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Group Processes: Influence in Social Groups - Coggle Diagram
Group Processes:
Influence in Social Groups
Why do people join groups?
Joining forces with others allows us to accomplish objectives that would be more difficult to meet individually
Fulfils a number of basic human needs e.g. establishing bonds with other people -- need to belong
People monitor their status in groups
and look for any sign that they might be rejected
A study found that when people who were asked to recall a time when they had been rejected by others, they estimated the temperature of the room they were in to be 5 degrees lower than did people who were asked to recall a time when they were accepted by others -- social rejection can be, literally, chilling
People have a need to feel distinctive from those who do not belong to the same groups
Relatively small groups can fulfil both functions by giving us a sense of belonging and also making us feel special and distinctive e.g. fraternities and sororities
Groups help us to define who we are
Other people can be an important source of information
Groups provide a lens through which we can understand the world and our place in it
Groups help to establish social norms
The composition and functions of groups
Most groups have three to six members
If groups become too large, you cannot interact with all the members e.g. the college/university you attend is not a group because you are unlikely to meet and have interdependent goals with every other student
Social norms
All societies have social norms, some of which all members are acceptable to obey, and some of which vary from group to group
The power of norms to shape behavior becomes clear when ew violate them too often -- we are shunned by other group members and, in extreme cases, pressured to leave the group
Social roles
While norms specify how all members should act, roles specify how people who occupy certain positions in the group should behave
When members of a group follow a set of clearly defined roles, they tend to be satisfied and perform well
However, a potential cost is that people can get so far into a role that their personal identities and personalities get lost.
Zimbardo's prison experiment
Group cohesiveness
If a group has formed primarily for social reasons, the more cohesive the group is, the better. Group members are more likely to:
Stay in the group
Take part in group activities
Try to recruit new like-minded members
However, if the function of the group is to work together and solve problems,
Doing well on a task causes a group to become more cohesive
If the task requires close cooperation, cohesiveness causes a group to perform well
Sometimes, cohesiveness can get in the way of optimal performance if maintaining good relations among members becomes more important than finding good solutions to a problem
Group diversity
More often than not, group members tend to be
alike in age, sex, beliefs, and opinions
Many groups tend to attract people
who are already similar before they join
People tend to gravitate toward groups with similar others, and such similarity typically predicts group cohesiveness
Groups tend to operate in ways that
encourage similarity in the members
McLeod et al. (1996): College students were assigned to brainstorming groups ranging in size from three to five. Half of these groups were comprised entirely of white students, while the other half were racially diverse. All groups were assigned to the same task. Members of the racially homogeneous groups reported liking their group members more than did members of diverse groups.
However, when their ideas were analyzed, it was found that the diverse groups had come up with more feasible and effective possibilities. Group cohesiveness does not mean the group is performing at its optimal level -- participants may have enjoyed being in a group with similar others, but their performance was strongest when in a diverse group.
Diversity can come at the expensive of cohesiveness and morale, but diversity of backgrounds or perspectives often predicts improved performance in terms of group creativity, information sharing, and flexible problem solving
Individual behaviour in a group setting
Social facilitation
When the task is a relatively simple, well learned one,
the mere presence of others improves performance
When the task is difficult, one does worse in the presence of others
Zajonc (1965): The presence of others increases physiological arousal. When such arousal exists, it is easier to perform a dominant response but harder to do something complex or learn something new.
Three reasons why the presence of others leads to arousal:
Other people cause us to become particularly alert and vigilant
They make us apprehensive about how we're being evaluated
They distract us from the task at hand
The first explanation suggests that when others are around, we have to be alert to the possibility that they will do something that requires us to respond.
The second explanation focuses on the fact that people are often concerned about how others are evaluating them. It is not the mere presence of others but rather the presence of others who are evaluating us that causes arousal and subsequent social facilitation.
