PSYCH 2C03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Group Polarization, Facial Symmetry, Signify
18 Dec 2019
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Lecture 9 – groups
Groups
- What is a group
o A group of people compiled of 3 or more individuals
o Close proximity
- Permanency
o Permanent (family)
o Temporary (people in class)
- We have specific norms in place for our groups
o Unwritten rules about how you should behave
- Groups typically enhance our survival
o We tend to form groups automatically
o Hunter/gatherers (share resources), find a mate, transmit information
Definitions
- Social facilitation
o Occurs when we work alone but in the presence of an audience
▪ Ex. racing
o Triplett (1898)
▪ Cycling: individual times are slower that group times
• Performing with others increases our performance
▪ Experiment
• Kids reeling in fishing lines
• Alone vs. with others
▪ Kids who were alone were much slower than kids in groups
▪ Conclusion: everything improves in the presence of others
o BUT: sometimes we do worse in groups than alone
▪ Rats do better in mazes when alone than with other rats
o Idea: whatever your dominant response is will be enhanced
▪ If you are already good = you will do better
▪ If you are already bad = you will do worse
o Social psychologists renounce original social facilitations definition
- Updated social facilitation
o Occurs when we work alone but in the presence of an audience
o Performance is enhanced on simple, well-learned tasks, and diminished on
novel, complex tasks
- Social facilitation by Zajonc
o Reformulate social facilitation in terms of one’s dominant response
o Whatever your dominant response is, it will be enhanced
▪ Ex. If you were around poorly at a task, you will be worse. Doing poorly is
dominant
o Our arousal increases sue to the mere presence of others
▪ Yerkes-dodson law
o Modified Yerkes-dodson law – optimal arousal task differs according to task
difficulty
▪ This is where the dominant performance comes out
o Therefore, for new and/or complex tasks we want low arousal
o The pool hall experiment (michaels et al.)
▪ Secretly observe bowlers
▪ Quasi/field experiment
▪ IV 1: skill level at pool (high vs low)
• This is between subjects
▪ IV 2: alone vs. being watched
• This is within subjects
▪ DV: % shots made
• Alone: good lpayers make more shots than bad players
• Audience: there is a dramatic increse in the shots good players
make, and a dramitc decreased in the shots the bad players make
o Mechanism
▪ Mere presnece = arousal
▪ Evaluation aprehension – we think other people are watching and judjing
us
• Good = become more cautious, show off
• Bad = become more fearful
▪ Could it just be Distraction?
o Distraction
▪ Distraction – makes people worse at something they’re alreasy bad at
▪ Takes away from resources dedicated to doing well at something you’re
not particularily good at
▪ Marcus experiment
• IV: easy or hard task
o Easy – type name backwards
o Difficult – type backwards while inverse numbers are
thrown at you
• IV: with others vs. with others who cannot judge (blindfolded)
• DV: performance on task
o Everyone performed the same, and therefore the mere
presence of people causes you to do worse, not just
distraction
▪ Therefore distraction cannot explain hy we do better at easy tasks
- Social loafing
o Occurs when we work together towards the same goal
o The more people in each group, the less each individual contributes
▪ Diminishes performance
o RIngleman - agriculture observation
▪ Noticed agricultural workers could work 50 pounds more when by
themselves
▪ Worked harder when alone
▪ Why?
• Coordination loss?
• Loss of motivation?
o Make the other person do more work
o Ingham et al.
▪ Tug of war task – (loss of motivation)
▪ Motivated by a prize
▪ IV: team size (anole vs 1, 2, or 8 other confederates who are not pulling)
▪ DV: measured pulling power in lbs
• Alone – 130 pounds
• The more people are added in the team, the less work the
participant puts in. decreases linearly corelating with number of
confederates
▪ Coordination or motivation loss?
• When the confederates are not helping, the more confederates
there are in the group, the more loafing occurs.
• When the confederates DO begin to help, there is only slightly
more loafing, and this can be explained by loss of coordination
• Therefore, the majority of loafing is due to motivation loss
o When do people loaf?
▪ Diffusion of evaluation
• You can’t see that I tried a lot less
• If I can take it easy, I will
• Low chance of being caught as the slacker
▪ How do we stop loafing?
• Division of tasks
▪ How do different situations affect loafing?
• Ease of evaluation (ease of being caught slacking)
▪ Other factors
• Gender: men loaf more than women
o Caviat: when a woman is added to the group of men,
loafing goes away
• Group: loafing decreases when grouped with strangers
o Unsure of their output
o Loafing increases when grouped with friends, rely of
friends to pick up slack
• Importance: higher importance tasks = less loafing
• Culture: individualist societies loaf more than collectivist
Document Summary
What is a group: a group of people compiled of 3 or more individuals, close proximity. Permanency: permanent (family, temporary (people in class) We have specific norms in place for our groups: unwritten rules about how you should behave. Groups typically enhance our survival: we tend to form groups automatically, hunter/gatherers (share resources), find a mate, transmit information. Idea: whatever your dominant response is will be enhanced. If you are already good = you will do better. If you are already bad = you will do worse: social psychologists renounce original social facilitations definition. Updated social facilitation: occurs when we work alone but in the presence of an audience, performance is enhanced on simple, well-learned tasks, and diminished on novel, complex tasks. Social facilitation by zajonc: reformulate social facilitation in terms of one"s dominant response, whatever your dominant response is, it will be enhanced, ex. If you were around poorly at a task, you will be worse.
