Chapter 2: Studying Groups PDF

**CHAPTER 2: STUDYING GROUPS** THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF GROUPS - Paradigm: scientist's shared assumptions about the phenomena they study - A way of looking at the world that is passed between scientists, more than just knowledge or certain facts **The Individual and the Group*...

**CHAPTER 2: STUDYING GROUPS** THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF GROUPS - Paradigm: scientist's shared assumptions about the phenomena they study - A way of looking at the world that is passed between scientists, more than just knowledge or certain facts **The Individual and the Group** **Levels of analysis** - Group-level analysis - Humans are the constitutive elements of groups, groups and their processes have profound impact on members - Sociological - Individual-level analysis - Focus on the person in the group - Attitudes, motivations, personality as true determinants of social behaviour - Psychological - Durkhiem - Anomie, suicide - Share beliefs (collective representations are cornerstones of society) - Floyd Allport - Individual to understand the group - Groups not a real entity - Group fallacy: individual can think or feel, not the group **The group mind** - Collective consciousness - Group often acts together, especially when share the same views, attitudes, intentions, etc - Single, unifying consciousness - those who study individuals - concede that people act a certain way in groups - individuals drawn together by a collective structure, possibly worth studying **The reality of groups** - norms impact the way that individuals act - exist at the level of groups but not individual - field theory - B = f (P, E) - B are a function of the interaction of P (personal characteristics) with E (environmental factors) - Groups as a unified system with emergent properties that cannot be fully understood by piecemeal examination - Groups can unite members so intensely that their personal identity is overwhelmed **The Multilevel Perspective** - Micro-level - Qualities, characteristics, and actions of individual members - Meso-level - Group-level qualities of the groups themselves (cohesiveness, size, composition, structure) - Macro-level - Qualities and processes of larger collectives like communities, organizations, societies - Consider how these levels combine and interact - Can be different for every single group, even if the groups are of the same 'type' MEASUREMENT **Observation** - Watching and recording a group's activities and interactions **Overt and Covert Observation** - Overt observation - No attempt at hiding that one is studying a group - Covert observation - Recording activities of a group without their knowledge **Participant Observation** - Watch and record the group's activities and interactions while taking part in the group's social process **Reactivity and the Hawthorne Effect** - the act of being studied can make people behave differently than they would have otherwise **Structuring Observations** - Qualitative methods - Generate data describing general qualities and characteristics rather than precise quantities and amounts - Often textual not precise quantities or amounts - Structured observational methods - Classify into categories which are much more strict - Quantitative as it yields numeric results - Interaction Process Analysis (IPA) - Classify behaviour into 1 of 12 categories - 1-3 and 10-12 are socioemotional, relationship interaction - 4-9 are instrumental or task interactions - Never version called Systematic Multiple Level Observation of Groups - SYMLOG (26 categories) **Reliability and Validity of Observations** - Reliability: - a measure's consistency across time, components, and raters. For example, if a rater, when she hears the statement, "This group is a boring waste of time," always classifies it as a Category 12 behavior, then the rating is reliable. - Interrater reliability: - consistency across raters. For example, if different raters, working independently, all code the statement similarly, the rating has interrater reliability. - Validity: - the extent to which the technique measures what it is supposed to measure. The IPA, for example, is valid only if observers' ratings actually measure the amount of relationship and task interaction in the group. If the observers are incorrect in their coding, or if the categories are not accurate indicators of relationship and task interaction, the scores are not valid **Self-Report** **Sociometry** - self-report on who likes or dislikes who - Who would you most like to work with? - Who do you like the least? - Who do you like the most? - Make a sociogram - Diagram of relationships among group members **Social Network Analysis** - set of procedures for studying the relational structure of groups and networks graphically and mathematically - gets info about individual members, relationships between pairs of members, groups's overall structure - Roles - Neglected - Few connections to others - Rejected - Many people hate - Popular - Many people like - Controversial - Some people like, some people hate - Sociable - Selects many friends - Unsociable - Selects few friends - Cliques - Subcluster in larger group - Couples - Gatekeeper - Controls flow of information **Reliability and Validity of Self-Report Measures** - people may change their answers from day to day which makes it unreliable - if questions are not worded properly it looses