Midterm 2: Group Processes

Group Polarization

3 factors that play into group polarization

1. Group composition, including homogeniality, likeability and physical closeness
2. Presence of an out-group
3. The level of extremeness of origonal response

Reasons behind polarization

1. Exposure to opinions and arguments that only support and validate your origonal ideas.
2. Estimating how extreme other's responses are and then going to match and beat other's levels to be liked.
3. Crowd emotion amplification

Crowd Emotion Amplification

The idea that we overestimate how extreme other's views are, so as we try to match their views, our own views become more extreme.

Face Anger Experiment and it's corresponding concept

Participants were presented with different numbers of faces, all with varying degrees of anger. When asked the average amount of anger, people tended to overestimate due to the fact that humans are sensitive to emotions. They are drawn to the more emotional faces and generalize that to everything else. The bigger the group, the bigger the effect. This was replicated with happiness, but not to the same degree.
Concept: crowd emotion amplification

Deindividualization

When people are in a group, they tend to do worse things that they wouldn't do alone. When in a group, they have more self-control and self-conciousness, which leashes bad urges.

Halloween Experiment and it's corresponding concept

Candy and money were left out purposely for kids to steal. They were either in groups or alone and anonymous or not. Those that were alone and anonymous were more likely to steal, especially when combined together.
Concept: Deindividualization

Bystander Apathy

When people are in a group, they are less likely to extend help to someone in need.

Help Seizure Experiment and it's corresponding concept

Participants were led to believe that they are conversing with a group before a confederate pretends to have a seizure. People are less likely to help and take more time to help as group size increases.
Concept: bystander apathy

Individual likelihood of helping vs Aggregated likelihood of helping

One describes how people are less likely to help as they are in a bigger group while the other talks about how people are more likely to recieve help as the number of others nearby increases.

Robber's Cave Experiment and it's corresponding concept

Kids from similar backgrounds were split off into 2 groups. They bonded, competed for resources, and competed in competitions in which victory and rewards come at a cost to the other group. Kids broke out into fights and rated the other group badly and their own groups nicely. When forced to work together, this animosity decreased significantly.
Concept: Realistic conflict theory

Realistic Conflict Theory

The idea that when groups are led to compete for limited resources, they establish anomosity and ill-feelings towards one-another.

Minimal Group Paradigm

The idea that groups don't need to be competeing against eachothers for it's members to develop an in-group bias.

Attitudes and Memory Experiment and it's corresponding concept

Children were split into meaningly categories. Their explicit attitudes, implicit attitudes and memories towards outgroups and in-groups were tested. They distributed more resources to the in-group (explict attitudes), implicitly thought better of in-groups, and remembered incstances of in-group members doing more good deeds. They did not remember the out-group doing more bad things than in-groups.
Concept: minimal group paradigm

Estimation Experiment and it's corresponding concept

Participants were led to believe they were either one of two new personality that either overestimated or underestimated. When shown faces of others in their category, their brain was measured with EEG. The N170, the activity sensitive to face perception of those important to them, heightened when they viewed in-group faces.
Concept: minimal group paradigm

Own-race Bias

The phenomenon that people tend to identify people of their own ethnic category more quickly and accurately than people of other races.

Perceptual Expertise

You have more experiende of categorizing people in a certain race since you see them a lot more, so you have practice of doing it and therefore do it better.

Fear and Out-group Experiment and it's coresponding concept

People were randomly categorized and conditioned to fear in-group and out-group faces with shocks. Their fear was detected with physiological responses, and they found that out-group faces are more rapidly conditioned to be feared.

"Group" definition

Two or more people who interactand influence eachother that percieves themselves as an "us" and others as a "them".

"Mere presence" definition

People that aren't doing anything with/for/to eachother, just passive spectators or co-actors.

"Co-actors" definition

People that do things silmultaniously and individualy on a non-competitive task.

"Social facilitation" definition

The strengthening of dominent responses due to the mere presence of others.

"Dominent responses" definitions

Tasks that are someone is easy/trained in/skilled at.

How the presence of others create arousal

1. Evaluation apprehension
2. Disraction, creating a conflict between attention to the task and distraction, overloading the brain and creating arousal.
2. mere presence

"Evaluation apprehension" definition

Concern for how others are evaluating you.

Social Loafing

The tendency for people to put less effort in a task they're doing in a group than when they do it individually.

Free-riding

Benefiting from the group but giving little in return.

Reason behind free-riding and social loafing

Responsibility is diffused, evaluation apprehension decreases because people are not getting judged individually, resulting in less arousal.
Rewards are distributed equally regardless of how much effort they put in

Qualities of a task resulting in less social loafing

1. Challenging
2. Appealing
3. Involving

Reasons behind deindividualization

Actions are seen as that of a group and situation, so they feel as if they will not be held responsible for them.

Hazing

Teams pick on new group members with the intention to make being part of the group more likeable since they worked so hard to get in.

Risky Shaft Phenomenon

Group decisions become risker than decisions made alone.
When opinions converge, they do so at a riskier point than their initial average.

Accentuation Phenomenon

A real life type of group polarization when over time, initial differences amoung different university groups become more noticible/prominent due to reinforcement by other group members.

Plurastic Ignorance

The false impression of how other people are thinking, feeling and rsponding. We only learn their positions, not arguments.

Groupthink

The tendency for groups to surpress differing cognitions in the interest of perserving harmony in the process of decision-making.

How to combat groupthink

Critique from a diverse group of people

Leadership

The process by which certain group members motivate and guide the group.

Task leadership

A leadership style that focuses on the mission and high achievement.

Social Leadership

The type of leadership where leaders are focused on welcoming group input, disregarding heiarchies and group morale.

The Great Person Theory of Leadership

The disproven theory that there is only one type of person that could become a good leader.

Transactional leaders

Leaders that have high social and task leadership skills.

Translational leaders

Leaders that are charismation and inspire others to follow their compelling vision.

What makes a minority group persuasive?

1. When they are consistent and stick to their position.
2. When they are confident enough to raise doube in the majority, which leads to re-thinking.
3. When the members of the majority defect to the side of the minority, when others will follow suit.