Group Structure & Process

Group

• two or more people
• who interact
• who are independent

Need to Belong

• evolutionary explanation: being in a group is survival advantage
• together hunting, mating, finding partner, etc is easier

Advantages

• goal attainment: goals can be reached quicker and more efficiently
  • e.g. help against procrastination
• epistemic: others as source of information (reduce uncertainties)
• behavioral safety: norms, social roles, rules
• social identify: sense of belonging and social identity

Belonging and Distinction

• provide us with a social identity
• groups give us a sense of belonging but also make us feel distinctive
  • In-Group Bias
    • tendency to favor members, characteristics, etc of own group in comparison to other groups
• support of self-esteem
  • feeling proud when my football team wins
    • I still can’t play any better and did not achieve anything, but I feel good anyways
  • not included in Maslov Hierachy → massive criticism

How to form Groups

Group Discussion I

• how to form a group quickly
  • people have different departments, jobs, pay, etc

Forming a Group

• form hierarchies (still a work-group) and self-assign tasks
• form their own deadlines → autonomy
• ice-breaker questions
  • talk about values (discipline, work ethic, commitment)
  • personal interest to be innovative
  • what do you need/want in a team?
  • how do you imagine the best team structure for you?
  • when do you have the best idea? what do you need for it?
  • how would you imagine the place where you are innovative?
• how for people are opening up should be up to the individual, not forced upon by the boss or team members
  • mixing work and home too much can break either relationship, maybe even both
• some hierarchy yes, but not too rigid and deep structure
• distribute responsibility and make them care

Stages of Group Development

• Forming
  • exchange of information, task exploration
• Storming
  • disagreement over goals and procedures
• Norming
  • formation of consensus and norms
• Performing
  • goal-focused efforts, orientation toward mastery & performance
• Adjourning
  • completion of tasks, dissolution of roles
  • “letting go” of tasks, taking 15 minutes to discuss how it went and what we can learn from the experience
  • moment of truth, no dependence on teammates anymore

Social Norms

• reflect groups generally accepted way of thinking feeling or acting
  • descriptive norms = what people think, feel, do
  • injunctive norms = what people should think, feel, do
  • can be different: e.g. littering: nobody should, but some do anyways
• rules needed so groups can function
• can form naturally
• do not have to be formal (written down)
• pressure to follow
  • group conformity → “yielding to group pressures”

Social Roles

• social, cultural, ecomnoic, political and historical factors
• social roles are assigned to groups
• group members perform role-appropriate behaviors
• role-associated behaviors are attributed to personality characteristics
• stereotypes of group froms

Conformity Bias

• Hoffman & Hurst
• n=48
  • orinthians and ackmians
  • employed within household (child care) or outside
  • biases already formed
  • stereotypes were assigned to whole groups, even to individuals which are in the group but do not share the same characteristics

Social Facilitation

Cockroaches

• Zajonc 1969
• n = 72
  • solving a simple and complex maze either with or without an audience
  • other cockroaches placed in glass containers around the maze
  • in a simple maze the audience improves the performance, in the complex maze not

Social Facilitation & Social Loafing

• presence of others
  • individual efforts can be evaluated (Facilitation)
  • alertness, evaluation apprehension
  • arousal
    • enhanced performance on simple task
    • impaired performance on complex task
• presence of others
  • individual efforts cannot be evaluated (Loafing)
  • no evaluation apprehension
    • I am not in the focus, but the group
  • relaxation
    • impaired performance on simple task
    • enhanced performance on complex task

Empirical Study

• Jackson & Williams 1985
• n = 48
  • setup
    • alone: working alone
    • co-worker: working together, scored individually
    • collective co-worker: working together, scored together
  • result
    • similar to cockroaches, simple and complex maze
    • better performance for complex task when working together
      • simple task → individual work is better
    • co-worker condition good for simple, bad for complex task

