1. Group Processes: Influence in Social Groups
Chapter 9
Group Processes: Influence in Social Groups

2. 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 other
(Cartwright & Zander, 1968; Lewin, 1948)

3. Why Do People Join Groups?
Group benefits:
Important source of information:
Help us resolve ambiguity in social world
Important aspect of identity:
Help us define who we are
Help us feel distinct from other groups
Establishment of social norms
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, 1995). People 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).

4. Social Roles
Shared expectations in a group about how particular people are supposed to behave in that group

5. Social Roles – Stanford Prison Experiment
Zimbardo and colleagues (1973) randomly 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.
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, 1973). The 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, rubber sandals, a cap made from a nylon stocking, and a locked chain attached to one ankle.

6. 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.

7. The Guard Role One of the guards from Zimbardo’s prison experiment at Stanford.
Source: Philip G. Zimbardo, Inc.

8. Group Cohesiveness Group Cohesiveness
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
(Levine & Moreland, 1998; Pickett, Silver, & Brewer, 2002; Sprink & Carron, 1994)
Group Cohesiveness
Qualities of a group that bind members together and promote liking between members

9. 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

10. Group Diversity (2 of 2) Homogenous groups are more cohesive
Diverse groups perform better

11. Individual Behavior in a Group Setting
9.2 In what ways do individuals perform differently when others are around?

12. Social Facilitation Social Facilitation
People do better on simple tasks, and worse on complex tasks, when they are in the presence of others and their individual performance can be evaluated

13. A Crowded-Classroom Benefit Research on social facilitation finds that people do better on a well-learned task when in the presence of others than when they are alone. If students have studied hard and know the material well, they might be better off taking an exam in a room with lots of other people.
Source: wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock

14. Social Loafing (3 of 3) Social Loafing
People do worse on simple tasks but better on complex tasks when they are in the presence of others and their individual performance cannot be evaluated
Social loafing in groups has since been found on a variety of simple tasks, such as clapping your hands, cheering loudly, and thinking of as many uses for an object as you can (Karau & Williams, 2001; Shepperd & Taylor, 1999).

15. Figure 9.3 Social Facilitation and Social Loafing
(Jackson & Williams, 1985)
The presence of others can lead to social facilitation or social loafing. The important variables that distinguish the two are evaluation, arousal, and the complexity of the tasks.

16. Deindividuation: Getting Lost in the Crowd (1 of 2)
The loosening of normal constraints on behavior when people cannot be differentiated (such as when they are in a crowd), leading to an increase in impulsive and deviant acts
In other words, getting lost in a crowd can lead to an unleashing of behaviors that we would never dream of doing by ourselves.

17. The KKK: Hiding Under Robes and Hoods The robes and hoods of the Ku Klux Klan cloak its members in anonymity; their violent behavior is consistent with research on deindividuation.
Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ ]

18. Deindividuation Makes People Feel Less Accountable
Why does deindividuation lead to impulsive and sometime violent acts?
Makes people feel less accountable
Increases obedience to group norms
(Diener, 1980; Postmes & Spears, 1998; Zimbardo, 1970)

19. Deindividuation Online (1 of 2)
Deindividuation does not require face-to- face contact
Example: feeling less inhibited on social media that’s anonymous
(Postmes & Spears 1998)
In To Kill a Mockingbird, for example, the norms of the lynch mob were to take the law into their own hands, but clearly these norms conflicted with other rules and laws (e.g., “Thou shalt not kill”). Because of the conditions promoting deindividuation, they were about to act on the group’s norms and ignore the others until Scout stepped in and reminded them that they were individuals. Thus it is not just that deindividuation reduces the likelihood that one person will stand out and be blamed but also that it increases adherence to the specific group’s norms.

20. Deindividuation

21. Group Decisions: Are Two (or More) Heads Better Than One?
9.3 Are two (or more) heads better than one in decision making, and how do leaders shape group outcomes?

22. Process Loss
Any aspect of group interaction that inhibits good problem solving
In some groups, people don’t listen to each other; in others, one person is allowed to dominate the discussion while the others tune out (Sorkin, Hays, & West, 2001; Watson, Johnson, Kumar, & Critelli, 1998).
Process loss can occur for a number of reasons:
Groups might not try hard enough to find out who the most competent member is.
The most competent member might find it difficult to disagree with everyone else.
Communication problems can arise.
Group will do well only if the most talented member can convince the others that he or she is right!

