MODULE 7
GROUP BEHAVIOUR
Definition:
• Baron- A group is a collection of two or more interacting individuals who maintain a
stable relationship pattern and share common goals.
• Marvin Shaw- A group is two or more people who interact with one another so that
each person influences and is influenced by the others.
• A group involves people who perceive themselves to be a part of a coherent unit that
they see as different from another group
• Cohesive group- One where there are strong bonds among the members
• Groups can differ in terms of:
• Common bond groups- involves face-to-face interaction among members; the
individuals in the group are bonded to each other. E.g. Players of a sports team,
friends and family
• Common identity groups- the members are linked via the category as a whole rather
than to each other, with face-to-face interaction often being absent. The members
might not know each other personally, Eg: University &gender groups' height not
known personally
• Entitativity- the extent to which the groups are perceived as coherent. there are two
types:
a) Mere collection of individuals in the same place at the same time.
b) Intimate groups like families, friends, etc.
Q) What determines whether and to what extent we perceive a group as an entity?
1) Members interact with one another often, although not necessarily face-to-face (over
the internet)
2) The group is important in some ways to its members
3) Members share common goals
4) Members perceive themselves as similar to one another in important ways
I. Roles: Differentiation of functions within groups
• Activity - Think of a group to which you belong or have belonged. Did everyone in
the group perform the same function?
• Some roles are assigned or gradually acquired without being formally assigned.
• People internalize their social roles. These roles are linked to key aspects of the self-
concept, and they can have important implications for psychological well-being.
Case Study:
• Students ' self-perceptions were measured and then randomly assigned to fulfill a
particular role in a class task. One was an idea-generating role, and the other was
a devil's advocate role
• If there is a discrepancy between their self-perception and their assigned role, they
cannot fulfill the task in a positive mood.
• Tasks that authentically reflect themselves exhibit a more negative mood and enjoy
class tasks more.
Q) When and why does role assignment affect our behavior?
- Prison Study (Simulated) by Reicher & Haslam, 2006. Participants were randomly assigned
to the role of either prisoner or guard.
1) Those assigned to guards failed to identify with their role because they were concerned
about being liked by prisoners and how others might perceive them.
2) Those assigned to prisoners showed a significant increase in identifying with their role.
Q) Did this difference in identification with the assigned role affect the observed behaviors?
- Yes as, roles are not Automatic determinants of behaviour.
II. Norms: The Rules of the Game
- Implicit rules that inform people about what is expected of them. Sometimes norms guide
over emotions
- Explicit feeling rules - Expectations about the emotions that are appropriate to express.
Eg: Customer service operators should always appear positive and have a smile.
- "How to be a good group Member" may be guided by subtle emotional experience norms.
- Norms across cultures:
a) Collectivism (Asian societies) b) Individualism (Western societies)
- Being a member of a particular group is important to our self concept, we are more likely to
be guided by its norms. We ignore or act contrary to its norms when we fail to identify with
that group.
III. Cohesiveness:The force that binds members
Case Study: There are two groups. One where members like one another very much, and the
other where members don't like one another (don't share common goals, lack shared identity,
and are less likely to be successful at tasks). The reason for this difference in experience and
performance of these two groups is what social psychologists call cohesiveness: all the forces
that cause the members to remain in the group.
• Cohesive groups have a sense of solidarity.
• See themselves as a homogenous group, support and cooperate with ingroup
members, aim to achieve group goals, have high morale, and perform better than
noncohesive groups.
• Group cohesiveness is the degree to which group members have feelings of
interpersonal liking, task commitment, and group pride.
IV. Status:
- Hierarchies in a group. Members in a group differ in hierarchies/status within the group.
- Conformity increases with status
V. Social Facilitation: Effects of Presence of others
Drive Theory: The presence of others, either as an audience or co-actors, energizes our
psychological being, strengthening the tendency to perform dominant responses. If these
responses are correct, performance improves, and if incorrect, performance is harmed.