Distribute Tasks and Organize Teams

• hard tasks to groups → ability to relax, lay back and try out
• simple tasks to individuals → more attribution, higher performance
  • boring tasks to people with cheerleaders, maybe even open room offices
• open room offices are bad for more complex tasks, they require peace, privacy and time
  • even amazon warehouses installed privacy screens to improve working conditions

Performance

• general assumptions: groups are better at decision making
  • legal decision, steering groups, consultants
  • more brains make better decision
• groups are better if …
  • individuals can contribute their opinion
  • various perspectives are taken into account
  • motivated to find the (objectively) best solution
  • expert knowledge is shared and considered

Process Loss

• any aspect of group interaction that inhibits good problem solving
  • production blocking
  • shared information bias
  • groupthink
  • ingroup favoritism

Production Blocking - Idea Production

• Diehl and Stroebe (1987)

• todo

• individual brainstorming and disregard are best

• production blocking

  • if I have to wait I have time to forget and to overthink and therefore not share my ideas
    • they might not be the best, but quantity finds by chance a good idea

Avoid Production Blocking

• nominal group technique
  • leader introduces the problem, group members silently write down ideas concerning the issue, approx 10 to 15 minuts
  • sharing ideas
  • discussion of each idea
  • each member ranks the five most preferred solutions, writes the ranking down on a card, laeder collects cards, averages the rankings and informs
• electronic brainstorming
  • write down ideas at the same time
    • just typing and reading, no talking
    • gathering huge amounts of ideas and thoughts
  • advantages:
    • no production blocking
    • online exposure to other’s ideas can stimulate production of additional ideas
    • equal to nominal groups under 8 people
  • GPT: can also brainstorm with a LLM

Shared Information Bias

• stasser & thus
• todo p1 6 38,39
• some got all of the positive information, some only a few positive facts
• talking about things “they all know” - the negative
  • we are never figuring out about all the good stuff, because only the bad is shared
• shared information biastodo

Avoid shared information bias

• long enough discussions
  • more time = better information sharing in the end
• members should not share their initial preferences

• transactive memory: specific areas of expertise to every member - everybody should share all his information of area

Conformity or Groupthink

todo

Ingroup Favoritism

todo

Social Identity Theory

todo

Stereotype Threat

• fear of confirming others negative stereotipe of your own group
  • salience of social identity
  • todo

Empirical Evidence

• Steele & Aronson (1995)
  • todo
  • there are stereotypes which label good/bad on people
    • especially with negative stereotypes
• Shih, Pttinsky & Ambady (1999)
  • todo
  • positive stereotypes can also increase performance

Group Cohesiveness

• unity of a group
• benefits
  • less conflicts
  • encourages cooperation
  • following norms
  • attract and keep valued members
• negatives
  • get in way of optimal performance
    • if group itself is the goal of the group occasional conflict is necessary but often avoided
  • systematic biases

Diversity

• Diversity
• homogeneous group - nicer group dynamics
• heterogeneous group - better decisions - more feasible, sustainable
• todo

Groupthink

• the group and it’s consensus is the most important body
  • not the decisions it is taking or the facts it’s members are viewing
• todo just everything here is flawed

Dangerous for Management

• innovation is hard with groups set in their way
• common hatred can keep unsustainable groups together

Ways to Avoid Groupthink

• todo
• critical evaluator
  • check in regularly - who is the devils advocate? do we need outside counselling?
• leaders impartial
• parallel groups
  • same policy questions, but different leaders
• privately discuss
• outside experts
  • challenge core ideas
• devils advocate
  • one person asks “What if?”
    • nobody wants to be the devils advocate → randomize
• second chance meetings
  • are we still okay with this?

Group Polarization

• todo
• extremify own preferences to fit into the group
  • much more moderate when asked in isolation than within a group
• todo p1 6 64
• positive but also negative decisions
• skew of group consensus

Empirical evidence

• todo
• groups have less risk aversion
• todo

Avoid Group Polarization

• todo
• rely more on data - increase education

I am Done, my brain is fried

• todo p1 6 60 onwards

Deindividualization

• not exam relevant