Psychology: Social Psychology and Group Behavior

Social Influence and Group Dynamics

• Latane's clapping/cheering studies: found that motion loss equals social loafing, where individuals exert less effort when working in a group.
• Deindividuation: loss of a person's sense of individuality and reduction of normal constraints against deviant behavior.

Crowd Behavior

• LeBon's theory of crowd behavior: people become barbaric and form a social identity, shifting from personal to shared social identity as a crowd member.

Group Decision Making

• Brainstorming: a technique that attempts to increase the production of creative ideas by encouraging group members to speak freely without criticizing their own or others' contributions.
• Groupthink: a group decision-making style characterized by an excessive tendency among group members to seek concurrence, which can override rational decision-making processes.
• Preventing groupthink: wide consultation with outsiders, encouragement of criticism, use of sub-groups to discuss issues, and follow-up meetings.

Group Polarization

• Exaggeration of initial tendencies in the thinking of group members through group discussion.

Social Dilemmas

• Situations in which a self-interested choice by everyone will create the worst outcome for everyone.

Social Status

• Some roles/role occupants/groups have more prestige.
• Fesinger's (1954) social comparison theory: people hold others who successfully compete with them in higher regard.

Norms

• Rules of conduct for members, which can be formal or informal, descriptive and prescriptive.
• Characteristics: explicit or implicit, fairly resistant to change, and can influence the individual in the absence of the group.

Social Facilitation

• Process whereby the presence of others enhances performance on easy tasks but impairs performance on difficult tasks.
• Studies:
  • Triplett's (1898) experiment: people cycled faster when paced than alone.
  • Zajonc's (1965) drive theory: arousal drives energy to produce dominant response.

Social Loafing

• Group-produced reduction in individual output on tasks where contributions are pooled.

Evaluation Apprehension Theory

• Fear of evaluation by others produces social facilitation.

Distraction-Conflict Theory

• Distraction from the task is the key to social facilitation.

Self-Awareness Theory

• Self-focused attention leads people to notice self-discrepancies, thereby motivating persons to mind an escape from self-awareness or change in behavior.

Self-Enhancement

• People are motivated to feel good about themselves, which can affect their thoughts and behavior.
• Better than average effect: people thinking they're better than average and have biased self-enhancement.

Self-Serving Beliefs

• Person takes credit for positive events but blames external factors for negative events, leading to self-enhancing recollections and biased opinions.