Zajonc (1965) stated that the presence of others would facilitate a well-learned response but
inhibit a less practiced or new response. To understand the social facilitation theory, he
conducted experiments with cockroaches.
- Cottrell (1968)- He gave the theory of Evaluation Apprehension
The presence of others might sometimes disrupt performance because of apprehension about
having their performance evaluated.
Zajonc did not believe in this theory, according to him, cockroaches do not judge other
cockroaches.
Q. Can having an audience distract us?
R.S Baron believed that presence of others can be distracting and lead to Cognitive Overload.
- Distraction Conflict Theory:
Divided attention between task and audience which leads to restricting one's attention to
focus only on essential cues or stimuli and screening out non essential ones.
Q. Which is more important: Energised physiological being or distraction/narrowed
attention?
- Norton and Newson (2006) conducted an experiment on effects of others on eating as a
function of distraction.
Results: With friends and families and while watching TV leads to increased food intake.
Whereas eating in presence of strangers was less distracting leading to no change in food
intake.
Advantage of Cognitive Theory is that it helps explain why and when animals and people are
affecteed by the presence of others, meaning how distracting it is to perform.
VI. Social Loafing: Letting others do the work
- Reduction in motivation and effort that occur when individual work collectively in a group
compared to when they work individually as independent co actors. (Karau and Williams,
1993)
- Williams and Harkins (1979) Experiment
Male participants were divided into groups of 2, 4, and 6 and asked to clap/cheer as loudly as
possible at specific times. Everyone wore headphones to avoid being disturbed by others.
Each knew the number of members in their group clapping/cheering.
Result:
a) The total amount of noise increased with the size of the group
b) Amount of noise produced by each participant dropped as the group size increased
Conclusion: Each person put less effort as the group size increased.
Social Loafing doesn't happen in simple and seemingly meaningless situations. It is seen
more when cognitive or Physical tasks are given.
-Psychological Factors of Social Loafing: (Price, Harrison, Gavin 2006)
a) if people felt dispensable to the group they were more likely to show social loafing
b) If the group perceives more fairness, then participants are less likely to show social
loafing.
- Techniques to reduce Loafing:
1) Making output or effort of each participant readily identifiable
2) Increasing member’s commitment to successful task performance.
3) Increasing apparent importance or value of a task
4) Giving a standard of performance. For example, Students provide feedback to each other
throughout the duration of the project.
VII. Effects of being in a Crowd: Deindividuation:
- When in large crowds, there is a drift towards wild, unrestrained behavior. They tend
to loose their individuality and act as others do.
- Zimbardo (1970): Being in a crowd makes people anonymous and, therefore, less
responsible for their own actions, which encourages unrestrained antisocial actions.
- It leads to greater normative behaviour
- Does not necessarily lead to harmful behaviours. It increases the likelihood that crowd
members will follow the group's norms.
VIII. Social Influence
Efforts by one or more people to change the behaviour, attitudes or feelings of one or more
others. (Cialdini,2000)
It often succeeds in changing the behaviour of the people it directs towards.
-Used to manipulate selfish needs or increase positive social effects
_ 3 Major forms of S.I
1. Conformity: Efforts to change others' behavior through norms about how to behave in a
given situation .
Norms a) Formal (speed limit)
b) Informal
2. Compliance: Efforts to change others' behaviors through direct requests.
3. Obidience: Following direct orders or commands
I Confirmity: Refers to pressures to behave in wsays consistent with rules indicating how we
should behave.
-Solomon Asch (1951): Line activitu
-Factors affecting Confirmity:
a)Cohesiveness & conformity- being influenced by those we like
b)Confirmity & group size
c) Conformity & Status within a group
d) Norms affect behaviour. Two types of Norms:
1. Descriptive: What most people do in a given situation.
2. Injunctive: How people ought to behave
Q. Why do we confirm?
1. the desire to be liked: Normative Social Influence
2. the desire to be right: Informational Social Influence
II. Compliance: getting others to say Yes. Efforts to change others behaviour through direct
request.
