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With credit to Francesco Marciuliano; drawn by Craig Macintosh March 25 2008
 

OVERVIEW READINGS

EDP 5285 GROUP PROCESSES GUIDE 1:  INTRODUCTION GUIDE 2: METHODS FOR STUDYING GROUPS GUIDE 3: GROUP STRUCTURE GUIDE 4: ASPECTS OF GROUP STRUCTURE II GUIDE 5: ATTRACTION TO GROUPS GUIDE 6: COHESIVENESS II GUIDE 7: INFLUENCE PROCESSES GUIDE 8: PERFORMANCE & DECISION-MAKING GUIDE 9: LEADERSHIP GUIDE 10: GROUP COOPERATION & CONFLICT

COURSE PROJECT PRESENTATION

*More recently some employers now want "independent experience" too.

While it is self affirming to see that my personal experiences actually have some validation in the research literature, it is difficult to get students (particularly undergraduates) to do team projects. Most are concerned about "free riders" or "social loafing"  and being exploited, i.e., that they will be the only group member to do the job and that the entire rest of the (free-riding) group will receive credit for one's individual labors.  Other students are unsure about how to coordinate team efforts. When work on a team project is postponed due to other priorities, social loafers are less likely to be held accountable and loafing occurs more frequently.

Yet, when team members work together, the results can be spectacular! I am thinking of the two Social Psychology students who collected attitude data from nearly 1100 summoned jurors that resulted in three publications! Or the five person team who studied the effects of challenging authority on conformity to an aerobics instructor's (an experimental team member) attempts to teach new steps. Or the group that studied whether "pregnancy" made a difference in helping behavior at Governor's Square Mall during the holiday shopping season. Or the group that made over 1000 observations to study conformity in "looking up." None of these projects could have been accomplished by a lone individual.

Of course, these salutary projects are not an inevitable outcome of working in groups. Sometimes groups do worse than the average member working alone, even spectacularly worse. The issue becomes under which circumstances working in groups produces a superior--or an inferior--product.

How does the mere presence of other people affect the performance of individuals? Is performance improved, worse, or about the same?

For a brief review of social facilitation material in Guide One, click HERE.

The basic idea is that the presence of others creates at least some physiological arousal. Arousal heightens the probability of performing dominant responses. When a dominant response is correct, the presence of others improves performance. If the dominant response is incorrect, performance can suffer.

Many "work groups" do, in fact, consist of co-actors. Sewers in a clothing factory, students taking an exam, or counter workers at the post office are all co-actors, doing pretty much the same job at the same time in the same place. Although they are not "groups" in the sense of coordinated roles or interdependence, their coworkers' presence may still influence their performance just the same.

More detailed research finds that one key to the physiological arousal that occurs with compresence or the presence of others is evaluation apprehension, i.e., a social anxiety that occurs when we believe that our behavior is under scrutiny and faces normative evaluation. Although some arousal may occur with the mere presence of others, it is heightened if some type of evaluation situation is involved. And, with groups of friends, a relaxation response may occur instead. The latter finding suggests one mechanism whereby more interpersonally cohesive groups are less productive: if relationships are too friendly, group members are more relaxed, less motivated to produce (according to the norms of the larger organization), and possibly produce at a lower quantity and quality.

The presence of others thus can improve performance through motivation and when improvement is easy to do. This would include quantity (when it is easy to increase output) on simple or well structured tasks.

However, what if the situation is new, the task unstructured or complex, requiring a sequence of steps to complete? In that case, both theory and empirical results suggest that individual performance in acquisition tends to suffer in the presence of others (especially on novel tasks). The recommendation is to study, practice, or rehearse alone, then perform in the presence of either co-acting others or an audience, wherein the presence of others will increase arousal, thereby facilitating the performance of well learned responses.

Social facilitation stresses arousal, motivation, or drive. Other theorists in this area suspect more cognitive processes are at work when people perform in the presence of others, such as heightened self-awareness or increased self monitoring. The increased attention paid to one's performance thus can actually distract individuals from exclusive attention to the task.

Ivan Steiner's social combination theory, in contrast, focuses more on group, rather than individual, productivity. In his view, group performance depends more on whether groups have the resources to succeed (schools which lack trained teachers, updated computers, sufficient textbooks, or laboratory equipment, for example, face gigantic hurdles in becoming Florida "A-level" schools) and whether groups can combine these resources productively.
 

Factors such as co-actors or audience effects interact with situational variables such as task complexity, group diversity, group size, or the nature of the task to influence task performance. KSAs is short for "knowledge, skills, and abilities" that members bring with them to a group situation. Similar to other types of knowledge, skills, and abilities that people possess, group skills learned in one situation may generalize to others.

