Group Processes: CHAPTER 9 OUTLINE

I. What Is a Group?
Learning Objective: 9.1 Explain what groups are and why people join them.
 A group consists of two or more people who interact and are interdependent in the sense
that their needs and goals cause them to influence each other.
A. Why Do People Join Groups?
 Joining forces with others allows us to accomplish objectives that would be
more difficult to meet individually. Forming relationships also fulfills a
number of basic human needs.
 Groups also provide a lens through which we can understand the world and
our place in it. They become an important part of our identity, and they help
establish social norms, which are the explicit or implicit rules defining what
constitutes acceptable behavior.
B. The Composition and Functions of Groups
1. Social Norms
 All societies have norms about which behaviors are acceptable,
some of which all members are expected to obey and some of
which vary from group to group. The power of norms to shape
behavior becomes clear when we violate them too often: We are
shunned by other group members and, in extreme cases, pressured
to leave the group.
2. Social Roles
 Most groups have a number of well-defined social roles, which are
shared expectations in a group about how particular people are
supposed to behave. Whereas norms specify how all group
members should act, roles specify how people who occupy certain
positions in the group should behave.
3. Group Cohesiveness
 Another important aspect of how a group functions is how
cohesive it is. Group cohesiveness refers to the qualities of a
group that bind members together and promote mutual liking.
4. Group Diversity
 Related to cohesiveness is the diversity of a group’s composition.
Members of a group tend to be alike in age, sex, beliefs, and
opinions. In short, people tend to gravitate toward groups with
similar others, and such similarity predicts group cohesiveness.
 Nonetheless, there is no simple answer to the question of how
diversity affects groups.
II. Individual Behavior in a Group Setting
Learning Objective: 9.2 Describe how individuals perform differently when others are around.
A. Social Facilitation: When the Presence of Others Energizes Us
 Studies have consistently shown that as long as a task is a relatively simple,
well-learned one, the mere presence of others improves performance.
1. Simple Versus Difficult Tasks
  Experiments have found that people and animals do worse in the
presence of others, however, when the task is difficult.
2. Arousal and the Dominant Response
 Bob Zajonc argued that the presence of others increases
physiological arousal. When such arousal exists, it is easier to
perform a dominant response (e.g., something we’re good at)
but harder to do something complex or learn something new.
This phenomenon is known as social facilitation.
3. Why the Presence of Others Causes Arousal
 Researchers have developed three theories to explain the role of
arousal in social facilitation: Other people cause us to become
particularly alert and vigilant, they make us apprehensive about
how we’re being evaluated, and they distract us from the task at
hand.
B. Social Loafing: When the Presence of Others Relaxes Us
 Social loafing is the tendency for people to relax when they are in the
presence of others and their individual performance cannot be evaluated, such
that they do worse on simple tasks that they don’t care about but better on
complex tasks that are important to them.
C. Gender and Cultural Differences in Social Loafing: Who Slacks Off the Most?
 The tendency to engage in social loafing has been found to be stronger in men
than in women, who generally tend to be higher than men in relational
interdependence, which is the tendency to focus on and care about personal
relationships with other individuals.
 Research has also found that the tendency to engage in social loafing is
stronger in Western cultures than in Asian cultures, perhaps due to the
different self-definitions prevalent in these cultures. Members of Asian
cultures are more likely to have an interdependent view of the self, which is a
way of defining oneself in terms of relationships to other people.
D. Deindividuation: Getting Lost in the Crowd
 Being in a group can cause deindividuation, which is a loosening of normal
constraints on behavior when people can’t be identified. In other words,
getting lost in a crowd can lead to an unleashing of behaviors that we would
never dream of exhibiting when by ourselves.
1. Deindividuation Makes People Feel Less Accountable
 People feel less accountable for their actions when they recognize
that there is a reduced likelihood of their being singled out and
blamed for their behavior.
2. Deindividuation Increases Obedience to Group Norms
 Becoming deindividuated also increases the extent to which people
obey a group’s norms, which sometimes conflict with the norms of
other groups or society at large. Deindividuation does not always
lead to aggressive or antisocial behavior, though; it depends on the
group’s norms.
3. Deindividuation Online
 Deindividuation doesn’t require face-to-face contact; it thrives
 with less physical forms of interaction. In many respects, the
internet is ideal terrain for the emergence of deindividuation
(e.g., insulting “trolling” and obscene comments in online forums).