23. Failure to Share Unique Information
Groups tend to focus on the information they share & ignore facts known to only some members of the group.
ways to get groups to focus more on unshared information:
Group discussions should last long enough to get beyond what everyone already knows.
Assign different group members to specific areas of expertise so they know they alone are responsible for certain types of information.
Groups often fail to discuss information that only some members have (Geitemeyer & Schulz-Hardt, 2003; Stasser & Titus, 1985).
Consider a medical team trying to decide on the course of treatment of a person with abdominal pain. All members share some knowledge, such as the fact that the patient is a male in his fifties with a history of digestive problems. Some members of the team, however, know things the other members do not. The doctor who first examined the patient in the emergency room may be the only one who knows that the patient had mussels for dinner that night, whereas one of the attending physicians may be the only one to have seen the results of a blood test showing that the patient has an abnormally high white blood cell count. Obviously, to make the most informed decision, the group needs to pool all of the information and use it to decide on the best course of treatment.

24. Groupthink
A kind of thinking in which maintaining group cohesiveness and solidarity is more important than considering the facts in a realistic manner
Perhaps this was the problem with Kennedy and his advisers when they decided to invade Cuba; they were more concerned with maintaining morale than with rocking the boat.
Janis (1972, 1982): Groupthink is most likely to occur when group is:
Highly cohesive
Isolated from contrary opinions
Ruled by a directive leader who makes his or her wishes known

25. Cartoon: Groupthink in the Boardroom
Henry Martin/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank

26. Figure 9.4 Groupthink: Antecedents, Symptoms, and Consequences
Arthur Schlesinger, one of Kennedy’s advisers, reported that he had severe doubts about the Bay of Pigs invasion but did not express these concerns during the discussions out of a fear that “others would regard it as presumptuous of him, a college professor, to take issue with august heads of major government institutions” (Janis, 1982, p. 32). If anyone does voice a contrary viewpoint, the rest of the group is quick to criticize, pressuring the person to conform to the majority view. Schlesinger did share some of his doubts with Dean Rusk, the secretary of state. When Robert Kennedy, the attorney general and the president’s brother, got wind of this, he took Schlesinger aside at a party and told him that the president had made up his mind to go ahead with the invasion and that his friends should support him. This kind of behavior creates an illusion of unanimity, where it looks as if everyone agrees. On the day the group voted on whether to invade, President Kennedy asked all those present for their opinion—except Arthur Schlesinger.
Under some conditions, maintaining group cohesiveness and solidarity is more important to a group than considering the facts in a realistic manner (see “Antecedents”). When this happens, certain symptoms of groupthink occur, such as the illusion of invulnerability (see “Symptoms”). These symptoms lead to defective decision making. (Based on data in Janis & Mann, 1977.)

27. Avoiding the Groupthink Trap
A wise leader can take several steps to avoid groupthink:
Remain impartial
Seek outside opinions
Create subgroups
Seek anonymous opinions
Fortunately, President Kennedy learned from his mistakes with the Bay of Pigs decision, and when he encountered his next major foreign policy decision, the Cuban missile crisis, he took many of these steps to avoid groupthink. When his advisers met to decide what to do about the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba, Kennedy often absented himself from the group so as not to inhibit discussion. He also brought in outside experts (e.g., Adlai Stevenson) who were not members of the in-group. That Kennedy successfully negotiated the removal of the Soviet missiles was almost certainly due to the improved methods of group decision making he adopted.

28. Leading All the Way: Martin Luther King, Jr.
What determines whether someone, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., is a great leader? Is it a certain constellation of personality traits, or is it necessary to have the right person in the right situation at the right time?
Source: File/AP Images

29. Leadership Styles Transactional Leaders Transformational Leaders
Leaders who set clear, short-term goals and reward people who meet them
Transformational Leaders
Leaders who inspire followers to focus on common, long-term goals
Transactional leaders do a good job of making sure the needs of the organization are met and that things run smoothly.
It is tranformational leaders, however, who think outside the box, identify important long-term goals, and inspire their followers to toil hard to meet these goals.

30. The Right Person in the Right Situation
Contingency Theory of Leadership
The idea that leadership effectiveness depends both on how task-oriented or relationship-oriented the leader is and on the amount of control and influence the leader has over the group

31. Contingency Theory of Leadership (1 of 3)
Two basic types
Task-Oriented Leader
A leader concerned more with getting the job done than with workers’ feelings and relationships
Relationship-Oriented Leader
A leader who is concerned primarily with workers’ feelings and relationships
The contingency theory of leadership has been supported in studies of numerous types of leaders, including business managers, college administrators, military commanders, and postmasters (Chemers, 2000; Peters, Hartke, & Pohlmann, 1985; Schriesheim, Tepper, & Tetrault, 1994; Van Vugt & DeCremer, 1999).

