Social Psychology (Free Access)

• Social psychology is the study of how individuals perceive, influence, and relate to others. 
• History
  • Western Ideas began with
    • Plato’s idea that the man was supposed to be rational
    • Aristotle idea was that man’s behaviour changes with observation and analysis
    • Greek & Roman ideas were that Man & society were secular and dependent
      • It was important to constantly question aspects around us
        • Rooted in academic skepticism
    • Christianity’s ideal was of the supremacy of man on earth as decided by God
    • Rene Descartes by 17^th century developed scientific methods of analysis and rejected the Christian doctrine
  • Emergence of Sociology
    • Auguste Comte’s idea was to find a true final science in the highest order to understand society and the individual
  • The emergence of Social Psychology
  • 1862: Proposed two branches of Psychology: Physiological and social
    • Identity: 
      • The American view of identity as being individualistic
      • Gestalt perspective: the environment is not only made up of individuals but also their interrelationships
      • 1924: Floyd Allport introduced experimental methods in social psychology 
  • World Wars and the Great Depression in America greatly shaped social psychology
    • In 1936 the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) was established. It began by creating ethics and values in research
      • Kurt Lewin was a founder
      • “No research without action, and no action without research”
    • By the world wars, fascism was a major problem and its anti-intellectual stand led to the immigration of social scientists to America
    • Additionally, social behavior knowledge in wartime programs were included
  • After the wars ended social psychology grew in America and its theories began to be used the world over 
  • Many prominent social psychologists came out post-war:
    • Leon Festinger (1957): Cognitive dissonance 
      • Influence of the group on individuals
    • Staley Milgram (1963): Obedience
      • Most people would follow any instruction given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being.  
      • Gordon Allport: Contact hypothesis
        •  Desegregation and reduction of racial prejudice
      • Elaine Hatfield and Ellen Berscheid (1969) – Interpersonal or Romantic Attractions 
      • Zimbardo –  Social roles and their effects
      • Bib Latane and John Darley (1968) – bystander intervention
  • Crisis in social psychology also known as the Crisis of Confidence
    • Started in the 1970’s
    • Questions were raised about the need for social psychology
    • Ethical issues were brought up due to studies by Zimbardo and Milgram
    • Research conclusions were questioned due to
      • White male-dominated bias 
      • University students are a major sample
    • The crisis of confidence was reduced by the following measure:
      • Increase in experimental methods
      • Increase in correlational methods
      • Increased interest in the concept of the self
    • After 1980’s social psychology developed an interdisciplinary and multicultural aspect
      • culture-specific and evolutionary human behavior were of concern
      • Cognitive science and neuroscience became important parts of Social psychology

Social Cognition

• The manner in which we interpret, analyze, remember, and use information about the social world.
  • How we think about the social world
  • Attempts to understand it and ourselves
  • Our place in it

Methods used:

