Myers Ch 8: Group Influence

Group Influence

Chapter 8

https://purposeinleadership.com/2014/09/05/groups-vs-teams/

What Is a Group?

• Group: two or more people who, for longer than a few moments, interact with and influence one another and perceive one another as “us.”
• Different groups help us meet different human needs.

• To affiliate
• to belong and connect with others
• To achieve.

• To gain a social identity.

https://avp.com/news/history-of-the-wilson-ball/

https://www.successconsciousness.com/blog/success/starting-point-of-achievement-is-desire/

Social Facilitation

• We are affected by the presence of others.
• Original meaning: the tendency of people to perform simple or well-learned tasks better when others are present.
• Current meaning: the strengthening of dominant (prevalent, likely) responses in the presence of others.
• Officiating bias
• German referees awarded 1.8 yellow cards to home teams and 2.35 to away teams
• Travel fatigue
• when flying east, west coast NFL teams do better when playing games at night
• Familiarity with the home context
• cold, rain, high altitude, etc.
• Home-team crowd noise disruption
• this can disrupt visiting players' performances

https://lovepublicspeaking.org/fear-public-speaking-more-than-death-fear-not-the-audience-only-sees-20-of-your-nerves

Robert Zajonc reconciled apparently conflicting findings by proposing that arousal from others’ presence strengthens dominant responses.

Figure 1 The Effects of Social Arousal

Table 1 Home Advantage in Major Team Sports

Source: Jeremy Jamieson (2010).

Crowding: The Presence of Many Others

• We are also affected by crowding—the presence of many others.
• with pressure and large crowds, we are prone to choking (stutterers stutter more, and golfers do worse on the last day of a tournament, especially if they are in the lead)
• Being in a crowd intensifies positive or negative reactions (friendly people are liked more and unfriendly people are disliked more when sitting close together)
• Fun shared with others is more energizing—and fun.
• Why are we aroused in the presence of others
• Evaluation apprehension: we wonder if people are evaluating us
• Distraction: we suffer from cognitive overload when we are worrying about others evaluating us AND trying to attend to a task

https://lovepublicspeaking.org/fear-public-speaking-more-than-death-fear-not-the-audience-only-sees-20-of-your-nerves

Do Individuals Exert Less Effort in a Group?

• Social facilitation usually occurs when people work toward individual goals and when efforts can be individually evaluated.
• What happens when people pool their efforts toward a common goal and individuals are not accountable for their efforts?

• Example: class group projects on which all students get the same grade.

https://practicalpie.com/social-loafing-definition-examples/

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Many Hands Make Light Work

• Collective effort is often less than the sum of individual efforts.
• Group members may be less motivated in additive tasks.
• Example: tug-of-war.
• Social loafing: the tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool their effort toward a common goal than when they are individually accountable.
• Effort decreases as group size increases.
• Free riders: people who benefit from the group but give little in return.

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A statistical digest of 49 studies, involving more than 4,000 participants, revealed that effort decreases (loafing increases) as the size of the group increases. Each dot represents the aggregate data from one of these studies.

Figure 3 Effort Decreases as Group Size Increases

Source: Williams et al., 1992.

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When individuals cannot be evaluated or held accountable, loafing becomes more likely. An individual swimmer is evaluated on her ability to win the race. In tug-of-war, no single person on the team is held accountable, so any one member might relax or loaf.

Figure 4 Social Facilitation or Social Loafing?

swimmers: ©imagenavi/Getty Images; tug-of-war: ©Thinkstock Images/Getty Images

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Social Loafing in Everyday Life

• In workplace group experiments, employees produced more when their individual performance was posted.
• Social loafing is also evident in varied cultures.

• Example: private plots and collective farms under communism
• Private plots occupied 1% of the agricultural land, but produced 27% of the Soviet farm output.
• Social loafing appears in donations of money and time.
• Workers not paying dues or volunteering their time to unions or professional associations still accept the benefits.
• People in groups loaf less when the task is challenging, appealing, or involving.
• Groups also loaf less when members are friends or when they feel identified with or indispensable to the group.

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Deindividuation: When Do People Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?

