ALHT106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Procedural Memory, Life Hack, Cognitive Psychology
ALHT week 8 online lecture Group Dynamics
What are Groups?
- While we may regard any conceivable set of 3 or more people as a ‘group’, in some
loose sense, generally when we refer to groups we mean something more socially
specific
- The prevailing definition used in the psychology literature comes from Cartwright
and Zander (1968): “a collection of individuals who have relations to one another
that make them interdependent to some significant extent”
Interdependence
- As the definition suggests, the central property that defines a group (as opposed to
some other cluster of people) is interdependence, which is to say, some form of
exchange or mutual reliance in a social domain
- While Social Psychology, as a field, focuses mostly on the functions of
interdependence, research in Organisational Psychology (sometimes called Industrial
Psychology) tends to break interdependence into 3 categories
Pooled Interdependence
- Interdependence characterised by shared resources and outcomes but no structure
or roles, low conflict but often ineffective
Sequential Interdependence
- Interdependence involving an asymmetrical chain of one-way interactions, such that
later stages depend heavily on early stages
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Reciprocal Interdependence
- Interdependence involving expectation-governed interactions between multiple
specialised roles, vulnerable to poor coordination
Reciprocal Interdependence (better)
Group-Level Processes
- This social interdependence is not always directed towards shared, external goals (as
in voluntary coalitions, or the groups investigated in organisational psychology)
- Even very innocuous or ‘casual’ social groups, such as peer groups and immediate
families, operate in interdependent ways around implicit goals, most notably, they
intuitively strive for intra-group Cohesion and Harmony
Decision-Making in Groups
- These background concerns of Cohesion and Harmony are present in all groups, even
those specifically formed around accomplishing a specific task or reaching a
collective decision
- The psychological pressure exerted by this need for Cohesion and Harmony often
comes into conflict with other deliberative processes that are made on the group-
level, and give rise to 2 emergent phenomena: Groupthink and Group Polarisation
Groupthink
- As the pejorative connotation of the term itself implies Groupthink is the most
common, maladaptive phenomenon that can occur on the level of the group,
whenever a group is required to make a decision via consensus
- Groupthink describes the overall REDUCTION in critical scrutiny and consideration
that occurs when members of a group are reluctant to risk group cohesion by
expressing disagreement
- The effects (and limitations) of Groupthink are generally explored in experiments
where participants (who must reach a group decision by consensus) are asked to
record their own thoughts and preferences privately, in addition to participating in
the group discussion
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- It is common for the majority of the group to notice problems, but say nothing about
them, in an attempt to avoid conflict
- This self-censorship for the sake of maintaining Cohesion is often so pervasive, the
individual group members become convinced that everyone else unanimously
agrees on the flawed course of action, which researchers call a False Consensus
effect
- In some cases, the entire group may say nothing in objection to an obvious problem,
owing to the perceived false consensus, causing a group-level knowledge deficit
called Pluralistic Ignorance
- Groups that place cohesion as a very high priority will lead to people censoring
themselves (suspending or not voicing their critical faculties) in order to not offend
someone else in their group
Group Polarisation
- More troubling than this simple suspension of critical sentiments, is the
manifestation of Groupthink that tends to shift the character of a group’s consensus
to increasingly extreme options
- In the old literature, this tendency for groups to endorse more extreme courses of
action than any 1 member would endorse in private was called “Risky Shift”, now
called Group Polarisation
- The reason for the change of name is because groups don’t simply make “riskier”
decisions than individuals (as was once thought), but rather, the average character
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Document Summary
Alht week 8 online lecture group dynamics. While we may regard any conceivable set of 3 or more people as a group", in some loose sense, generally when we refer to groups we mean something more socially specific. The prevailing definition used in the psychology literature comes from cartwright and zander (1968): a collection of individuals who have relations to one another that make them interdependent to some significant extent . As the definition suggests, the central property that defines a group (as opposed to some other cluster of people) is interdependence, which is to say, some form of exchange or mutual reliance in a social domain. While social psychology, as a field, focuses mostly on the functions of interdependence, research in organisational psychology (sometimes called industrial. Psychology) tends to break interdependence into 3 categories. Interdependence characterised by shared resources and outcomes but no structure or roles, low conflict but often ineffective.