• Heuristics
• Schemas
• Automatic processing
• Controlled processing
• Heuristics
  • Simple rules for making complex decisions or drawing inferences in a rapid manner and seemingly effortless manner.
  • Four types:
  • Representative
  • Availability
  • Anchoring
  • Status Quo
  • Why do we need/use these?
    • Information overload: demands placed on our cognitive system are greater than its capacity.
      • Stress increases incidence of information overload
    • Conditions of uncertainty
  • You meet someone new at a house party. He is dressed in a suit. His hair is neatly placed and is clean shaven. Talks effortlessly and can hold a conversation. You notice that he also has clean personal habits and is very gentlemanly in his manners. You enjoy his company but he leaves the party early as he has a meeting the next morning.
  • Later you realize you forgot to ask him about his profession. What could it be?
  • You meet your neighbor for the first time. You notice that she is dressed conservatively, is neat in her personal habits, has a very large library in her home, and seems very gentle and a little shy.
  • What could her profession be?
• Representativeness Heuristic
  • Prototype comparisons: Summary of the common attributes possessed by members of a category.
  • Rule: The more a person resembles or matches a given group, the more likely she or he is to belong to that group.
  • Can these judgement be wrong?
  • Decisions or judgments based on representativeness tend to ignore base rates –  frequency with which given events or patterns occur in the total population.
  • Asians are less likely to be governed by representativeness heuristics compared to North Americans.
  • Is it safer to be in a Big SUV or a smaller, lighter car, in the event of an accident?
  • How often do you use your cell phone during class hours?
• Availability Heuristic
  • A strategy for making judgements on the basis of how easily specific kinds of information can be brought to mind.
  • Ease and amount rules
  • Self relevant, personal familiarity and emotional judgments follow the ease rule
  • Amount rule is followed for when we have less information about a particular subject, or if the task is inherently difficult.
• Anchoring and Adjustment
  • It involves the tendency to use a number of value as a starting point to which we then make adjustments
    • Usually takes place during times of uncertainty
    • We use something we know as a starting point
  • We stop as soon as a value we consider plausible is reached
    • To save “mental effort”
• Status Quo
  • Belief that the Status quo is good because it has existed for a length of time and therefore must be of some use
    • Eg a product that has been in the market for a long time may be preferred over a new, better product
  • Study on chocolates (Eidelman, Pattershall, Crandall, 2010)
  • Uncertainty is again central to these decisions.
• Schemas
  • Mental framework centering on a specific theme that helps us to organize information
  • Influences three processes:
    • Attention
    • Encoding
    • Retrieval
  • Attention: Act as filters: information consistent with them are more likely to be noticed. However, information that is starkly different is also noticed
    • More used when cognitive load is high
  • Encoding: Information consistent with schemas is encoded
    • Sharply different are also encoded, especially if they don’t agree with us
  • Retrieval: Retrieval of consistent information is higher.
    • However, it may simply be that people report things that are consistent with their schemas.
    • When corrected for this response tendency we notice that both inconsistent and consistent information are equally likely to be retrieved.
  • Priming: A situation that occurs when a stimuli or event increases the availability in memory or consciousness of specific type of information held in memory
  • Unpriming: Effects of the schemas tend to persist until they are somehow expressed in thought or behavior and only then do their effects decrease.
  • Perseverance effect: The tendency of schemas to remain unchanged even in the face of contradictory information
  • Effects of schemas: (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968): Teachers and student IQ
  • Automatic processing: occurs after extensive experience with a task or type of information, we reach a stage where we can perform the task or process the information in a seemingly effortless, automatic and nonconscious manner.
  • Controlled processing: occurs when a task or type of information requires systematic, logical and highly effortful manner of processing.
• Social neuroscience: Remember the experiment on immediate judgement of individuals as good or bad?
  • If immediate judgement is made, amygdala is more responsible
  • If judgement are reserved and thought through it is due to the prefrontal cortex.

