Group Processes Seminar 7

1. Group Processes Seminar 7

2. What is a group?

3. Which of these are meaningful groups? • Members of Film Society • Your family • Ashoka Students • Males • Husband and wife • Social psychologists • A group of people occupying the same elevator • People who like watching Desperate Housewives • Psychology majors • Twins • People who wear Googleglass • People who notice other people wear Google glass

4. Entitativity: An index of “groupness” • How much a social group seems like a coherent unit rather than simply a collection of individuals.  • What makes people feel like a group? • Similarity • Common fate • Proximity • Goodness of form • Resistance to intrusion Campbell (1958). Common fate, similarity, and other indices of the status of aggregates of person as social entities. Behav Sci.

5. Why do people join groups? • Functionalist perspective • Psychological (need for belonging) • Instrumental • People are selective in what groups they join • Need to distinguish identity (recall: social mach bands experiment)

6. Social facilitation What happens when people are in groups?

7. Classic paradigms in social facilitation • Social facilitation: An improvement in performance in the presence of others. General experimental paradigm Perform task in private vs. Public Strobe. (2012). The truth about Triplett (1898), but nobody seems to care. Pers Psyc Sci.

8. The debate in social facilitation • Is performance improved or impaired in “public” (audience or co-actor) conditions ? • Decades of confusing results • Resolution: Zajonc (1965) • The role of dominant (habitual, well-learned) responses: • If dominant response yields incorrect answer: hurts performance • If dominant response yields correct answer: helps performance

9. Zajonc study • Pronounce words between 1 and 16 times • Creates “dominant” response: • Words pronounced most frequently = dominant • Words flashed very quickly: 1/100 second • Participants guess word • If others are present, more likely to guess “dominant” words

10. The cockroach study • Cockroaches placed in runway • Bright light shown • Run to other end of runway to escape light • Cockroach “spectators” or not • Perform faster with spectators • But only if maze is simple Zajonc. (1969). Social enhancement and impairment of performance in the cockroach. J Pers Soc Psy.

11. Practical implications? • Archival data from Ministry of Transport, Israel. • Apart from the presence of a driving instructor, test-takers were tested alone or with observer (another testee) in the backseat for economic reasons. • Which percentage belongs to which group? 49% pass 34% pass Rosenbloom et al. (2007). Success on a practical driver's license test with and without the presence of another testee. Acc Analy Prev.

12. Something else from the driving study… Rosenbloom et al. (2007). Success on a practical driver's license test with and without the presence of another testee. Acc Analy Prev.

13. Social Loafing Output of individual is diminished when working in a group • Ringelmann • Why no social facilitation?

14. SOCIAL FACILITATION Enhanced performance on simple tasks Individual efforts can be evaluated Arousal/ distraction Impaired performance on complex tasks Presence of others SOCIAL LOAFING Impaired performance on simple tasks Individual efforts cannot be evaluated Little arousal/evaluation apprehension Relaxation Enhanced performance on complex tasks

15. Individual differences in social loafing

16. Deindividuation What happens when people are in groups, but others don’t “see” them?

17. Imagine this You drink a potion that would make you totally invisible for 24 hours and were completely assured that you would not be detected or held responsible for your actions. What would you do?

18. Theories of Deindividuation • Original view: loosening of normal constraints on behavior when people are in a crowd • Leading to…“mob behavior”

19. Newer view of Deindividuation • Two factors • Lower accountability • Increases obedience to “local” norm Nowadays…

20. Singaporeans are angry

22. Group Decision Making What happens when people make a collective decision?

23. Initial issues • Most major decisions in the world are made by groups • Why? • Are groups always better than single individuals?

24. Wisdom-of-the-crowds: Transactive memory Groups collectively encode, store, and retrieve knowledge Provides the group members with more and better knowledge than any individual could access on his/her own Sparrow et al. (2011). Google effects on memory. Science.

25. Problem 1: Members sometimes fail to share unique information Shared information condition Unshared information condition 4-member team each received same information negative information, but unique number of positive information about job candidates: A, B, and C. 4-member team each received same information of job candidates: A, B, and C. Candidate A is the obvious best, 8 positive, 4 negative traits: Member 1 2 Member 1 8 4 4 24% chose A 84% chose A 8 4 Member 2 2 Member 2 4 Member 3 8 4 2 Member 3 4 Member 4 2 8 4 Member 4 4

26. Problem 2: Groupthink • Excessive tendency to seek concurrence among group members (“herd mentality”) • Valuing group cohesiveness and solidarity more than the need to consider the facts in a realistic manner. • Can lead to disastrous decisions • Cuba’s Bay of Pigs • Challenger disaster (1986) • US-Iraq war

27. The road to groupthink Symptoms • Illusion of invulnerability • Moral certainty • Stereotyped view of outgroup • Self-censorship • Pressure to conform • Illusion of unanimity Antecedents • Group is (already) cohesive • Isolated • Directive leader • Stress • Poor decision-making rules Defective decision making • Incomplete survey of alternatives • Failure to examine risks of favored alternative • Poor information search • Few contingency plans

28. Problem 3: Group polarization • Original finding (Stone, 1962) seemed to suggest “risky shift” • Newer view: group polarization, not riskiness per se • Whatever way the group is leaning initially, members tend to polarize further in that direction

29. Risky shift, Cautious shift

30. Real world implications of group behavior

31. Identity fusion theory • Humans are like onions Personal-level identity Private self Community-level identity Social-level identity Social self (social identities) _______-level identity Swann & Burhmester (2015). Identity fusion. Curr Dir Psy Sci.

32. Identity fusion • The feeling of oneness: Private identity “fuses” with group identity • Can you name some examples? • ____________ • ____________ • Measuring identity fusion

33. What happens when group identities are threatened? • Time 1: Spanish participants’ level of identity fusion was measured • Time 2: Wrote an essay describing themselves • Received pos vs. neg feedback regarding their Spanish identity • DVs: “I would fight someone [physically threatening another Spaniard], [insulting or making fun of Spain], [help others get revenge on someone who insulted Spain], etc.” What would you predict?

34. Identities are fluid • Social categorization can be spontaneous (more about this in the week on Stereotypes & Prejudice) • We have so many identities • Males vs. females • Professors vs. husband • Indian vs. Earthling • Hence: Identity fusion can exist as both a trait and state • Implications for activation of state-level identities on self-sacrifice…?

35. Group discussion What makes a terrorist?

36. Take home messages • People are social beings, but highly selective ones • Being in groups has its pros and cons