PSYC 325 - Chapter 8, Part 1

Chapter Overview

  • Lecture 15: Group Processes

  • Instructor: Dita Kubin, PhD, Concordia University

  • Course: PSYC325 - Winter 2025

Midterm Review Session

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  • Topics Covered:

    • What is a group?

    • Group Influence

    • Group Performance

Defining a Group

  • Examples of Groups:

    • Facebook friends

    • Classmates

    • Gym-goers

    • Family members

  • Characteristics of a Group:

    • Direct interaction over a period of time

    • Shared common fate, identity, or set of goals

  • Difference from Collectives:

    • Collectives involve people engaging in a common activity with little direct interaction (e.g., a science conference)

Reasons for Group Membership

  • Why Join a Group?

    • Ability to accomplish goals through collective action

    • Evolutionary Perspective:

      • Survival and mating advantages for those in groups, more likely to pass on genes

    • Innate Psychological Need to Belong for:

      • Physical protection

      • Identity and positive self-view (related to social identity theory)

      • People in all cultures are motivated to form relationships and resist relationship breakups

Key Features of Groups

Roles

  • Group Socialization:

    • Can be explicit or implicit in establishing role expectations

    • Types of Roles (can be formal or informal):

      • Instrumental Roles: Help the group achieve tasks

      • Expressive Roles: Provide emotional support and maintain morale

  • Group Functioning:

    • Good Group Functioning - Roles match members’ talents and personalities

    • Poorer job performance arises from uncertain, unstable, or conflicting roles

Norms

  • Groups establish norms, which are rules of conduct for members

  • We conform to group norms to avoid social rejection and maintain self-esteem

  • Tolerance to norm violations can itself be a norm

Cohesiveness

  • Definition of Group Cohesiveness:

    • Qualities that bind members together, promoting liking, unity, and commitment to group goals

  • Bidirectional Relationship:

    • Increased cohesiveness correlates with higher likelihood to stay in the group, participate in activities, and recruit new like-minded members

Group Influence

  • Key Example:

    • Vancouver Canucks and public behaviour during the Stanley Cup finals illustrates collective influence in group settings

    • Vancouver Canucks lost game 7 to Bruins, so 100 000 people gathered downtown Vancouver and collectively “lost it”

Social Facilitation

  • Definition:

    • Performance is influenced by the presence of others

  • Triplett's Study (1897-98):

    • Found that young boys reel in fishing lines faster in groups compared to alone

    • Being in a group increases nervous energy and enhances performance

      • Later studies showed mixed results:

        • Sometimes presence of others enhanced performance; other times, performance declined

  • Zajonc (1965) Findings:

    • Mere presence of others sufficient to produce social facilitation

    • Presence of others enhances performance on simple tasks; impairs performance on complex tasks

    • Presence of others facilitates the dominant response, not necessarily the task itself

    • Example:

      • Henry is good at free throws

        • Dominant response is to make the shot

          • This is a simple tasks where the automatic response is correct

          • Over-learned, instinctual, automatized, require no resources

      • Perry is poor at three throws

        • Dominant response is to overshoot the target

          • This is a complex task where the answer is not obvious

          • Novel, learned, controlled, requires cognitive resources

  • Zajonc’s Three-Step Process:

    1. The presence of others creates general physiological arousal, which energizes behaviour

    2. Increased arousal enhances an individual’s tendency to perform the dominant response

    3. The quality of an individual’s performance varies depending on the task

  • Dominant Response Theory:

    • Performance affected depending on task complexity

Cockroach Studies (Zajonc, 1969)

  • Study 1:

    • Setup:

      • Cockroach runs simple OR complex maze

      • Cockroach runs alone OR with another cockroach

    • Findings:

      • Cockroaches ran simpler mazes faster in the presence of another cockroach

      • Cockroaches ran complex mazes slower in the presence of another cockroach

  • Study 2:

    • Setup:

      • Cockroach runs simple OR complex maze

      • Cockroach runs alone OR has cockroach spectators

    • Results:

      • Cockroach ran simple maze faster with an audience

      • Cockroach ran complex maze slower with an audience

Alternative Explanations for Social Facilitation

  • Mere presence (Zajonc’s explanation)

    • The proposition that the mere presence of others is sufficient to produce social facilitation effects

  • Evaluation apprehension theory (Geen, 1991)

    • The presence of others will produce social facilitation effects only when those others are seen as potential evaluators

Social Loafing

  • Definition:

    • Reduction of individual effort in groups for tasks with pooled contributions

  • Study (Latane et al., 1979):

    • Participants asked to make as much noise as possible while wearing blindfolds

      • IV - think they are alone vs. with others

      • DV - how loud do they clap?