III. Group Decisions: Are Two (or More) Heads Better Than One?
Learning Objective: 9.3 Compare the decision-making outcomes of individuals versus groups
and explain the impact of leadership in group outcomes.
 One of the major functions of groups is making decisions. In general, groups can perform
better than individuals when group members freely contribute independent opinions from
a variety of viewpoints, if people are motivated to search for the answer that is best for the
entire group and not just for themselves, or when they rely on group members’ unique
areas of expertise. However, several factors can cause groups to make worse decisions
than individuals would.
A. Process Loss: When Group Interactions Inhibit Good Problem Solving
 One potential problem is that a group can perform well only if the most expert
or talented members can convince the others they are right, which is not
always easy, given how stubborn people can be. This is an example of
process loss, which is any aspect of group interaction that inhibits good
problem solving.
1. Failure to Share Unique Information
 Groups tend to focus on the information they already collectively
share, talking less about facts known to only some members of the
group.
 When the combined memory of a group is more efficient than the
memory of its individual members, it is called transactive
memory. The tendency for groups to fail to consider important
unique information can be overcome if people learn who is
responsible for what kinds of information and take the time to
discuss these unshared data.
2. Groupthink: Many Heads, One Mind
 Group cohesiveness can get in the way of clear thinking and good
decision making. Groupthink is a kind of thinking in which
maintaining group cohesiveness and solidarity is more important
than considering the facts in a realistic manner.
B. Group Polarization: Going to Extremes
 The tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the
initial inclination of their members—toward greater risk if people’s initial
tendency is to be risky and toward greater caution if people’s initial tendency
is to be cautious—is known as group polarization.
C. Leadership in Groups
 One of the best-known answers to the question of what makes a great leader is
the great person theory, which maintains that certain key personality traits
make a person a good leader, regardless of the nature of the situation the leader
faces.
1. Leadership and Personality
 People of all different personality types can become successful
 leaders. Surprisingly few personality characteristics correlate
strongly with leadership effectiveness, and the relationships that
have been found tend to be modest.
2. Leadership Styles
 Although great leaders may not have specific kinds of
personalities, they do appear to adopt specific kinds of leadership
styles. Transactional leaders set clear, short-term goals and
reward people who meet them. Transformational leaders, on the
other hand, inspire followers to focus on common, long-term goals.
3. The Right Person in the Right Situation
 A comprehensive theory of leadership needs to focus on the
characteristics of the leader, the followers, and the situation. The
best-known theory of this type is the contingency theory of
leadership, which argues that leadership effectiveness depends
both on how task-oriented or relationship-oriented the leader is and
on the amount of control and influence the leader has over the
group.
 Task-oriented leaders are concerned more with getting the job
done than with workers’ feelings and relationships, whereas
relationship-oriented leaders are concerned more with workers’
feelings and relationships.
4. Gender and Leadership
 It is difficult for women to achieve leadership positions because
many people believe good leaders have agentic traits, which are
traditionally associated with men. In contrast, women are
stereotypically expected to be more communal.
 Women leaders are also more likely to be put in precarious, high-
risk positions where it is difficult to succeed, a situation known as
the “glass cliff.”
5. Culture and Leadership
 Researchers have found that different cultures value different traits
in leaders. For example, autonomous leadership, defined as being
independent of one’s superiors and spending a lot of time working
alone, was valued more in Europe than in Latin America. But there
is universal agreement about the value of two leadership qualities:
possessing charisma and being team-oriented.

