Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Unit 1
Unit 1
1. What is a group
2. Group effects on individual performance
3. Group norms
4. Group structure and roles
Even when we have never met a person, we directly assign them different attributes,
quickly placing them in a position in our personal like /dislike scale. That will affect our
relationship with them. How that may happen and why?
1. WHAT IS A GROUP
• Social groups may vary from very small (a nuclear family) to large groups (e.g., a nation,
a gender).
• Social categories may also be considered social groups. The individuals within a social
category may build a sense of group when acquiring entitativity, understood as the
property of a group that makes it appear to be a distinct, coherent and bounded entity.
For a group to reach entitativity it has to share a social category (with at least one or
more social attributes).
Common-bond groups. Based on the relationship among the members of the group
(e.g., families, small communities). Based on personal goals. Individuals know each
other.
Common-identity groups. Based on one or several social attributes or categories that
are shared by all group members. Individuals may not know many of the group
members. More altruistic motivations.
GROUP COHESIVENESS:
• The property of a group that affectively binds people as group members to one
another and to the group as a whole, giving the group a sense of solidarity and oneness.
Social attraction: Liking of somebody based on their group prototycality (regarding some
group attribute).
Social attraction is the liking aspect of group membership. You can like someone as a
group member and not as an individual level. This group attraction is the one that affects
group cohesiveness (and not individual attraction). Social attraction increases
cohesiveness either in small or large groups (such as nations).
Interpersonal attraction within members of the group does not seem to affect social
attraction and cohesiveness, more related to identity attributes assigned to the group.
GROUP STATUS
Consensual evaluation of the prestige and power of a role or role occupant in a group,
or of the prestige of a group and the members as a whole. Higher status usually imply
higher initiative when starting a new task or activity.
Expectation states theory: Members in a group assign status (and roles) to other
members based on (specific and diffuse) characteristics of the member related to such
status (or role).
Communication networks:
• Centralized network: Improves simple tasks as central, hub person is able to integrate
and pass the information while the peripheral persons can focus on their tasks. For more
complex tasks that is not possible.
• Centralized networks may produce more internal conflicts.
• Computer – mediated communication brings more quantity of information being
communicated but also may amplify communication and group biases.
GROUP SOCIALIZATION:
• Dynamic relationship between the group and its members that describes the passage
of members through a group, in terms of commitment and of changing roles.
• Group building through group socialization (Tuckman, 1965):
1. Forming
2. Storming
3. Norming
4. Performance
5. Adjourning
Social loafing: A reduction of individual effort when working on a collective task (in
which the individual outputs are pooled together). A tendency for individuals to work
less hard on a task when they believe that others are also working on the task.
3. GROUP NORMS
Roles: Patterns of behaviour that distinguish between different functions within the
group, and that interrelate to one another for the greater good of the group.
Roles:
• Represent a division of labour
• Furnish clear-cut social expectations
• Furnish members with a self-definition and a place within the group. We all have a
tendency to assign stable, internal roles to individuals within a group (related to the
correspondence bias).
Difficulties in role performance
Role conflicts:
1. Inter-role conflict: When two or more roles performed by the same person are
incompatible.
2. Intra-role conflict: When the intrinsic tasks within a role are incompatible
Role ambiguity:
3. Poor knowledge (or outcomes compared to expectancies) of the role which leads to
frustration.
In the next cases, write down the type of role difficulty (1-4) that may be happening:
1. An executive who has to enforce new unpleasant norms among his/her subordinates.
2. A worker who is unmotivated because the tasks are very simple and repetitive.
3. A worker who has problems reconciling family life with work.
4. A student who is “free-riding” because nobody explained what s/he has to do in the
group project.
5. A school teacher with anxiety because s/he does not know how to solve the problem
of lack of interest of the students in learning.
Group status
Consensual evaluation of the prestige and power of a role or role occupant in a group,
or of the prestige of a group and the members as a whole. Higher status usually imply
higher initiative when starting a new task or activity.
Expectation states theory: Members in a group assign status (and roles) to other
members based on (specific and diffuse) characteristics of the member related to such
status (or role).
Communication networks:
• Centralized network: Improves simple tasks as central, hub person is able to integrate
and pass the information while the peripheral persons can focus on their tasks. For more
complex tasks that is not possible.
• Centralized networks may produce more internal conflicts.
• Computer – mediated communication brings more quantity of information being
communicated but also may amplify communication and group biases.
Presentación 2