Groups

The Nature and Purpose of Group Living

A group has been described as “a collection of individuals who have relations to one another that make them interdependent to some significant degree.”

Social Facilitation

What effect does the presence of other people have on human performance?

• Does the presence of others typically help or hinder performance, or does it have no effect at all?

Social facilitation

• initially a term for enhanced performance in the presence of others; now a broader term for the effect, positive or negative, of the presence of others on performance

Initial Research

The first social psychology experiment:

Triplett (1898) observed that cyclists recorded faster times when competing against others than when racing alone.

• He designed an experiment to test whether the presence of others facilitates human performance

Triplett assigned groups of children to reel in fishing lines alone and beside another child and found faster times when the child was co-acting with another person.

He concluded that the presence of others facilitates performance.

• He coined the term social facilitation becuase of this experiment

However, subsequent studies showed that often the presence of others can impair performance.

• EX: Math, memory, complex cognition proves this idea!

Resolving the Contradictions

Zajonc’s theory of mere presence

• The presence of others increases arousal, and arousal increases an individual’s dominant responses.

  • Nervous system arousal

  • Difference between Zajonc’s theory and Triplett is Zajonc focuses on arousal!

  • This theory is well supported!

Dominant Response

Dominant response

• in a person’s hierarchy of possible responses in any context, the response she is most likely to make

  • For an easy or well-practiced task, the dominant response is often correct.

    • Like reeling a fishing line.

  • For a difficult or novel task, the dominant response is often incorrect

    • If it is new or hard, the higherarchy is not built for you becuase you don’t do this behavior often. Therefore, the dominant response is wrong

Two Pathways that occur!

Zajonc’s Model of Social Facilitation

Testing the Theory

Thus, the presence of others can facilitate performance of easy tasks but may impair performance of difficult tasks.

Zajonc et al. examined the effects of social facilitation using cockroaches running mazes in the presence or absence of other roaches.

In the presence of spectator roaches, the test roaches ran faster through a simple maze but slower through a complex maze

Social Facilitation in Other Species

Mere Presence or Evaluation Apprehension?

Evaluation apprehension

• people’s concern about how they might appear to others, or be evaluated by them

  • A study found participants made more dominant responses in front of an audience that could evaluate their performance than when in front of an audience that could not see them or when they performed alone

Evaluation Apprehension and Social Facilitation

Testing for Evaluation Apprehension

A study examined how fast people changed their shoes when they were alone (unaware of being observed) compared to when other people were present.

• Even though participants had no sense of being evaluated while changing their shoes, they did so faster in the presence of another person even if that person wasn’t watching them.

Social Facilitation and the Effect of an Audience

Novel tasks increase in time when people are paying attention!

Beyond Social Facilitation

People are complex stimuli, and their presence can have a variety of effects that overlay the influence of mere presence examined here.

• People are often very concerned about making a good impression, and their evaluation apprehension can intensify arousal and lead to more pronounced social facilitation effects.

Social Loafing

The tendency to exert less effort when working on a group task in which individual contributions cannot be monitored

Reasons:

1. Assumption that someone else will do the work

2. People assume that their contribution will not be useful or helpful

   1. I’m worried that the group with think my part of the project is bad!

Group Decision Making

When people come together in groups, one of the most important things they do is make decisions.

• Much of the research on group decision making has been guided by the assumption that decisions made by groups are typically better than those made by individuals. Many heads are better than one.

• Yet, in many contexts, group decisions are no better than those rendered by individuals

Group Think

Groups that are highly cohesive can produce poor group decisions because maintaining group harmony may be emphasized over making an accurate judgment.

• People hate dissenting!

