Social Groups

Chapter 7

1
 The Group
 Humans are fundamentally social.
 If deprived of social contact over a long period of time, mental
breakdown occurs.
 The Geneva Convention defines more than 30 days of solitary
confinement as a form of torture.
 The group (defined): a collection of people interacting
who share expectations about each other’s behavior.
 Groups have a shared sense of “special” belonging or
membership – they know they have something in common with
each other. Examples: a family, Carolina Panther fans, a rock
band.
 The group is one of the fundamental components of social
structure.
2
 The Group
 A group differs from an aggregate.
 An aggregate is a collection of people who merely happen
to be in the same place at the same time, but who have no
sense of special membership.
 Examples of aggregates: moviegoers, plane travelers.
 Crowd: a temporary cluster of individuals.
 Category: a number of people who share similar
characteristics.
 Category members may have never encountered each
other.

3
 The Group
 All groups have an internal structure.
 They have membership boundaries.
 They have their own values, norms, statuses and roles.
 They have leaders and followers.
 The structure of a group may be rigid and explicit
(such as in the military) or flexible and vague (such as
among friends).
 People form groups for a purpose or a common goal.
 This purpose may be explicit or implicit.
 For this reason, group members tend to be similar to each
other in ways that are relevant to this common purpose.

4
 The Group

 The more group members interact with each

other, the more they are influenced by the
group’s norms and values, and the more
similar to each other they are likely to become.

5
 Two Basic Types of Social Groups
 1. Primary group: small, intimate, lasting,
meaningful.
 The vast bulk of social interaction in pre-industrial
societies occurs in primary groups.
 2. Secondary group: large or small, formal, task
oriented, temporary, impersonal or anonymous.
 Since the emergence of industrial societies, there has been
a dramatic increase in secondary group interaction.
 Large secondary groups always contain smaller primary
groups within them.

6
 Small Groups
 A small group is one that contains few enough
members that they can relate or interact as
individuals with one another.
 A small group may be a primary or secondary group.
 Small groups have a tendency to develop personal or
primary group relationships if they meet a lot over
time.
 However, if the group meets only a few times and disbands
after it has fulfilled its purpose, then members may remain
impersonal and relatively anonymous toward each other.

7
 The Effects of Group Size
 Basic insight: the smaller the group, the more
personal and intense the interaction can become.
 The dyad: the smallest possible group,
consisting of two people.
 It’s distinguishing characteristic is that each member
has to take account of the other.
 If one ignores the other, then the group is destroyed.
 Dyads are highly unstable.
 This has implications for the American family and its
middle class emphasis on the nuclear structure. The
nuclear family has fewer supports from extended family
members. 8
 The Effects of Group Size
 The triad is significantly different from a
dyad, because any one member can ignore the
others without destroying the group.
 The triad is more stable than the dyad.
 Beyond 3 members, groups get progressively more
stable.
 In the triad, 2 members can unite against the third,
subjecting them to peer pressure.

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 The Effects of Group Size
 The quality of group interaction changes with increases in
the size of the group.
 Group sizes of 2 to 7 members allow all members to take
part in the same conversation.
 Beyond 7 members, it becomes difficult to hold people to the same
conversation, and usually several simultaneous conversations begin
to occur.
 Groups larger than roughly 12 members usually cannot have
all members engaged in the same conversation unless one
member takes the role of leader and regulates the interaction.
 Something else happens: because individuals can no longer tailor
their speech to specific individuals, speech becomes more formal.

10
 The Effects of Group Size
 Generally the larger the group, the more
difficult the interaction.
 A sudden increase in group size can be
particularly disruptive because
 1. Interaction becomes more difficult.
 2. New members usually bring changes to the old
norms of interaction, making old members
uncomfortable until new norms emerge.

11
 Leadership
 Leadership is always present in groups.
 A leader is someone who is consistently able to
influence the behavior of others, usually by virtue
of certain personality traits.
 Even a group that claims to have no leader usually
has a leader.

12
Two types of leadership in small groups
 1. Instrumental leadership: the kind necessary to
organize and achieve a goal.
 This leader is goal oriented.
 2. Expressive leadership: the kind necessary to create
group harmony and solidarity.
 This leader focuses on keeping morale high and on minimizing
conflicts. They tend to be well liked.
 In the American family, men are traditionally socialized
into instrumental leadership roles while women are
traditionally socialized into expressive leadership roles.

