Module 76 Group Behavior
Flip It Video: Social Facilitation and Social Loafing
LEARNING TARGETS
76-1 Describe how the presence of others influences our actions via
social facilitation, social loafing, and deindividuation.
76-2 Explain how group interaction can enable group polarization.
76-3 Discuss the role the Internet plays in group polarization.
76-4 Discuss how group interaction can enable groupthink.
76-5 Describe how culture affects our behavior.
76-1 How does the presence of others influence our actions via
social facilitation, social loafing, and deindividuation?
Imagine standing in a room holding a fishing pole. Your task is to wind the
reel as fast as you can. On some occasions you wind in the presence of
another participant, who is also winding as fast as possible. Will the
other’s presence affect your own performance?
In one of social psychology’s first experiments, Norman Triplett
(1898) reported that adolescents would wind a fishing reel faster in the
presence of someone doing the same thing. Although a modern reanalysis
revealed that the difference was modest (Stroebe, 2012), Triplett inspired
later social psychologists to study how others’ presence affects our
behavior. Group influences operate both in simple groups—one person in
the presence of another—and in more complex groups.
2066
Social Facilitation
Social facilitation Skilled athletes often find they are “on” before an audience.
What they do well, they do even better when people are watching.
Triplett’s claim—of strengthened performance in others’ presence—is
called social facilitation. But further studies revealed that the truth is more
complicated: The presence of others strengthens our most likely response
—the correct one on an easy task, an incorrect one on a difficult task
(Guerin, 1986; Zajonc, 1965). Why? Because when others observe us, we
become aroused, and this arousal amplifies our reactions. Thus, expert
pool players who made 71 percent of their shots when alone made 80
percent when four people came to watch them (Michaels et al., 1982).
Poor shooters, who made 36 percent of their shots when alone, made only
25 percent when watched.
social facilitation
improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of
others.
2067
AP® EXAM TIP
As you work through this material, identify examples of group behavior in your
own life. Then, compare your examples with a classmate’s. This is a great way
to make psychology come alive and to study effectively. If you apply these
terms while reading the unit, it will be easier to identify the vocabulary later.
The energizing effect of an enthusiastic audience helps explain the
home-team advantage that has shown up in studies of more than a quarter-
million college and professional athletic events in various countries (Allen
& Jones, 2014; Jamieson, 2010). Home teams win about 6 in 10 games,
with the home advantage being greatest for teamwork-centered sports,
such as soccer and basketball (Jones, 2015). For most sports, home
cooking is best (see Table 76.1).
TABLE 76.1 Home Advantage in Team Sports
Percentage of home
Sport Years games won
Nippon League Baseball 1998– 53.6
2009
Major League Baseball 1903– 53.9
2009
National Hockey League 1917– 55.7
2009
International Rugby 1871– 56.9
2009
National Football League 1966– 57.3
2009
International Cricket 1877– 57.4
2068
2009
National Basketball Association 1946– 60.5
2009
Women’s National Basketball 2003- 61.7
Association 2009
English Premier League Soccer 1993– 63.0
2009
NCAA Men’s Basketball 1947– 68.8
2009
Major League Soccer 2002– 69.1
2009
Data from Moskowitz & Wertheim, 2011.
The point to remember: What you do well, you are likely to do even
better in front of an audience, especially a friendly audience. What you
normally find difficult may seem all but impossible when you are being
watched.
Social facilitation also helps explain a funny effect of crowding.
Comedians know that a “good house” is a full one. What they may not
know is that crowding triggers arousal. Comedy routines that are mildly
amusing in an uncrowded room seem funnier in a densely packed room
(Aiello et al., 1983; Freedman & Perlick, 1979). When seated close to one
another, people like a friendly person even more and an unfriendly person
even less (Schiffenbauer & Schiavo, 1976; Storms & Thomas, 1977). So,
to increase the chances of a lively interaction at your next event, choose a
room or set up seating that will just barely accommodate everyone.
2069
Social Loafing
Social facilitation experiments test the effect of others’ presence on the
performance of an individual task, such as shooting pool. But what
happens when people perform as a group—say, in a team tug-of-war?
Would you exert more, less, or the same effort as in a one-on-one match?
To find out, a University of Massachusetts research team asked
blindfolded students “to pull as hard as you can” on a rope. When they
fooled the students into believing three others were also pulling behind
them, students exerted only 82 percent as much effort as when they knew
they were pulling alone (Ingham et al., 1974). And consider what
happened when blindfolded people seated in a group clapped or shouted as
loudly as they could while hearing (through headphones) other people
clapping or shouting loudly (Latané, 1981). When they thought they were
part of a group effort, the participants produced about one-third less noise
than when clapping or shouting “alone.”
