Chapter 8

Question 1

What is a group?

Answer 1

Two or more people who share a common definition and evaluation of themselves and behave in accordance with such a definition.

Question 2

What is Entitativity?

Answer 2

The property of a group that makes it seem like a coherent, distinct and unitary entity. This is to distinguish real groups from mere assortment of people.

Question 3

What is social facilitation?

Answer 3

An improvement in the performance of well-learned/easy tasks and a deterioration in the performance of poorly learned/difficult tasks in the mere presence of members of the same species.

Question 4

What are audience effects?

Answer 4

Impact of the presence of others on individual task performance

Question 5

What is Drive Theory?

Answer 5

Zajonc’s theory that the physical presence of members of the same species instinctively causes arousal that motivates performance of habitual behaviour patterns via dominant, instinctive responses. Arousal is due to the fact that others are unpredictable.

Question 6

What is the evaluation apprehension model?

Answer 6

The argument that the physical presence of members of the same species causes drive because people have learned to be apprehensive about being evaluated. Task difficulty is then a moderator to the performance.

Question 7

What is distraction-conflict theory?

Answer 7

The physical presence of members of the same species is distracting and produces attentional conflict between attending to the task and attending to the audience; leading to increased arousal facilitating dominant response. Task difficulty determines the direction of this effect.

Question 8

What is task taxonomy?

Answer 8

Group tasks can be classified according to: whether a division of labour is possible; whether there is a predetermined standard to be met; and how an individual’s inputs can contribute.

Question 9

What is process loss?

Answer 9

Deterioration in group performance in comparison to individual performance due to the whole range of possible interferences among members.

Question 10

What is coordination loss?

Answer 10

Deterioration in group performance compared with individual performance, due to problems in coordinating behaviour.

Question 11

What is the Ringelmann effect?

Answer 11

Individual effort on a task diminishes as group size increases, often due to coordination and motivation loss.

Question 12

What is social loafing?

Answer 12

A reduction in individual effort when working on a collective task (one in which our outputs are pooled with those of other group members) compared with working either alone or coactively (our outputs are not pooled).

Question 13

What is the free-rider effect?

Answer 13

Gaining the benefits of group membership by avoiding costly obligations of membership and by allowing other members to incur those costs.

Question 14

What is social impact?

Answer 14

The effect that other people have on our attitudes and behaviour, usually as a consequence of factors such as group size, and temporal and physical immediacy.

Question 15

What is social compensation?

Answer 15

Increased effort on a collective task to compensate for other group members’ actual, perceived or anticipated lack of effort or ability.

Question 16

What is cohesiveness?

Answer 16

The property of a 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.

Question 17

What is personal attraction?

Answer 17

Liking for someone based on idiosyncratic preferences and interpersonal relationships.

Question 18

What is social attraction?

Answer 18

Liking for someone based on common group membership and determined by the person’s prototypicality of the group.

Question 19

What is group socialisation?

Answer 19

Dynamic relationship between the group and its members that describes the passage of members through a group in terms of commitment and of changing roles.

Question 20

What are initiation rites?

Answer 20

Often painful or embarrassing public procedures to mark group members’ movements from one role to another.

Question 21

What is ethnomethodology?

Answer 21

Method devised by Garfinkel, involving the violation of hidden norms to reveal their presence.

Question 22

What is group structure?

Answer 22

Division of a group into different roles that often differ with respect to status and prestige.

Question 23

What are roles?

Answer 23

Patterns of behaviour that distinguish between different activities within the group, and that interrelate to one another for the greater good of the group. They can be informal/implicit, formal/explicit, task-focused and socio-emotional focused. Roles differ in status.

Question 24

What is status?

Answer 24

Consensual evaluation of the prestige of a role or role occupant in a group, or of the prestige of a group and its members as a whole.

Question 25

What is expectation states theory?

Answer 25

Theory of the emergence of roles as a consequence of people's status-based expectations about others' performance.

Question 26

What are specific status characteristics?

Answer 26

Information about those abilities of a person that are directly relevant to the group's task.

Question 27

What are diffuse status characteristics?

Answer 27

Information about a person's abilities that are only obliquely relevant to the group's task, and derive mainly from large-scale category memberships outside the group.

Question 28

What is a communication network?

Answer 28

Set of rules governing the possibility or ease of communication between different roles in a group.

Question 29

What is a schism?

Answer 29

Division of a group into subgroups that differ in their attitudes, values or ideology.

Question 30

What are subjective group dynamics?

Answer 30

A process where normative deviants who deviate towards an outgroup (anti-norm deviants) are more harshly treated than those who deviate away from the outgroup (pro-norm deviants).

Question 31

What is uncertainty-identity theory?

Answer 31

To reduce uncertainty and to feel more comfortable about who they are, people choose to identify with groups that are distinctive, are clearly defined and have consensual norms.

Question 32

What is social ostracism?

Answer 32

Exclusion from a group by common consent.

Question 33

How is cohesiveness and entitativity different?

Answer 33

Cohesiveness is from group members themselves, while entitativity is from how others seen the group

Question 34

What types of groups are there?

Answer 34

1. Intimacy groups (family, friends) 2. Task Groups (work, study, sports team) 3. Social categories (race, gender, nationality and social class) 4. Loose associations (bus stop, living in the same area) - however, not all scientists consider them groups but aggregates

Question 35

What are the two main social psychological perspectives on groups?

Answer 35

1. Individualistic view - Group processes = interpersonal processes 2. Collectivist view - Group processes = unique properties of people's feelings, thinking and behaviour as group members

Question 36

What do groups consist of?

Answer 36

1. Central, prototypical members - those who have many attributes that characterise the group 2. Marginal, non-prototypical members - those who have few attributes that characterise the group

Question 37

What is the Black Sheep Effect?

Answer 37

Tendency for group members to evaluate deviant or disliked ingroup members more negatively than similar outgroup members

Question 38

What moderators affect the Black Sheep Effect?

Answer 38

1. Strength of deviance - does not apply to minor breaches of ingroup norms 2. Direction of deviance - pro-norm; away from other group and anti-norm; towards other group < Theory of Subjective Group Dynamics 3. Status of ingroup deviant - leaders are less prone to be seen as Black Sheep

Question 39

What is the Theory of Subjective Group Dynamics?

Answer 39

Ingroup members deviating in the direction of an outgroup are treated more harshly than those deviating away from the group

Question 40

What is the development of small interactive groups?

Answer 40

1. Forming - oreintation/familiarisation 2. Storming - conflict where group members are familiarised enough to start working through disagreements 3. Norming - post-conflict consensus, cohesion, common identity and shared purpose 4. Performing - group works smoothly as one unit, goals, morale and atmosphere 5. Adjourning - group dissolves either due to lack of interest or having completed goals

Question 41

What is social inhibition?

Answer 41

Doing worse on a task due to the mere presence of others

Question 42

What are the types of group tasks?

Answer 42

1. Additive - Group's product = sum of individual input. Performance is better in group than best individuals 2. Compensatory - Group's product = average of individual inputs. Performance is better in group than most individuals 3. Disjunctive - Group's product = selection of 1 individual's input. Performance is better in best individuals than groups 4. Conjunctive - Group's product = least performing member. Group = worst individual