13
 Leadership
 Expressive leaders (who are well liked) are sometimes
pressured to be instrumental leaders by the members of
the group.
 However, people who direct group activities
(instrumental leaders) tend to lose popularity fairly
quickly.
 They are greatly respected, but less well liked.
 Result: leaders generally do not fill both instrumental and
expressive roles at the same time for very long.
 When an expressive leader becomes an instrumental leader, it is
not uncommon to see another member of the group assume an
expressive leadership role.

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 Leadership
 When a newly formed group chooses a leader,
it usually gives both instrumental and
expressive roles to the same person.
 Generally what occurs is that this leader loses
popularity over the next 3 or 4 meetings. By the 4th
meeting, few members still consider the leader
likable.
 In such cases, the original leader may retain the
instrumental role, but another member emerges to
assume the expressive role.

15
 Leadership
 Do leaders have distinctive characteristics?
 Generally, they are more likely to be
 Taller than average
 Judged better looking
 Rated higher in IQ
 More sociable
 More talkative
 More self confident
 More liberal in political outlook (even in conservative groups)

16
 Leadership
 However, personality traits alone cannot tell
use who would make a good leader because
different conditions require different
leadership qualities.
 The same leader who may be appropriate for
fighting a war may be inappropriate for waging
peace.

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Three Basic Styles of Leadership
 1. Authoritarian: where leaders simple give orders.
 2. Democratic: where leaders seek group consensus.
 3. Laissez –faire: where leaders seem easy going and
make little attempt to direct or organize the group.
 In the U.S. democratic style leadership is usually the
most effective style in holding small groups together
and accomplishing goals.
 Authoritarian leaders are usually less effective because
groups can get bogged down in internal conflicts.
 Laissez faire leaders are less effective because the group
loses goals and directives.

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 Three Basic Styles of Leadership
 However, there are situations where democratic leadership is
less effective.
 In emergency situations where speed and efficiency are primary, an
authoritarian style produces the most effective leader.
 In ordinary friendship situations where folks are just hanging out and
relaxing, the laissez-faire style works well.
 Within any formal organization or bureaucracy, there may be
different situations that call for different styles of leadership.
 It is not uncommon to see an authoritarian style of leadership being
used on the job when a democratic style would be more effective.
 Americans are socialized into democratic ideals and tend to react
negatively to authoritarian leaders in non-crisis situations.

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 Group Decision Making
 When it comes to making decisions, are two heads
better than one?
 Yes, but only for determinate tasks. These are
problems that have only one correct solution.
 Two heads are not necessarily better than one when a
problem has no necessarily-correct solution. In other
words, for indeterminate tasks.
 When several solutions seem correct, group decision
making may not be the best way to go.

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 How do groups come to a decision?
 Usually, through consensus.
 Only rarely does a majority impose its view on a reluctant
minority.
 No matter what the views of the individual members at the
outset, the general tendency is for discussion to bring about
general conformity.
 This insight has applications for understanding the jury
deliberation process. Juries usually move toward general
agreement and certainty.
 The only exception to this pattern toward consensus is when
members represent the fixed opinions of others outside the group,
such as in union-management bargaining.
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 Group Decision Making
 Because members tend to arrive at a consensus, are
groups likely to make less risky or more risky decisions
than individuals?
 Generally groups are likely to make more risky decisions
than individuals.
 This is called the “risky shift” and is partly explained by
individuals being absolved of personal responsibility for the
decisions made by the group.
 An example of a disastrous risky shift was the decision to
invade Iraq in 2003. Recent evidence shows that the CIA and
other security agencies adopted a risky shift policy under
pressure from President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

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 Group Decision Making
 Conclusion
 The process of group discussion tends to intensify
member’s opinions at the same time that consensus begins
to emerge.
 Discussion toward consensus breeds boldness in group
decision-making.
 In other words, the initially tentative opinions of members
becomes more bold as the group moves toward consensus.
 The problem is that unanimous decisions that are boldly
stated can cause major problems if the decision happens to
be wrong. Part of the issue involves groupthink.
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 Groupthink
 Groupthink is the informal norm associated with small groups
that says that loyalty to the group (or group harmony) is more
important than asking the tough questions that may cause
group arguments.
 Groupthink keeps members from “rocking the boat” by disagreeing
with each other. An atmosphere of consensus is assumed.
 Historical American foreign policy examples where
groupthink occurred:
 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion (John Kennedy)
 1965 Vietnam escalation (Lyndon Johnson)
 2003 Iraq invasion (George Bush)
 In each of these historical blunders, either the President permitted
little disagreement (thus encouraging groupthink) and/or groupthink
emerged among the inner circle of policy advisors.
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 Groupthink
 Policy Implication
 Beware of leaders who surround themselves with
members who don’t like to rock the boat.
 Their decisions may be “bold,” but wrong.
Their decisions may be overly risky, they are
overly certain that they are right, and their
decisions may be a product of groupthink.