Self

• Gallup Research:
  • Chimpanzees were put in front of large mirrors
  • They were seen vocalizing, gesturing, and making other social responses.
  • Pick food out of their teeth, groom themselves, blow bubbles, and make faces for their own entertainment.
  • From all appearances, they recognized themselves.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJFo3trMuD8
  • Developmental Psychologists says for human children self-recognition takes place between 18 – 24 months of age                                   
  • Self-recognition among great apes and humans is the first clear expression of the concept “ME”
• The ability to see yourself as a distinct entity is a necessary first step in the evolution and development of a self-concept.
• Self-concept is the sum total of beliefs you have about yourself.
• Second step involves understanding social factors.
• Charles Horten Cooley (1902) suggested the Looking-glass self
• Other people serve as a mirror in which we see ourselves.
• Person’s self grows out of society’s interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others.
• The term refers to people shaping their self-concepts based on their understanding of how others perceive them. Cooley clarified that society is an interweaving and inter-working of mental selves.
• Where does our self-concept come from?
• Four sources
  • Introspection
  • Perception of our own behaviour
  • Influences of other people
  • Autobiographical memory
• Introspection
  • The method where people achieve insight into their own beliefs, attitudes, emotions and motivations.
    • Various techniques-
    • Meditation
    • Psychotherapy
    • Religion
    • Dream analysis
    • Hypnosis
  • Self-knowledge is derived from introspection, a looking inward at one’s own thoughts and feelings.
  • People assume that to truly know someone you must have access to private subjective experiences.
• Does introspection improve the accuracy of self-knowledge?
• Introspection can increase self-insight-provided we have enough time and cognitive resources.
• Perceptions of our own behaviour
• Daryl Bem (1972) proposed this theory on Self-Perception.
• Cognitive dissonance argues that people become uncomfortable when they hold multiple conflicting opinions or behave in ways that conflict with their beliefs.
•  Self-perception theory, by contrast, argues that people develop their attitudes based upon their own behaviour.
• For example, a woman who is paid to walk another person’s dog might then develop more affection for dogs in general, ultimately identifying herself as a dog-lover. 
• People infer what they think or how they feel by observing their own behaviour and the situation in which takes place.
• Facial Feedback Hypothesis
• Changes in facial expression can lead to corresponding changes in the subjective experience of emotion.
  • For example, an individual who is forced to smile during a social event will actually come to find the event more of an enjoyable experience.
• James Laird (1974)
• 80 muscles in the human face that can create over 7,000 expressions.
• Can we vary our own emotions by contracting certain muscles and wearing different expressions?
• Laird argues that facial expressions affect emotion through a process of Self-Perception
• “If I’m smiling, I must be happy”
• Robert Zajonc (1993)
  • Smiling causes facial muscles to increase the flow of air-cooled blood to the brain, a process that produces a pleasant  state by lowering brain temperature.
  • Frowning decreases blood flow, producing an unpleasant state by raising temperature.
  • People need to infer how they feel.  Rather, facial expressions evoke physiological changes that produce an emotional experience.
  • Zajonc etal (1989) – Repeat Vowels 20 times each, including the sounds “ah”, “e”, “u” and the German Vowel “u.”
  • In the meantime, temperature changes in the forehead temperature and subjects reported on how they felt.
  • Ah, e – cause people to miming smiling and lowered forehead temperature and elevated mood.
  • U and u. – sounds that cause us to mimic frowning, increased temperature and dampened mood
  • The facial muscles can influence emotion even when people are not aware that they are wearing a particular facial expression.
  • It’s possible to alter how you feel by putting on the right face.
  • Other expressive behaviors such as body posture can also provide us with sensory feedback and influence the way we feel.
  • When people feel proud, they stand erect with their shoulders raised, chest expanded, and head held high (expansion).
  • When dejected, however people slump over with their shoulders drooping and head bowed (contraction).
  • Emotional state is  revealed in the way you carry yourself.
  • Sabine Stepper and Fritz Strack (1993) arranged for subjects to sit in either a slumped or upright position by varying the height of the table they had to write on.
  • Those forced to sit upright reported feeling more pride after succeeding at a task than did those who were put into a slumped position.
• When someone is rewarded for listening to music or spending time with their friends, his or her behavior becomes overjustified or overrewarded, and can be attributed to extrinsic as well as intrinsic motives.
  • Overjustification is the tendency for intrinsic motivation to diminish for activities that have become associated with reward or other extrinsic factors.

• Self-Schemas
  • Definition: Beliefs people hold about themselves that guide the processing of self-relevant information.
  • Hazel Markus (1977), the cognitive molecules of the self-concept are called self-schemas.

