Group Dynamics Notes
Introduction to Group Dynamics
Learning Objectives
Understand the specific components of group dynamics.
Appreciate the nature of groups, its diversity, and practicality.
Establish genuine interest in understanding the nature of groups.
Group Dynamics Definition
Group dynamics encompasses the actions, processes, and changes that occur within groups and between groups.
The field of group dynamics is a scientific discipline devoted to studying groups and group processes.
Defining a Group
Professional Doctor's Perspective: A group is built with blood, sweat, and tears.
Businessman's Perspective: A group is a cooperative unit.
Professional Teacher's Perspective: A group is the best way to continue learning.
Automotive Technician's Perspective: A group is like a car, consisting of multiple parts joined together to accomplish a particular task.
Partners' Perspective: A group is a series of people with a combination of skills and knowledge complementary to each other, aiming to reach defined goals.
The Nature of Groups
A group is two or more individuals who are connected by and within social relationships.
A group can range in size from two members to thousands of members.
Very small collectives, such as dyads (two members) and triads (three members) are groups, but so are very large collections of people, such as mobs, crowds, and congregations.
On average, most groups tend to be relatively small in size, ranging from two to seven members.
The links may also be relatively weak ones that are easily broken with the passage of time or the occurrence of relationship-damaging events.
Even weak ties, however, can create robust outcomes, such as when a group member you hardly know provides you with critical information that is common knowledge in that person’s social circles.
The larger the group, the more ties are needed to join members to each other and to the group.
The members of any given group are networked. These connections, or ties, may be based on strong bonds, like the links between the members of a family or a clique of close friends.
Social Relationships Within Groups
Definitions of the word group vary, but many stress one key consideration: relationships among the members.
“A group is a collection of individuals who have relations to one another” (Cartwright & Zander, 1968, p. 46).
“A group is a social unit which consists of a number of individuals who stand in (more or less) definite status and role relationships to one another” (Sherif & Sherif, 1956, p. 144).
“A group is a bounded set of patterned relations among members” (Arrow, McGrath, & Berdahl, 2000, p. 34).
People in a group are said to be linked by their membership.
Social Identity
Group members share a common identity with one another.
They know who is in their group, who is not, and what qualities are typical of insiders and outsiders.
This perception of themselves as members of the same group or social category—this social identity—creates a sense of we and us, as well as a sense of they.
Social identity can be thought of as the “sum total of a person’s social identifications.
Key Terms
Membership: The state of being a part of, or included within, a social group.
Network: A set of interconnected individuals or groups; more generally, any set of social or nonsocial objects that are linked by relational ties.
Social Identity: Aspects of the self-concept that derive from relationships and memberships in groups; in particular, those qualities that are held in common by two or more people who recognize that they are members of the same group or social category.
Group: Two or more individuals who are connected by and within social relationships.
Characteristics of Groups
Interaction: Groups create, organize, and sustain relationship and task interactions among members.
Goals: Groups have instrumental purposes, for they facilitate the achievement of aims or outcomes sought by the members.
Interdependence: Group members depend on one another, in that each member influences and is influenced by each other member.
Structure: Groups are organized, with each individual connected to others in a pattern of relationships, roles, and norms.
Unity: Groups are cohesive social arrangements of individuals that perceivers, in some cases, consider to be unified wholes.
Interaction
Relationship Interaction (socioemotional interaction): Actions performed by group members that relate to or influence the emotional and interpersonal bonds within the group, including both positive actions (social support, consideration) and negative actions (criticism, conflict). This pertains to the interpersonal, social side of group life.
Task interaction: Actions performed by group members that pertain to the group’s projects, tasks, and goals.
Goals
Joseph E. McGrath’s (1984) Circumplex Model of Group Tasks emphasized that groups undertake many activities to achieve their goals.
Circumplex Model of Group Tasks is a conceptual taxonomy developed by Joseph McGrath that orders group tasks in a circular pattern based on two continua: cooperative–competitive and conceptual–behavioral.
Joseph E. McGrath’s (1984) Circumplex Model of Group Tasks emphasized that groups have four basic goals:
Generating ideas or plans
Choosing a solution
Negotiating a solution to a conflict
Executing (performing) a task.
Each of these basic categories can be further subdivided, yielding a total of eight basic goal-related activities.
The theory identifies eight basic activities undertaken by groups—planning, creating, solving problems, making decisions, forming judgments, resolving conflicts, competing, and performing—and arranges them in a circle based on two dimensions: executing–choosing and generating–negotiating.
Tasks in the upper four quadrants require cooperation among members, whereas conflict is more likely when groups undertake those tasks in the lower quadrants.
Tasks on the right side of the circle are behavioral ones, whereas those on the left side of the circle are more intellectual, conceptual tasks.
McGrath’s Model Task Types
Generating:
Type 1: Planning tasks- groups that formulate the strategies they will use to accomplish their goals.
Type 2: Creativity task- groups create altogether new ideas and approaches to their problems.
Choosing:
Type 3: intellective tasks- groups that make decisions about issues that have correct solutions.
Type 4: decision-making tasks- groups make decisions about issues or questions that can be answered in many ways.
Negotiating:
Type 5: cognitive conflict task- groups that must resolve differences of opinion among members regarding their goals or decisions.
Type 6: mixed-motive tasks- groups resolve competitive disputes among members.
Executing:
Type 7: contests/battles/competitive tasks- groups that do things, including taking part in competitions.
