Week 8

Chapter 8
Group Processes: Influence in Social Groups
Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Discussion Question
• Have you ever written or posted something

anonymously online that you know you never
would have had the nerve to say or do in person?

Learning Objectives
•
9.1 What are groups, and why do people join them?
•
9.2 In what ways do individuals perform differently when
others are around?
•
9.3 Are two (or more) heads better than one in decision
making, and how do leaders shape group outcomes?
•
9.4 What determines the likelihood that individual or group
conflict will escalate or be resolved?

What Is a Group?
9.1 What are groups, and why do people join them?

Defining a Group
• Two or more people who interact and are

interdependent in the sense that their needs and
goals cause them to influence each other

Why Do People Join Groups?
• Groups have a number of other benefits:

– Important source of information:
 Help us resolve ambiguity in the social world
– Important aspect of identity:
 Help us define who we are
 Help us feel distinct from other groups
– Establishment of social norms

Social Norms
• Potential costs to social roles

• If enmeshed in a role, individual identities and
personalities can get lost.
Social Roles
Shared expectations in a group about how particular people

are supposed to behave in that group

Social Roles
• Zimbardo and colleagues (1973) randomly assigned male
volunteers to play roles for two weeks as:
– Prisoners
– Guards
• Students quickly assumed these roles.
– Researchers had to end the experiment after only

six days.

When Stanford Became a Prison
Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues randomly assigned students to play
the role of prisoner or guard in a mock prison. The students assumed
these roles all too well.
Source: Philip G. Zimbardo, Inc.
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The Guard Role
One of the guards from Zimbardo’s prison experiment at Stanford.
Source: Philip G. Zimbardo, Inc.
The Stanford Prison Study
• Guards
– Abusive
– Verbally harassed, humiliated prisoners
• Prisoners
– Passive
– Helpless
– Withdrawn

Prison Abuse at Abu Ghraib
• In 2004, American military guards routinely

abused prisoners in Abu Ghraib, a prison in Iraq.
– Physical beatings, sexual abuse, and psychological
humiliation
• The American public was shocked by pictures of
these abuses
• A few bad apples happen to end up in the unit
guarding the prisoners?
– “What’s bad is the barrel” (Zimbardo)

Group Cohesiveness (1 of 2)
• The more cohesive a group is, the more its members are likely to:
– Stay in the group
– Take part in group activities
– Try to recruit new like-minded members
Group Cohesiveness
Qualities of a group that bind members together and

promote liking between members

Group Cohesiveness (2 of 2)
• Task requires close cooperation?
– Cohesiveness helps performance.
• Maintaining good relationships most important?
– Cohesiveness can interfere with optimal performance

Group Diversity (1 of 2)
• Group members tend to be alike in age, sex,

beliefs and opinions
• Why are they similar?
– Attracted to and likely to recruit similar others
– Groups operate in ways that encourage similarity in

the members

Group Diversity (2 of 2)
• Homogenous groups are more cohesive
• Diverse groups perform better

Figure 9.1
Racial/Gender Diversity and Business Performance
To examine the relationship between a business’s performance and its racial and gender diversity, Herring (2009)
conducted a correlational study of over 1,000 U.S. workplaces and found a positive association between both types of
diversity with (a) sales revenue and (b) number of customers. These results seem to indicate a positive relationship
between diversity and a business’s bottom line. But as you know, because these data are only correlational, we cannot
draw conclusions here regarding one variable causing another.
Individual Behavior in
a Group Setting
9.2 In what ways do individuals perform differently when
others are around?

Social Facilitation (1 of 4)
• Social Facilitation
– People do better on simple tasks, and worse on

complex tasks, when they are in the presence of others
and their individual performance can be evaluated

• The presence of others can mean one of two

things:
1. Performing a task with coworkers doing the same
thing you are
2. Performing a task in front of an audience that only
observes you

• If task is simple, well-learned
– The mere presence of others improves performance
– This phenomenon is found in humans as well as other

species!