Attitudes

• Attitudesare evaluation that are made of various aspects of a individuals environment and social world
  • Attitudes can range from favorable or unfavorable 
    • Depending on issues, ideas, objects, actions
  • Attitudes can be certain and sure or uncertain and unsure
  • Attitudes may be explicit attitudes or implicit
    • Explicit attitudes are conscious and reportable
    • Implicit attitudes are uncontrollable and usually not consciously accessible
      • Implicit attitudes are assessed using the Implicit Association Test (IAT)
• Attitudes are important as theyaffect our behavior. 
  • Usually when attitudes are strong and accessible (explicit)
  • But implicit attitudes also have a role to play in determining behaviour
• Attitude development:
  • Classical conditioning
  • Operant conditioning
  • Observational learning
• Often attitudes and behaviours are not in sync with one another i.e. attitudes don’t fit with our behaviour or vice versa. This is known as Cognitive dissonance
  • Resolution occurs when either the attitude is changed or behaviour is in line with the attitude

Social Influence (Read: How To Win Friends & Influence People )

• Social Influence is the effort put by one or more people in order to change the behavior, attitudes, or feelings of others
• Types:
  • Conformity
  • Compliance
  • Obedience
• Conformity: Here individuals usually change their attitudes or behavior to be in line with existing social norms.
• Social norms are either clearly defined and known – explicit, or are underlying and not clear – implicit
  • Either way, individuals follow them most of the time
  • Therefore, it’s easier to predict behaviour
• Facades of conformity
  • Conforming would lead to upward mobility. 
  • More conforming when someone intends to leave the organization
• Conformity reduces personal freedom but to reduce social chaos conforming is important
• Research studies have shown that even when participants conformed they didn’t agree it was because of the influence of others on them.
  • Reason: focus on internal information rather than on the overt actions (actor-observer effect)
  • Introspection illusion: Our belief that social influence plays a miniscule role in shaping our own actions but has a major role in shaping the actions of others.
• Solomon Asch’s study on conformity was pioneering
• Sherif’s autokinetic effect
• Factors responsible for conformity:
  • To look good to others
  • To seem cohesive
    • Cohesiveness is the extent to which we are attracted to a social group and want to belong to it.
  • Group size: The larger the group, the more pressure to conform. 
    • Tops of at 3-4 members. Then it levels off.
    • Recent studies don’t support this notion and say that group size up to 8 and beyond can also affect conformity
  • Descriptive norms: behaving how people generally do in a given situation
  • Injunctive norms behaving how one ought to behave.
  • Normative focus theory: norms will influence behavior only to the extent that they are important or salient for the people involved 
• Zimbardo’s Prison study
  • The main purpose of the study was to determine whether participants would come to behave like real guards and real prisoners—whether they would, in a sense, conform to the norms established for these respective roles.
  • study after only 6 days; initial plans called for it to last 2 weeks.
  • Conclusion: it is the situations in which people find themselves—not their personal traits—that largely determine their behavior
  • More recent research, including another dramatic prison study (this time conducted jointly by social psychologists and the BBC) offers a much more optimistic set of conclusions (Reicher & Haslam, 2006)
    • In contrast to the findings of the Stanford Prison Study, guards and prisoners in the BBC research did not passively accept their roles. Rather, the guards actually rejected their power over the prisoners while the prisoners, in contrast, identified closely with one another and actually took action to gain equal power.
    • They succeeded, and for a time, the “prison” adopted a democratic structure in which guards and prisoners had relatively equal rights. 
    • When this new structure seemed to fail, however, both groups moved toward acceptance of a rigidly authoritarian approach in which the prisoners surrendered almost totally and no longer offered any resistance to their inequality.
• Social norms and the social structure from which they arise do not necessarily produce acceptance of inequalities.
• Social change occurs because people decide to challenge an existing social structure rather than accept it
• Bystander effect: When in the presence of a large groups, individuals tend to not help assuming someone else will.
  • Occurs because of Diffusion of responsibility: More number of witnesses present, less likely is the victim going to receive help
  • The idea of someone else will do it
  • However, if the person requiring help is of the in-group, they are more likely to receive help
    • The race of the victim is also important
• Five major decisions before deciding to help or not
  • Observing or failing to observe something unusual in the environment
  • Appropriately interpreting an event as an emergency
    • Pluralistic ignorance: The tendency of all the bystanders to depend on one another to understand the situation
  • Deciding if it is the individuals’ responsibility to provide help
  • Deciding if the individual has the knowledge/skill to help
  • Making the final decision to provide help
  • Helping also requires inhibiting fear
• (Study Tip: Observation, Interpretation, Responsibility, Knowledge, Decision, Fear Inhibition)
  • External factors responsible for helping
    • Helping people we like
    • Helping those who are not responsible for their problems
    • Exposure to live prosocial models
    • Playing prosocial video games
    • Gratitude
    • Mood and helping behaviour
    • Positive emotions
    • Negative emotions
    • Feelings of elevation- “Faith in humanity restored”
    • Factors that reduce helping
    • Social exclusion
    • Darkness
    • Deindividuation
      • A reduced form of self-awareness that makes people act in impulsive, wild ways
    • Putting an economic value on Prosocial Behaviour
  • Effects of being helped
  • Perceived motives matter
  • Sometimes can work negatively because self-esteem may being to suffer
    • Especially if the one being helped is of a lower status
  • Non conformity
    • The restrictions that often influence the thought, expression, and behavior of most people don’t seem to apply to the powerful
      • Powerful people are less dependent on others for obtaining social resources
      • They may not pay much attention to threats from others or efforts to constrain their actions in some way
      • They may be less likely to take the perspective of other people and so be less influenced by them.
    • People who possessed power, or were merely primed to think about it, were in fact less likely to show conformity to the actions or judgments of others than people lower in power
    • Overall, then, situational information might have less influence on their attitudes, intentions, actions, and creative expressions

