Lesson 3

• People often join groups because they share common interests
• Stability of group membership leads to greater cohesiveness and better performance
• One reason people join groups is to be near and talk to other people
• People join groups to earn emotional support from the other members of the group
• Groups pressured by outside forces tend to become highly cohesive
• Criteria for a group

  • Members of the group must see themselves as a unit
  • Group must have multiple members
  • Two or more people must also see themselves as a unit
  • Anything that happens to one member of the group affects every other member
• Group Size affects group performance, with smaller groups being more cohesive and performing better
• Groups that are isolated or located away from other groups tend to be highly cohesive
• People join groups because of our desire for identification with some group or cause
• Group Homogeneity is the extent to which its members are similar
• People tend to form groups with people who either live or work nearby
• Group Cohesiveness is the extent to which group members like and trust one another, are committed to accomplishing a team goal, and share a feeling of group pride
• People join groups to obtain assistance or help
• In the workplace, the most common reason for joining groups is that employees are assigned to them
• Group Dynamics


  • Influential interpersonal processes that occur in and between groups over time
  • Determine the group’s inherent nature and trajectory: the actions the group takes, how it responds to its environment, and what it achieves
• For a collection of people to be called a group, there are 4 criteria that must be met:
• People who join political parties exemplify being in pursuit of a common goal—get a particular person or members of a particular party elected to office
• Reasons for joining groups

  • Assignment
  • Physical Proximity
  • Affiliation
  • Identification
  • Emotional Support
  • Assistance or Help
  • Common Interests
  • Common Goals
• Psychological reactance occurs when we believe someone is trying to influence us to take a particular action, leading us to react by doing the opposite
• Groups perform best when they are small and cohesive
• Groups have the greatest member satisfaction when consisting of approximately 5 members
• The higher the group's status, the greater its cohesiveness
• High performance is seen with certain types of tasks: Conjunctive tasks where all group members must contribute for the product to be completed
• High performance is seen with certain types of tasks: Additive tasks where the group's performance equals the sum of individual performances
• Large organizations work best when divided into smaller groups and committees
• High performance is seen with certain types of tasks: Disjunctive tasks where the group selects one solution from a pool of solutions
• Groups with confident members perform better than those with less confident members
• Groups with high-ability members outperform those with low-ability members
• Groups with task-related experience and certain personality traits perform better
• Good communication among group members is essential for successful group performance
• Group roles

  • Task-oriented roles
  • Social-oriented roles
  • Individual role
• Social facilitation involves the positive effects of others' presence on an individual's behavior
• People high in agreeableness tend to fill social-oriented roles
• People high in conscientiousness tend to fill task-oriented roles
• Presence of an audience increases performance in extraverts but not introverts
• Social inhibition involves negative effects of others' presence
• Audience effects occur when a group of people passively watch an individual
• Coaction affects behavior when 2 or more people are performing the same task in the presence of others
• Factors affecting behavior

  • Audience’s size
  • Physical proximity to the person/group
  • Status
• Groups are most likely to be affected by

  Large audiences of experts who are physically close to them