• Triplett (1898) asked children to wind up a fishing

line on a reel.
– By themselves or in the presence of other children
– They wound faster when in the presence of other

children than when by themselves
 One of the first social psychology experiments ever done

A Crowded-Classroom Benefit
Research on social facilitation finds that people do better on a well-
learned task when in the presence of others than when they are alone. If
students have studied hard and know the material well, they might be
better off taking an exam in a room with lots of other people.
Source: wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock
Figure 9.2
Cockroaches and Social Facilitation
In the maze on the left, cockroaches had a simple task: to go from the starting point down the runway to the darkened
box. They performed this feat faster when other roaches were watching than when they were alone. In the maze on the
right, the cockroaches had a more difficult task. It took them longer to solve this maze when other roaches were watching
than when they were alone. (Based on data in Zajonc, Heingartner, & Herman, 1969)
Simple versus Difficult Tasks
• When working on a more difficult task
– Opposite results
 A task can take longer to solve when others are present than
when performing alone.
 People and animals do worse in the presence of others when

the task is difficult.

Arousal and the Dominant Response
(Zajonc, 1965)
• The presence of others increases physiological
arousal
 i.e., our bodies become more energized
• When such arousal exists:
– It is easier to do something that is simple.
– It is harder to do something complex or learn

something new.

Why the Presence of Others
Causes Arousal (1 of 4)
• Three theories to explain the arousal and social
facilitation:
1. Other people cause us to become particularly alert

and vigilant.
2. Other people make us apprehensive about how we’re

being evaluated.
3. Other people distract us from the task at hand.

1. Other people cause us to become particularly
alert and vigilant.
– Because other people can be unpredictable, we are in

a state of greater alertness in their presence.
 Causes mild arousal

2. They make us apprehensive about how we’re
being evaluated.
– When other people can see how you are doing, you
feel like they are evaluating you.
 Evaluation apprehension can cause mild arousal.

3. They distract us from the task at hand.
– Divided attention produces arousal.
– Consistent with this interpretation, nonsocial sources of

distraction, such as a flashing light, cause the same
kinds of social facilitation effects as the presence of
other people.

Social Loafing (1 of 3)
• When in the presence of others, individual

efforts often cannot be distinguished from those
around them.
• If being with other people means merging into a

group and becoming less noticeable than when
alone: increase relaxation.

• Ringelmann (1913)
– When a group pulled on a rope, each individual exerted

less effort than when doing it alone.

• Social Loafing
– People do worse on simple tasks but better on complex

tasks when they are in the presence of others and their
individual performance cannot be evaluated

Slacking Off in Class
Sometimes being surrounded by others allows us to slack off (or “loaf”),
demonstrating that there’s not a single, simple answer to the question of
how the presence of other people affects individual performance.
Source: PhotoAlto/Alamy
Social Facilitation and Social Loafing
• Arousal enhances performance on simple tasks

but impairs performance on complex tasks.
• Becoming relaxed impairs performance on

simple tasks but improves performance on
complex tasks.

Figure 9.3
Social Facilitation and Social Loafing
The presence of others can lead to social facilitation or social loafing. The important
variables that distinguish the two are evaluation, arousal, and the complexity of the tasks.
Gender and Social Loafing
• In a review of more than 150 studies
– Social loafing is more likely among men.
– Women tend to be higher than men in relational

interdependence.
 Focus on and care about personal relationships with other

individuals
 May make women less likely to engage in social loafing when

in groups

Culture and Social Loafing
• Tendency to loaf stronger in Western cultures

than in Asian cultures
• Why?
– Self-definitions:
 Asian cultures: Interdependent self
– Reduces social loafing tendencies

Predicting If Presence of Others
Will Help or Hurt Performance
• Need to know two things:
1. Can individual efforts be evaluated?
2. Is the task simple or complex?

