People in Groups Flashcards
(18 cards)
Entitavity
= the property of the group that makes it seem like a coherent, distinct and unitary entity. How ‘groupie’ is the group?
High entitativity: group has clear boundaries, are well-structured and relatively homogenous
Low entitativity: fuzzy boundaries and structures and more heterogenous
Drive Theory
physical presence of others causes arousal that motivates performance of habitual behaviour patterns (dominant response) for that situation
Social facilitation
improvement of performance on well-learnt/easy tasks (correct) and inhibiting of poorly-learnt/difficult tasks (incorrect) in the mere presence of others (audience effect)
Evaluation apprehension model
against drive theory – peoples mere present only causes arousal when we feel like being evaluated (Scheu vor evaluation)
Distraction-conflict theory
presence of other creates conflict between attending to task or attending to audience. Distraction causes impairment of performance on difficult tasks but also produces drive that facilitates dominant responses which overcomes distraction on easy tasks.
Self-awareness theory
want to bring actual self (task performance) with ideal self (how we would like to perform) in line because of self-discrepancy. Too hard on tough tasks so give up and perform worse.
Ringelmann effect
individual effort on task diminishes as group size increases
due to co-ordinational loss or motivational loss
Social loafing
= work less hard on task when we believe others are also working on the task (motivational loss)
Output equity: believe others also loaf
Evaluation apprehension: when anonymous we loaf because won’t be evaluated
Matching to standard: loaf when no clear sense of groups standard
Free-rider effect
= someone who takes advantage of shared public resource without contributing to its maintenance (motivational difference)
Social compensation
increased effort on collective task to compensate other group members lack of effort/ability
when in competition/aiming for a goal or generally more collectivistic/common-identity group
Norms
= attitudinal and behavioural uniformities that define group membership and differentiate between groups. They can emerge only from groups and influence our behaviour even in the physical absence of the group.
Specify limited range of behaviour that is acceptable in a certain context thus reduce uncertainty and facilitate confident choice of action
Moral
= key feature of norms that regulates behavioural activation or inhibition depending on what’s “right” or “wrong”
Groups configure normative attitudes and practices around what they think is right/wrong thus build moral principles on normative practices
Moral foundation theory (Haidt): prioritise different moral principles in moral reasoning (e.g. conflict between political orientations)
Correspondence bias
tendency to attribute roles to dispositions of the role player which eventually can change concept of self (Zimbardo’s prison experiment)
Expectation-status-theory
roles emerge as a consequence of people’s status-based expectations about others’ performance. Status derives from two sets of characteristics.
o Specific status characteristics: attributes that relate directly to ability on the group task
o Diffuse status characteristics: attributes that are generally positively or negatively valued in society – derive from large-scale categories outside the group (e.g. being wealthy)
o More desirable and attractive thus more powerful (social comparison)
Group members
core members: highly prototypical, significant influence
marginal members: can be treated as deviants being in a wrong group and are disliked but can be agents of social change when they gain voice
o subjective group dynamics (Marques): due to identity uncertainty reduction (don’t go along with social identity and self-concept)
Reason for formation
Terror management theory (Greenberg): affiliation and group formation as highly effective strategies because they provide symbolic immortality through connection to normative systems that outlive individuals – raises self-esteem
Uncertainty identity theory (Hogg): reduce feeling of uncertainty
Group polarisation
= tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the mean of individual members initial position (in the direction already favoured by the mean)
Risky shift: riskier decision in groups because risk is shared
Persuasive arguments theory: people in groups are persuaded by novel information that supports initial position and thus become more extreme in their endorsement
Social comparison theory: compare opinion and shift towards others
Cultural values theory: for social approval reasons, people shift opinion about position valued in wider culture
Social identity theory: regular conformity phenomenon
Group memory
= group shapes own version of truth by because only some members individual memory will contribute
= remember more because come together and share memories
Transactive memory: groups have shared memory for who within the group remembers what and is the expert on what
Group mind: people adopt qualitatively different mode of thinking when in a group