This diminished effort is called social loafing (Jackson & Williams,
1988; Latané, 1981). Experiments in the United States, India, Thailand,
Japan, China, and Taiwan have found social loafing on various tasks,
though it was especially common among men in individualist cultures
(Karau & Williams, 1993). What causes social loafing? When people act
as part of a group, they may
feel less accountable and therefore worry less about what others think.
view their individual contributions as dispensable (Harkins &
Szymanski, 1989; Kerr & Bruun, 1983).
overestimate their own contributions, downplaying others’ actions
(Schroeder et al., 2016).
slack off (as you perhaps have observed on group assignments) if they
share equally in the benefits, regardless of how much they contribute.
Unless highly motivated and strongly identified with the group, people
may free ride on others’ efforts.
2070
social loafing
the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts
toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable.
Working hard, or hardly working? In group projects, social loafing often
occurs, as individuals free ride on the efforts of others.
2071
Deindividuation
Deindividuation During England’s 2011 riots and looting, rioters were
disinhibited by social arousal and by the anonymity provided by darkness and
their hoods and masks. Later, some of those arrested expressed bewilderment
over their own behavior.
We’ve seen that the presence of others can arouse people (social
facilitation), or it can diminish their feelings of responsibility (social
loafing). But sometimes the presence of others does both. The uninhibited
behavior that results can range from a food fight to vandalism or rioting.
Perhaps you can recall following the crowd in yelling at a referee or
opposing team? This process of losing self-awareness and self-restraint,
called deindividuation, often occurs when group participation makes
people both aroused and anonymous. Compared with identifiable women
in a control group, New York University women dressed in
depersonalizing Ku Klux Klan–style hoods delivered twice as much
presumed electric shock to a victim (Zimbardo, 1970).
deindividuation
the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that
foster arousal and anonymity.
Deindividuation thrives, for better or for worse, in many settings. The
2072
anonymity of online discussion boards and blog comment sections can
unleash mocking or cruel words. Online bullies, who would never say
“You’re the ugliest person I know” to someone’s face, will hide behind
their anonymity. Tribal warriors who depersonalize themselves with face
paints or masks are more likely than those with exposed faces to kill,
torture, or mutilate captured enemies (Watson, 1973). When we shed self-
awareness and self-restraint—whether in a mob, at a rock concert, at a
ballgame, or at worship—we become more responsive to the group
experience—bad or good. For a comparison of social facilitation, social
loafing, and deindividuation, see Table 76.2.
TABLE 76.2 Behavior in the Presence of Others: Three Phenomena
Psychological
effect of
Social others’
Phenomenon context presence Behavioral effect
Social Individual Increased arousal Amplified dominant
facilitation being behavior, such as doing
observed better what one does well
(or doing worse what is
difficult)
Social loafing Group Diminished Decreased effort
projects feelings of
responsibility
when not
individually
accountable
Deindividuation Group Reduced self- Lowered self-restraint
setting that awareness
fosters
arousal and
anonymity
Check Your Understanding
2073
Ask Yourself
How have you experienced social loafing, such as with group projects?
Test Yourself
What is social facilitation, and why is it more likely to occur with a well-
learned task?
People tend to exert less effort when working with a group than they would
alone, which is called ______________ ______________.
You are organizing a meeting of fiercely competitive political candidates. To
add to the fun, friends have suggested handing out masks of the candidates’
faces for supporters to wear. What phenomenon might these masks engage?
Answers to the Test Yourself questions can be found in Appendix E at the end of the book.
***
We have examined the conditions under which the presence of others can
motivate people to exert themselves or tempt them to free ride on the
efforts of others, make easy tasks easier and difficult tasks harder, and
enhance humor or fuel mob violence. Research also shows that interacting
with others can similarly have both bad and good effects.
2074
Group Polarization
76-2 How can group interaction enable group polarization?
We live in an increasingly polarized world. The Middle East is torn by
warring factions. The European Union is struggling with nationalist
divisions. In 1990, a one-minute speech in the U.S. Congress would enable
you to guess the speaker’s party just 55 percent of the time; by 2009,
partisanship was evident 83 percent of the time (Gentzkow et al., 2016). In
2016, for the first time in survey history, most U.S. Republicans and
Democrats reported having “very unfavorable” views of the other party
(Doherty & Kiley, 2016). And a record 77 percent of Americans perceived
their nation as divided (Jones, 2016).