    • Participants made 1/3 less noise when they thought they were in groups than alone

    • Participants perceived they made the same amount of noise whether alone or in a group

  • Strategies to Reduce Social Loafing: Make People Accountable

    • Limit the scope of the project

      • Projects that are very large and complex should be broken into smaller components

    • Keep the groups small

    • Use peer evaluations

    • Making each group member a “manager” of different segments of the task can also help reduce social loafing

Collective Effort Model

  • Theory by Karau & Williams (2001):

    • Theory that individuals will exert effort on a collective task if they believe their individual efforts will be important/relevant/meaningful for achieving outcomes that they value

  • Social Compensation:

    • People sometimes increase their efforts on collective tasks to compensate for the anticipated social loafing or poor performance of other group members

Deindividuation

  • Social facilitation - groups can arouse us

  • Social loafing - groups can diffuse sense of responsibility

  • Definition:

    • Loss of individuality and reduction of constraints against deviant behavior in groups

  • Zimbardo's Model:

    • Factors leading to deindividuation include anonymity and arousal

  • Trick or Treat Study (Diener et al., 1976):

    • Groups of children wearing masks exhibited more deviant behaviour, had research assistants follow kids (taking 1 candy vs taking more than 1, where 1 is normative and more than 1 is a transgression)

    • IV - Group size (counted - not manipulated) & anonymity (asked names - manipulated)

    • Results:

      • Kids who were anonymous and in a group were most likely to take extra candy (most transgression) - supposedly because they were in a deindividuated state

  • Model of Deindividuation

    • Antecedent conditions

      • Diffusion of responsiblity

      • Arousal

      • Anonymity

      • Stimulus overload

    • Internal state (deinidividuation)

      • Loss of self

      • Lower evaluation apprehension

      • Weakened internal controls/constraints

    • Behavioural effects

      • Impulsivity

      • Irrationality

      • Emotionality

      • Antisocial activity

Group Performance

  • How do groups affect decision-making?

  • We tend to assume that a group is better than an individual

  • Do groups outperform the sum of people working individually?

  • Effect on Decision-Making:

    • Assumption that groups outperform individuals

  • Losses and Gains:

    • Process Loss: any aspect of group interaction that inhibits good problem solving and performance

    • Process Gain: Factors that facilitate effective problem-solving so that the group outperforms the individuals who make up the group

  • Task Types and Performance:

    • Additive tasks: result is sum of all members

      • Prone to social loafing (process loss)

    • Conjunctive: result is determined by weakest link

      • Slowest/weakest member holds all back

    • Disjunctive tasks: result is determined by strongest member (process loss)

      • Not listening to best person (process loss)

Brainstorming in Groups

  • Common Practice:

    • Brainstorming assumed effective for idea generation, but research indicates it may produce fewer ideas than working individually (Mullen et al., 1991)

  • Problems with Group Brainstorming and Potential Solutions:

    • Production blocking - each person writes out their own ideas

    • Free riding - keep track of each person’s input

  • Solutions to Improve Brainstorming:

    • Write ideas individually before sharing (nominal groups)

    • Ensure anonymity in contributions

    • Avoid groupthink and encourage unique input

Process Loss Solutions

  • Communication and Expertise Utilization:

    • Fostering a shared understanding can enhance performance

  • Biased Sampling:

    • Groups often discuss more shared information, neglecting unique insights.

    • Promote sharing expertise for enhanced outcomes

Transactive Memory

  • Definition:

    • A collective system of remembering that improves group memory efficiency

  • Key Elements for Success:

    • Division of knowledge, trust in members' expertise, and coordination of efforts