Obedience

• One of the most obvious and direct influences on attitudes and behavior is the power of authority figures
  • Parents, teachers, police, judges
• Why do we conform so readily to authority?
  • Fear of punishment
  • Consequences for disobeying
• Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Study
  • Was interested in studying whether or not most people would continue to obey an authority figure, even at the expense of another person.

Prosocial Behaviour 

• Prosocial Behavior: behaviour that results in people helping others without immediate reward to themselves.
• Empathy is the ability to share someone’s feelings and to understand them from there point of view
• Components:
  • Emotional empathy- The ability to share others’ feelings
  • Empathic accuracy- The precision with which one perceives others’ feelings.
  • Empathic concern- Feelings of concern for another’s wellbeing.
• Altruism is the ability to act selflessly for the benefit of others, without any apparent reward.
• Motives for prosocial behaviour 
  • Empathy-Altruism hypothesis
  • Negative state relief model
  • Empathic joy
  • Kin Selection theory
  • Competitive altruism
  • Defensive helping
• (Study Tip: NECKED)
  • Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis
    • The act of deriving pleasure from helping others, knowing that helping others would bring pleasure to oneself.
    • Leads to:
      • Empathetic accuracy
      • Popularity
      • Better friendships
      • More prosocial behavior
      • Better social adjustment
  • Negative state relief model
    • Individuals help others in order to reduce their own negative feelings.
  • Empathic Joy hypothesis
    • People show positive reaction when they receive help and this induces the positive feeling in the helper leading them to engage in greater prosocial behavior 
  • Kin Selection theory
    • You are more likely to help closer relatives than distant relatives or non relatives
    • You are more likely to help younger relatives than older relatives
      • Evolutionary basis
  • Reciprocal altruism
    • Helping non family members in the expectance of reciprocal help
  • Competitive altruism theory
    • It involves helping others to increase one’s own reputation or social status
  • Defensive helping
    • The help given to the members of out-groups to reduce the threat they pose to the status of the in-group
    • Creation of dependence

Negative Social Relations (Read: Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past)

