SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Fifth Edition ELLIOT ARONSON University of California, Santa Cruz TIMOTHY D. WILSON University of Virginia ROBIN M. AKERT Wellesley College 22,038.06 FACULDADE DE PSICOLOGIA E DE CIENCIAS DA EDUCAGAO UNIVERSIDADE DE COIMBRA BIBLIOTECA 18302 eq EI Pearson Education InternationalIf you purchased this book within the United States or Canada you should be aware that it has been ‘wrongfully imported without the approval ofthe Publisher or the Author. Senior Acquisitions Editor: Jeff Marshall Editor’in-Chief: Leah Jewell Editorial Assistant: Jill Liebowiv. 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Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by Copyright and permission should be obsained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval sytem, Or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. For information regarding permission (s), write to: Rights and Permissions Department Pearson Education LTD. Pearson Education Australia PTY, Limited Pearson Education Singapore, Pre. Lid Pearson Education North Asia Ltd Pearson Education Canada, Ltd. Pearson Edueacion de Mexico, S.A. de C.¥. Pearson Education — Japan Pearson Education Malaysia, Pe. Lid Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey PEARSON ae Keun es) EN 1098765432 ISBN 0-13-132793-3284 CHAPTERS Group Processes Group ‘Two or more people who interact and {are interdependent in the sense thet their needs and goals cause them to influence each other disastrous plan? Most of us assume that groups make better decisions than ind viduals. However, in this case, a committee of experts made an astonishing nung. ber of errors. Would President Kennedy have been better off risaking the decision by himself, without consulting his advisers? ‘Though you might think so, consider Kennedy's next foreign policy crisis which also involved Cuba. The following October, the CIA discovered that the Soviet Union had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. The missiles were aimed to. ward U.S. cities, and the resulting crisis brought us the closest we have ever come to World War TI (Rhodes, 1995). Kennedy and his advisers deftly avoided yar with a brilliant strategy of threats, naval blockades, and conciliatory gestures that succeeded in getting Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, to back down and remove the missiles, What did Kennedy and his advisers do differently this time? Did they simply stumble onto @ good strategy, or had they leamed from their earlier mistakes at the Bay of Pigs? In this chapter, we will focus on questions such as these about the nature of groups and how they influence peo- ple’s behavior, which are some of the oldest topics in social psychology (Cartwright & Zander, 1968; Forsyth, 2000; Levine, 1999; Levine & Moreland, 1990, 1998. WHAT IS A GROUP? Six students sitting around a table in the library are not a group. But if they meet to study for their psychology final together, they are. A group consists of two or more people who interact and are interdependent in the sense that their needs and goals cause them to influence each other (Cartwright & Zander, 1968; Lewin, 1948). Like Kennedy's advisers working together to reach a foreign policy decision, citizens meeting to solve a community problem, or people who have gathered to blow off steam at a party, groups are people who have assembled for some common purpose. Think for a moment of the number of groups to which you belong. Don't forget to include your family, campus groups (such as fraternities, sororities, or political organizations), community groups (such as churches or synagogues), Sports teams, and more temporary groups (such as your classmates in a small seminar). All of these count as groups, because you interact with the other mem bers and you are interdependent: You influence them, and they influence you. Why Do People Join Groups? Forming relationships with other people fulfills a number of basic human needs—so basic, in fact, that there may be an innate need to belong to groups. Some researchers argue that in our evolutionary past, there was a substantial sur vival advantage to establishing bonds with other people (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). People who bonded together were better able to hunt for and grow food, find mates, and care for children. Consequently, they argue, the need to belong has become innate and is present in all societies. Consistent with this view, peo ple in all cultures are motivated to form relationships with other people and toresist the dissolution of these relationships (Gardner, Pickett, & Brewer, 2000; Manstead, 1997) Groups have a number of other benefits. As we saw in Chapter 8, other peo- ple can be an important source of information, helping us resolve ambiguity about the nature of the social world. Groups become an important part of our identity, helping us define who we are—witness the number of times people wear shirts with the name of one of their groups (e.g., a fraternity or sorority) embla- zoned on it. Groups also help establish social norms, the