Historic examples of groupthink:

• the Kennedy administration’s invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs without providing proper air cover

• the Johnson administration’s decision to increase the number of American soldiers fighting in Vietnam

• the conclusion by U.S. naval high command that extra precautions were not needed at Pearl Harbor despite warnings of an imminent attack by the Japanese

Symptoms and Sources of Groupthink

Groupthink

• faulty thinking by members of highly cohesive groups in which the critical scrutiny that should be devoted to the issues at hand is subverted by social pressures to reach consensus

Self-censorship

• withholding information or opinions in group discussions

Elements of Janis’s Groupthink Hypothesis

1. Conditions that must be met for groupthink to occur

   1. High cohesion in the group, insolation of the group, directive leadership, lack of standardized proceedures, high stress

   2. Beore any gorup think occurs, these must happen

2. Concurrence seeking

   1. Groups are motivated to come to a unainous decision

3. Group think will now happen

   1. the belief that our decision is the best, thinking that the group is invulnerable

   2. People won’t look for alternatives, not look at things objectively

The Dangers of Group Think

In many group decision-making scenarios, group decisions tend to be more extreme.→ Group Polarization

• Group discussions may encourage a favorable view of extreme viewpoints, and so the group decision becomes more extreme.

Preventing Groupthink

Group leaders should refrain from making their opinions known at first.

• People will otherwise fall in line to appease the leader

Group leaders should discuss important decisions with each member individually. Individuals then feel free to express their opinions during the group discussion.

• Prevents a group from forming

Bring in outside opinions.

Assign a “devil’s advocate.”

Develop an alternate plan

Group Polarization

The tendency for group decisions to be more extreme than those made by individuals; whatever way the individuals are leaning, group discussion tends to make them lean further in that direction

This happens because of two differnet reasons:

The “Persuasive Arguments” Account

Persuasive arguments

• Exposure to additional arguments in favor of one’s preexisting opinion strengthens that opinion.

  • If you hold an opinion, and the group provides more evidence for your opinion, then you will support that opinion even more!

• Example: We have a group of people who are talking about the idea of strict puishments for criminals. Everyone in the group supports the idea of strict punishments. Durring the discussion, the group memebrs come up with reasons for strict punishments are a good idea. Since the group members already held the idea of supporting punishmnent. Just by virtue of people listing and arguing for it, people are persuaded to support it even more!

The “Social Comparison” Interpretation

Social comparison

• compares self to others, with the drive to be “better” than others

• If others express similar opinions, we may take a more extreme position to differentiate ourselves.

• Example: If everyone in the group is way more extreme in their beliefs than you, then you will think ‘i’m not firm enough in my beliefs” and your throught process becomes even stronger!

Power and Social Hierarchy

Power

• the ability to control one’s own outcomes and those of others; the freedom to act

  • Power is relational: an individual’s power varies from one relationship to another.

Social Hierarchy

• The relational nature of power manifests in a social hierarchy, or an arrangement of individuals within a group in terms of their relative power.

Characteristics of Leaders

How do people become leaders within social hierarchies?

• Leadership is not based on expertise, knowledge, and technical skill alone.

• Alongside expertise and social skills, someone who can provide rewards to the group is more likely to rise to a leadership role.

  • There will be people who will have connections, and bring in things… does this make a person a good leader?

The Elements of Power

Status

• the outcome of an evaluation of attributes that produces differences in respect and prominence, and which contributes to determining a person’s power within a group

  • Can influence power and leadership

  • When people function as leaders, part of it is because they are exerts, give rewards, or can build respect.

Gaining Power

Understand the four virtues and three vices

These four are also based on philosophy

These vices are also called the Dark Triad

• A super bad combination for a leader to have

Power and Intimidation

Clear and inaproprate crossing of boundreis/personal space

When people gain power, you run the risk of people acting socially inapropreate because they can get away with it

How Power Shapes Thought and Action

Approach/inhibition theory

• This theory maintains that high- power individuals are inclined to go after their goals and make quick (and sometimes rash) judgments, whereas low-power people are more likely to constrain their behavior and pay careful attention to others.

• The people who have power feel like they can make quick, rash judgements. People who don’t have power cannot make quick decisions because they have to think the decision through

  • Example: You are a CEO of a company, and are super powerful. Some of the things that you can do as the CEO is to make decisions without consulting people, take major risks with the company, treat your employees poorly. If you are now a newly hired employee at the bottom of the higherarchy, you cannot make decisions all by yourself with impulsivity. You hesitate more, get approval, and you cannot challange leaders.

The Influence of Power on Behavior

The approach/inhibition theory of power has two core predictions:

• The first element concerns the influence of power on how people perceive others.