• We make judgments about others based on their group membership. 
  • in-group are preferred
  • out-group are not as preferred
• Stereotyping—beliefs about what members of a social group are like.
• Prejudice —negative emotional responses or dislike based on group membership.
• Discrimination—differential treatment based on group membership
• (Study Tip: Stereotype is cognitive, Prejudice is emotional, Discrimination is behaviour)
  • Gender stereotypes
    • Related to both genders. 
    • Negative and positive stereotypes
    • Worse effect on women, especially in the corporate world. 
      • 1% of CEO’s in the fortune 500 companies are occupied by women
    • Glass ceiling effect: a final barrier that prevents women, as a group, from reaching top positions in the workplace.
      • The trend is weakening. 
    • Glass Cliff: Choosing women for leadership positions that are risky, precarious, or when the outcome is more likely to result in failure – usually at a time of crisis.
    • Shifting standards: Stereotypes against in-group members
    • Schemas are a major reason for developing stereotypes
    • Reliance on stereotypes reduces by negating them
  • Prejudice
    • Not personal
    • Belief about underlying essences of the group
      • Essences—usually attributed to biologically based features that distinguish one  group from another
        • Used as a justification for their differential treatment
    • some theorists have suggested that all prejudices are not the same
    • “Prejudice” is not a generic negative emotional response
      • Specific intergroup emotions including fear, anger, envy, guilt, or disgust are important
      • Discriminatory actions would be different depending on what emotion underlies prejudice 
      • E.g. Anger=direct harm, Pity/Guilt=avoidance 
    • Implicit prejudice- Links between group membership and trait associations or evaluations that the perceiver may be unaware of. 
      • They can be activated automatically based on the group membership of a target.
  • Methods to reduce Prejudice
    • Contact hypothesis: Constant engagement with out-group 
      • Change categorizations based on similarities
      • Supported by research
    • Recategorization: rethinking categorization based only on out-group measure
      • Shifts in the boundaries between our ingroup (“us”) and some outgroup (“them”)
    • Superordinate goals: goals that both groups need to reach for benefit
    • Guilt: people can feel collective guilt based on the actions of other members of their group
      • Can reduce racism

Aggression

• Actions that are designed to harm others
• Perspectives on Aggression
  • Biological Factors [Freud]
    • Aggression stems from thanatos i.e. death instinct
  • Konrad Lorenz
    • Aggression stems from inherent fighting instinct; 
    • Strongest in males due to evolution
  • Modern thoughts
    • Genes may be ‘slightly’ responsible
    • Males more aggressive toward males
    • Males less aggressive toward females (except in cases of domestic violence)
    • Not same for females
      • Generally not as aggressive as males, irrespective of sex
  • Drive theories
    • External conditions cause motive to aggression, especially increase in frustration levels
• Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis [Dollard]
  • Frustration leads to arousal to harm which is the cause of frustration
    • Frustration always leads to aggression
    • Aggression always stems from some frustration
• Modern → Social learning 
  • Aggression comes from experience including experiences with aggressive people and culture
• General Aggression Model (GAM) [Anderson Bushman]
  • 2 inputs can create aggressive behaviour:
    • Situational factors
      • Frustration, provocation, exposure to other aggressive people or discomfort
    • Personal factors
      • Traits predisposing towards aggression, attitudes and beliefs about violence, perceiving others as hostile
• 3 processes in a human being when exposed to input of aggression causing stimuli
  • Arousal – increase physiological excitement
  • Affective – hostile feelings
  • Cognitions – hostile thoughts/beliefs/attitudes
    • Appraisal of these will lead to decision to overt aggression
      • Also known as thoughtful impulse

• Direct provocation leads to major aggression
  • Types:
    • Condescension
    • Criticism of us
    • Teasing
    • Statements harming public image
• Excitation Transfer Theory
  • states physiological arousal dissipates slowly and a portion of it may transfer from one situation to another
  • As a result of overexposure to violent things, people may become desensitive to aggression contact
  • But it may also increase tendency to aggress
• Emotion → heightened arousal → aggression (excitation transfer theory)