IV. Conflict and Cooperation

Learning Objective: 9.4 Summarize the factors that determine whether individual and group
conflict will escalate or be resolved.
 Often people have incompatible goals, placing them in conflict with one another. This can
be true of two individuals, two groups, or two nations. The opportunity for interpersonal
conflict exists whenever two or more people interact.
A. Social Dilemmas
 One of the reasons we have conflicts is because very often what is best for an
individual is not always best for the group as a whole.
  A social dilemma is a conflict in which the most beneficial action for an
individual will, if chosen by most people, be harmful to everyone.
 The “prisoner’s dilemma” is an example of one such social conflict.
1. Increasing Cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma
 The tit-for-tat strategy is a way of encouraging cooperation by at
first acting cooperatively but then always responding in the way
your opponent did (cooperatively or competitively) in the
previous trial. This strategy communicates a willingness to
cooperate and an unwillingness to be exploited if the partner is
selfish.
B. Using Threats to Resolve Conflict
 When involved in a conflict, many of us are tempted to use threats to get the
other party to cave to our wishes. A classic series of studies by Morton
Deutsch and Robert Krauss, utilizing a paradigm called the “trucking game,”
indicates that threats are not an effective means of reducing conflict.
1. Effects of Communication
 In another version of Krauss and Deutsch’s study, they introduced
verbal communication aimed at working out a solution that was
fair to both parties, which was successful because it fostered trust
instead of adding fuel to the competitive fires.
C. Negotiation and Bargaining
 Negotiation is a form of communication between opposing sides in a conflict
in which offers and counteroffers are made and a solution occurs only when
both parties agree.
 An integrative solution to a conflict is a compromise in which the parties
make trade-offs on issues according to their different interests; each side
concedes the most on issues that are unimportant to it but are important to the
other side.

KEY TERMS

 Group: Two or more people who interact and are interdependent in the sense that their needs
and goals cause them to influence each other
 Social Roles: Shared expectations in a group about how particular people are supposed to
behave
 Group Cohesiveness: Qualities of a group that bind members together and promote liking
between them
 Social Facilitation: When people are in the presence of others and their individual
performance can be evaluated, the tendency to perform better on simple tasks and worse on
complex tasks
 Social Loafing: When people are in the presence of others and their individual performance
cannot be evaluated, the tendency to perform worse on simple or unimportant tasks but better
on complex or important tasks
 Deindividuation: The loosening of normal constraints on behavior when people can’t be
 identified (such as when they are in a crowd)
 Process Loss: Any aspect of group interaction that inhibits good problem solving
 Transactive Memory: The combined memory of a group that is more efficient than the
memory of the individual members
 Groupthink: A kind of decision process in which maintaining group cohesiveness and
solidarity is more important than considering the facts in a realistic manner
 Group Polarization: The tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than
the initial inclinations of their members
 Great Person Theory: The idea that certain key personality traits make a person a good
leader, regardless of the situation
 Transactional Leaders: Leaders who set clear, short-term goals and reward people who
meet them
 Transformational Leaders: Leaders who inspire followers to focus on common, long-term
goals
 Contingency Theory of Leadership: The idea that the effectiveness of a leader depends
both on how task- or relationship-oriented the leader is and on the amount of control the
leader has over the group
 Task-Oriented Leaders: Leaders who are concerned more with getting the job done than
with workers’ feelings and relationships
 Relationship-Oriented Leaders: Leaders who are concerned more with workers’ feelings
and relationships
 Social Dilemma: A conflict in which the most beneficial action for an individual will, if
chosen by most people, have harmful effects on everyone
 Tit-for-Tat Strategy: A means of encouraging cooperation by at first acting cooperatively
but then always responding the way your opponent did (cooperatively or competitively) on
the previous trial
 Negotiation: A form of communication between opposing sides in a conflict in which offers
and counteroffers are made and a solution occurs only when both parties agree
 Integrative Solution: A solution to a conflict whereby the parties make trade-offs on issues,
with each side conceding the most on issues that are unimportant to it but important to the
other side