Type 8: Performances/ psychomotor tasks - groups working together to create some product or carry out collective actions.
Interdependence
Interdependence is the state of being dependent to some degree on other people, as when one’s outcomes, actions, thoughts, feelings, and experiences are determined in whole or in part by others.
Interdependence results when the outcomes of one or more group members are determined, in part, by other group members.
Influence is sometimes mutual and reciprocal: all members influence one another.
But influence can be unilateral, as when a leader influences others but is not influenced by them.
More typically, influence is reciprocal but unequal; a leader’s influence over followers is substantially greater than followers’ influence on the leader.
In some cases influence is sequential, as when A influences B who influences C.
Structure
Group structure is the underlying pattern of roles, norms, and relations among members that organizes groups.
Role: A coherent set of behaviors expected of people who occupy specific positions within a group.
Norm: A consensual and often implicit standard that describes what behaviors should and should not be performed in a given context.
Unity/Group Cohesion
Group cohesion: The strength of the bonds linking individuals to and in the group.
Entitativity: The extent to which an assemblage of individuals is perceived to be a group rather than an aggregation of independent, unrelated individuals; the quality of being an entity.
Entitativity is how unified the group appears to be to the perceiver; that is, perceived unity rather than the group’s actual unity.
Entitativity is substantially influenced by:
Common fate: Do the individuals experience the same or interrelated outcomes?
Similarity: Do the individuals perform similar behaviors or resemble one another?
Proximity: How close together are the individuals in the aggregation?
Types of Groups
Primary Groups
Small, long-term groups characterized by face-to-face interaction and high levels of cohesiveness, solidarity, and member identification
Examples: Close friends, families, gangs, military squads
Primary groups serve as the primary source of socialization for members by shaping their attitudes, values, and social orientation.
Social Groups
Small groups of moderate duration and permeability characterized by moderate levels of interaction among the members over an extended period of time, often in goal-focused situations
Examples: Coworkers, crews, expeditions, fraternities, sports teams, study groups, task forces
Memberships in social groups tend to be shorter in duration and less emotionally involving.
The boundaries of such groups are more permeable, so members can leave old groups behind and join new ones.
These groups are, in general, more instrumental ones: they are likely to stress the performance of tasks rather than enjoying relationships.
This is also called secondary groups, associations, and task groups.
Collectives
Aggregations of individuals that form spontaneously, last only a brief period of time, and have very permeable boundaries
Examples: Audiences, bystanders, crowds, mobs, waiting lines (queues)
Collectives are larger groups whose members act in similar and sometimes unusual ways.
A list of collectives would include a street crowd watching a building burn, an audience at a movie, a line (queue) of people waiting to purchase tickets, a mob of college students protesting a government policy, and a panicked group fleeing from danger.
Categories
Aggregations of individuals who are similar to one another in some way, such as gender, ethnicity, religion, or nationality
Examples: Asian Americans, New Yorkers, physicians, U.S. citizens, women
A category is an aggregation of people or things that share some common attribute or are related in some way.
For example, people who live in New York City are New Yorkers, Americans whose ancestors were from Africa are African Americans, and those who routinely wager sums of money on games of chance are gamblers.
The Nature of Group Dynamics
Kurt Lewin
Kurt Lewin is commonly identified as the founder of the movement to study groups scientifically.
He coined the term group dynamics to describe the way groups and individuals act and react to changing circumstances.
Influenced by Gestalt psychology, Lewin developed a theory that emphasized the importance of individual personalities, interpersonal conflict, and situational variables.
Field Theory
Lewin's Field Theory proposed that behavior is the result of the individual and the environment.
This theory had a major impact on social psychology, supporting the notion that our individual traits and the environment interact to cause behavior.
Kurt Lewin was an influential psychologist who is today recognized as the founder of modern social psychology.
His research on group dynamics, experiential learning, and action research had a tremendous influence on the growth and development of social psychology.
He is also recognized for his important contributions in the areas of applied psychology and organizational psychology.
Bruce Tuckman’s Theory of Group Development
Forming phase: the group members become oriented toward one another.
Storming phase: conflicts surface in the group as members vie for status and the group sets its goals.
Norming phase: the phase when conflicts subside and the group becomes more structured and standards emerge.
Performing phase: the group moves beyond disagreement and organizational matters to concentrate on the work to be done.
Adjourning stage: the phase when the group disbands.
Phases of Team Development
Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning - based on group development model by Bruce Tuckman
All phases are necessary and inevitable for a team to grow, tackle problems, find solutions, plan work, and deliver results
Forming
Questioning
Socializing
Displaying eagerness
Focusing on group identity & purpose
Sticking to safe topics
Taking the 'lead'
Providing clear expectations and consistent instructions
Quick response times
Storming
Resistance
Lack of participation
Conflict
Competition
High emotions
Starting to move towards group norms
Normalizing matters
Encouraging leadership
Norming
Reconciliation
Relief, lowered anxiety
Developing cohesion
Performing
Demonstrations of interdependence
Healthy system
Members are engaged & supportive
Ability to effectively produce as a team
Balance of task and process orientation
'Guide from the side' (minimal intervention)
Encouraging group decision-making and problem-solving
Providing opportunities to share learning across teams
Adjourning
Shift to process orientation
Sadness
Recognition of team and individual efforts
Recognizing individual and group efforts
Providing learning opportunities and feedback
Monitoring the 'energy' of the group
Celebrating
Recognizing change
Providing an opportunity for summative team evaluations
Providing an opportunity for acknowledgments