Attribution

• Attribution theory – explaining the cause of one’s or others’ behaviour
  • 2 types
    • Dispositional attribution are based on to internal factors like personality, motivation
    • Personal attributions are explanations in terms of personal characteristics
    • Situational are external factors like environment, others’ influence
• Locus of control
  • The belief individuals have of whether their behaviour is controlled by themselves or are external
  • Internally controlled motivators are better
• Attribution errors
  • Fundamental Attribution Error
    •  Attribution of others’ behaviour as due to personal factors even in the presence of powerful situational factors
  • Self-serving bias
    • Acceptance of credit when successful
    • Blaming others when unsuccessful
• Attribution theory: A group of theories that describe how people explain the causes of behaviour.
• Jones’s Correspondent Inference Theory – Edward Jones & Keith Davis (1965)—
  • This theory describes how we use others’ behaviour as a basis for inferring their disposition
  • The process of making an internal attribution.  T
  • Internal disposition are based on understand the link or correspondence between motive and behaviour. 
  • People make internal inferences based on three factors-
    • Persons’ degree of choice- free choice is indicative of internal disposition
    • Non common effects- effect that can be caused by one specific factor but not by others. 
      • Helps zoom in on a cause for others behaviour
    • Low social desirability- When individual’s behaviour doesn’t indicate socially desirability
• Kelley’s covariance theory of attribution argued that people take three factors into account when making a personal vs. situational attribution:
  • Consensus:  the extent to which other people behave in the same way in a similar situation to the person in question. 
    • More people=higher consensus
  • Consistency:   the extent to which the person in question behaves this way every time the situation occurs at different times.
  • Distinctiveness:  the extent to which the person in question behaves in the same way to other situations.
    • If consistency is high, and distinctiveness and consensus are low, then a personal attribution is more likely: 
    • If consistency is high, and distinctiveness and consensus are also high, then a situational attribution is more likely.

Personal Attribution	Situational Attribution
Consistency (High)	Consistency (High)
Distinctiveness (Low)	Distinctiveness (High)
Consensus (Low)	Consensus (High)

Group Processes

• Social loafing: In a group, each additional individual puts in less effort, thinking that others will be putting in their effort.

What is a Group?

• A group may be defined as an organised system of two or more individuals, who are interacting and interdependent, who have common motives, have a set of role relationships among its members, and have norms that regulate the behaviour of its members.

Characteristics

• A social unit with a unique identity where there are two or more individuals who perceive themselves as belonging to the group.
  • Characteristic of the group helps in distinguishing one group from the other and gives the group
• Common motives: A group has common motives and goals. They work towards goals, or away from certain threats.
• Interdependency: A group is interdependent on its members. Each doing their own part
• Goal directed/Need based: Individuals who are trying to satisfy a need through their joint association also influence each other.
• Communication: A gathering of individuals who interact with one another either directly or indirectly.
• Roles and Norms: A group has interactions that are structured by a set of roles and norms. Norms are created by the group members and determine how individuals behave in the group and specify the behaviours expected from group members.
  • It’s different from a crowd as there is neither any structure nor feeling of belongingness in a crowd.
    • Irrational behaviour in crowds no interdependence among members.
  • Teams are special kinds of groups.
    • In groups, performance is dependent on contributions of individual members.
    • In teams, both individual contributions and teamwork matter.
    • In groups, the leader or whoever is heading the group holds responsibility for the work.
    • However in teams, although there is a leader, members hold themselves responsible
• Mob behaviour is characterised by homogeneity of thought and behaviour as well as impulsivity.