The third explanation centers on how distracting other people can be. It is similar to the notion that we need to be alert in the presence of others, except that it focuses on the idea that any source of distraction will put us in a state of conflict because it is difficult to pay attention to two things at the same time. This divided attention produces arousal. Consistent with this interpretation, nonsocial sources of distraction can cause the same kinds of social facilitation effects.
It is not only the presence of real people that can influence our behaviour, but also the presence of our favourite television characters (both human and animated).
Social loafing
When being with other people means that we can merge into a group, becoming less noticeable than when we are alone, we usually become relaxed -- because no one can tell how well we are doing, we should feel less evaluation apprehension.
This causes people to do worse on
simple tasks that they don't care about
However, becoming relaxed can
improve performance on complex tasks
Gender and cultural differences
The tendency to loaf was found to be
stronger in men than in women
Women tend to be higher than men in relational
interdependence -- this may be what makes women
less likely to engage in social loafing
The tendency to loaf is stronger in
Western cultures than Asian cultures
This could be due to the different self-definitions prevalent in these cultures (independent vs interdependent view of the self)
However, women and members of Asian cultures do engage in social loafing when in groups; they are just relatively less likely to do so then men or members of Western cultures
To predict whether the presence of others will help or hinder your performance, you need to know:
Whether your individual efforts can be evaluated
Whether the task is simple or complex
Implications for how groups should be organized:
If you want your employees to work on a relatively simple problem, evaluation apprehension can improve performance. Employees shouldn't be placed in groups where their individual performance cannot be observed because social loafing is likely to result.
If you want your employees to work on a difficult, complex task, then lowering their evaluation apprehension by placing them in groups in which their individual performance cannot be observed is likely to result in better performance.
Deindividuation
Deindividuation makes people feel less accountable
Deindividuation increases obedience to group norms
(vs societal norms)
Consequently, deindividuation does not always lead to aggressive or antisocial behaviour -- it depends on the norms of the group.
Deindividuation doesn't require face-to-face contact. In fact, it thrives with less physical forms of interaction e.g. online (feelings of anonymity)
Group decisions
Process loss
Can occur for a number of reasons:
Groups might not try hard enough to find out who the most competent members are and instead rely on someone who really doesn't know what he or she is talking about
Perhaps the most competent members find it difficult to disagree with everyone else in the group (normative social pressures)
Communication problems
Failure to share unique information
Groups tend to focus on the information they already share and ignore facts only known to some members of the group.
Study about selecting student body president
Unshared information is more likely to be brought up later in the discussion, suggesting that group discussions should last long enough to get beyond what everyone already knows.
It also helps to tell group members not to share their initial preferences at the outset of the discussion; if they do, they will focus less on unique, unshared information
Another approach is to assign different group members to specific areas of expertise so that they know that they alone are responsible for certain types of information
This lesson has been learned by many couples, who know to rely on each other's memories for different kinds of information e.g. times of social engagements and when to pay the bills
When the memory of a group is more efficient than the memory of its individual members, we call it transactive memory
Groupthink
Antecedents of groupthink
The group is highly cohesive
Group isolation
A directive leader
High stress
Poor decision-making procedures
Symptoms of groupthink
Illusion of invulnerability
Belief in the moral correctness of the group
Stereotyped views of out-group
Self-censorship
Direct pressure on dissenters to conform
Illusion of unanimity
Mindguards
Defective decision making
Incomplete survey of alternatives
Failure to examine risks of the favoured alternative
Poor information search
Failure to develop contingency plans
Steps to make groupthink less likely:
Remain impartial
Seek outside opinions
Create subgroups
Seek anonymous opinions
A group can perform well only if
the most expert or talented members
can convince the others that they
are right, which is not always easy.
