PSY 227: GROUP PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES AND DYNAMICS

Lecture One

Introduction
Psychology is the scientific study of human (and nonhuman) behavior, which may be overt or
covert.
Psychology can be subdivided into many different specializations, some of which are concerned
primarily with the science of psychology (experimental) and others with the application of
scientific principles. The applied area with the largest number of psychologists is clinical
psychology.
- Clinical psychology is the scientific study and treatment of psychological disorders or
dysfunctions to promote subjective well-being and personal development.
- Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why humans grow, change,
and adapt across the course of their lives from birth till death.
- Industrial and organizational psychology is the scientific study of human behavior in the
workplace.
- Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are
influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Group
Dynamics is an important aspect of social psychology.

The world is made up of groups. We live in groups. Our world contains not only 7.8 billion
individuals (as at 2021), but also195 countries and hundreds of millions of other formal and
informal groups—couples having dinner, roommates hanging out, and business teams plotting
strategy.

How do such groups influence us?

And how do individuals influence groups?

If you are like most people, there is probably at least one thing you do in private that you would
never do when someone else is around. In this course we describe many ways in which the
presence and behavior of other people affect our own behavior, and how we, in turn, affect the
behavior of others. We will examine several intriguing phenomena of group influence.

What is a Group?
Experts argue that all groups have one thing in common: Their members interact. Therefore, a
group is defined as two or more people who interact and influence one another. A group
therefore exists when two or more people interact for more than a few moments, affect one
another in some way, and think of themselves as ‗us‘. Different groups help us meet different
human needs—to affiliate (to belong to and connect with others), to achieve, and to gain a
social identity. From our early ancestors to the present, human beings have intentionally
collaborated to forage, hunt and survive.

Based on the above definition, students working individually in a computer room would not be a
group. Although physically together, they are more a collection of individuals than an interacting
group (though each may be part of a group with dispersed others in an online chat room). The
distinction between unrelated individuals in a computer lab and interacting individuals
sometimes blurs. People who are merely in one another‘s presence do sometimes influence each
other. The mere presence of others may have effects on others in form of social facilitation,
social loafing and deindividuation. These three phenomena can occur with minimal interaction
(in ―minimal group situations‖). Furthermore, we consider the social influence within interacting
groups in form of group polarization, groupthink, and minority influence.

Social Facilitation
More than a century ago, Norman Triplett (1898), a psychologist interested in bicycle racing,
noticed that cyclists‘ times were faster when they raced together than when each raced alone
against the clock. Before he peddled his hunch (that others‘ presence boosts performance),
Triplett conducted one of social psychology‘s first laboratory experiments. Children told to wind
string on a fishing reel as rapidly as possible wound faster when they worked with competing co-
actors than when they worked alone. ―The bodily presence of another contestant . . . serves to
liberate latent energy,‖ concluded Triplett. Further experiments by other researchers did find that
others‘ presence led people to improves in simple tasks like multiplication problems and cross
out designated letters faster. It also improved accuracy on simple motor tasks, such as keeping a
metal stick in contact with a dime-sized disk on a moving turntable. This effect was termed
social facilitation. Social Facilitation is the tendency of people to perform simple or well-
learned tasks better when others are present. This social facilitation effect also occurs with
animals. In the presence of others of their species, ants excavate more sand, chickens eat more
grain, and sexually active rat pairs mate more often.
However, with further experiments of social facilitation, a trend of contradictory results began to
emanate. In these cases, the presence of others hindered the performance of simple (or previously
known tasks). This led to social facilitation research being grounded to a halt, and it lay dormant
for 25 years until awakened by the touch of a new idea by Social psychologist Robert Zajonc
(1923–2008, pronounced Zy-ence, rhymes with science). He used the principle that social
facilitation strengthens dominant (prevalent, likely) responses in the presence of others. This
implied that the presence of others enhances performance on easy tasks (which is likely the most
dominant); while people may perform worse than usual on more difficult/complex tasks
(which is also likely the most dominant). Thus, if social arousal facilitates dominant responses, it
should boost performance on easy tasks and hurt performance on difficult tasks.
Social facilitation is defined as the strengthening of dominant (prevalent, likely) responses
in the presence of others.

When the effect of others‘ presence increases with their number; this is known as the crowding
effect. Sometimes the arousal and self-conscious attention created by a large audience interferes
even with well-learned, automatic behaviors, such as speaking. Given extreme pressure, we‘re
vulnerable to ―choking.‖ Stutterers tend to stutter more in front of larger audiences than when
speaking to just one or two people.