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 Group Conformity
 The smaller the group, the greater the intensity of
social interaction. Therefore the pressure to
conform is particularly powerful in the small group
due to the intense atmosphere.

 This insight was confirmed by the research of

Solomon Asch (1951, 1955, 1956).
 Asch found that unanimous group pressure of 4 or more
people to conform to a wrong answer swayed one-third
of his subjects away from their (obviously) right answer
to the (obviously) wrong unanimous group answer.
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 Soloman Asch on group conformity
 Subjects were shown lines of
different lengths and asked to
match the lines. Without group
pressure they did fine. But when
the subject witnessed others mis-
matching the lines, there was
group pressure on the subject to
conform to the group’s
mismatched lines. In one-third
of the cases, the subjects over-
rode their own assessment and
adopted the unanimous wrong
assessment held by the others.

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Soloman Asch on group conformity
 Conclusion: group pressure can override an
individual’s own physical senses. People may
yield to the group by giving the answer they
think the group wants.
 They may suspect or know it to be the
wrong answer, or they may allow the group
to override their own assessment and
believe they are wrong.

28
 Soloman Asch on group conformity
 Why did some of the people conform to the wrong answer?
 Researchers asked the subjects this question and learned that
 1. People want to be well liked, so they conform to the group rather
than rock the boat.
 2. People doubt their own correct answers when everyone else
provides a consistently wrong answer.
 The group pressure implied by the opinion of others can lead to
self-modification, effectively making you see almost anything.
 Later psychological research suggests that the actual perception
of line length changed as a function of exposure to other’s views
of its length. It is less of a conscious judgment.

29
 Solomon Asch on group conformity
 Asch varied the number of conspirators who gave
the wrong answers between 1 and 15.
 He found that the subjects conformed to a group of 3 or
4 as readily as they did to a larger group.
 Researchers varied the Asch experiment to address
the issue of unanimous group consensus.
 If the group was not unanimous, then subjects felt much
freer to stick to their original opinion. All it took was
one other person disagreeing with the group, and under
this circumstance less than 10% of subjects adjusted
their opinion to the majority group (wrong) opinion.
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 Group Pressure and Obedience
 Both the Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram
studies suggest that
 1. People tend to obey legitimate authority figures even
when there is evidence it may be wrong behavior.
 2. Some people will conform to group pressure even
when there is physical evidence such conformity may be
incorrect.
 In the Asch experiments, people did not attribute their “wrong”
behavior to an authority figure. Rather, they attributed their
wrong behavior to misjudgment or poor eyesight.
 This misjudgment can occur at the perceptual level, causing
people to doubt their own senses in favor of the group
definition. The group has a powerful effect on perception.
31
Obedience – the Zimbardo research
 Another famous study which contributes to
why people conform was done by Philip
Zimbardo.
 Zimbardo learned that people do not just obey
from the pressure of authority and/or from
group pressure - they also obey from the
pressure of particular social situations and their
implied statuses and roles.
 Role expectations play an important part in how we
behave.
32
 Philip Zimbardo: Status and
Role in a Mock Prison (1971)
 Zimbardo set up a social psychological experiment
that quickly went awry. He had undergraduates play
the role of prisoners and prison guards in a mock
prison environment.
 What is the role expectation of “prison guard” or
“prisoner”?
 The experiment was cut short after only 6 days because
those playing the role of prison guard quickly became
mean and sadistic, while the “prisoners” became
depressed and passive.
 Link to youtube clip: The Stanford Prison Experiment

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 Zimbardo
 Zimbardo found that even the temporary adoption of a
status can quickly affect one’s personality.
 At the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (2004), American guards quickly
became sadistic in much the same way that the student guards did
back in 1971.
 Conclusion:
 The social situation and its implied roles are powerful
influences of how people can be expected to behave.
 Good people can do harm to others if they find themselves
in particular social situations within the context of socially
approved roles, rules, norms, a legitimizing ideology, and
institutional support that transcends individual agency.
 See Zimbardo’s recent book, The Lucifer Effect, for more information.

34
 Ingroups and Outgroups
 Every group has membership boundaries.
 Note that these boundaries may be vague in some cases (like peer
groups).
 All groups tend to maintain their boundaries by developing
a sense of “us” and “them.”
 Ingroup: a social group commanding a members esteem
and loyalty.
 Outgroup: a social group one does not belong to toward
which one feels competition or opposition.
 People tend to regard their ingroups as special. By the same
token, they regard the outgroup as less worthy or perhaps
even with hostility.

