Group behaviour and decision making

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What is a group?
… a group comprises two or more people, involves interaction between people, demands an awareness of some form of common fate or goals, has a specific structure such as the role and status of individuals within the group and group norms”
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What is group socialisation?
Dynamic relationship between the group and its members in terms of changes in roles and commitment
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What are groups not?
Static entities- new members join, existing members leave
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What are the five stages of Tuckman's model of group socialisation?
Forming, Storming, norming, performing, adjouring
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What is the first stage?
Orientation and familiarisation
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What is storming?
Working through disagreements
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What is norming?
group cohesion and common identity
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What is performing?
Group performs optimally and smoothly
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What is adjourning
Group dissolves because goals have been achieved or members lose interest/motivation
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What does Moreland and Levine's model explain?
Group dynamics across the lifespan of a group
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What is evaluation?
Group members (& potential group members) evaluate the rewards of group membership. Individuals are evaluated in terms of their contribution to the group.
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What is commitment?
Evaluation affects investment in the group (or individual). It is highest when individuals and groups agree on goals and values
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What are role transitions?
Change in the role of a group member - central to Moreland and Levine’s model
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What is the social process over time?
Investigation, socialisation, maintenance, resocialisation, rememberance
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What increases over time?
Commitment
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What are the different roles over time?
Prospective member, new member, full member, marginal member, ex member
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What is group cohesiveness?
The property of the group that affectively binds people as group members to one another and to the group as a whole, giving the group a sense of solidarity and oneness
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What are the field of forces that increase group cohesiveness?
Attractiveness of group, group members, mediation of goals: Social interaction per se, individual goals requiring interdependence
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How is group cohesiveness measured?
Averaging interpersonal attraction across the whole group (Summation)
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What does research reveal that cohesiveness is determined by?
Factors influencing interpersonal attraction: similarity, cooperation, perceived acceptance by other group members, shared threat
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What does cohesiveness predict?
 Conformity to group norms  Accentuated similarity (self-stereotyping and in-group member stereotyping)  Improved intragroup communication (use of jargon; ‘in-jokes’)  Enhanced liking of group members
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What did Hogg say about the pre-exsisting definition of cohesiveness?
It is an 'elusive' concept based on idiosyncratic characteristics:
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What is there a need to distinguish between?
Personal attraction and social attraction
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What is personal attraction?
Based on close relationships and idiosyncratic preferences
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What is social attraction?
Inter-individual liking based on perceptions of self and others not in terms of individuality but group norms and prototypes o This shows how you can like someone a group member, but not as a person (or vice versa).
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What is a group norm?
Rules and standards of behaviour that are understood by group members and guide or constrain on social behaviour
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What do norms do?
: rules and standards of behaviour that are understood by group members and guide or constrain social behaviour (Cialdini & Trost, 1998).
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What do specifically norms do?
define what is acceptable and what is not in a group, reduce uncertainty by promoting socially appropriate actions o can be enforced by laws/legitimacy, or implied and taken for granted (Garfinkel, 1967)
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What can norms lead to?
Derogation if violated
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What was the effects of dormitory political norms on students level of conservatism?
Conservative views decreased after liberal dorm exposure
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What is group structure?
Division of the group into different roles that often differ with respect to status and prestige
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What are roles?
Patterns of behaviour that distinguish between different activities within the group and people adopt for the greater good of the group
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Why do roles emerge?
Division of labour, provide clear cut social expectations of members, give members self definition and place within group
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What is status?
Prestige of a particular role in a group or the prestige of a group and its members as a hole
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Not all roles in a group are what?
Equal in terms of status
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What is the expectation states theory?
Roles in groups are assigned based on expectations of people's performance
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What is specific status characteristics?
Abilities of a person directly relevant to the group task (good athlete in a sports team) pick the person who is best at the job, events like racism or sexism can often prevent this
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What is diffuse status characteristics?
positive or negatively valued characteristics in society (e.g., age & education
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ARe two heads better than one?
Groups function better when solving factual problems - those with one correct answer
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But less well defined real problems present what kinds of problems?
Concerns with social judgement and offending others, unwillingness to take responsibility, lack of confidence in abilities/solutions
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What do groups do ?
Remember more information than individuals do alone
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For example?
Different people recall different information, whole group is better at recognising true information
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Clark and Stephenson
Reviewed research on group Vs individual memory
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What was Clark and Stephenson's memory?
Students or police officers watched a police interrogation of an alleged **** case (alone Vs in groups of 4 people)
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What did they pps have to do?
