Group Dynamics: Social Norms & Roles

• A group consists of three or more people who interact and are interdependent, typically with 3-6 members; two people are a dyad.

Why People Join Groups

• Groups offer survival advantages, contribute to group identity, and facilitate social change.

Composition and Function of Groups

• Social norms dictate expected behavior for group members, promoting homogeneity.
• Social roles are shared expectations within a group about how specific individuals should behave.
• Clearly defined roles improve group performance and member satisfaction but may lead to loss of identity or decency.
• The Stanford Prison Experiment, led by Phil Zimbardo, highlighted the costs of social roles.
• Gender roles also have costs associated with them.
• Group cohesiveness refers to the qualities that bind members together and foster liking.
• Homogeneous groups ("birds of a feather flock together") influence group processes.
• Diversity in groups can reduce cohesiveness and conformity but improve decision-making.

Group Influence

• Social facilitation occurs when the presence of others energizes individuals.
• People perform better on simple, well-learned tasks but worse on complex, novel tasks when others are present.
• Norman Triplett's 1898 experiment, the first in social psychology, showed children winding fishing reels faster in the presence of others.
• Allport (1920) found that undergraduates generated better arguments alone than in a group.
• Zajonc's theory suggests the presence of others facilitates performance on simple tasks but hinders complex ones.
• The presence of others causes arousal due to increased alertness, evaluation apprehension, and distraction.
• A study of college students playing pool showed that skilled players' accuracy increased with observers, while unskilled players' accuracy decreased (Michaels et al., 1982).
• Social loafing, also known as the free rider problem, is the tendency for people to reduce effort when working in a group.
• The "bad apple effect" can exacerbate social loafing.
• Max Ringelmann's 1913 cart-pulling experiments demonstrated that individuals exert less effort when pulling together than alone.
• Latané et al. (1979) found that three people alone make as much noise as six people in a group.
• Men and individuals from individualistic cultures are more prone to social loafing.
• Diversity within a group can increase social loafing.
• Deindividuation involves the loosening of normal behavioral constraints when in a group, leading to impulsive and deviant acts.
• Anonymity, diffusion of responsibility, reduced self-awareness, and increased compliance with group norms contribute to deindividuation.
• Suicide baiting is more likely when crowds exceed 300 people and after 6:00 PM (Mann, 1981).
• A study of Halloween mayhem (Diener et al., 1976) found that children in groups and in anonymous conditions were more likely to take more candy than allowed.

Group Decisions

• Group decisions are superior when focused on the group's best interest, rely on expertise, facilitate task division, and include students.
• Process loss occurs when group interactions inhibit good problem-solving.
• Process loss can happen when the best member is not allowed to make decisions or conformity pressures and communication problems arise.
• Failure to share unique information is a common example of process loss.
• Shared and unshared information was studied in groups of 4 selecting the best candidate by Strasser & Titus in 1985 - delegating helps.
• Groupthink, identified by Janis (1972, 1982), occurs when maintaining group cohesiveness is prioritized over objective consideration of facts.
• The Bay of Pigs is a notable example of groupthink.
• Both low and high confidence in a group's problem-solving ability can encourage groupthink.
• To resist groupthink, leaders should be impartial, seek outside opinions, create subgroups, and solicit anonymous opinions.
• Group polarization is the tendency for groups to make more extreme decisions than the initial inclinations of their members.
• Persuasive arguments and social comparison contribute to group polarization.

Leadership in Groups

• The Great Person Theory suggests key personality traits make someone a good leader, regardless of the situation.
• Extraversion, assertiveness, intelligence, and integrative complexity are weakly correlated with leadership ability.
• Studies of US presidents (Simonton, 2001; McCan, 1992) considered height, family size, books published, IQ, tidiness, attractiveness, and achievement motivation.
• Transactional leaders set clear, short-term goals and rewards, while transformational leaders inspire followers to focus on long-term goals.
• The Contingency Theory of Leadership (Fiedler, 1967, 1978) suggests leadership effectiveness depends on whether the leader is task-oriented or relationship-oriented and the amount of control they have.
• Task-oriented leaders prioritize getting the job done and are most effective in high and low-control situations.
• Relationship-oriented leaders prioritize feelings and relationships between workers and are most effective in moderate-control situations.
• Women in leadership roles face a double bind due to communal versus agentic expectations.
• Women leaders face a glass ceiling, glass cliff in interpersonal crises, and negative evaluations from male subordinates as transformational leaders.

Conflict and Cooperation

• Conflict is inevitable at various levels.
• Social dilemmas, where the most beneficial action for an individual has harmful effects on everyone if chosen by most, cause conflicts.
• The Prisoner's Dilemma demonstrates how individually rational choices can lead to suboptimal outcomes for both players.
• Players are more cooperative when playing against a friend, expecting future interaction, playing in small groups, and exhibiting greater trust.
• The Tit-For-Tat Strategy encourages cooperation by initially acting cooperatively and then mirroring the opponent's previous turn.
• Consistent co-operators create a norm of cooperation, benefiting everyone and are evaluated more positively than freeloaders.
• Rewarding cooperators is perceived more positively than punishing freeloaders and is more likely to maintain cooperation.
• Threats are not an effective means of reducing conflict.
• The Trucking Game (Deutsch & Krauss, 1960, 1962) demonstrated that communication helps resolve conflict if used to find solutions for both parties.
• If communication is used mainly to convey threats, competition increases.
• Negotiation involves communication between opposing sides to reach a mutually agreed-upon solution.
• An integrative solution involves parties making trade-offs based on their different interests, conceding on unimportant issues but important to the other side.
• Effective communication of goals/objectives and trust-building are crucial for effective negotiations.
• Electronic negotiations can be more hostile than face-to-face negotiations (Stuhlmacher & Citera, 2005).
• Monahan (2021) discusses online dispute resolution through text-based mediation (TBM) and videoconferencing mediation (VCM).