validity - or if people are unwilling to accurately answer it would be invalid - may not be accurate to describe group processes because individuals do not actually know or can not accurately assess RESEARCH METHODS IN GROUP DYNAMICS **Case Studies** - in-depth examination of one or more groups - could be done directly or based on records or interviews with members after it has disbanded **Conducting a Case Study** - can look at groups with great success... or not - groupthink - how people may get blindspots when working in groups **Advantages and Disadvantages** - advantages - richly detailed qualitative data - good for bona fide groups - when group is well documented by why they act the way they do is quite unknown - Disadvantages - group may be so unique it doesn't tell us much about overall group dynamics - issues with objectivity - inaccurate or unavailable information - cannot confirm causal relationships **Correlational Studies** - test strength or relationship between the variables that they measure - reference group - group that provides individuals with guidelines or standards for evaluating themselves, their attitudes, and their believes **Conducting Correlational Studies** - correlation coefficient - -1 to +1 - -1 is one goes up, other goes down - +1 is both go same direction (could be up or down) **Advantages and Disadvantages** - Advantages - Shows more about relationship - Can be done without disrupting or manipulating - Disadvantages - Limited casual information - Can be difficult to prove directionality **Experimental Studies** **Conducting Experiments** - Identify variable they believe caused a change (independent variable) - Assessed effect of independent variable by acting it out in different variations - Measure dependent variables - Control other variables outside of the independent and dependent variables **Advantages and Disadvantages** - Advantages - Can make casual inferences - Good for testing hypotheses - Disadvantages - Cannot always properly control situation - May make an artificial group with artificial results - Are they actually relevant to real life groups? **Studying Groups: Issues and Implications** - Very hard to document objectively - May not create enough detail **Selecting a Method** - What style of info do you want? - Quantitative - Qualitative - May use multiple methods to get a more full picture **Ethics of Group Research** - May watch without telling people that they are being observed - IRB Institutional Review Board - Minimize risk to participants - Reviews each study's procedures before permitting researchers to proceed THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES **Motivational perspectives** - motivations: psychological mechanisms that give purpose and direction to behaviour - habits, beliefs, feelings, wants instincts, compulsions, drives - "to move" - emotions - "to move" - Focus on the generative aspect of human behaviour on the forward-moving, internally driven aspect of behaviour - Hierarchy of needs - Groups offer many of these like protective, resources, and interaction - Groups can give both positive and negative emotions **Behavioural perspectives** - Skinner's behaviourism - Assumptions - Psychological processes like motives and drives may shape people's reactions in groups - Psychological processes are too difficult to index accurately - Analyze how people behave in an actual situation for the best results - Most behaviour consistent with law of effect - We are more likely to repeat behaviour with positive consequences - Social Exchange Theory - the rewards are valued ones and any costs created by the groups are minimized - the members trust each other to fulfill their obligations over the long term - the exchange is judged to be a fair one with fairness defined primarily by mutual adherence to the norm of reciprocity - members develop a commitment to the group as indicated by increased affective attachment, a sense of loyalty, and an authentic concern for the other member's and the group's well-being - people are more likely to discontinue their group membership if demands are too high **System perspectives** - Systems theory approach - Groups are complex, adaptive, dynamic systems of interacting individuals - Groups can be created with a purpose or self-created - Groups can be responsive to outside stimuli or give outputs themselves - Parts of a group are interchangeable unless the parts are super specific which then may cause extraordinary change to the group - Input-process-output model - Input that feed into the group setting - Could be micro-, meso-, or macro- factors - Processes that take place within the group as it works on the task - Outputs generated by the system - Feedback goes back from output to input **Cognitive perspectives** - Cognitive processes that determine how group members gather and make sense of information - People form impressions of groups right when they join them - Constantly perceiving, judging, reasoning, remembering - Memory - Self-reference effect - People are more likely to remember a word when it is related to them - Group-reference effect - Similar impact as looking for words that relate to them **Biological perspectives** - Testosterone is linked to seeking power - Changes in heart rate and blood pressure is related when in group settings **Selecting a theoretical perspective** - You can mix and match theories for administering a test or making a hypothesis - synthesis