• When arousal and diffused responsibility combine, people may commit acts that range from a mild lessening of restraint to impulsive self-gratification to destructive social explosions.
• Deindividuation: loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension.

• Occurs in group situations that foster responsiveness to group norms, good or bad.
• Examples: violent protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and violent storming of the U.S. Capitol in January 2021.

https://www.ladbible.com/entertainment/53021-squid-game-story-cast-20210928

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Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone

• Group size is significant.
• Larger the group, the more its members lose self-awareness and become willing to commit atrocities .
• People’s attention is focused on the situation, not on themselves.
• “Everyone’s doing it” attitude—they attribute their behavior to the situation rather than to their own choices.
• Anonymity may lessen inhibitions
• Makes one less self-conscious, more group-conscious, and more responsive to cues present in the situation—whether negative or positive.
• The Internet offers anonymity
• Anonymous bullying over the internet and social media is common.

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Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone

• Arousing and distracting people’s attention, even with minor actions, increases the likelihood of aggressive outbursts by large groups.
• Group shouting, chanting, clapping, and dancing hype people up and reduce self-consciousness.
• When we act in an impulsive way as a group, we are not thinking about our values; we are reacting to the immediate situation.
• Sometimes we seek deindividuating group experiences, such as with worship experiences.

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Children were more likely to transgress by taking extra Halloween candy when in a group, when anonymous, and, especially, when deindividuated by the combination of group immersion and anonymity.

Figure 6

Source: Data from Diener et al., 1976.

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Diminished Self-Awareness

• Group experiences that diminish self-consciousness tend to disconnect behavior from attitudes.
• Opposite of deindividuation is self-awareness.

• Self-awareness
• a self-conscious state in which attention focuses on oneself and makes people more sensitive to their own attitudes and dispositions.
• Those who are self-aware exhibit increased self-control and are less likely to cheat.
• Circumstances that decrease self-awareness (as with alcohol) increase deindividuation; and deindividuation decreases in circumstances that increase self-awareness.

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Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?

• Group polarization
• The tendency for groups to show a shift towards the extremes of decision-making when compared to decisions made by individuals.
• Group-produced enhancement of members’ preexisting tendencies.
• Similar minds polarize.

https://jackwestin.com/resources/mcat-content/group-decision-making-processes/group-polarization

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The Case of the “Risky Shift”

• Risky shift phenomenon
• group and individual decisions tend to be riskier after group discussion.
• Occurs not only when a group decides by consensus: After a brief discussion, individuals, too, will alter their decisions.
• Risky shift is not universal—some dilemmas lead people to be more cautious after discussion.
• Original “risky shift” dilemma: Should Helen expend time and energy on writing her novel?
• Dilemma that induced caution: Should Roger, with a low-paying job and two children, invest in the stock?

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Do Groups Intensify Opinions?

• Discussion typically strengthens the average inclination of group members.
• Group polarization experiments:

• Bekafigo et al. (2019)—Voters increased dislike of Donald Trump after a group discussion.
• Mititoshi Isozaki (1984)—Japanese students gave more guilty verdicts as jury in a traffic case.

• Markus Brauer, et al. (2001)—French students’ dislike of someone after discussing of negative impressions with others.
• Group polarization occurs in everyday life, where people associate mostly with others whose attitudes are similar to their own.
• In schools, the “accentuation effect.”
• non-members of sororities and fraternities tend to be more liberal and these differences grow with time
• In communities, as people self-segregate.
• In politics, where like-minded communities serve as political echo chambers.
• On the Internet, where we “selectively expose” ourselves to like-minded media.

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The group polarization hypothesis predicts that discussion will strengthen an attitude shared by group members.

Figure 7 Group Polarization

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Discussion increased polarization between homogeneous groups of high- and low-prejudice high school students. Talking over racial issues increased prejudice in a high-prejudice group and decreased it in a low-prejudice group.

Figure 8

Source: Data from Myers & Bishop, 1970.

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Democrats have increasingly agreed that “Racial discrimination is the main reason why many Black people can’t get ahead these days” (Pew, 2017). Republicans have become less likely to agree.