Deindividuation: Getting Lost in
the Crowd (1 of 2)
• Deindividuation
– The loosening of normal constraints on behavior when

people cannot be differentiated (such as when they are
in a crowd), leading to an increase in impulsive and
deviant acts

Deindividuation: Getting Lost in
the Crowd (2 of 2)
• Examples
– Massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam War
– Mobs of soccer fans sometimes attacking each other
– Hysterical fans at rock concerts who trampled each

other to death
– Lynching of African Americans by people cloaked in the

anonymity of white robes

The KKK: Hiding Under Robes and Hoods
The robes and hoods of the Ku Klux Klan cloak its members in anonymity;
their violent behavior is consistent with research on deindividuation.
Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Division [LC-USZ62-138224]
Deindividuation Makes People Feel
Less Accountable
• Why does deindividuation lead to impulsive and

sometime violent acts?
– Makes people feel less accountable
– Increases obedience to group norms

Deindividuation Increases Obedience to
Group Norms
• Deindividuation does not always lead to

aggressive or antisocial behavior.
– Depends on what the norm of the group is

Deindividuation Online (1 of 2)
• Deindividuation does not require face-to-face

contact
– Example: feeling less inhibited on social media that’s

anonymous

Deindividuation Online (2 of 2)
• Cyberspace also provides advantages for the free

and open discussion of difficult topics.
• Cost seems to be a reduction in common civility.
• The phenomenon of the internet “troll” is a modern

example of deindividuation, made possible by the
feelings of anonymity that often go along with
being online.

Group Decisions: Are Two (or
More) Heads Better Than One?
9.3 Are two (or more) heads better than one in decision
making, and how do leaders shape group outcomes?

When Group Interactions Inhibit
Good Problem Solving
• Group will do well only if the most talented
member can convince the others that he or
she is right!

Process Loss
• Any aspect of group interaction that inhibits good

problem solving

Failure to Share Unique Information
• Groups tend to focus on the information they

share and ignore facts known to only some
members of the group.
• Subsequent research has focused on ways to get
groups to focus more on unshared information:
– Group discussions should last long enough to get
beyond what everyone already knows.
– Assign different group members to specific areas of
expertise so that they know that they alone are
responsible for certain types of information.
Transactive Memory
• The combined memory of two people that is more

efficient than the memory of either individual

Groupthink: Many Heads, One Mind
(1 of 2)
• A kind of thinking in which maintaining group
cohesiveness and solidarity is more important
than considering the facts in a realistic manner

Groupthink: Many Heads, One Mind
(2 of 2)
• Janis (1972, 1982): Groupthink is most likely to

occur when group is:
– Highly cohesive
– Isolated from contrary opinions
– Ruled by a directive leader who makes his or her

wishes known

Cartoon: Groupthink in the Boardroom
Henry Martin/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank
Figure 9.4
Groupthink: Antecedents, Symptoms, and Consequences
Under some conditions, maintaining group cohesiveness and solidarity is more important to a group than considering
the facts in a realistic manner (see “Antecedents”). When this happens, certain symptoms of groupthink occur, such
as the illusion of invulnerability (see “Symptoms”). These symptoms lead to defective decision making. (Based on
data in Janis & Mann, 1977.)
Avoiding the Groupthink Trap
• A wise leader can take several steps to avoid

groupthink:
– Remain impartial
– Seek outside opinions
– Create subgroups
– Seek anonymous opinions

An Epidemic of Foreclosures
Some have argued that the financial crisis of 2007 was triggered by groupthink among
financial experts. Based on what you have read about groupthink, do you think this is true?
Source: Andy Dean Photography/Shutterstock
Group Polarization: Going to Extremes
(1 of 2)
• The tendency for groups to make decisions that
are more extreme than the initial inclinations of its
members
• Joining a group is likely to lead an individual’s
attitudes to become more extreme through
processes of group polarization.

Group Polarization: Going to Extremes
(2 of 2)
1. Persuasive arguments interpretation
– Individuals bring to the group a set of arguments, some

of which other individuals have not considered.
2. Social comparison interpretation
– When people discuss an issue in a group, they first

explore how everyone else feels.