What is it about other people presence that creates arousal? Evidence supports three possible
factors; evaluation apprehension, distraction, and mere presence.

Evaluation Apprehension: Observers make us apprehensive because we wonder how they are
evaluating us. The self-consciousness we feel when being evaluated can also interfere with
behaviors that we perform best automatically (Mullen & Baumeister, 1987). If self-conscious
basketball players analyze their body movements while shooting critical free throws, they are
more likely to miss. We perform some well-learned behaviors best without overthinking them.

Distraction: It is also theorized that when we wonder how co-actors are doing or how an
audience is reacting, we become distracted. This conflict between paying attention to others and
paying attention to the task overloads our cognitive system, causing arousal. This arousal may
come not just from the presence of another person but also from other distractions, such as bursts
of light etc.

Mere Presence: Zajonc, however, believed that the mere presence of others produces some
arousal even without evaluation apprehension or arousing distraction. Recall that facilitation
effects also occur with nonhuman animals. This hints at an innate social arousal mechanism
common to much of the zoological world. (Animals probably are not consciously worrying about
how other animals are evaluating them.) At the human level, most runners are energized when
running with someone else, even one who neither competes nor evaluates.
Social Loafing
Social facilitation usually occurs when people work toward individual goals and when their
efforts can be individually evaluated. But what happens when people pool their efforts toward a
common goal and individuals are not accountable for their efforts? Max Ringelmann (reported by
Kravitz & Martin, 1986) found that the collective effort of tug-of-war teams was but half the sum
of the individual efforts. Contrary to the presumption that ―in unity there is strength,‖ this
suggested that group members may actually be less motivated when performing additive tasks.
This was termed social loafing which describes the tendency for people to exert less effort
when they pool their efforts toward a common goal than when they are individually
accountable. In fact, it has been established that effort decreases as group size increases. People
who benefit from the group but give little in return are known as free riders. Social loafing also
appears (unconsciously) in real life routines such as donations of money, group projects etc.
Social loafing is borne out of perception of diffused responsibility among the group.

But surely collective effort does not always lead to slacking off. Sometimes the goal is so
compelling and maximum output from everyone is so essential that team spirit maintains or
intensifies effort. In an Olympic crew race, will the individual rowers in an eight-person crew
pull their oars with less effort than those in a one- or two-person crew? The evidence assures us
they will not. People in groups loaf less when the task is challenging, appealing, or involving. On
challenging tasks, people may perceive their efforts as indispensable. When swimming the last
leg of a relay race with a medal at stake, swimmers tend to swim even faster than in individual
competition. Groups also loaf less when their members are friends or they feel identified with or
indispensable to their group.

Deindividuation: Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone

Social facilitation experiments show that groups can arouse people, and social loafing
experiments show that groups can diffuse responsibility. When arousal and diffused
responsibility combine, and normal inhibitions diminish, the results may be startling. People may
commit acts that range from a mild lessening of restraint (throwing food in the dining hall,
snarling at a referee, screaming during a rock concert) to impulsive self-gratification (group
vandalism, orgies, thefts) to destructive social explosions (police brutality, riots, lynchings).
These unrestrained behaviors have something in common: They are provoked by the power of
being in a group.

Groups can generate a sense of excitement, of being caught up in something bigger than one‘s
self. It is hard to imagine a single rock fan screaming deliriously at a private rock concert, or a
single rioter setting a car on fire. It‘s in group situations that people are more likely to abandon
normal restraints, to forget their individual identity, to become responsive to group or crowd
norms—in a word, to become deindividuated.

Deindividuation is the loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension which occurs in

Self-awareness is the opposite of deindividuation. Self awareness is s self-conscious state in

What circumstances elicit deindividuation in groups?

- Group Size
The size of a group has the effect of on the level of confidence that members of a group may
garner in achieving the collective goal of the group. The greater the group size, the greater the
confidence levels.
- The Group Entity
The presence of a group increases the perception that the group as an entity is responsible for the
actions by group members. A lynch mob enables its members to believe they will not be
prosecuted.
- Anonymity
A group has the power not only to arouse its members but also to render them unidentifiable,
such that an individual in the group loses self-awareness because his/her identity is lost in the
group.
- Arousing and Distracting Activities
Aggressive outbursts by large groups are often preceded by minor actions that arouse and divert
people‘s attention. Group activities like shouting, chanting, clapping, or dancing serve both to
hype people up and to reduce self-consciousness. These activities provide several layers of
motivation which heightens each individual‘s emotions until a point of crescendo is reached. E.g.
Fans reactions, Lynch Mob, Audience response etc.