explicit or implicit rules defining what is acceptable behavior, The Composition and Functions of Groups ‘The groups to which you belong probably vary in size from two or three mem- bers to several dozen members. Most groups, however, have two to six members (Desportes & Lemaine, 1988; Levine & Moreland, 1998; McPherson, 1983). This is due in part to our definition of groups as involving interaction between mem- bers, If groups become too large, you cannot interact with all the members; for example, the college or university that you attend is not a group because you are unlikely to meet and interact with every other student, Another important feature of groups is that the members tend to be alike in age, sex, beliefs, and opinions (George, 1990; Levine & Moreland, 1998; Magaro & Ashbrook, 1985). There are two reasons for the homogeneity of groups. First, ‘many groups tend to attract people who are already similar before they join (Feld, 1982). As we'll see in Chapter 10, people are attracted to others who share their attitudes and thus are likely to recruit fellow group members who are simi lar to them, Second, groups tend to operate in ways that encourage similarity in the members (Moreland, 1987). This can happen in a number of important ways, some of which we discussed in Chapter 8. Social Norms As we saw in Chapter 8, social norms are a powerful determinant of our behavior. All societies have norms about which behaviors are acceptable, some of which all members are expected to obey (e.g., we should be quiet in li- braries) and some of which vary from group to group (e.g., rules about what to ‘wear to weddings and funerals). If you belong to a fraternity or sorority, you can probably think of social norms that govern behavior in your group, such as Whether alcoholic beverages are consumed and how you are supposed to feel about rival fratemities or sororities. Its unlikely that other groups to which you belong share these norms. The power of norms to shape behavior becomes clear when we violate them too often: We are shunned by other group members and, in extreme cases, pressured to leave the group (Marques, Abrams, & Sero- io, 2001; Schachter, 1951; see also Chapter 8) Social Roles Most groups have a number of welldcfined social roles, which are shared expectations in a group about how particular people are supposed to be- have. Whereas norms specify how all group members should act, roles specify how people who occupy certain positions in the group should behave. A boss and an employee in a business occupy different roles and are expected to act in different ways in that setting. Like social norms, roles can be very helpful, be- cause people know what to expect from each other. When members of a group follow a set of clearly defined roles, they tend to be satisfied and perform well (Barley & Bechky, 1994; Bettencourt & Sheldon, 2001), There are, however, two potential costs to social roles. First, people can get 40 far into a role that their personal identities and personalities get lost. Suppose that you agreed to take part in a two-week psychology experiment in which you were randomly assigned to play the role of a prison guard or a prisoner in a sim- Ulated prison. You might think that the role you were assigned to play would not What IsGroup? i Social Roles Shi how particular peopl behave 1d expectations in a group abou supposed t286 CHAPTERS Group Processes Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues randomly assigned students to play 1 role of prisoner or guard in a ‘mock prison. The students assumed these roles all too well, Those playing the role of guard became ‘quite aggressive, and those playing the role of prisoner became passive, helpless, and withdrawn. People got into their roles so much that their personal identities and sense of decency somehow got lost. be very important; after all, everyone knows that itis only an experiment and that people are just pretending to be guards or prisoners, Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues, however, had a different hypothesis. They believed that social roles can be so powerful that they “take over” our personal identities tothe point that we become the role we are playing. ‘To see if this is true, Zimbardo and colleagues conducted an unusual study They built a mock prison in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University and paid students to play the role of guard or prisoner (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1978). The role students played was determined by the flip of a coin. The guards were outfitted with a uniform of khaki shirts and Pants, a whistle, a police nightstick, and reflecting sunglasses, and the prisoners were outfitted with a loose-ftting smock with an identification number stamped on it, rubber sandals, a cap made from a nylon stocking, and a locked chain at tached to one ankle. The researchers planned to observe the students for two weeks, to see whether they began to act like real prison guards and prisoners. As it turned out, the students quickly assumed these roles—to such an extent that the researchers