group behaviour - sam sagar

• a group consist of two or more individuals who perceive themselves to belong to a group with shared goals
• a group is a collection of individuals who

  • interact and influence one another
  • join to achieve common goals and to satisfy some need through their joint association
  • share common set of roles and norms
• social groups: church groups, sport, political groups, student union
• cultural groups: blacks, asians, european
• group behaviour

  • behaviour, conflict and social identity
  • within the group - intragroup
  • between groups - intergroup
• intragroup behaviour is whenever individuals from one group interacts with its members in term of group identification
• intergroup behaviour is typically competitive/ hostile as people favour their own group and don't identify with the other group
• group-orientated culture - east asia / oriental cultures

  individual orientated culture - western culture
• group formation and norms

  • key characteristics of groups are roles, status and norms. these determine relationship of power within and between groups
  • current research views groups as being dynamic
  • changing over time
  • members join and leave
  • involves varying roles, commitment and initiation processes
• group cohesiveness - a group that effectively binds people to one another and to the group as a whole, giving the group a sense of solidarity and oneness
• group cohesion characterized by:

  1. uniformity of conduct and effectiveness in their actions
  2. in group solidarity and co-operation
  3. mutual acceptance and support between members
• • conformity to the group is needed to maintain memberships of the group
  • conformity maximises group cohesion and minimises confluct and controversy in the group
  • level of group cohesiveness differs between groups, between contexts and across time
  • low cohesiveness - a weak group
• group cohesiveness (cont)

  • two forces act on the individual to make the group more / less cohesive

  1. the attractiveness of the group
  2. how much the group satisfies the individuals goals and needs

  • these forces produce cohesiveness leading to membership continuity and adhering to group norms
• factors that increase group attraction icnlude:

  • similarity, cooperation, interpersonal acceptance, shared ideas and threat
• the frustration-aggression hypothesis

  • developed to explain aggressive behaviour in individuals
  • conditions of relative deprivation lead people to feel frustrated
  • argued people in relatively deprived situations leads to frustration leads to aggression
• relative deprivation is a pre-cursor of hostile group behaviour; explains the condition under which such behaviour occurs

  • subjective sense of having less than what we think we deserve; based on feelings of injustice
  • i.e. perceived discrepancy between our actual attainments
• Relative deprivation seeks to explain collective unrest and aggression , e.g. london riot arguably based on economic/social deprivation: 41% of suspects arrested lived within top 10% socially deprived areas in uk
• relative deprivation - crucial pre-condition for aggression and unrest
• how does relative deprivation occur

  • the J-curve hypothesis (davies, 1962)
  • relative deprivation becomes particularly acute when individual / group attainments suffer a sudden setback in the contexts of expectations, which continue to rise (e.g. unemployment, recession)
• the J-curve hypothesis

  • relative deprivation becomes particularly acute when individual/ group attainments suffer a sudden setback in the contexts of expectations, which continue to rise
  • historical examples where recession led to long periods of deprivation:
  • french and russian revolutions
  • the rise of nazism in germany
• two forms of relative deprivation

  1. egoistic relative deprivation
  2. fraternalistic relative deprivation
• egoistic relative deprivation

  • individuals sense of deprivation relative to other similar individuals
  • individual personally feels has less than entitled to relative to ones aspirations / to other individiauls
• fraternalistic relative deprivation

  • comparisons with dissimilar others, or with members of other groups
  • sense that our group has less than it is entitled to relative to our aspirations or to other groups
• what type of RD leads to highest level of unrest

  • fraternalistic relative deprivation linked to highest levels of social unrest
  • walker and mann:
  • studied unemployed workers
  • fraternalistic RD was associated with militant protests, law breaking, destruction property
  • egoistic RD associated with stress (headaches, sleeplessness etc)
• critiques of the theories

  • runciman - relative deprivation is too vague; suggested other types of deprivation; e.g. egoistic RD vs FRaternalised RD
• critiques of theories

  • geschwender
  • tested j-curve hypothesis to explain african american protests and riots in 1960. found no evidence of decline in attainment, but a steady rise in incomes, education levels
• taylor 1982

  • little evidence that social dissatisfaction is based on the degree of mis-match between expectations and actual attainment
• critique of the theories

  • tyler and smith
  • perceptions of official institutional injustice have a particularly strong influence on intergroup protests
• los angeles riots

  • acquittal of 4 white LA policemen accused of beating a black motorist
  • backround: rising unemployment and deepending unrest among black communities
  • BUT! violecne broke out also at relatively affluent black neighborhoods
• realistic group conflict theory

  • sherifs critique of explanations of group conflict
  • groups do not always need hardship to be hostile
  • not all in-group personalities can be the same
• realistic group conflict theory

  • sherif argued that when groups compete over scarce resources, it creates intergroup hostility and ethnocentrism
• realistic conflict theory

  • ethnocentrism: judging my own group as superior to other groups. this judgement is based on my own cultural point of view
  • thus, making false assumptions about others based on our own limited understanding of other cultures
  • this leads to prejudice, discrimination and intergroup conflict
  • limited resources often give rise to ethnocentrism and intergroup conflict
  • so tough times or competition for resources increase ethnocentrism and intergroup conflict
• robbers cave experiment - sherif and sherif

  experiment aim:

  • to examine the concept of a 'group' and how perceptions of belonging to a group impacted members relationships within the group and with people outside the group
• robbers cave experiment

  • famous observational study at summer camps
  • n=22 boys, age 12 yrs, all white, middle class, protestants, didn't know one another
  • boys (and parents) were led to beleive it was a genuine summer camp
  • parents were asked not to visit their boys during the camp
• robbers cave experiment

  observational data collected in 3 phases:

  stage 1: group formation, friendship and bonding development

  stage 2: intergroup competition

  stage 3: intergroup cooperation
• robbers cave study: key results

  • prejudice, discrimination and ethnocentrism rose as a consequence of intergroup conflict
  • there was a degree of ethnocentrism even when there was no intergroup competition
  • intergroup conflict after competition started as verbal and escalated to a physical fight
  • the winning group, which was less frustrated, often expressed higher levels of intergroup aggression than the losing team
  • the nature of the groups goal determined the nature of individuals and intergroup behaviours
• • intergroup behaviour can be defined as any behaviour that is influenced by group members perceptions of the outgroup
  • group members may engage in collective protest when they feel deprived as a group relative to their collective aspirations relative to other group
  • competition for scarce resources tends to produce intergroup conflict