competitive than individuals in mixed-motive situations * Harder to establish trust between groups * Members of a group feel that they are more anonymous than if they act alone * Large groups are more likely to exploit scarce resources than small ones are

Negotiation

Both sides often have the opportunity to reach an integrative agreement
Integrative Agreement: Both parties obtain outcomes that are superior to a 50-50 split
Communication in which both sides disclose their goals and needs is critically important in allowing each side to see opportunities for joint benefits

Culture and Negotiation

An individualistic perspective emphasizes direct communication and confrontation
A collectivist perspective emphasizes more indirect communication and a desire to avoid direct conflict
Individualistic negotiators may emphasize rationality
Collectivistic negotiators have a greater tolerance of contradiction and emotionality
Relationship building is an important part of the negotiation process among Chinese
Individualists tend to prefer to make compromises and concessions toward the end of a negotiation
Collectivists may prefer to begin with generous concessions and gradually reduce their concessions later
Negotiations across cultures can be challenging because the participants have different ways of performing these dances

Finding Common Ground

Recognition of a superordinate identity is one way to establish common ground between groups in conflict
When group members perceive that they have a shared identity across group boundaries and interactions between the groups often become more peaceful