LAW 039

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL
PSYCHOLOGY & CRIMINOLOGY

GROUPS AND
INDIVIDUALS

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 GROUPS & INDIVIDUALS

 1. The Psychology in Groups

 2. Social Groups

 3. Coordination in Groups

 4. Perceived Fairness

 5. Group Decision Making

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 INTRODUCTION :
1) MEANING & NATURE OF
GROUP

 DEFINITION:
 Group means interdependent people who have emotional
ties and interact on regular basis.
 A collection of people who are perceived to be bonded
together in a coherent unit to some degree. (Baron).

 NATURE:
 Members depend on another to achieve group goals, one
affected all will be affected

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Features of Groups

 Status
 In many different species, including our own, high status confer
important advantages on those who posses it (Buss, 1999).
 Physical attributes such as height may play some role. Those who are
taller are held in higher esteem compared to shorter people.
 Individual’s behavior also play critical role in status acquisition.

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Cont.

 Roles
 Different people perform different tasks and were expected to
accomplish different things for the groups.
 Sometimes, roles are assigned.

 Norms
 Implicit rules that inform people about what is expected of them
 Important norm varies considerably across cultures, but also can apply
differently to groups within a culture, is collectivism versus
individualism.

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Cont.

 Cohesiveness
 Cohesive group have a sense of solidarity.
 They seem themselves as homogenous, supportive of ingroup members,
cooperative with ingroup members, aim to achieve group goals rather
than individual goals, have high morale, and perform better than
noncohesive groups (Hogg, 2007).

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BENEFITS OF JOINING A GROUP

• Gain self knowledge from belonging to some various group.-

becomes a part of our self identity

• To help reach our goals- group status sometimes help us to

improve ourselves.

• To accomplish goals where we could not get alone

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 2) SOCIAL GROUPS:
ii)CHARACTERISTIC

1. Similarity and diversity

Similar : always perform/participate in the same activities and

share their similar interest

Diversity : ‘the different’ among the members, gives the flexibility

to changes and in making decision

they become more creative with diversity of members rather than

to minimize the differences.

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 Cont.

2. Accomplish the instrumental task and satisfy socio emotional needs

To achieve certain goals they cannot do it alone

Example : fire in a building; can you do the task alone?

In a group, certain people tend to feel neglected so normally the leader will
try to balance the situations; give attention to the task and also considerate
feelings of the members.

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 Cont.
3. Group structure develop quickly and changes slowly

Elements in a structure:

i.Social norms

Norms: rules /expectations within a group concerning how its members

should/should not behave.

Social norms: Expected standards of behaviour and beliefs established and

enforced by a group (norm that can be view from a group; personal
appearance, opinions or behaviour).

Related with conformity, can enhance performance when well structured to

reward effort, efficiency and quality.

Also related with cohesiveness ( all the forces that cause members to
remain in the group); will support in group, oriented to achieve group goals.
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 Cont.

ii. Social roles

•Roles : the set behaviours that individuals occupying specific positions within a
group are expected to perform.

•Social roles: Clusters of socially defined expectations that individuals in a given

situation are expected to fulfill.

•Roles in group : the division of labour, well defined roles improve group dynamics
and performance.

•Roles can be assigned but sometimes without formally being assigned to the
members.

•Once people do identify with a roles, they will be guided to perceive it to be the
norms that is consistent with the roles.

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 Cont.
iii. Status systems

•Achieve because of who and what they are

•Expectation theory states that the development of group status is based on

members’ expectation of others’ probable contributions to the achievement of
group goals

•This expectation will be based on:

1) task-relevant characteristics (social skills and experiences)
2) Diffuse status characteristics (race, sex, age etc)

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 iii) INFLUENCES

• It relates with how the presence of others will affect a

person’s performance.

• This involves in two situations :

• 1. Social Facilitation
• - An individual performance in the presence of audience

• 2. Social Loafing
• - An individual performance as a part of a larger group of
performers

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 1. Social Facilitation

• Norman Triplett’s study on performance- enhance performance when

other people are there

THE MERE-PRESENCE THEORY (By Robert Zajonc (1965)

Proposition:

1. All animals (including humans) are genetically predisposed to become

psychologically aroused when around conspecifics (its own species). –
receive rewards and punishments through revolution

2. This arousal enhances the performance of whatever response tendency

is dominant (well learned) in an animal.

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 EXAMPLE OF SOCIAL FACILITATION

• Handclapping by audience during your performance will increase the

arousal, elicit the dominant response.

• Calculated math in front of the class, it will increased arousal, inhibit

execution of correct answers.

# on easy and difficult task, the performance of dominant response is

facilitated in others’ presence.

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 Cont.

THE DISTRACTION – CONFLICT EXPLANATION

•When animal (human or other) is working on a task in the presence of other

conspecific, it will rise up conflict; whether to attend the companions or to the
task at hand.

•Loud noises / flashing lights also produce the same effect as presence of
other person

•For the complex task, it will cause impairment, not only because of
evaluation of people towards you but also can be distracted from your
surroundings.

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 2. Social Loafing

• Definition :
• 1.Group induce reduction in individual output when performer’s efforts are
pooled and thus cannot be individually judged.
• 2.Reductions in motivation and effort when individuals work in a group
compared to when they work individually.