  • do leaders have empathy towards others

• The second element is the prediction that power should make people behave in less constrained and at times more inappropriate ways

If you have power, you have a green light. Do whatever you want

If you don’t have power, you have a yellow light. Slow down and be careful

Power and Empathy Failures

Participants were induced to think of a time they felt very powerful or a time they felt powerless. The researches then had people draw an E on their forhead. If you could take the perspective of a person accross from you, then you should be able to draw the E so that the person across from you could read it (empathy)

Those in power were shown to have low empathy

Those low in power to shown to have high empath

Power and Unethical Behavior

1 are old cars, 5 are super fancy luxury cars. The percentages shown are how often each type of car would cut padestrians off from corssing the sreeet. If you had an old car, they would not cut people off. If you had a fancy car, you would do it 46% of the time.

Deindividuation and the Psychology of Mobs

Why would people in group settings deindividualize?

Deindividuation and the Group Mind

Many aspects of human behavior only arise when people are in groups.

Deindividuation

• a reduced sense of individual identity accompanied by diminished self-regulation that can come over people when they are in a large group

  • People do behaviors that they normally would not do

Decrease in self-awareness resulting in decreased self- regulation and greater conformity to surrounding group norms

Deindividuation results from feelings of anonymity, lack of accountability, and the energizing effects (increase in arousal) of being lost in a crowd

A Model of Deindividuation

Philip Zimbardo (1970) proposed a theoretical model of deindividuation that specifies how certain conditions create the kind of psychological state that promotes the impulsive and often destructive behaviors observed in mobs.

A Theoretical Model of Deindividuation

In order for deindividuation for occur: there must be 3 parts

The first part is most important because it sets the stage for deindividualization to occur

First: Anticedent Conditions

• Anonymity

• Diffusion of responsibility

• Energizing effect of other

• Stimulus Overload

Second: Internal State (Deindividuation)

• Lesseded self-observation and self-evaluation

• Lesseded conserns with the evaluations of others

• Weakening of internal controls

  1. Lessens concern with shame, guilt, fear, committment

Third: Behavioral Effects

• Impulsivity

• Irrationality

• Emotionality

• Antisocial activity (Causes Problematic, criminal activity)

Effects of Deindividuation

Deindividuation often results in more impulsive, emotional, irrational, and antisocial behaviors.

Historic examples of deindividuation include lynch mobs, riots, and military atrocities.

• mercyhurst beats Ohio State at Football, we all strom the field. While it is deindividuation, it is not criminal

Testing the Model:

The Conduct of War

The conduct of war

• Deindividuation may encourage greater levels of brutality directed at groups that are seen as enemies or rivals.

• Increase of brutality happens when we deindividualize ourselves

Halloween Mayhem

In America, many forms of uninhibited and impulsive behaviors occur on Halloween.

The disguised identities of Halloween costumes may lead to deindividuated states.

Halloween study (Seattle, 1976)

• Experimenters placed bowls of candy at 27 homes.

• Children arrived alone or in groups and were told to take one piece of candy.

• After the adult left, 57 percent of children in groups took extra candy, but only 21 percent of children who were alone did so.

• If the adult asked for names before going inside the house, there is a dramatic change in data.

Kids who are anonymous had higher rates then kids who were named.

Self-Awareness and Individuation

Individuation

• an enhanced sense of individual identity produced by focusing attention on the self, which generally leads people to act carefully and deliberately and in accordance with their sense of propriety and values

Studies of Self-Awareness

Self-awareness theory

• a theory maintaining that when people focus their attention inward on themselves, they become concerned with self- evaluation and how their current behavior conforms to their internal standards and values

In the study there was a coffee cart. If you used any of the milk/creamer, you were supposed to put money in the jar to pay for it. In the study, they changed the conditions. Near the cart, there was a picture of flowers or a man staring at you. One issue with the study is because different people came up to the coffee cart, it is not standard

Self-Consciousness and the Spotlight Effect

Spotlight effect

• individuals’ conviction that other people are paying attention to them (to their appearance and behavior) more than they actually are

• We as humans are over confident/over critical about how often people are paying attention to us