Chapter 8 - Group Influence

  • Vocabulary:

    • Group: Two or more people who, for longer than a few moments, interact with and influence one another and perceive one another as “us”, has to be a conscious knowing and conscious collective thought

    • Social facilitation:

      • The tendency of people to perform simple of well-learned tasks better when others are present

      • The strengthening of dominant and prevalent responses in the presence of others. For easy tasks (unconscious), performance is improved. For harder, more difficult tasks (such as public speaking) performance in groups is impaired

    • Social inhibition: The reverse of social facilitation, with difficult tasks people are more likely to perform poorly than if they weren’t being watched

    • Evaluation apprehension: Concern for how others are evaluating us

    • Social loafing: The tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool their efforts toward a common goal than when they are not held individually accountable, the larger the group is the more likely this is

    • Free riders: People who benefit from the group but give little in return, tend to participate in social loafing in larger groups

    • Deindividuation: Loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension, occurs in a group situation that fosters responsiveness to group norms, good or bad

    • Self-awareness: A self-conscious state in which attention focuses on oneself, it makes people more sensitive to their own attitudes and dispositions

    • Group polarization: Group-produced enhancement of member’s preexisting tendencies, a strengthening of the members’ average tendency, not a split within the group

    • Social comparison: Evaluating one’s opinions and abilities by comparing oneself with others

    • Pluralistic ignorance: A false impression of what most other people are thinking or feeling, or how they are responding

    • Groupthink: The mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrent-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action

    • Leadership: The process by which certain group members motivate and guide the group

    • Task leadership: Leadership that organizes work, sets standards, and focuses on goals

    • Social leadership: Leadership that builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support

    • Transformational leadership: Leadership that, enabled by a leader’s vision and inspiration, exerts significant influence

  • People have a tendency to form groups, and based on the scenario will think of what various groups they are in before making a decision

  • Life raft activity:

    • Sextant: 9, 11

    • Mirror: 11, 8, 1

    • Netting: 2, 5

    • 25 L Water: 1, 1, 3

    • Rations: 5, 2, 4

    • Map: 10, 12

    • Floating cushion: 12, 10, 9

    • 10 L Petrol: 13, 13, 2

    • Radio: 6, 7

    • Plastic sheeting: 7, 6, 5

    • Shark repellent: 14, 14

    • Rum: 4, 4

    • Rope: 3, 3, 8

    • Chocolate: 15, 15, 6

    • Fishing: 8, 9, 7