Psychology / Unit 10: Social Psychology
10.4 Group Behavior
Notes
- Social facilitation: performing better on easy or well-practiced tasks when others are present (and worse on hard tasks).
- Social loafing: putting in less effort in a group when individual contributions aren't identifiable.
- Deindividuation: loss of self-awareness in a crowd or when anonymous, which can lead to out-of-character behavior.
- Group polarization: group discussion strengthens the average leaning of the group.
- Groupthink: the desire for harmony leads a group to ignore alternatives and make poor decisions (for example, nobody speaks up about a flaw in the plan).
- To reduce groupthink, encourage dissent and invite outside views.
Practice
In a group project, one student does less work because the teacher only grades the group as a whole. This is:
Effort decreases when individual contributions are not identified.
A group of friends makes a bad plan because no one wants to disagree and disturb the group's harmony. This is:
The desire for agreement overrides careful thinking.
A skilled swimmer performs better in front of a crowd than alone in practice. This is:
An audience improves performance on well-practiced tasks.
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