Figure 9 A Polarizing Society

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Explaining Group Polarization

• Informational influence results from accepting evidence about reality.
• There may be arguments from others that were not considered.
• The more group members repeat others' arguments, the more they rehearse and validate them.
• Normative influence is based on a person’s desire to be accepted or admired by others.
• Social comparison
• evaluating one’s opinions and abilities by comparing oneself with others.
• Pluralistic ignorance
• a false impression of what most other people are thinking or feeling, or how they are responding.

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Group Decision Making: Do Groups Hinder or Assist Good Decisions?

• In work groups, team spirit can increase motivation.
• When making decisions, however, close-knit groups may pay a price.
• Examples studied:

• Pearl Harbor.
• Bay of Pigs Invasion.
• Vietnam War.
• Decision-making groups can have a tendency to suppress dissent in the interest of group harmony.
• Groupthink: “the mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action” (Janis, 1971).
• Irving Janis pointed to these characteristics
• Amiable, cohesive group.
• Relative isolation of the group from dissenting viewpoints.
• Directive leader who signals what decision he or she favors.

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8 Symptoms of Groupthink

• Janis identified eight groupthink symptoms.
• Two groupthink symptoms lead group members to overestimate their group’s might and right.

1. Illusion of invulnerability.2. Unquestioned belief in the group’s morality.

• Group members also become closed-minded.

3. Rationalization.4. Stereotyped view of opponent.

• Finally, the group suffers from pressures toward uniformity.

5. Conformity pressure.6. Self-censorship.7. Illusion of unanimity.8. Mindguards—protecting a leader or group members from information that would call into question the effectiveness or morality of the group’s decisions.

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In a groupthink-breeding situation, seeking concurrence leads to the emergence of groupthink symptoms and defective decision making.

Figure 11 Theoretical Analysis of Groupthink

Source: Adapted from Janis & Mann, 1977, p. 132.

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Experimental Evidence for Groupthink

• Follow-ups have supported aspects of groupthink theory:
• Directive leadership is associated with poorer decisions because subordinates can feel too weak or insecure to speak up.
• Groups do prefer supporting over challenging information.
• When members look to a group for acceptance, approval, and social identity, they may suppress disagreeable thoughts.
• Groups that make smart decisions have widely distributed conversation, with socially attuned members who take turns speaking.
• Groups with diverse perspectives outperform groups of like-minded experts.
• Group success depends both on what group members know and how effectively they can share that information.

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Preventing Groupthink

• Janis’s recommendations:
• Be impartial.
• Encourage critical evaluation.
• Occasionally subdivide the group, then reunite to air differences.
• Welcome critiques from outside experts and associates.
• Before implementing, call a “second-chance” meeting to air any lingering doubts.

https://corporater.com/resources/avoiding-groupthink/

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When Groups Perform Better

• Not every group decision is flawed by groupthink; and multiple heads are often better than one.
• Three ways to enhance group brainstorming:

• Combine group and solitary brainstorming.
• Have group members interact by writing.
• Incorporate electronic brainstorming (google doc).

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The Influence of the Minority: How Do Individuals Influence the Group?

• Determinants of minority include consistency, self-confidence, and defection.
• More influential than a minority that wavers is a minority that sticks to its position.

• Minority slowness effect: a tendency for people with minority views to express those views less quickly that do people in the majority.
• Consistency and persistence convey self-confidence, and a minority that conveys self-confidence tends to raise doubts among the majority.
• Lone defector from the majority tends to be even more persuasive than a consistent minority voice.

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The Influence of Leaders

• Leadership
• the process by which certain group members motivate and guide the group.

• Formal and informal group leaders exert disproportionate influence.
• Task leadership
• organizes work, sets standards, and focuses on goals.
• Social leadership
• builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support.
• Transformational leadership
• enabled by a leader’s vision and inspiration, exerts significant influence.

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How to Start a Movement: Derek Sivers

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Concluding Thoughts: Are Groups Bad for Us?

• Negative effects of groups are only half the truth.
• Other half is that we are group-dwelling creatures.

• We depend on one another for sustenance, support, and security.
• When our individual tendencies are positive, group interaction accentuates our best.
• Depending on which tendency a group is magnifying or disinhibiting, groups can be very, very bad or very, very good.

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