A powerful principle helps us understand our increasingly polarized
world: The beliefs and attitudes we bring to a group grow stronger as we
discuss them with like-minded others. This process, called group
polarization, can have beneficial results, as when low-prejudice students
become even more accepting while discussing racial issues. And it can be
socially toxic, as when high-prejudice students who discuss racial issues
become more prejudiced (Myers & Bishop, 1970; Figure 76.1). The
repeated finding: Like minds polarize.
group polarization
the enhancement of a group’s prevailing inclinations through discussion within
the group.
2075
Figure 76.1 Group polarization
If a group is like-minded, discussion strengthens its prevailing
opinions. Talking over racial issues increased prejudice in a high-
prejudice group of high school students and decreased it in a low-
prejudice group.
Analyses of terrorist organizations reveal that the terrorist mentality
emerges slowly among people who share a grievance (McCauley, 2002;
McCauley & Segal, 1987; Merari, 2002). As they interact in isolation
(sometimes with other “brothers” and “sisters” in camps or in prisons),
their views grow more and more extreme. Increasingly, they categorize the
world as “us” against “them” (Chulov, 2014; Moghaddam, 2005).
Knowing that group polarization occurs when like-minded people
segregate, a 2006 U.S. National Intelligence estimate speculated that “the
operational threat from self-radicalized cells will grow.”
“ What explains the rise of fascism in the 1930s? The emergence of student
2076
radicalism in the 1960s? The growth of Islamic terrorism in the 1990s? . . . The
unifying theme is simple: When people find themselves in groups of like-minded
types, they are especially likely to move to extremes. [This] is the phenomenon of
group polarization. ”
Cass Sunstein (2009)
The Internet offers us a connected global world, yet also provides an
easily accessible medium for group polarization. When I [DM] got my
start in social psychology with experiments on group polarization, I never
imagined the potential dangers, or the creative possibilities, of polarization
in virtual groups. On the plus side, I can network with other advocates of
accessibility for people with hearing loss. On the minus side, the Internet
enables opinion bubbles: Progressives friend progressives and share links
to sites that affirm their shared views. Conservatives connect with
conservatives and likewise share conservative perspectives. With news
feeds and retweets, we feed one another information—and misinformation
—and click on content we agree with (Bakshy et al., 2015; Barberá et al.,
2015). Thus, within the Internet’s echo chamber of the like-minded, views
become more extreme. Suspicion becomes conviction. Disagreements with
the other tribe can escalate to demonization. (For more on the Internet’s
role in group polarization—toward ends that are good as well as bad—see
Thinking Critically About: The Internet as Social Amplifier.)
“ Dear Satan, thank you for having my Internet news feeds tailored especially for
ME!”
Comedian Steve Martin, 2016 tweet
2077
2078
Groupthink
76-4 How can group interaction enable groupthink?
Does group influence ever distort important national decisions? Consider
the Bay of Pigs fiasco. In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and his
advisers decided to invade Cuba with 1400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles.
When the invaders were easily captured and quickly linked to the U.S.
government, Kennedy wondered aloud, “How could I have been so
stupid?”
“ One of the dangers in the White House, based on my reading of history, is that
you get wrapped up in groupthink and everybody agrees with everything, and
there’s no discussion and there are no dissenting views.”
Barack Obama, December 1, 2008, press conference
Social psychologist Irving Janis (1982) studied the decision-making
process leading to the ill-fated invasion. He discovered that the soaring
morale of the recently elected president and his advisers fostered undue
confidence. To preserve the good feeling, group members suppressed or
self-censored their dissenting views, especially after President Kennedy
voiced his enthusiasm for the scheme. Since no one spoke strongly against
the idea, everyone assumed the support was unanimous. To describe this
harmonious but unrealistic group thinking, Janis coined the term
groupthink.
groupthink
the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-
making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.
Later studies showed that groupthink—fed by overconfidence,
conformity, self-justification, and group polarization—contributed to other
2079
fiascos as well. Among them were the failure to anticipate the 1941
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; the escalation of the Vietnam war; the
U.S. Watergate cover-up; the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident (Reason,
1987); the U.S. space shuttle Challenger explosion (Esser & Lindoerfer,
1989); and the Iraq war, launched on the false idea that Iraq had weapons
of mass destruction (U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, 2004).
Despite the dangers of groupthink, two heads are often better than one.
Knowing this, Janis also studied instances in which U.S. presidents and
their advisers collectively made good decisions, such as when the Truman
administration formulated the Marshall Plan, which offered assistance to
Europe after World War II, and when the Kennedy administration
successfully prevented the Soviets from installing missiles in Cuba. His
conclusion? Groupthink is prevented when a leader—whether in
government or in business—welcomes various opinions, invites experts’
critiques of developing plans, and assigns people to identify possible
problems. Just as the suppression of dissent bends a group toward bad
decisions, open debate often shapes good ones. This is especially the case
with diverse groups, whose varied perspectives often enable creative or
superior outcomes (Nemeth & Ormiston, 2007; Page, 2007). Teams of
smart people tend to surpass individual smart people at predicting political
events (Mellers et al., 2015). None of us is as smart as all of us.