Leadership in Groups
• Great Person Theory
– The idea that certain key personality traits make a

person a good leader, regardless of the situation

Leadership and Personality
• Personality and leadership abilities weakly related

• Compared to nonleaders, leaders tend to be
slightly more:
– Intelligent
– Extraverted
– Confident
– Charismatic
• Surprisingly few personality characteristics
correlate strongly with leadership effectiveness.
Leadership Styles
• 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

Leading All the Way: Martin Luther King, Jr.
What determines whether someone, such as Martin

Luther King, Jr., is a great leader? Is it a certain
constellation of personality traits, or is it necessary to
have the right person in the right situation at the right
time?
Source: File/AP Images
The Right Person in the Right Situation
(1 of 2)
• A leader can be highly successful in some
situations but not in others.
• Comprehensive theory of leadership must focus

on the leader, followers, and situation.

The Right Person in the Right Situation
(2 of 2)
• Contingency Theory of Leadership
– The idea 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

Contingency Theory of Leadership (1 of 3)
• Two basic types
1. Task-Oriented Leader
 A leader concerned more with getting the job done than with
workers’ feelings and relationships
2. Relationship-Oriented Leader
 A leader who is concerned primarily with workers’ feelings and

relationships

• Task-oriented leaders, most effective

– High-control work situations
 Leader-subordinate relationships are excellent
 The work is structured and well-defined
– Low-control work situations
 Leader-subordinate relationships are poor
 The work needing to be done is not clearly defined

• Relationship-oriented leaders are most effective
– Moderate-control work situations
 Fairly smooth
 But some attention to poor relationships and hurt feelings

is needed

Figure 9.5
Fiedler’s Contingency Theory of Leadership
According to Fiedler, task-oriented leaders perform best when situational control is high or low,
whereas relationship-oriented leaders perform best when situational control is moderate.
Gender and Leadership (1 of 3)
• Difficult for women to achieve leadership positions
– Why?
 Belief that good leaders have agentic traits
– Women stereotyped as having communal traits

• Double bind for women leaders:
– If warm and communal,
 Perceived as having low leadership potential
– If agentic and forceful
 Often perceived negatively for not “acting like a woman shoul

d”

• Glass cliff
– Women are thought to be better at managing crises

(especially interpersonal ones)
 Puts them in precarious positions where difficult to succeed
• Good news: Prejudice against women leaders

lessening over time

GM’s First Female CEO Inherits a Recall
In 2014, Mary Barra became the first female CEO of a major global
automaker, in this case General Motors. Within months, she had to
announce plans for GM to recall over 11 million cars due to defective
design components that the company had known about for nearly 10
years. Could Barra become another example of a woman who broke
through a “glass ceiling” only to find herself on a “glass cliff”?
Source: US Senate/Alamy
Culture and Leadership
• Cultural differences
– Autonomous leaders valued more in Eastern European

than Latin American
• Cultural similarities in valued leadership qualities
– Charisma
– Team-Orientation

Conflict and Cooperation
9.4 What determines the likelihood that individual or
group conflict will escalate or be resolved?

When Goals Collide
• Often people have incompatible goals.
• These incompatibilities place them in conflict with

each other.
– This can be true of individuals, groups, companies,

nations.

Counseling for Conflicts
Sometimes people are able to resolve conflicts peacefully, such as a
couple that has an amicable divorce. At other times conflicts escalate
into rancor and violence. Social psychologists have performed
experiments to test ways in which conflict resolution is most likely to
occur.
Source: WavebreakmediaMicro/Fotolia
Social Dilemmas
• A conflict in which the most beneficial action for an

individual, if chosen by most people, will have
harmful effects on everyone

Prisoner’s Dilemma (1 of 2)
• Two people must choose one of two options

without knowing what the other person will
choose.