Reasons for joining Groups

• Security: Groups reduce individual insecurity by diffusion of responsibility, sense of comfort, and protection. Individuals feel stronger, and are less vulnerable to threats.
• Status: Perceived to be important by others when individuals are group members.
• Self-esteem: Groups provide feelings of self-worth and establish a positive social identity. Being a member of prestigious groups enhances one’s self-concept.
• Satisfaction of one’s psychological and social needs: Needs such as sense of belongingness, giving and receiving attention, love, and power are fulfilled through a group.
• Goal achievement: Groups help in achieving such goals which cannot be attained individually.
• Provide knowledge and information: Group membership provides knowledge and information and thus broadens our view. As individuals, we may not have all the required information. Groups supplement this information and knowledge.

Group Formation

• Proximity: when we are around the same group of people, there are higher chances of building relationship. Commonality in interests, attitudes, and background are important determinants of your liking for your group members.
• Similarity: Similar interests, attitudes and backgrounds, help people negotiate with one another and understand each other better. Leading to building of groups. Psychologists have given several explanations for this.
  • One explanation is that people prefer consistency and like relationships that are consistent.
  • When we meet similar people, they reinforce and validate our opinions and values, we feel we are right and thus we start liking them
• Common motives and goals: When people have common motives or goals, they get together and form a group which may facilitate their goal attainment.

Stages of Group Formation

• Groups usually go through different stages of formation, conflict, stabilisation, performance, and dismissal.
• Tuckman suggested that groups pass through five developmental sequences.
• These are: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.
• Forming: When group members first meet, there is a great deal of uncertainty about the group, the goal, and how it is to be achieved. People try to know each other and assess whether they will fit in. There is excitement as well as apprehensions.
• Storming: Intragroup conflict will occur here. In this stage, there is conflict among members about how the target of the group is to be achieved, who is to control the group and its resources, and who is to perform what task. When this stage is complete, some sort of hierarchy of leadership in the group develops and a clear vision as to how to achieve the group goal.
• Norming: Group members by this time develop norms related to group behaviour. This leads to development of a positive group identity.
• Performing: By this time, the structure of the group has evolved and is accepted by group members. The group moves towards achieving the group goal. For some groups, this may be the last stage of group development.
• Adjourning:  For some groups, there may be another stage known as adjourning stage. In this stage, once the function is over, the group may be disbanded. However, it must be stated that all groups do not always proceed from one stage to the next in such a systematic manner.
• Sometimes several stages go on simultaneously, while in other instances groups may go back and forth through the various stages or they may just skip some of the stages.

TYPE OF GROUPS

Major types of groups are enumerated below :

• Primary and Secondary Groups:
  • Primary groups have pre-existing formations which are usually given to the individual e.g family, caste
    • Face to face interaction
    • Proximity
    • Emotional bonds
    • Boundaries are fixed
    • Important for developing beliefs and values
  • Secondary groups are those which the individual joins by choice. E.g. football clubs, political party.
    • relationships among members are more impersonal,
    • indirect,
    • less frequent
    • Boundaries are not set
• Formal and Informal Groups:
  • The functions of a formal group are explicitly stated as in the case of an office organisation.
    • The roles to be performed by group members are stated in an explicit manner.
    • The formation of formal groups is based on some specific rules or laws and members have definite roles.
    • There are a set of norms which help in establishing order.
    • The formation of informal groups is not based on rules or laws and there is close relationship among members.
•  Ingroup and Outgroup:
  • Ingroup refers to one’s own group also referred to as us or we
    • Members are similar and favoured
  • Outgroup refers to another group, also referred to as they or them
    • Members are different and discriminated
  • These differences can be easily understood by studying Tajfel’s experiments called as the minimal group paradigms where random division of group also lead individuals to support the in-group in comparison to the out-group.

Group Polarisation

• It has been found that groups are more likely to take extreme decisions than individuals alone. Strengthening of the group’s initial position as a result of group interaction and discussion is referred to as group polarisation. This may sometimes have dangerous repercussions as groups may take extreme positions, i.e. from very weak to very strong decisions.

Suggested Reading(s):

• Social Psychology
• Psychology (Adaptation) Four Colour
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials)
• Thinking, Fast and Slow (Penguin Press Non-Fiction)