“ If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I
will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we
exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”
Attributed to dramatist George Bernard Shaw, 1856–1950
2080
Cultural Influences
76-5 How does culture affect our behavior?
Compared with the narrow path taken by flies, fish, and foxes, the road
along which environment drives us is wider. The mark of our species—
nature’s great gift to us—is our ability to learn and adapt. We come
equipped with a huge cerebral hard drive ready to receive cultural
software.
Culture is the behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared
by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next
(Brislin, 1988; Cohen, 2009). Human nature, noted Roy Baumeister
(2005), seems designed for culture. We are social animals, but more.
Wolves are social animals; they live and hunt in packs. Ants are
incessantly social, never alone. But “culture is a better way of being
social,” observed Baumeister. Wolves function pretty much as they did
10,000 years ago. We enjoy countless things that were unknown to our
century-ago ancestors. Culture works.
culture
the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group
of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.
Other animals exhibit smaller kernels of culture. Chimpanzees
sometimes invent customs—using leaves to clean their bodies, slapping
branches to get attention, and doing a “rain dance” by slowly displaying
themselves at the start of rain—and pass them on to their peers and
offspring (Whiten et al., 1999). Culture supports survival and reproduction
by transmitting learned behaviors that give a group an edge. But human
culture does more.
Thanks to our culture’s mastery of language, we humans enjoy the
preservation of innovation. Within the span of this day, we have used
2081
Google, smart phones, digital hearing technology [DM], and a GPS
running watch [ND]. On a grander scale, we have culture’s accumulated
knowledge to thank for the last century’s 30-year extension of the average
human life expectancy in many countries. Moreover, culture enables an
efficient division of labor. Although two lucky people get their name on
this book (which transmits accumulated cultural wisdom), the product
actually results from the coordination and commitment of a team of gifted
people, no one of whom could produce it alone.
Across cultures, we differ. But beneath differences is our great
similarity—our capacity for culture. Culture transmits the customs and
beliefs that enable us to communicate, to exchange money for things, to
play, to eat, and to drive with agreed-upon rules and without crashing into
one another.
Variation Across Cultures
We see our adaptability in cultural variations among our beliefs and our
values, in how we nurture our children and bury our dead, and in what we
wear (or whether we wear anything at all). We are ever mindful that the
worldwide readers of this book are culturally diverse. You and your
ancestors reach from Asia to Africa.
Riding along with a unified culture is like biking with the wind: As it
carries us along, we hardly notice it is there. When we try biking against
the wind we feel its force. Face-to-face with a different culture, we become
aware of the cultural winds. Visiting Europe, most North Americans notice
the smaller cars, the left-handed use of the fork, the uninhibited attire on
the beaches. Stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait, American and
European soldiers alike realized how liberal their home cultures were.
Arriving in North America, visitors from Japan and India struggle to
understand why so many people wear their dirty street shoes in the house.
2082
But humans in varied cultures nevertheless share some basic moral
ideas. Even before they can walk, babies prefer helpful people over
naughty ones (Hamlin et al., 2011). Worldwide, people prize honesty,
fairness, and kindness (McGrath, 2015). Yet each cultural group also
evolves its own norms. The British have a norm for orderly waiting in line.
Many South Asians use only the right hand for eating. Sometimes social
expectations seem oppressive: “Why should it matter how I dress?” Yet,
norms—how to greet, how to eat—grease the social machinery.
When cultures collide, their differing norms often befuddle. Should we
greet people by shaking hands, bowing, or kissing each cheek? Knowing
what sorts of gestures and compliments are culturally appropriate, we can
relax and enjoy one another without fear of embarrassment or insult.
When we don’t understand what’s expected or accepted, we may
experience culture shock. People from Mediterranean cultures have
perceived northern Europeans as efficient but cold and preoccupied with
punctuality (Triandis, 1981). People from time-conscious Japan—where
bank clocks keep exact time, pedestrians walk briskly, and postal clerks
fill requests speedily—have found themselves growing impatient when
visiting Indonesia, where the pace of life is more leisurely (Levine &
Norenzayan, 1999). Someone from the European community, which
requires 20 paid vacation days each year, may also experience culture
shock when working in the United States, which does not guarantee
workers any paid vacation (Ray et al., 2013).
