Tribe

1. Tribe IMD09120: Collaborative Media Brian Davison 2011/12

2. Tribe • Group formation • Norms • Conformity • Roles • Anonymity • Summary Brook, P. (1963) Lord of the Flies

3. Working in teams Performing Shared vision; disagreements resolved positively; constructive problem-solving Roles are clarified; decisions made as a group; group norms established Norming Storming Decisions are difficult; team members compete for importance; rebellion against leader Forming High dependency on leader to clarify objectives and roles. Anxiety about processes Tuckman, B.W. (1965) Development sequence in small groups, Psychological Bulletin, 63, 316-328

4. Norms • “attitudes and behaviours that group members are expected to show uniformly; these define group membership and differentiate between groups” (Hewstoneet al., 2005) • Relatively enduring, but may change with circumstances over time

5. Group identity • ‘Postural congruence’ • Uniform • Language • Gestures • Facial expressions • Cultural preferences http://www.punk77.co.uk/groups/gobonyou.htm

6. The Hawthorne Effect • Elton Mayo, 1920s • Manipulated lighting, humidity, length of working day, rest periods, etc. • Productivity rose • Observer, not supervisor • Management attention • More freedom • Revised behavioural norms http://www.flavinscorner.com/scibadly2.htm

7. Conformity • Asch, 1950s • Participants had to decide which of three comparison lines of different lengths matched a standard line • 36 participants tested individually: only 3 mistakes in 720 trials (0.42%) • In groups, naïve participants agreed with incorrect majority answer in 32% of trials http://www.simplypsychology.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/asch-conformity.html

8. Why? • Genuinely believed they were mistaken • Didn’t want to upset the experiment by disagreeing • Thought their eyesight might be faulty • Some denied being aware of giving the wrong answer • Others didn’t want to ‘appear different’

9. Some factors affecting conformity • Group size and unanimity • most pronounced with 3-5 person majority • and if others are unanimous (but only if perceived as independent judges) • task difficulty • as becomes more difficult, more likely to conform • giving answers in privacy • conflicting results • cultural factors • lower conformity rates found in the late 1970s

10. The Bystander Effect • People are less likely to take action in groups • Diffusion of responsibility http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE5YwN4NW5o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsPfbup0ac

11. The Milgram Experiment • Ordinary people asked to administer electric shocks of increasing strength • Lowest: 15V • Highest: 450V (lethal) • They believed it was an experiment about learning • Most went all the way to 450V

12. The scripts

13. Short break

14. Roles “patterns of behaviour that distinguish between different activities within a group and that help to give the group an efficient structure” (Hewstoneet al., 2005)

15. Roles in Computer Mediated contexts • Yoo & Alavi, 2003 • Analysed email conversations among executives acting as virtual teams during a training exercise • Leaders • Emerged from the interactions • Sent more and longer messages • Fell into three types: initiator, scheduler and integrator

16. Yoo & Alavi results

17. One-tailed test Tests whether a result is either significantly larger or significantly smaller than the mean. Shaded area is 0.05 of total 1.645

18. Two-tailed test Tests whether a result is significantly different from the mean. Each shaded area is 0.025 of total 1.96

19. Roles as structure • The individual has multiple roles • Unfamiliar roles may feel awkward • Culturally shared roles supply norms of behaviour • Feelings of personal responsibility can be avoided • Zimbardo, 1973 • College students acting as prisoners and guards • Powerful effects of even artificial roles and emerging group norms

20. The Stamford Prison Experiment What kind of prison guard would you make?

21. Anonymity • De-individualisation • Groups provide anonymity • Conversely, when protected from the group, the individual acts more authentically and responsibly • The anonymity of CMC may encourage extreme group behaviour • The anonymity of CMC may offer the individual freedom from usual social pressures

22. Postmes et al. 2000 • Formation of group norms in students using email • socially constructed group norms determine email communication patterns within groups • e.g. email used as chat, or scheduling tool, or to interact with non-present friends, or… • process constrained by social identities which become more meaningful over time • conformity to norms increases over time • communication outside the group governed by different social norms

23. Postmes et al. 2001 added more to this • Anonymity can increase social influence if there is a strong, meaningful group identity • group members primed with certain norms (efficiency vs. sociability) • behaviour of anonymous groups more in accordance with the norm than identifiable groups • But other studies show conflicting results

24. Summary • Groups exert powerful influences on the individual • Norms, roles and anonymity insulate the individual • Groups may display extreme behaviour