Answer questions and free recalled information
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What did they find?
Groups outperformed individuals, recalled more correct info, fewer over interpretations of data, no difference in number of errors made
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What is brain storming?
“Uninhibited generation of as many ideas as possible in a group, in order to enhance group creativity” (Osborn, 1957).
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What does systematic reviews show?
Individuals are 2x more creative when they brainstorm ideas alone
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What is the first reason why brainstorming ineffective?
1. Evaluation apprehension- despite inhibited instruction, individuals still worried about evaluation. Are personal ideas as good as anyone else’s ideas?
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What is the second reason why brainstorming is ineffective?
2. Social loafing and free riding – motivation loss. No need to do work as other people are doing the work
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What is the third reason why brainstorming is ineffective?
3. Production matching - average group performance is used as a norm because task is novel
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What is the fourth reason why brainstorming is ineffective?
4. Production blocking - Turn taking interrupts flow of idea generation
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What is the illusion of group effectivity?
1. Mere volume of production of ideas 2. Enjoyment and satisfaction of the process 3. Individuals share only some of their ideas – assume everyone has more (and novel) ideas to share.
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What is groupthink?
“A mode of thinking in highly cohesive groups in which the desire to reach unanimous agreement overrides the motivation to adopt rational decision making procedures.”
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Why might the decision process be faulty?
people fail to give adequate time to interpretating data, then they are confident in their decision because they just want to get it over and done with.
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What four foreign policy decisions did Janis develop his theory from?
Pearl Harbour, Escalation of Korean War, Bay of pigs invasion, escalation of vietnam war
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What method was used?
Archival methods (retrospective & content analysis) Looking at old documents and looking at how they made this decision and why the event went so wrong.
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What are the ancedents of the group think model?
Excessive group cohesiveness, insulation of group from external information and influence, lack of impartial leadership and of norm encouraging proper procedures, ideological homogeneity of membership, high stress from external threat and task comple
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What are symptoms of groupthink model?
Feelings of invulunerability and unanimity, unquestioning belief that the group must be right, tendency to ignore or discredit information contrary to the group's position, direct pressure exerted on dissidents to bring them into line, stereotyping
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McCauley?
• Re-analysed 6 historical cases from Janis’s research and Marshall Plan & Cuban Missile Crisis. • Each case coded separately for presence or absence of groupthink antecedents
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What was present in the non group think cases?
Cohesion, time pressure and perception
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Tetlock et al (1992)
A Q sort card task with bipolar statements for 6 historical cases of groupthink and 2 non group think cases
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What did participants do?
Participants sorted cards into 3 piles and rated each card: o ‘1’ (extremely characteristic) to ‘9’ (extremely uncharacteristic)
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What are positive correlations for?
6 groupthink cases
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What are negative correlations for?
2 non groupthink cases
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What did Flower's investigate
o 120 college students given a crisis problem to solve o Leadership-style manipulated (open vs. closed)
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What was manipulated>
Cohesiveness manipulated (Strangers Vs friends of the leader
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What is the DV?
Number of solutions and number of facts discussed
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What is there more of?
More solutions and facts were discussed with the open leader
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What did pps in closed leader condition rate the leader as?
More influential in the decision making process than those in the open condition, cohesiveness was not significant
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Leana (1985)
o 208 college students given a hypothetical business problem
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What are two different groups?
o Cohesiveness (low & high) & Leadership (directive vs. nondirective) manipulated
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What was the dv?
Number of facts, solutions discussed
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What was found in the low cohesive group?
Significantly fewer facts
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What was found in groups with a directive leader?
Fewer solutions proposed and discussed
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What should a leader be when assigning a decision making task to a group?
Neutral
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What should a leader give high priority to?
Objections and doubts
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What should groups consider?
Unpopular alternatives
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What are potential solutions?
They should be discussed with expert non group members
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What is group polarisation?
tends to encourage people to be more extreme in their decisions
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What can this do?
make our decisions “riskier” but only for groups that value risk-taking
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What are real life implications?
– people can become less tolerant to opposing views. (What if peoples’ views were offensive to start with?)
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What are persuasive argument theory?
Greater exposure to more novel arguments supporting one’s opinions.
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What is the bandwagon effect?
we take a more extreme view to differentiate ourselves from others.
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What is pluralistic ignorance?
group discussion can liberate people to be true to their beliefs.
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What is social identity theory?
group memberships leads to conformity to group norms, which minimises variability within the group (Turner and Oakes, 1989).
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

What is group socialisation?

Back

Dynamic relationship between the group and its members in terms of changes in roles and commitment

Card 3

Front

What are groups not?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

What are the five stages of Tuckman's model of group socialisation?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What is the first stage?

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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