ended the experiment after only six days. Many of the guards became quite abu. sive, thinking of creative ways of verbally harassing and hnmiliating the prison ers. The prisoners became passive, helpless, and withdrawn. Some prisoners, in fact, became so anxious and depressed that they had to be released from the study earlier than the others. Remember, everyone knew that they were in a ps chology experiment and that the prison was only make-believe. The roles of {guard and prisoner were so compelling and powerful, however, that this simple truth was often overlooked. People got so far into their roles that their personal identities and sense of decency somehow got lost. If social roles are so powerful in make-believe prisons, imagine how powerful {hey are in real prisons and in other institutions with welldefined roles, The roles \we assume can shape our behavior in powerful and unexpected ways. Parents of young children, for example, can often be heard exclaiming, “I swore I would never yell at my child in the way my parents yelled at me, and yet Ijust did!” The second drawback of social roles is that there is cost to acting inconsis- tently with the expectations associated with them, The next time you report t0 your job, ty telling your boss that you're going to decide what she should do that day, Role expectations are especially problematic when they are atbitrary oFWhat ls Group? 287 unfair. All societies, for example, have expectations about how people who oc- cupy the roles of women and men should behave. As we discuss in Chapter 13, these role expectations can constrain the way in which people behave and result in negative attitudes toward people who decide to act inconsistently with how they are expected to behave, The Try It! exercise on this page describes a way you can experience this for yourself. Gender Roles In many cultures, women are expected to assume the role of wife and mother and have limited opportunities to pursue other careers. In the United States and other countries, these expectations are changing, and women have more opportunities than ever before. Conflict can result, however, when expectations change for some roles but not for others assumed by the same per- son. In India, for instance, women were traditionally permitted to take only the roles of wife, mother, agricultural laborer, and domestic worker. As their rights have improved, women are increasingly working at other professions. At home, though, many husbands still expect their wives to assume the traditional role of child rearer and household manager, even if their wives have other careers Conflict results, because many women are expected to “do it all"—maintain a carcer, raise the children, clean the house, and attend to their husband's needs (Brislin, 1993). Such conflicts are not limited to India; many American readers will find this kind of role conflict all too familiar (Rudman, 1998), Changing roles do more than cause us conflict; they can actually affect our personalities. In a historical study, researchers tracked women's social status in the United States between 1981 and 1993 and compared those results to women's ratings of their own assertiveness (Twenge, 2001). Women’s status im- proved between the years of 1931 and 1945. During this time, women increas- ingly earned college degrees and worked outside the home; by 1945, for example, over half ofall college degrees were earned by women. If World War IL increased opportunities for women while men were away fighting, when the men came home, so did the women. During the years 1946-1967, the stay.at home mom became the norm; women increasingly dropped out of the workforce, and fewer women went to college. In 1950, for example, about 25 percent of college degrees were earned by women, Between 1968 and 1993, women’s status What Happens When You Violate a Role? Pick a behavior that is part of the role for your gender in your culture, and deliberately violate it For example, if you are male in the United States, you might decide to put on makeup or carry a urse to your next class. Ifyou are female, you might wear a jacket and tie to a party. Keep a journal describing how others react to you. More than likely, you will encounter a good deal of social disap- Proval, such as people staring at you or questioning your behavior. For this reason, you want to avoid role violations that are too extreme. ‘The social pressure that is brought to bear on people who do not conform to their roles explains why it can be so difficult to break out of the roles to which we are assigned, even when they are arbitrary. Of course, there is safety in numbers; when enough people violate role expectations, others do not act nearly so negatively, and the roles begin to change. For example, it is how much ‘more acceptable for men to wear earrings than it was twenty years ago. To illustrate this safety in numbers, enlist the help of several same-sex friends and violate the same role expectation together. Again, note carefully how people react to you. Did you encounter more or less social disapproval in the group than you did as an individual?