SESSION 8

GROUP PROCESSES

I. Group identity: what is it?

Humans are social animals: live and have evolved to function in social groups.
We have own identity but also several group identities. Predominant group identity changes according to
context (nationality, community…)
 People attached to name, history, symbol.
 Societies: groups that share symbols (not only groups of people who live on same land)

Why support more one team that other? Not always city, player… Attached to name, history and symbol!
Have emotional reactions to failure/success of tea because our self-esteem gets tied into our team’s
performance (bad and rejection of part of identity // pride and happiness)
 Schadenfreude: feel good when other team loses

Group socialisation: Groups are dynamic structures that change continuously over time (old leave, new join,
new member socialised by the group and thus shapes the group…).
5 stages of group development:
 Forming: familiarisation stage (start interaction, learn about other)
 Storming: Starts working together through disagreements about goals and practices
 Norming: Cohesion and sense of common identity and purpose emerge (agree for more
performance in group)
 Performing: works smoothly as unit that has shared norms and goals (common goal, good
performance)
 Adjourning: dissolution of group because has accomplished its goals or because members lose
interest and move on (leave the group because goal achieved or don’t want to be part of it
anymore)

II. Group norms

Characteristics:
- Uniform attitudes or behaviour
- Define group membership
- Differentiate between groups
- Provide frame of reference which guides behaviour

Group norm: attitudinal and behavioural uniformities that define group membership and differentiate
between groups

Experiment: Investigate the effect of group norm on political attitudes (Siegel & Siegel, 1957)
Measure level of conservatism of 1st Year bachelor students before and after having been assigned to
accommodation with conservative (sororities) OR liberal (dormitories) ideologies -> Decrease of
conservatism in dormitory because surrounded by more liberals and this influenced their attitude
Norms in the workplace
Group norms associated with individual behaviour: absenteeism, dame, inappropriate language, conflict,
aggression… (respect from the others etc)

III. How do groups affect performance?

A) Social facilitation
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GROUP PROCESSES

Task complexity: Easy tasks VS Difficult

tasks
Task mastery: Well-learned tasks (master
subject, rehearsed a lot) VS Not well-
learned (just learned, did not rehearse)

Social facilitation: an improvement in the

performance of easy or well-learned tasks
and a deterioration in the performance of
difficult or poorly learned tasks in the
mere presence of others

The presence of others

- Increases our level of performance for simple tasks (because more energy and more focus)
- Decreases our level of performance for difficult task (because feel stressed)

Does audience has to be evaluative?

Experience: Investigate effect of (non) evaluative audiences on performance (Schmitt et al., 1986)
Measures: time spend to do the task (easy, difficult)
Result: When alone, perform the task better than in front of audience. Even if blindfolded audience, have
the stress (effect of others)

B) Social loafing

Experience: Investigate effect of working in groups to working alone on task performance (Ringelman,
1913)
Measure: force exerted on rope per person
Results: individual effort on task decreases as group size increases

2 possible explanations for social loafing

- Coordination loss (disturbed by others)
- Motivation loss
When experiment replicated with real groups (all participants) and pseudo groups (only one is real
participant, other confederates): same result (Decrease in performance when people are working in groups)
o When “Pseudo group”, no loss of coordination so had to be loss of motivation.
o When “Real Group”, perform even less because decrease in motivation and
coordination

Social loafing: tendency for individuals not to work as hard on their task when they believe that others are
also working on the task
 People are less motivated to work on a task when effort and input cannot be distinguished
from others, leading to decrease in performance compared to potential of group

3 reasons
 OUTPUT EQUITY: loaf because believe that others are doing the same (why should I work
more than others?)
 EVALUATION APPREHENSION: feeling of being anonymous and unidentifiable (work less
because cannot evaluate own performance)
 MATCHING TO STANDARD: no clear performance standard or goal to match
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GROUP PROCESSES

Experiment: Investigate the effect of the amount of effort by the partner on social loafing (Jackson &
Harkins, 1985)
Measure: sound level produced by participant while shouting during 4 seconds (know about the effort on
the task of the partner)
Result: Social loafing in low effort and no information (output equity is the reason). Lots of effort for big
effort for the other.

Social loafing in the workplace

Experiment: Investigate SL in workplace (Liden et al., 2004)
Measure: team size, cohesiveness, SL, Individual performance, prosocial behaviour
Result: the bigger the team, the more intense the social loafing. When people was cohesive, less effort

Prevention of Social loafing:

 Select member who have high motivation (unlikely to loaf) OUTPUT EQUITY
 Increase intergroup competition (increase motivation to perform better) OUTPUT EQUITY
 Engage in peer evaluation (contribution to other members, decrease anonymity) EV. AP.
 Set group goals (common objective to work towards) MATCHING TO STANDARD

IV. Group decision & Group bias

Group decisions:
Belief, characterised by
juries, that two heads are
better than one has long
been accepted as basic
component of legal system
in many countries. Today,
many decisions in
organisations are made by
groups, teams or
committees

A) Brainstorming

Brainstorming: people are asked to generate as many ideas as possible, as quickly as possible. Told not to be
inhibited by quality, be non-critical, build other’s ideas when possible
 Group performance technique designed to facilitate creative thinking and thus make the group
more creative

BUT: People are performing better when they are alone

Brainstorming VS Nominal Group

Experiment: Investigate the effectiveness of brainstorming
Measure: had to create as many ideas as possible
Result: People are 2 times more creative in nominal groups
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GROUP PROCESSES

 Due to production blocking. Thoughts interrupted by others and have to take turns, people are
less productive in brainstorming situation

How to improve efficiency?

 Electronic brainstorming: groups produce more ideas
 Heterogeneous groups: groups in which members have different type of knowledge about
brainstorming topic may create a particularly stimulating environment. May mitigate effect of
production blocking

B) Groupthink

Groupthink: mode of thinking in highly cohesive groups in which the desire to reach unanimous agreement
overrides the motivation to adopt proper rational decision-making procedures

Example: Pearl Harbor (US Convinced by their own opinion that they did not take into account others.
Finally, was a disaster for the US)
Example: US 2016 presidential election (Democrats were confident that they would win “blue” states with
Hillary Clinton that they neglected them)

Experiment: Distinguish effect for different types of relationships between group members on groupthink
(Hoog & Hains, 1998)
Measure: whether or not to close down a movie theatre
Results: Groupthink mainly occurs in groups with common interests. Friendship protects against
groupthink

C) Group polarisation

Experiment: Testing effect of group discussion on decision making

Measure: Read story with uncertain outcome, estimate minimum probability of success for which they will
recommend the risky option
Result: Group discussions produce more extreme group decisions than the mean of members’ original
opinions

People take more extreme decisions when they are in groups rather than alone
- When people who take cautious decisions have to take the same decision as a group, even more
cautious
- When people who take risky decision have to take same decision as group, group decision will
be even more risky