32. Gender and Leadership Double bind for women leaders:
If warm and communal,
Perceived as having low leadership potential
If agentic and forceful
Often perceived negatively for not “acting like a woman should”
In 2011, only 12 of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies were women, and the boards of directors of U.S. companies included only 16% women (Catalyst, 2011). Things are not much different elsewhere. That 16% figure is actually among the highest in the world, except for Scandinavian countries (Norway has the highest percentage of women on boards of directors at 40%).
If a woman’s style of leadership is stereotypically “masculine,” in that she is autocratic, “bossy,” and task-oriented, she is evaluated more negatively than men who have the same style are (Eagly & Carli, 2003; Eagly, Makhijani, & Klonsky, 1992). This is especially true if men are doing the evaluating.

33. Gender and Leadership (3 of 3)
Glass cliff
Women are thought to be better at managing crises (especially interpersonal ones)
Puts them in precarious positions where difficult to succeed
Here’s another danger that women leaders face: Because they are perceived as being more communal, they are often thought to be better at managing crises, particularly ones that involve interpersonal problems, such as a conflict between high-level managers. That might seem like a good thing—trusting women leaders to solve problems—but it has a downside in which women are more likely to be put in precarious, high-risk positions where it is difficult to succeed. Michelle Ryan and her colleagues have called this a “glass cliff” (Ryan et al. 2008, 2011). Even when women have broken through the “glass ceiling” into top leadership positions, they are more likely than men to be put in charge of units that are in crisis and in which the risk of failure is high.

34. GM’s First Female CEO Inherits a Recall In 2014, Mary Barra became the first female CEO of a major global automaker, in this case General Motors. Within months, she had to announce plans for GM to recall over 11 million cars due to defective design components that the company had known about for nearly 10 years. Could Barra become another example of a woman who broke through a “glass ceiling” only to find herself on a “glass cliff”?
Source: US Senate/Alamy

35. Conflict and Cooperation
9.4 What determines the likelihood that individual or group conflict will escalate or be resolved?

36. Social Dilemmas
A conflict in which the most beneficial action for an individual, if chosen by most people, will have harmful effects on everyone
What is best for an individual is not always best for the group as a whole. Consider a publishing venture by the novelist Stephen King. He wrote two installments of a novel called The Plant and posted them on the Internet, asking readers to pay $1 per installment. The deal he offered was simple: If at least 75 percent of the people who downloaded the installments paid the fee, he would keep writing and posting new installments. If fewer than 75 percent of the people paid, he would stop writing, and people would never get the rest of the novel.
King had devised a classic social dilemma, a conflict in which the most beneficial action for an individual will, if chosen by most people, be harmful to everyone (Weber, Kopelman, & Messick, 2004). It was to any individual’s financial advantage to download King’s novel free of charge and let other people pay. However, if too many people took this approach, everyone would lose, because King said he would stop writing the novel.
At first, people acted for the good of all; more than 75 percent paid for the first installment. As with many social dilemmas, however, people eventually acted in their own self-interest, to the detriment of all. The number of people who paid for their later installments dropped below 75 percent, and King stopped posting new ones, saying on his Web site that the novel is “on hiatus.”

37. Negotiation and Bargaining (1 of 3)
A form of communication between opposing sides in a conflict in which offers and counteroffers are made and a solution occurs only when both parties agree
People often find it difficult to identify integrative solutions (Hoffman et al., 1999; Thompson, 1997).
They will tend to distrust proposals made by the other side and to overlook interests they have in common (O’Connor & Carnevale, 1997; Ross & Ward, 1995, 1996).

38. Negotiation and Bargaining (2 of 3)
Integrative Solution
A solution to conflict whereby parties make trade- offs on issues according to their different interests; each side concedes the most on issues that are unimportant to it but important to the other side
People often find it difficult to identify integrative solutions (Hoffman et al., 1999; Thompson, 1997).
They will tend to distrust proposals made by the other side and to overlook interests they have in common (O’Connor & Carnevale, 1997; Ross & Ward, 1995, 1996).

39. Negotiation and Bargaining (3 of 3)
When negotiating, integrative solutions are often available:
Work on gaining trust and communicating.
Remember people often construe situation differently.
Neutral mediators often help solve labor disputes, legal battles, and divorce proceedings by recognizing that there are mutually agreeable solutions to a conflict.
You may discover the other side communicates its interests more freely as a result, increasing the likelihood of a solution beneficial to both parties.