Group Processes and Social Influence Notes

Definition: Three or more people who interact and are interdependent.
Benefits:
- Facilitate goal achievement.
- Provide information - social comparison & ambiguity resolution.
- Identity.
- Establishing social norms and rules.

Members tend to be similar because people are attracted to similar others, and because groups operate in ways that encourage similarity among members.
Influential aspects of groups:
- Norms
- Roles
- Group cohesiveness

Triplett’s observations: performance improves in the presence of others.
However, on some tasks, performance is worse when others are present.
Zajonc: Performance is enhanced on simple, well-learned tasks, and impaired on complex, poorly-learned ones.
- Example: Michaels et al. skilled vs. unskilled pool shooters
Zajonc: Arousal facilitates the dominant response
- Evaluation apprehension
- Attentional diversion
- Mere presence - physiological arousal

Groups outperform individuals: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts – False, but only when output is monitored collectively
A deficit in coordination or diminished individual effort?
- Ingham’s rope pull
- Latane’s clapping & shouting study
What about “Free riding”?
Why?
Social Loafing is less pronounced if:
- Challenging, involving tasks
- Group consists of friends (high cohesion)
- Culture is collectivist (interdependent self)
- People believe their individual contribution can be monitored

Social Facilitation:
- Individual efforts evaluated
- Evaluation apprehension and distraction
- Arousal
Social Loafing:
- Individual efforts pooled and NOT evaluated
- No evaluation apprehension
- Relaxation

Abandoning restraint & loss of sense of individual responsibility
- Increased responsiveness to situational cues
- Decreased accessibility & influence of personal values (diminished self-awareness)
- Loss of evaluation apprehension
- Increased impulsivity / decreased self-regulation (disinhibition)
Zimbardo’s guards, Rodney King incident & soccer hooligans
Moderating variables affecting deindividuation
- Group size
- Arousal and diminished self-awareness
- Anonymity (Zimbardo’s hooded women & Deiner’s “trick or treaters”)

The “Risky Shift” phenomenon
- The “low-ranked chess player” dilemma - How much chance of success (1-in-10, 2-in-10, to 10 -in-10) is required to take the risk?
The “Cautious Shift”
- The “Roger dilemma” - Opposite results
Do groups make people more risk-tolerant?

Interaction and discussion strengthens average inclination of group members
Are Group Decisions More Risky than the Average of Individual Members?
What Causes Group Polarization?
- Normative Influence (social comparison explanation)
  - To gain approval (or to avoid rejection, embarrassment, or conflict), we look to other group members for cues about what attitudes we should hold
- Informational Influence (persuasive arguments explanation)
  - In our desire to be accurate, we look to others as sources of information, and alter our attitudes accordingly

Suppressing dissent in the interest of group harmony that results in faulty decision-making
Premature consensus seeking causing a failure to explore alternatives and critically examine proposed course of action
Cited examples:
- JFK’s “Bay of Pigs”
- LBJ and the Vietnam escalation
- Challenger launch
Causes of Groupthink
- High group cohesiveness, especially based on interpersonal liking
- Directive leadership
- Insularity of group
- Lack of formal method and procedures for exploring alternatives and critically evaluating decisions
- High stress
- Low expectation of finding suitable alternatives
Symptoms of Groupthink
- Illusion of invulnerability
- Conviction of moral superiority
- Negative stereotyping of out-groups (opponents and/or dissenters)
- Mindguarding
- Normative influence - conformity pressure
- Self-censorship
- Illusion of unanimity
Preventing Groupthink
- Leader refrains from endorsing and evaluating solutions
- Encouraging dissent - appointing a devil’s advocate and increasing diversity of group
- Permitting outside scrutiny and input
- Exhaustively search alternatives and criticize preferred course of action
- Prepare contingency plans

Majority influence:
- Normative conformity (public compliance)
Minority influence:
- Persuasion thru informational influence (private acceptance)
- Consistency, confidence, & reasonableness can sway majority through central route persuasion – genuine belief change

Much research has focused on what makes a good leader.
The great person theory states that certain key personality traits make a person a good leader, regardless of the situation.
Research indicates that personality traits are surprisingly unrelated to leadership.
Simonton found that only family size, height, and # publications predicted “presidential effectiveness.”
Rather than deeming personality traits unimportant, social psychologists suggest that good leadership is determined by a person having the right personality characteristics for the situation.

A task-oriented leader is one who is concerned more with efficient procedures, practices and processes in accomplishing goals than with workers’ feelings and relationships.
A relationship-oriented leader is more concerned with workers’ feelings and relationships as a means to accomplish goals.
Fiedler’s (1967, 1978) contingency theory of leadership states that leadership effectiveness depends both on how task-oriented or relationship-oriented the leader is and on the amount of control and influence the leader has over the group.

A social dilemma is a conflict in which the most beneficial action for an individual will, if chosen by most people, have harmful effects on everyone.

Public goods dilemma: Individuals must contribute to a common pool in order to create or maintain a public good.
Commons dilemma: Everyone takes from a common resource that will replenish itself if used in moderation but will run out if overused.