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Chapter 9
Group Processes: Influence in Social Groups
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Discussion Question
Have you ever written or posted something anonymously online that you know you never would have had the nerve to say or do in person?
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Learning Objectives
9.1 What are groups, and why do people join them?
9.2 In what ways do individuals perform differently when others are around?
9.3 Are two (or more) heads better than one in decision making, and how do leaders shape group outcomes?
9.4 What determines the likelihood that individual or group conflict will escalate or be resolved?
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What Is a Group?
9.1 What are groups, and why do people join them?
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Defining a Group
Two or more people who interact and are interdependent in the sense that their needs and goals cause them to influence each othe
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(Cartwright & Zander, 1968; Lewin, 1948)
What is a Group?
On a separate sheet of paper, write down each category that you believe represents a group.
1 students in a large lecture class
2. a family
3. members of the Sie
a Clu
4. residents of the same dorm
5. members of a baseball team
6. a construction crew building a highway
7. people riding an elevato
8. acquaintances standing in line for tickets
9. all citizens of the United States
10. all people in cars waiting to pay their tolls at an interchange
11. a mob of protestors at a demonstration
12. two strangers speaking on the telephone
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What is a Group and Why?
The textbook authors define a group as “two or more people who interact and are interdependent in the sense that their needs and goals cause them to influence each other.”
By this criterion, items 2, 5, and 6 are groups, since people are both interacting and interdependent on each other.
Items 1, 3, 7, 9, 10 do not meet the interaction criterion.
Items 1, 4, 7, 8, and 12 do not meet the interdependence criterion.
There are some “fuzzy boundaries” in these definitions (e.g., one can imagine ways in which students in a large class are interdependent on each other). Looking at the fuzzy boundaries of group definition, one can get a clearer idea of what some core characteristics of a group are.
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(Adapted from Agans, 1999, “The nature of groups: An exercise for classroom demonstration.” In L. Benjamin, B. F. Nodine, R. M. Ernst, & C. B. Broeker (Eds.), Activities handbook for the teaching of psychology (Vol. 4). Washington, DC: APA.)
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Why Do People Join Groups?
Groups have a number of other benefits:
Important source of information:
Help us resolve ambiguity in the social world
Important aspect of identity:
Help us define who we are
Help us feel distinct from other groups
Establishment of social norms
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Forming relationships with other people fulfills a number of basic human needs.
Some researchers argue that in our evolutionary past, there was a substantial survival advantage to establishing bonds with other people (Baumeister & Leary, XXXXXXXXXXPeople who bonded together were better able to hunt for and grow food, find mates, and care for children. Consequently, they argue, the need to belong has become innate and is present in all societies. Consistent with this view, people in all cultures are motivated to form relationships with other people and to resist the dissolution of these relationships (Gardner, Pickett, & Brewer, 2000; Manstead, 1997).
Social Norms
Potential costs to social roles
If enmeshed in a role, individual identities and personalities can get lost.
Social Roles
Shared expectations in a group about how particular people are supposed to behave in that group
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Social Roles
Zimbardo and colleagues XXXXXXXXXXrandomly assigned male volunteers to play roles for two weeks as:
Prisoners
Guards
Students quickly assumed these roles.
Researchers had to end the experiment after only
six days.
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Zimbardo’s group built a mock prison in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University and paid students to play the role of guard or prisoner (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, XXXXXXXXXXThe role students played was determined by the flip of a coin. The guards were outfitted with a uniform of khaki shirts and pants, a whistle, a police nightstick, and reflecting sunglasses, and the prisoners were outfitted with a loose-fitting smock with an identification number stamped on it, ru
er sandals, a cap made from a nylon stocking, and a locked chain attached to one ankle.
When Stanford Became a Prison
Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues randomly assigned students to play the role of prisoner or guard in a mock prison. The students assumed these roles all too well.
Source: Philip G. Zimbardo, Inc.
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The Guard Role
One of the guards from Zimbardo’s prison experiment at Stanford.
Source: Philip G. Zimbardo, Inc.
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The Stanford Prison Study
Guards
Abusive
Ve
ally harassed, humiliated prisoners
Prisoners
Passive
Helpless
Withdrawn
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Zimbardo’s group built a mock prison in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University and paid students to play the role of guard or prisoner (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, XXXXXXXXXXThe role students played was determined by the flip of a coin. The guards were outfitted with a uniform of khaki shirts and pants, a whistle, a police nightstick, and reflecting sunglasses, and the prisoners were outfitted with a loose-fitting smock with an identification number stamped on it, ru
er sandals, a cap made from a nylon stocking, and a locked chain attached to one ankle.
Prison Abuse at Abu Ghrai
In 2004, American military guards routinely abused prisoners in Abu Ghraib, a prison in Iraq.
Physical beatings, sexual abuse, and psychological humiliation
The American public was shocked by pictures of
these abuses
A few bad apples happen to end up in the unit guarding the prisoners?
“What’s bad is the ba
el” (Zimbardo)
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Hersch (2004)
Two Views of the Stanford Prison Study
There are many criticisms of Philip Zimbardo’s Prison Study.
Many have reviewed his methods and found that he was much more involved in directing the expectations for the behaviors of the prisoners and guards than he admits.
Further, he was not a removed researcher, but an involved participant.
As such, can we rely on his interpretations of his data to excuse poor behavior of others in social roles that allow for violence, like at Abu Ghraib prison?
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Two Views of the Stanford Prison Study
Watch both Required videos below and make your own assessment about the validity of Dr. Zimbardo’s conclusions.
Dr. Philip Zimbardo reviews the prison study and asserts that social roles drove the behavior of the prisoners and guards.
Dr. Alex Haslam replicated the prison study with more rigorous methodology and proposes an alternate explanation for the occu
ences during the Zimbardo prison study and at Abu Ghraib.
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Group Cohesiveness (1 of 2)
The more cohesive a group is, the more its members are likely to:
Stay in the group
Take part in group activities
Try to recruit new like-minded members
Group Cohesiveness
Qualities of a group that bind members together and promote liking between members
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(Levine & Moreland, 1998; Pickett, Silver, & Brewer, 2002; Sprink & Ca
on, 1994)
Group Cohesiveness (2 of 2)
Task requires close cooperation?
Cohesiveness helps performance.
Maintaining good relationships most important?
Cohesiveness can interfere with optimal performance
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(Gully, Devine, & Whitney, 1995)
Is it possible, for example, that the cohesiveness felt by Kennedy and his advisers got in the way of clear thinking about the Bay of Pigs invasion?
Group Diversity (1 of 2)
Group members tend to be alike in age, sex, beliefs and opinions
Why are they similar?
Attracted to and likely to recruit similar others
Groups operate in ways that encourage similarity in
the members
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Group Diversity (2 of 2)
Homogenous groups are more cohesive
Diverse groups perform bette
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Figure 9.1
Racial/Gender Diversity and Business Performance
To examine the relationship between a business’s performance and its racial and gender diversity, He
ing XXXXXXXXXXconducted a co
elational study of over 1,000 U.S. workplaces and found a positive association between both types of diversity with (a) sales revenue and (b) number of customers. These results seem to indicate a positive relationship between diversity and a business’s bottom line. But as you know, because these data are only co
elational, we cannot draw conclusions here regarding one variable causing another.
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Individual Behavior in
a Group Setting
9.2 In what ways do individuals perform differently when others are around?
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Social Facilitation (1 of 4)
Social Facilitation
People do better on simple tasks, and worse on complex tasks, when they are in the presence of others and