chapter 12

• How Does Group Membership Affect People?

  Social psychology

  Our perception/understanding of others

  How we function in groups

  The basis of discrimination/stigmatization

  Why we hurt or help others

  Why we fall in love
• Social brain hypothesis

  Primates (includes Homo Sapiens)

  Have unusually large Neocortex

  Neo= new; evolved more recently

  In homo sapiens: ~90% of cerebral cortex is neocortex (grey matter; 4 lobes of the brain)

  ~10% of cerebral cortex is allocortex

  Allocortex: hippocampus and olfactory system

  PFC makes-up 1/3rd of Neocortex

  PFC needed to navigate the complex rules of social membership to maintain bonds and not violate group norms

  Neocortex or simply cortex: grey matter comprised of neuronal cell body, dendrites and unmyelinated fibers
• Q: What did Smaers et al. (2011, 2017) and Donahue et al. (2018) find regarding the prefrontal cortex and white matter in humans compared to higher primates?A: They reported that the prefrontal cortex and white matter were disproportionately greater in humans than in higher primates.
• Q: How do Barton and Venditti (2013) and Gabi et al. (2016) contribute to the discussion on brain anatomy differences between humans and higher primates?A: They dispute the findings of Smaers et al. and Donahue et al., suggesting a discrepancy in results.
• Q: What factors might explain the conflicting findings in studies comparing human and higher primate brain anatomy?A: The lack of consensus on anatomical boundary delineation and limitations of adopted methods, as mentioned by Sherwood and Smaers (2013).
• Q: Despite the disagreement on certain aspects, what aspect of human brain evolution seems to be widely agreed upon in the literature?A: There is agreement that an expansion of distributed white matter networks, rather than cortical volume of the frontal lobe, may have played a crucial role in the evolution of human higher cognitive functions.
• Conditions for group formation

  • Reciprocity
  • Transitivity
• Reciprocity


  If Person A helps (or harms) Person B, then Person B will help (or harm) Person A; in other words, if you scratch my back, I will scratch yours
• Transitivity


  People generally share their friends' opinions of other people; if Person A and Person B are friends, then if Person A likes Person C and dislikes Person D, then Person B will also tend to like Person C and dislike Person D
• Individuals typically organize themselves into groups based on reciprocity and transitivity
• Ingroup


  A group that an individual perceives themselves as belonging to
• Ingroup members


  Treated preferentially by other ingroup members
• Outgroup member


  Anyone not a member of the ingroup
• Outgroup categorization is the basis of stereotypes; tendency to lump outgroup members as all similar
• Ingroup members are seen as diverse
• Social identity theory


  The idea that ingroups consist of individuals who perceive themselves to be members of the same social category and experience pride through their group membership
• Ingroup favoritism


  The tendency for people to evaluate ingroup members more favorably than outgroup members and to allocate greater privilege to ingroup rather than outgroup members
• Minimal group paradigm


  Group assignment based on arbitrary or meaningless criteria (e.g., the flip of a coin places you in group A or group B)
• Ingroup favoritism persists underlining the important influence of group membership (evolutionary advantage)
• Outgroup homogeneity effect


  The tendency to view outgroup members as less varied than ingroup members
• Activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)

  Associated with ingroup bias

  Evidence of mPFC activation with minimal group paradigm (arbitrary group assignment)

  Less mPFC activation when individuals consider

  outgroup members

  Due, in part, to dehumanization of outgroup members

  Ingroup members are perceived as more “human” than outgroup members

  E.g., racial minorities (e.g., First Nations or Black individuals )
• Group decisions based on

  Course of action favored by the majority in the group

  Desire to fit-in to be a good group member influences

  Thoughts, emotions and ultimately actions

  Power of context – the social situation

  Has greater impact on our behavior than most of us believe

  The Milgram experiment (reviewed later in this chapter)

  A startling example of how situational influences often alter behavior
• Emotional-affective pain areas

  Anterior insula

  Emotional, cognitive, empathy processing of pain (Labrakakis, 2023)

  Dorsal portion of the anterior cingulate

  cortex (dACC) and the anterior insula

  Amygdala

  modulated by inhibitory prefrontal cortical inputs

  Sensation of pain

  processed in primary and secondary somatosensory (S1, S2) cortices and the posterior insula
• Q: What predicts helping behavior towards ingroup and outgroup members?A: Helping ingroup members is best predicted by anterior insula activation when witnessing their suffering and by self-reports of empathic concern. Conversely, not helping outgroup members is best predicted by nucleus accumbens activation and the extent of negative evaluation of the other. This suggests that empathy-related insula activation may drive costly helping, while antagonistic signals in the nucleus accumbens decrease the likelihood of helping.
• Thoughts, emotions, and actions

  • Strongly influenced by a desire to "fit in", to be good group members
• The influence on behavior of the context, the social situation

  • Powerful
• Group impact on decision-making

  • Initial attitudes of group members determine whether group actions are risky or more cautious
  • Decisions often follow those favored by the majority
  • The group polarization (adopting one side of an issue) or "groupthink"
• Under "groupthink" members may accept bad decisions to maintain group harmony
• Group neglects to weigh and process all relevant information
• To prevent this "groupthink" bias

  1. Group leaders should not express their opinions too strongly in discussions

  2. Consider alternative ideas or even get views of those outside the group

  3. Someone to play devils' advocate and argue against the majority viewpoint
• Social Facilitation

  the presence of others can enhance performance

  E.g., cyclists tend to pedal faster when they ride with other cyclists than when they ride alone

  Zajonc’s model predicts that social facilitation can enhance or impair performance:

  If the dominant response is relatively easy, the presence of others will enhance performance.

  If the dominant response is difficult, the presence of others will impair performance.
• Social Loafing

  the tendency for people to not work as hard in a group vs. when working alone

  Six blindfolded people wearing headphones were told to shout as loudly as they could. Some were told they were shouting alone; others were told they were shouting with other people. Participants did not shout as loudly when they believed that others were shouting with them.
• Individuated

  Most often we are individuated

  We have sense of ourselves as individuals and feel responsible for our actions
• Deindividuation

  a state of reduced individuality, reduced self-awareness, and reduced attention to personal standards; this phenomenon may occur when people are part of a group

  People are especially likely to become deindividuated when they are aroused and

  anonymous and when responsibility is diffused

  E.g., as in mob behavior

  When our sense of identity is lost, many, but not all people, tend to act according to the expectations of the situation or the people around us

  Deindividuated people often do things they would not do if they were alone
• Deindividuation Can Cause Extreme Behavior Law enforcement officers committed violence against peaceful protesters at a Black Lives Matter rally. The officers are deindividuated by their uniforms, their numbers, their level of arousal, and reduced expectations of accountability
• Conformity


  The altering of one's behaviors and opinions to match those of other people or to match other people's expectations
• Why we conform

  • Normative influence
  • Informational influence
• Normative influence


  The tendency for people to conform in order to fit in with the group
• Normative influence can sometimes cause people to conform even when they believe the group is doing the wrong thing
• Informational influence


  The tendency for people to conform when they assume that the behavior of others represents the correct way to respond