35
 Ingroups and Outgroups

 The very presence of an “enemy” outgroup

tends to promote ingroup solidarity or loyalty.
 Thus, conflict between groups increases the loyalty
and solidarity of members within each group.

36
 Social Networks
 Social networks are webs of relationships that link the
individual directly to other people, and through them,
indirectly to even more people.
 An individual’s social network is not a group – because its members
don’t all interact together.
 Social networks provide access to resources and are helpful in
getting jobs and solving problems requiring special resources.
 In modern industrial societies the average individual has a
network of roughly 500-2500 acquaintances. The rise of the
Internet and links like My Space have greatly helped
computer-literate people widen their social networks.
 Today it is relatively easy to find other people interested in the same
obscure topic or underground band, thanks to Internet resources.

37
 Reference Group
 A reference group is a group which people compare themselves
with when they evaluate themselves.
 We constantly evaluate ourselves. We do this by comparing
ourselves with others and the standards of other groups.
 The verdict of our evaluations is strongly influenced by the
reference groups we choose to compare ourselves with (or the
one we are provided with to compare).
 If a trainee evaluates their performance by referencing the performance
of experienced veterans, their self evaluation will be low.
 Similarly, commercial culture teaches young women to rely on runway
models as their reference group – which guarantees she will feel she
needs improvement, and thus buy something.
 It is important to use realistic reference groups and realistic role
models.

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 Formal Organizations
 Until a century ago, nearly all social life took
place in primary groups.
 Today the social setting is dominated by large,
impersonal, formal organizations.
 Today, we are likely to be born in a formal
organization, just as we are likely to die in one.
 A formal organization is a large secondary
group that is deliberately and rationally
designed to achieve specific objectives.

39
 Formal Organizations
 In formal organizations, rights and
responsibilities are attached mainly to the office
or role a person occupies and not to the person as
an individual.
 Formal orgs are a double edged sword:
 On the one hand we need them for our material
standard of living, yet on the other hand their size,
impersonality, and power can be dehumanizing.
 Max Weber believed that much of the feeling of
alienation (powerlessness) of industrial societies stems
from the rise of bureaucracies.
40
 Bureaucracy
 A bureaucracy is a formal organization with an authority
structure that is hierarchical.
 Bureaucracies are shaped like a pyramid, where there are a few
people with a lot of power at the top, and there are many people
with little power at the bottom of the pyramid.
 Those at the top command the behaviors of those at the bottom,
making them efficient.
 The bureaucracy is highly efficient and rational. Many people can
be “processed” efficiently, thereby allowing mass access to
education, government, and other resources.
 Bureaucracies uphold the values of rationality, productivity,
efficiency, obedience, and meritocracy.
 Because they value meritocracy and achieved statuses, they
liberate us from the traditional values of ascription, racism,
sexism, and other non-rational bigotries.
41
 Six Characteristics of Bureaucracy
 1. Specialized tasks within the organization.
 2. Hierarchy of statuses and offices.
 3. Rules and regulations that serve as rational
guides for behavior.
 4. Technical competence to perform specialized
tasks used as a criteria of evaluation.
 5. Impersonality, where rules take precedence
over feelings.
 6. Formal, written records to assure rationality.
42
 Max Weber’s Analysis
 While Max Weber appreciated the rational nature of
bureaucracies, he also found them problematic.
 To Weber, the world was becoming disenchanting as it
became increasingly rationalized.
 Rationalization refers to the replacement of traditional,
primary group based interaction (spontaneous, rule-of-thumb,
emotionalized) with abstract, explicit, carefully calculated
rules and procedures that are associated with secondary group
interaction.
 Weber argued that the modern world was becoming
increasingly dull, with its mystery and beauty being replaced
by the new values of technical rationality, efficiency,
predictability, productivity, and other dehumanizing values.

43
 Max Weber on Bureaucracy
 Bureaucracies bring the subordination of humans to
the interests of impersonal, technical goals. The spirit
of humanity, to Weber, was “trapped in the iron cage
of bureaucracy.”
 Within the bureaucracy, people are treated
impersonally as “cases” or “numbers.”
 The members of the bureaucracy are expected to
remain impersonal in their contacts with the public –
to be “detached” from their own humanity. Feelings
interfere with the efficiency of the system.