-Robert Cialdini’s 6v basic principles of Compliance and how they function
1. Friendship or liking
2. Commitment or Consistency
3. Scarcity
4. Reciprocity
5. Social validation
6. Authority
- Tactics based on Commitment/Consistency:
a) Foot in-the door technique (Consistency)- Requesters begin with small requests and, when
granted, escalate to a larger one (the one they desired all along). For Eg, People offering free
samples
b) Lowball Procedure (Commitment)- A good deal is offered first, then it is changed to make
it less attractive after they accept the initial deal. For Eg; an Automobile Salesperson
- Tactics based on Reciprocity:
a) Door-in-the-face technique- Large request first, and when it is refused, retreat to smaller
one (the one they desired all along). For Eg; Negotiating a trip
b) That’s not all techniques. Additional benefits are offered to target people before they can
decide whether to comply with or reject that request. For Eg; Ads offering discounts
- Tactics based on Scarcity:
a) Playing hard to get- suggesting that a person/object is hard to get thus increasing
compliance.
b) Deadline Technique- Telling that others have only a limited time to take advantage of some
offer. For Eg; limited edition objects
III. Obedience: Most direct form of Social Influence
- Milgram experiment on effects of punishment on learning
Q. Why destructive obedience occur?
a) Shifting of responsibility to the authority figure
b) Norm of obeying those in authority
c) Gradual escalation of the commands
d) Rapid pace of such situations, no time to rationalize
Q. How to reduce destructive obedience?
a) They share the responsibility of inducing harm
b) Reminding that beyond some point, obedience is inappropriate
c) Calling the motives of the authority person in question
Prejudice and Discrimination
I. Prejudice:
- Negative emotional responses based on group membership. It is an attitude or a
feeling.
- Our feelings toward some groups are less positive compared to how we respond to our
own group
II. Stereotypes:
- Beliefs about social groups in terms of traits or characteristics that they believe to
share
III. Discrimination:
- Differential (usually negative behavior directed towards members of different social
groups.
- Actions that treat people differently
I. Prejudice
- It may reflect more specific underlying emotional responses to different out groups
- Dasgupta, De Steno, Bartlet, and Cajdric (2004) believed that some emotions can lead
directly to prejudice, like anger but not sadness.
- Even incidental feelings of anger caused by factors other than out-group can generate
automatic prejudice toward members of groups they do not belong
Q. Why/When does prejudice persist?
a) Threat to Self Esteem
b) Competition of resources: Realistic Conflict Theory (as competition escalates,
members of the group come to view each other in increasingly negative terms)
c) Role of Social Categorization (Us v/s Them effect): leads to the loyalty of in-group
and discrimination of out-groups
- Social Identity Theory: Prejudice derived from our tendency to divide the world into
Us and them and to view our group more favourably than out-group
- Stereotype content model: 2 stereotype dimensions
a) Warmth b) Competence
Groups perceived high in competence but low in warmth may be envied.
Low in warmth and competence will be despised
II. Discrimination: Prejudice in action
- Negative actions toward the objects of racial, ethnic, and gender prejudice
- Modern Racism- Concealing prejudice from others in public settings but expressing
bigoted attitudes when it is safe to do so.
Q. How can these prejudices be detected?
Finding a bonafide pipeline- asking people to express their views towards various
racial/ethnic groups. There are some implicit or automatically activated attitudes.
Q. How do prejudiced people maintain an unprejudiced self-image?
Social comparison with extreme images of bigots that many people who are prejudiced
can perceive themselves as not matching that prototype.
Q. When we confront what our group has done to another?
Torture is seen as more justifiable when our group commits than when others do, and it is
seen as a long-standing practice rather than something new.
Moral Disengagement- Motivated forgetting of own group harm doing.
Q. How to reduce stereotypes, discrimination, and prejudice?
1. Social learning view
2. Contact Hypothesis: bringing previously segregated groups into contact
3. Common ingroup identity model: shifting the boundary between US and them to
indicate former out groups in the Us category
4. Emotional techniques: Collective guilt, training to say NO
5. Social Influence