William Sewell's theory of "structuation" (“A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation.” American Journal of Sociology, 1992, 98 (1): 1-29.) described how group members can transfer skills from one setting to another. In my study of churches and synagogues, I found that middle-class congregations easily created interlocking, often elaborate, structures of support groups, almost certainly using skills for running groups that members had learned in educational or organizational settings, while working class congregations created far fewer support groups. In my research on citizen responses to a jury summons, it was clear that middle class white collar workers had the bureaucratic skills to easily request a postponement or an excuse from jury duty. Less educated blue collar workers (who held attitudes toward jury duty similar to those of white collar workers) simply failed to show up as opposed to filing a postponement or excuse. Political scientists (e.g., Warren Miller, et al. in The American Voter) report that less educated African-Americans who are church members (Black churches tend to fill more community functions, such as educational or political than White churches do on the average) have higher levels of political engagement, effects that do not hold for European-Americans. The lone working class President of the local Sheltie club was coached continually by other [largely middle class] members on how to hold a semi-formal meeting.

The weight of the evidence indicates that group members DO transfer knowledge and skills from other settings to new groups. This means that group diversity of membership, whether by gender, ethnicity, or social class, can benefit groups because a diverse membership brings different skills and attitudes to the group. If so, this is particularly important for the modern era in countries such as the United States which have begun to stress the importance of diverse work and civic group membership.

Diversity of group membership is a plus--if handled carefully. Group members may bring different points of view and supplement each other's information. A diverse group is likely to have a larger collective memory that encompasses the individual memories of all members. However, it is often difficult to get people to join or work in diverse groups.

On the other hand, different cultural groups can bring different interactional styles to a group setting. "Mars Meets Venus" is not just the orientation of a popular series of books; women and men, for example, tend to have different interaction styles in groups (e.g., men interrupt women at extremely high ratios and women appear more interested in consensus-building) that should be considered if all group members are to participate effectively. Differences that come from statuses outside the group (diffuse status characteristics) should be leveled or else members with junior or subordinate statuses will have their contributions neglected and be afraid to speak up. Further, similarity among members is a primary source of group cohesion. Extra effort may be needed to create a cohesive group of members who arrive with diverse backgrounds and experiences. 

Group goals not only provide a vision to motivate members and charge them with idealism. The type of goals a group adopts may facilitate group performance. Johnson and Johnson endorse the "START" model. Goals should be:

• Specific and clearly understood by all members. Hopefully, goals are operational, i.e., members can understand and identify the specific steps to be taken to attain goals.

• Trackable and measurable

• Achievable--but challenging. The group's LOA (level of aspiration) will work best if it constantly adjusts to prior successes or failures. If groups continually aspire to an unattainably high standard, the result will be loss of group morale and disillusionment (and possibly the loss of group members). However, if the goal is not challenging enough, members will become bored or dissatisfied, engaging in side conversations or putting forth little effort.

• Relevant

• Transfer (allow transfer of skills to other settings)

Group tasks can be:

• unitary (co-active) in which members (co-actors) perform similar behaviors

• conjunctive in which results are determined by the weakest member

• disjunctive in which results are determined by the strongest member

• additive  or the sum of individual performances

• compensatory, individual performances are averaged in some way

• sub tasks may be unitary (no sub tasks) or divisible  (typically coordinated sub tasks)

Of course, many times, the group itself does not decide on the task or group goals. Volunteer groups often decide on their own tasks as do smaller work groups, which may decide on how to implement a task. On the other hand, in hierarchical organizations, the group task may be assigned or delegated. Members can only decide how to implement the task, not what the task will be in the first place. Employees are told they must increase production. Members of a local political group are told to raise votes and funding for state and national candidates. That is why, when larger organizations delegate decision-making or implementation to work groups, delegation must be sincere, so that group members really feel that they "own the task."
  

Groups have been accused of stifling creativity. "Brainstorming" was a technique "officially" created in the 1970s and once widely applied in areas such as marketing to overcome this perceived limitation. The general notion was to have a group generate as many creative ideas as possible. Then the group would refine these ideas and adopt a decision, a new marketing scheme, or a new program (e.g., I worked with the U.S. Navy on racial integration programs several years ago when brainstorming was popular).

Because group members might be shy in proclaiming their ideas or sensitive to criticism, or because diffuse status characteristics might lead some member's contributions to be valued more highly, "brainstorming groups" adopted rules to maximize the generation of creative ideas. Any idea, no matter how initially ridiculous it seemed, was to be considered. Evaluation of ideas was reserved toward the end of a brainstorming session and members were expected to add to the ideas generated during the session.