44
The Informal Structure of Bureaucracy
 Despite Weber’s concerns about the cold-hearted nature
of bureaucracies, there is also an informal side, where
primary groups reside.
 Within all bureaucracies, informal networks develop and
primary groups emerge.
 Therefore, all bureaucracies consist of a bundle of formal
rules and regulations mixed with a bundle of informal
norms and relationships.
 These informal norms are created by the members themselves
and are a source of humanity within the “machine.”
 Note - The 1970s TV show MASH captured this informal
side.

45
The Informal Structure of Bureaucracy
 In reality, the formal structure of a bureaucracy
provides only a general framework for social
interaction.
 Ultimately it is the people who create and
operate an organization, and in essence the
bureaucracy is a negotiated reality.
 Within the larger structure of a bureaucracy,
members will negotiate informal norms and patterns
that have little relationship to the formal hierarchy.

46
 Dysfunctions of Bureaucracy
 Max Weber appreciated the paradox of bureaucracies.
In a mass society a bureaucracy is functional for most
people, yet it is dehumanizing too.
 Weber was especially interested in how bureaucracies
dehumanize us – they detach us from our humanity
by turning us into cold technocrats.
 Weber and other researchers have identified a number
of dysfunctions of bureaucracies.

47
 Dysfunctions of Bureaucracy
 1. Inefficient in unusual cases.
 2. Inability to be innovative.
 3. Goal displacement.
 4. Bureaucratic enlargement.
 5. The bureaucratic personality: detached, a
technocrat.
 6. Oligarchy (rule by the few) and its anti-
democratic, authoritarian nature.
 7. De-humanization.
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 McDonaldization
 George Ritzer recently expanded on Weber’s concerns
about over-rationalization. He argues that our society is
increasingly organized around four principles that
McDonalds has perfected:
 1. Efficiency. Both product and service are guided by this
value.
 2. Calculability – fixed amounts of product for fixed prices.
 3. Uniformity and predictability. Every product is made
the same way.
 4. Control through automation. The human element is
eliminated as much as possible through assembly lines,
computers and automation.
49
 Other Forms of Organization
 Most formal organizations are similar in structure,
but there are some variations.
 The Japanese Corporation
 The extraordinary achievements of Japan are largely due to
the unique features of the Japanese industrial corporation.
 Emphasis upon the group over the individual.
 Membership is a reciprocal lifetime contract, providing
job security to workers.
 All promotions are from within.
 Workers are organized into small teams, and it is the
team – not the individual – which is evaluated. Each
individual may belong to different teams over the years.
50
The Japanese Corporation
 The top managers are not paid that much more than
the bottom workers, perhaps 3 to 5 times more, but
nothing like the American system where the top
makes 400+ times more.
 Decision-making is collective and discussion occurs
from the bottom up. Top officials merely ratify.
 Japanese corporations go beyond strictly business to
offer their workers welfare, including housing,
recreation, health care, education, day care, etc.
 They fuse leisure activities with work activities.
 In turn, Japanese workers show great loyalty to the
firm.

51
 The Collective
 Collectives are nonbureaucratic organizations often
associated with progressives seeking to affirm
participatory democracy. They have several features:
 Little division of labor. The individual usually has a variety
of tasks.
 Generally authority is democratic and arises from consensus,
with a democratic leadership style.
 Individual initiative is valued.
 Members treat each others is equals.
 Strength: affirms democracy and equality.
 Weakness: less efficient, and only applicable to relatively
small scale enterprises. The larger a collective gets, the more
bureaucratic it is likely to get.

52
 Organizational Reform
 The rise of humanism during the 1960s resulted in the
criticism of bureaucracies because of their tendency
to stifle personal growth, and because of their
oligarchy-emphasis. As a result, there has been a call
to reform bureaucracies with new policies like
 flextime,
 periodic sabbaticals,
 paternity leave,
 job security,
 and a more egalitarian division of labor.

53
 Organizational Reform
 Ultimately the most significant reforms will be
those that allow greater social control over the
affairs of bureaucracies.
 We need to develop a means of making
bureaucracies more accountable to the public
interest and to their workers.
 In the final analysis organizations exist for the
benefit of people, not the other way around.

54
 Humanizing the Bureaucracy
 There are at least 3 ways to make bureaucracies more
humane:
 1. Social inclusiveness. The organization should make
everyone feel included, and work to minimize outgroup
hatreds.
 2. Sharing responsibilities. Reduce rigid, oligarchal
structures by spreading power more widely and keeping
lines of communication open between super- and sub-
ordinates.
 3. Expanding opportunities for advancement. Reduce
the number of workers stuck in dead end jobs and
encourage new means of upward mobility.
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End of Chapter 7

56