Group polarization
Risky shift
Not the full story
Groups tend to make decisions
that are more extreme in the same direction
as the initial predispositions of their members
When individual members are already
leaning toward a risky decision, group
discussion will usually exaggerate that
risky tendency
When people are initially inclined
to be conservative, groups tend to
make even more conservative decisions
than individuals do
Occurs for two main reasons:
Persuasive arguments interpretation:
All individuals bring to the group
a set of arguments supporting
their initial recommendation
Social comparison interpretation:
When people discuss the issue in a
group, they first check out how everyone
else feels. In an effort to fit in and be liked,
many people take a position that is similar
to everyone else's but a little more extreme --
supporting the group's values and also
presenting themselves in a positive light.
Leadership in groups
Great person theory
Leadership and personality
People of all different personality types
can become successful leaders
Leaders tend to be only slightly more intelligent, extroverted, charismatic, open to new experiences, confident in their leadership abilities, and assertive compared to nonleaders
Surprisingly few personality characteristics
correlate strongly with leadership effectiveness, and the relationships that have been found tend to be modest
Simonson (1987, 2001): Only height, family size, and number of books a president published before taking office correlated with how effective the presidents were in office
Leadership styles
Transactional leaders
Transformational leaders
These leadership styles are not closely linked with personality traits, and they are not mutually exclusive. The most effective leader is one who adopts both styles.
Must also take the situation into account,
so a comprehensive theory of leadership
needs to focus on the characteristics
of the leader, the followers, and the situation
Contingency theory of leadership
Task-oriented leaders
Do well in high-control work situations
and low-control work situations
Relationship-oriented leaders
Most effective in moderate-control work situations
Gender and leadership
One reason why it is difficult for women to achieve leadership positions is that many people believe that good leaders have agentic traits e.g. assertive, controlling, dominant, independent, self-confident, which are traditionally associated with men
In contrast, women are stereotypically expected to be
more communal e.g. concerned with the welfare
of others, warm, helpful, kind, affectionate
In addition, because women are perceived as being more communal, they are often thought to be better at managing crises, particularly ones involving interpersonal problems. Women are thus more likely to be put in precarious, high-risk positions where it is difficult to succeed (glass cliff).
Culture and leadership
Most research on leadership
has been conducted in Western countries
Different cultures value different traits in leaders:
Autonomous leadership was valued more in most
European countries than most Latin American countries
Universal agreement about the value of
charisma and being team oriented
Conflict and cooperation
Social dilemmas
Prisoner's dilemma
If people are playing the game with a friend or partner with whom they expect to interact in the future, they are more likely to adopt a cooperative strategy that maximizes everyone's profits
Subtly changing the norms about what kind of behaviour is expected can have large effects on how cooperative people are e.g. changing the name from "Wall Street Game" to "Community Game"
Showing people symbols of Chinese culture before the game also made people more cooperative, while showing people symbols of American culture made them more competitive
Tit-for-tat strategy
Allowing individuals rather than opposing groups to resolve a conflict because two individuals who play the prisoner's dilemma are more likely to cooperate than two groups who play the game
Using threats to resolve conflict
When involved in conflict, many are tempted to use threats to get the other party to cave to our wishes. However, a classic series of studies by Morton Deutsch and Robert Krauss (1960, 1962) indicates that threats are not an effective means of reducing conflict.
The problem with the communication in the trucking studies is that it did not foster trust; people used the opportunity to threaten each other. When people were specifically instructed on how to communicate (asked to work out a solution that was fair to both parties), verbal communication did increase the amount of money both sides won because it fostered trust instead.
Negotiation and bargaining
In everyday life, we often have a wide array of options. Given that there is considerable latitude on how people can resolve conflict, communication is important -- by talking, bargaining, and negotiating, people can arrive at a satisfactory settlement.
One limit to successful negotiation is that people often assume they are locked in a conflict in which only one party can come out ahead. They don't realise that a solution favourable to both parties is available.
An integrative solution is an outcome to a conflict whereby the parties make trade-offs on issues according to their different interests.
Can be difficult to identify, e.g. the more people have at stake, the more biased their perceptions of the opponent. This is one reason why people often use neutral mediators.