Prisoner’s Dilemma (2 of 2)
• Payoff depends on the choices of both

– Example
 If you and your friend both choose option X
– You both win $3
 If, however, you choose option Y and your friend chooses

option X,
– You win $6
– You friend loses $6

Increasing Cooperation in
the Prisoner’s Dilemma (1 of 3)
• People are more likely to adopt a cooperative
strategy if:
– Playing the game with a friend
– Expecting to interact with their partner in the future

• Change norms about expected behavior
– Changing name from “Wall Street Game” to

“Community Game”
 Increased the percentage of people who cooperated from 33%

to 71% in one study

• 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.

Using Threats to Resolve Conflict
• Threats not an effective means of reducing conflict
– Trucking game studies
 Retaliate against threats

Figure 9.6
The Deutsch and Krauss Trucking Game
Deutsch and Krauss (1962) studied cooperation (and the lack thereof) by asking participants to play a trucking game.
In the game, players earned money by driving from one point to another as quickly as possible. As in the image below,
the shortest route in their game required crossing a one-lane road, but both companies could not use this road at the
same time. When players were given gates they could use to restrict the other player’s use of the one-lane road, both
companies made even less money.
Effects of Communication
• Deutsch and Krauss trucking game does not approximate
real life
– Two sides could not communicate to each other
• Ran another version of the study where participants were

required to communicate
• Results?
– Reduced losses somewhat in the unilateral threat condition
– Failed to increase cooperation in the other two conditions
• Communication in the trucking studies did not foster trust

Figure 9.7
Results of the Trucking Game Studies
The left-hand panel shows the amount of money the participants made (summed over Acme and Bolt) when they could not
communicate. When threats were introduced by giving one (“unilateral threat”) or both sides (“bilateral threat”) a gate, both sides
lost more money. The right-hand panel shows the amount of money the participants made when they were required to
communicate in every trial. Once again, giving them gates reduced their winnings. (Based on data in Deutsch & Krauss, 1962.)
Negotiation and Bargaining (1 of 3)
• 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 conflict whereby parties make trade-offs

on issues according to their different interests; each
side concedes the most on issues that are unimportant
to it but important to the other side

• When negotiating, integrative solutions are often

available:
– Work on gaining trust and communicating.
– Remember people often construe situation differently.
– Neutral mediators often help solve labor disputes, legal

battles, and divorce proceedings by recognizing that
there are mutually agreeable solutions to a conflict.

Discussion Question Follow-up
• Why might deindividuation be particularly likely to

occur in online interaction? How can websites
prevent it from occurring?

Summary and Review
• Features and Functions of Groups
• Social Facilitation and Social Loafing
• Are two heads better than one?
• Leadership
• Social Dilemmas
• Resolving Dilemmas

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Chapter 8

Group Processes: Influence in Social Groups

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Have you ever written or posted something

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Two or more people who interact and are

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Groups have a number of other benefits:

 Help us resolve ambiguity in the social world

– Important aspect of identity:

 Help us define who we are

 Help us feel distinct from other groups

– Establishment of social norms

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Potential costs to social roles

Shared expectations in a group about how particular people

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Students quickly assumed these roles.

– Researchers had to end the experiment after only

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Source: Philip G. Zimbardo, Inc.

Source: Philip G. Zimbardo, Inc.

– Verbally harassed, humiliated prisoners

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• In 2004, American military guards routinely

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

– Stay in the group

– Take part in group activities

– Try to recruit new like-minded members

Qualities of a group that bind members together and

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Task requires close cooperation?

– Cohesiveness helps performance.

• Maintaining good relationships most important?

– Cohesiveness can interfere with optimal performance

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Group members tend to be alike in age, sex,

• Why are they similar?

– Attracted to and likely to recruit similar others

– Groups operate in ways that encourage similarity in

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Homogenous groups are more cohesive

• Diverse groups perform better

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

– People do better on simple tasks, and worse on

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• The presence of others can mean one of two

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• If task is simple, well-learned

– The mere presence of others improves performance

– This phenomenon is found in humans as well as other

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Triplett (1898) asked children to wind up a fishing

– By themselves or in the presence of other children

– They wound faster when in the presence of other