2083
Variation Over Time
Like biological creatures, cultures vary and compete for resources, and
thus evolve over time (Mesoudi, 2009). Consider how rapidly cultures may
change. English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (1342–1400) is separated from a
modern Briton by only 25 generations, but the two would have great
difficulty communicating. At the beginning of the last century, your
ancestors lived in a world without cars, radio broadcasting, or widespread
electric power and light. In the thin slice of history since 1960, most
Western cultures have changed with astonishing speed. Middle-class
people enjoy the convenience of air-conditioned housing, online shopping,
anywhere-anytime electronic communication, and—enriched by doubled
per-person real income—eating out more than twice as often as did their
grandparents back in the culture of 1960. Many people now enjoy
expanded human rights. And with greater economic independence, today’s
women more often marry for love and less often endure abusive
relationships.
But some changes seem not so wonderfully positive. Had you fallen
asleep in the United States in 1960 and awakened today, you would open
your eyes to a culture with more depression and more economic inequality.
You would also find North Americans—like their counterparts in Britain,
Australia, and New Zealand—spending more hours at work, fewer hours
with friends and family, and fewer hours asleep (BLS, 2011; Putnam,
2000).
Whether we love or loathe these changes, we cannot fail to be
impressed by their breathtaking speed. And we cannot explain them by
changes in the human gene pool, which evolves far too slowly to account
for high-speed cultural transformations. Cultures vary. Cultures change.
And cultures shape our lives.
Check Your Understanding
Ask Yourself
How have you been influenced by group polarization in your online
2084
activities?
Test Yourself
When like-minded groups discuss a topic, and the result is the strengthening
of the prevailing opinion, this is called ______________ ______________.
When a group’s desire for harmony overrides its realistic analysis of other
options, ______________ has occurred.
Answers to the Test Yourself questions can be found in Appendix E at the end of the book.
2085
Module 76 REVIEW
76-1 How does the presence of others influence our actions via
social facilitation, social loafing, and deindividuation?
In social facilitation, the mere presence of others arouses us, improving
our performance on easy or well-learned tasks but decreasing it on
difficult ones.
In social loafing, participating in a group project makes us feel less
responsible, and we may free ride on others’ efforts.
When the presence of others both arouses us and makes us feel
anonymous, we may experience deindividuation—loss of self-awareness
and self-restraint.
76-2 How can group interaction enable group polarization?
In group polarization, group discussions with like-minded others
strengthen members’ prevailing beliefs and attitudes.
76-3 What role does the Internet play in group polarization?
Internet communication magnifies the effect of connecting like-minded
people, for better and for worse. People find support, which strengthens
their ideas, but also often isolation from those with different opinions.
Separation plus conversation may thus lead to group polarization.
76-4 How can group interaction enable groupthink?
Groupthink is driven by a desire for harmony within a decision-making
group, overriding realistic appraisal of alternatives.
Group leaders can harness the benefits of group interaction by assigning
people to identify possible problems, and by welcoming various
opinions and expert critique.
2086
76-5 How does culture affect our behavior?
A culture is a set of behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions
shared by a group and transmitted from one generation to the next.
Cultures differ across time and space.
Multiple-Choice Questions
1. Maggie is an excellent hockey player, and she is playing in the final
hockey game of her high school career. The cheering of the fans causes
her to score three goals in the game, a record for her. The most likely
explanation for her performance is
a. social loafing.
b. group behavior.
c. social facilitation.
d. deindividuation.
e. group polarization.
2. Following a natural disaster, it is not uncommon for large groups of
people to loot stores and take far more than they might need to help
them survive the situation. This behavior is best explained by the
concept of
a. culture.
b. social facilitation.
c. groupthink.
d. deindividuation.
e. group polarization.
3. Marie disagrees with the answer her math review group comes up with.
She does not voice her own answer because she does not want to go
against the group. Marie is being affected by
a. group polarization.
b. groupthink.
c. social loafing.
2087
d. social facilitation.
e. cultural influences.
4. The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared
by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next is
known as
a. deindividuation.
b. groupthink.
c. social facilitation.
d. culture.
e. social loafing.
Practice FRQs
1. Describe the four possible causes of social loafing.
Answer
1 point: People acting as part of a group feel less accountable. Page
785
1 point: Group members may view their individual contributions as
dispensable. Page 785
1 point: People in a group may overestimate their own efforts, not
considering how much others are contributing. Page 785
1 point: Unless highly motivated and strongly identified with the group,
people may free ride on others’ efforts. Page 785
2. Anonymous reviews of restaurants tend to be more negative than those
where the name of the reviewer is attached. Explain why this is, using
the following terms: deindividuation and group polarization.
(2 points)
2088