However, one problem is that brainstorming can lead to information overload; so many ideas become generated that people begin to try to block too much information. The arousal overload makes some people anxious. Other members begin to feel conspicuous because they believe they are over or under contributing. At that point, group members "clam up," and, as a result, fewer creative ideas get expressed. Ironically, silence and time may be needed for members to assimilate information and generate ideas individually. Individual output may then be combined later into a group project.

The failure of "simple-minded brainstorming" to work effectively and the reluctance of organizations to put more complex rules in place for more effective brainstorming sessions led this technique to an early demise as a routine event. It still occasionally resurfaces. Of course, brainstorming may be superior to a group not considering a topic at all.

Perhaps a review of the focus group materials might be helpful to those who wish to try brainstorming. Focus groups, too, emphasize generation of ideas and tolerance of the expression of ideas. However, focus group do have a "semi" structure and that might be just the format to help brainstorming groups become more productive. I suspect just a little more structure could make brainstorming the effective tool its creators envisioned it to be.
 
 

Some of the benefits and problems that I have encountered while encouraging students to work in teams are neatly summarized by this literature on situational effects such as group size. For example, the tendency for individual effort and  productivity to drop as group size increases (the Ringelmann effect) was originally tested over a century ago in a clever series of experiments.

When tasks are simple and additive, or disjunctive, group productivity typically exceeds individual productivity. However, social loafing also increases with group size and this is a prime source of process loss wherein members work below their potential. Social loafing refers to the tendency for many members to work below capacity when in a group. Typical complaints are "I am the only one who does any work" or "I hate to be the one who did all the work and these loafers get the same grade!" To be charitable, social loafing may also reflect a lack of group structure so that members are not exactly sure what they are supposed to do or when tasks should be completed. Obviously, even suspicions of social loafing damage group cohesion and group productivity.

Here are some factors that increase social loafing:

• Group size

• Anonymity and/or private responses

• The group is comprised of [relative] strangers

• Low--or poor--communication

• Less structured environment including

• Lack of clarity about task assignment

• Higher levels of cohesion (group's norms can undermine productivity goals of larger organization)

• Identifiability of "product"

• Evaluation apprehension

• Group members know each other and/or belong to many of the same social networks, thus will repeatedly encounter the social loafer

• More task structure and specialized roles (promotes identifiability)

• Direct and immediate feedback to individual members on performance

• Increased personal involvement (e.g., responsibility for making and/or implementing decisions). This clearly relates to collective efficacy because when members are responsible for group decisions and goals, they feel more in control of conditions and outcomes. This can also swing group norms in line with those of the larger organizations. Under such conditions, cohesive groups will be more productive.

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Groups tend to make decisions in stages. Forsyth delineates orientation, discussion, decision, and implementation stages.

In making decisions, groups call upon a variety of decision rules (information processing schemas) and decision schemes. For example,  the "truth wins" (or "Eureka" situation) rule is invoked when a proposal or solution seems so intuitively obvious to most members, once it is explained, that it is almost immediately adopted. Members experience an "aha!" crystallization so that the proposal or solution appears "instinctively true." "Truth supported wins"  answers are less obvious and more ambiguous. As a result, diffuse status characteristics may provide the additional incentive to adopt the proposal or solution.

Groups suffer from some of the same information processing impediments that individuals face. The group may be overly influenced by vivid information but left unimpressed by statistical summaries. Members may act as "agenda scholars," i.e., they are use confirmatory bias in hypothesis "testing" rather than evidence driven decisions. As a result, the group may selectively gather and "cherry pick" data to support its conclusions instead of objectively weighing evidence. In their haste to reach a decision, group members may form conclusions too quickly. Thus, instead of trying to reason through alternatives, the group may force a premature vote or spend time trying to "convert deviants."

Groups also utilize a variety of decision schemes. Some examples include:

• Voting

• Compromise averaging (moderating views or plans)

• "Horse trading," a method of compromising such that different aspects of different members' agendas are adopted

• Procrastination

• Delegating decisions (for example, to a committee)

• Implicit consensus (no actual vote taken)

More ethnographic research conducted in groups indicates that interpersonal skills through the group decision making process need to be sharpened:

• Members need to listen carefully (and to stop simply waiting for a pause in conversation to start talking)

• Members need to communicate their goals, plans, and values clearly (probably easier said than done)

• Members need to stay on task

• Side conversations and social coalitions should be avoided

• Members should participate and avoid remaining aloof

• Egocentric behavior and self aggrandizement should also be avoided (star rather than team behavior)

• Group interaction should be courteous! Respect should be shown toward others and their ideas. Negative behaviors such as interruptions, belittlement, name-calling, or personal criticism, should be avoided.