• Cause the diffusion of responsibilities (belief that the presence of

other people in a situation makes one less personally responsible for
the events that occur in that situation)
• Example: when people work in a group, their individual output will be
‘lost in the crowd’.
• Such as in the school assembly, some students did not sing
‘Negaraku’ clearly.

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 FACTORS TO SOCIAL LOAFING

• According to Price, Harrison , Gavin (2006), social loafing can be caused

by:

1. If people felt dispensable to the group, they were likely to loaf.

(DISPENSABLE)

2. The more fairness that was perceived in the group generally, the less
likely participants were to loaf. (FAIRNESS)

Q1: How do you contribute on your part if you are competent/expert in

certain field as compared to your group members?

Q2: How do you cooperate in a group that consists of various ages and multi
races members?

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How to reduce social loafing?

• Makes an evaluation towards individual member.

• Increasing group members’ commitment to a successful task

performance.

• Gives different task to different individuals in the group.

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 3. COORDINATION IN GROUPS
a) Cooperation
Def : situations in which each persons can increase his/her individual
gains by acting in one way, but if all (or most) people do the same thing,
the outcomes experienced by all are reduced (acting in selfish manners).

Example : PRISONER’S DILEMMA

A situation where two suspect caught by police were given choice; either
to cooperate (keep silent/not confess) or to compete (rat the other person
out). If both cooperate, they will have large gains but if one them
cooperate and one is not, they will have a moderate gains while if both
compete, they will suffer substantial losses).

cooperation: behaviour in which groups work together to attain shared

goals.

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 Cont.
• B) Conflict
 Def: a process in which individuals or groups perceive that others have
taken or will soon take actions incompatible with their own interests.

 Erroneous attribution, faulty communication, misunderstanding other’s

view may cause a conflict in a group.

 How to settle conflict?

 i) Bargaining : a process of negotiating by exchange

offers/counteroffers/concessions either directly or through representative.

 Ii) Superordinate goals : Goals that both sides to a conflict seek and tie
their interests together rather than driving them apart.

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 i) Bargaining;
Tactics to reach integrative agreement:-
NO. TACTIC DESCRIPTION

1. Broadening the pie Available resources are increased so that both sides can obtain
their major goals.

2. Nonspecific One side gets what it wants; the other is compensated on an

compensation unrelated issue

3. Logrolling Each party makes concessions (demand) on low- priority issues in

exchange for concessions on issues it values more highly.

4. Bridging Neither party gets its initial demands, but a new option that major
interests of both sides is developed.

5. Cost cutting One party gets what it desires, and the other party are reduced in
some manner.

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 4. PERCEIVED FAIRNESS IN GROUPS

DISTRIBUTIVE PROCEDURAL TRANSACTIONAL

JUSTICE JUSTICE JUSTICE

Refers to individuals Judgments concerning Refers to the extent to

judgments about whether the fairness of the which people who
they are receiving a fair procedures used to distribute rewards
share of available distribute available explain or justify their
rewards – proportionate rewards among group decisions and show
to their contributions to members. respect and courtesy to
the group those who receive
rewards.

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 5. GROUP DECISION MAKING

 Decision making : process involved in combining and integrating available

information to choose one out of several possible courses of action.

 Stages in decision making (Forsyth);

1. Orientation stage : to identify task and plan for strategy

2. Discussion stage : group gathers information, identify solutions and evaluate

information

3. Decision stage : relies on the implicit/explicit decision rules

4. Implementation stage : evaluate the effectiveness of the decision

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 Cont.
Group Decision Rule
This is about the required number of group members that must agree with a
position for the group as a whole to adopt it.

1.Unanimity rule: all group members must agree on the same position before a
decision is finalized.

2.Majority-wins rule : a group opts for whatever position is held by more than 50%
members.

3.Plurality- wins rule : when there is no clear majority, the group opts for the
position that has the most support.

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 Cont.
Group Polarization
A tendency of a group member to shift toward more extreme positions than
those they initially held by the individual members as a result of group
discussion.
The process will be go through discussion; whatever the initial
learning/preference of a group before its discussion, will be strengthened
during the group deliberation.
Two factors for this:

1.Social comparison – it will motivate the self evaluation which focused on

how their positions on relevant issues similar/dissimilar with other members

2.Mutual persuasion – members will learn on new information, the will favour
the supported view.

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 Cont.
Downside of Group Decision Making
Group Think

It is a high level of cohesiveness

It is a tendency for group members to assume that their decision can’t be
wrong, that all members must support the group decision strongly and that
information contrary to it should be ignored.

Why it happens?(Irving Janis)

1.High group cohesiveness – increased conformity, allow influence by

member to their thinking and actions

2.Threatening situational context – in a stressful situation, a decision should

be made quickly over accuracy

3.Structural/procedural faults – because of lack of systematic knowledge for

making and reviewing decision, it will cause the group final decision. 27
 Potential dangers of group decision making;

 Biased processing of information

Group members process information in ways that allow
them to reach desired decisions.

 Failure to share information

Groups members do not always share information
unique to each member and only discuss information
known by all.

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THANK YOU

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