The old cliché was that groups were conservative. Group discussion was supposed to moderate extreme viewpoints, and opinions or courses of action would reflect horse trading and compromises among members. Therefore, you can imagine the surprise among researchers in the mid 1960s when a series of studies (the "Stoner dilemmas") reported that, as a result of group discussion, not only was the group's final choice more risky than the average of members' choices before deliberation, but individual members' post test scores also moved in a "risky" direction. These studies were called research on the "risky shift."

Within the next 10 years of research, it became apparent that (1) groups could experience "conservative shifts" too and (2) it was something about the group discussion that could move members in a direction more extreme (risky or conservative) than the average of group member's individual viewpoints. Discussion appears to intensify attitudes, beliefs, values, judgments and perceptions. The entire phenomenon was then renamed "group polarization" or "group polarized decision making."

The phenomenon may occur because those holding extreme views usually try to be persuasive and may talk so much that other members may conclude that this is the group's position, creating "pluralistic ignorance"  or misperception of the group's ' true position.

Pressures toward unanimity (such as occur in juries) or social comparison processes (the new information  presented stimulates members to compare their own opinions with the group) may also be important. Group discussion may also provide a forum for members to learn the group's values. The direction of the shift (risky or conservative) seems to follow the general direction of initial group values. Polarized decisions are a dramatic reminder that groups can taken on a "life of their own," divergent from the sum or average of individual members.
 

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Not only can group decisions be different from the average of co-acting individuals in a simulated group, but, in real life they also can be disastrous! "Groupthink" is the term that Irving Janis coined to describe a rigid, narrow, ethnocentric style of decision making that can lead groups to make absolutely terrible decisions. The group's decisions are problematic because the group considers only a narrow range of information that supports its own agenda. The problem may be exacerbated by a directive leader who states her or his own direction early in the group session. (See more recent--and creative--research by Phillip Tetlock.)

Janis felt that group cohesiveness was a prime factor in creating Groupthink situations. Because members want to belong and because cohesive groups are better at enforcing norms and rejecting deviants, cohesive groups are more likely to impose homogeneity and uniformity upon their membership. This suggests that interpersonal cohesion or possibly the attractiveness of a highly prestigious group may increase "Groupthink" while stressing task cohesion or group structure may ameliorate it.
 

GROUPTHINK SYMPTOMS OR MANIFESTATIONS:

• Stifling of dissent or nonconforming ideas (and group rejection of those who express them); this can include negative processes such as strong, personal criticism or belittlement

• Self censorship: individual members fail to even consider alternative information or courses of action

• Self-appointed "mindguards protect" the group from contrary information or alternative courses of action (Remember the tenor of an upward flow of communication.)

• The group spends too much time discussing shared information (bolsters cohesion)

• Thus the group is characterized by apparent unanimity or surface harmony leading to:

• Premature closure on discussion; the full range of ideas is never considered

• Illusions of invulnerability (we can't go wrong! the force is with us!)

• Illusions of morality (the group's decision is superior to alternatives because the group is superior)

• Exaggerated in-group loyalty and biased outgroup perceptions

• Group isolation or insulation (so ideas from outsiders are not considered)

• Group cohesion (see above)

• Group isolation. In my study of religious congregations I found that congregations who created support groups were less insular than congregations which did not. I believe that the skills that parishioners gained by creating and maintaining support groups made it easier to create and maintain ties to other religious congregations (even if this was on the softball field in the "Church Leagues").

• Formal leadership style and powerful, overly directive leader

• Leader states opinion at the beginning of group deliberations (closed and directive leadership)

• Less directive leadership

• Leader refrains from announcing position at beginning (more open leadership)

• Encouragement of ideas (modified "brainstorming" approach), delay concurrence

• Level status differences during group discussion (this one is very hard to enforce but perhaps can be implemented during group formation)

• Bring in outside experts to evaluate information, realism of goals, and plans for action

• Stress structural or task cohesion rather than interpersonal cohesion (reduces reliance on friendship)

• Get a non-judgemental discussion going in the group. Encourage ideas from all members.

• Rotate an appointed group "devil's advocate" so that no one particular person appears to dissent.

I have presented material first on cohesion and group influence because these two sets of processes can dramatically influence group decision making and performance. Descriptions of the types of decision making and performance prepare us for our next topic, which is leadership. The effectiveness of different styles of leadership often depends on the type of group situation: the goals, the tasks, the structure.
 
 
 

OVERVIEW

READINGS

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Susan Carol Losh
March 21 2018

In memory, Columbia