Social Groups Chapter 7

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Social GroupsChapter 7
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The Group

• Humans are fundamentally social.
• If deprived of social contact over a long period
  of time, mental breakdown occurs.
• The Geneva Convention defines more than 30 days
  of solitary confinement as a form of torture.
• The group (defined) a collection of people
  interacting who share expectations about each
  others behavior.
• Groups have a shared sense of special belonging
  or membership they know they have something in
  common with each other. Examples a family,
  Carolina Panther fans, a rock band.
• The group is one of the fundamental components of
  social structure.

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The Group

• A group differs from an aggregate.
• An aggregate is a collection of people who merely
  happen to be in the same place at the same time,
  but who have no sense of special membership.
• Examples of aggregates moviegoers, plane
  travelers.
• Crowd a temporary cluster of individuals.
• Category a number of people who share similar
  characteristics.
• Category members may have never encountered each
  other.

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The Group

• All groups have an internal structure.
• They have membership boundaries.
• They have their own values, norms, statuses and
  roles.
• They have leaders and followers.
• The structure of a group may be rigid and
  explicit (such as in the military) or flexible
  and vague (such as among friends).
• People form groups for a purpose or a common
  goal.
• This purpose may be explicit or implicit.
• For this reason, group members tend to be similar
  to each other in ways that are relevant to this
  common purpose.

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The Group

• The more group members interact with each other,
  the more they are influenced by the groups norms
  and values, and the more similar to each other
  they are likely to become.

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Two Basic Types of Social Groups

• 1. Primary group small, intimate, lasting,
  meaningful.
• The vast bulk of social interaction in
  pre-industrial societies occurs in primary
  groups.
• 2. Secondary group large or small, formal, task
  oriented, temporary, impersonal or anonymous.
• Since the emergence of industrial societies,
  there has been a dramatic increase in secondary
  group interaction.
• Large secondary groups always contain smaller
  primary groups within them.

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Small Groups

• A small group is one that contains few enough
  members that they can relate or interact as
  individuals with one another.
• A small group may be a primary or secondary
  group.
• Small groups have a tendency to develop personal
  or primary group relationships if they meet a lot
  over time.
• However, if the group meets only a few times and
  disbands after it has fulfilled its purpose, then
  members may remain impersonal and relatively
  anonymous toward each other.

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The Effects of Group Size

• Basic insight the smaller the group, the more
  personal and intense the interaction can become.
• The dyad the smallest possible group, consisting
  of two people.
• Its distinguishing characteristic is that each
  member has to take account of the other.
• If one ignores the other, then the group is
  destroyed.
• Dyads are highly unstable.
• This has implications for the American family and
  its middle class emphasis on the nuclear
  structure. The nuclear family has fewer supports
  from extended family members.

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The Effects of Group Size

• The triad is significantly different from a dyad,
  because any one member can ignore the others
  without destroying the group.
• The triad is more stable than the dyad.
• Beyond 3 members, groups get progressively more
  stable.
• In the triad, 2 members can unite against the
  third, subjecting them to peer pressure.

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The Effects of Group Size

• The quality of group interaction changes with
  increases in the size of the group.
• Group sizes of 2 to 7 members allow all members
  to take part in the same conversation.
• Beyond 7 members, it becomes difficult to hold
  people to the same conversation, and usually
  several simultaneous conversations begin to
  occur.
• Groups larger than roughly 12 members usually
  cannot have all members engaged in the same
  conversation unless one member takes the role of
  leader and regulates the interaction.
• Something else happens because individuals can
  no longer tailor their speech to specific
  individuals, speech becomes more formal.

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The Effects of Group Size

• Generally the larger the group, the more
  difficult the interaction.
• A sudden increase in group size can be
  particularly disruptive because
• 1. Interaction becomes more difficult.
• 2. New members usually bring changes to the old
  norms of interaction, making old members
  uncomfortable until new norms emerge.

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Leadership

• Leadership is always present in groups.
• A leader is someone who is consistently able to
  influence the behavior of others, usually by
  virtue of certain personality traits.
• Even a group that claims to have no leader
  usually has a leader.

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Two types of leadership in small groups

• 1. Instrumental leadership the kind necessary to
  organize and achieve a goal.
• This leader is goal oriented.
• 2. Expressive leadership the kind necessary to
  create group harmony and solidarity.
• This leader focuses on keeping morale high and on
  minimizing conflicts. They tend to be well liked.
• In the American family, men are traditionally
  socialized into instrumental leadership roles
  while women are traditionally socialized into
  expressive leadership roles.

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Leadership

• Expressive leaders (who are well liked) are
  sometimes pressured to be instrumental leaders by
  the members of the group.
• However, people who direct group activities
  (instrumental leaders) tend to lose popularity
  fairly quickly.
• They are greatly respected, but less well liked.
• Result leaders generally do not fill both
  instrumental and expressive roles at the same
  time for very long.
• When an expressive leader becomes an instrumental
  leader, it is not uncommon to see another member
  of the group assume an expressive leadership role.

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Leadership

• When a newly formed group chooses a leader, it
  usually gives both instrumental and expressive
  roles to the same person.
• Generally what occurs is that this leader loses
  popularity over the next 3 or 4 meetings. By the
  4th meeting, few members still consider the
  leader likable.
• In such cases, the original leader may retain the
  instrumental role, but another member emerges to
  assume the expressive role.

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Leadership

• Do leaders have distinctive characteristics?
• Generally, they are more likely to be
• Taller than average
• Judged better looking
• Rated higher in IQ
• More sociable
• More talkative
• More self confident
• More liberal in political outlook (even in
  conservative groups)

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Leadership

• However, personality traits alone cannot tell use
  who would make a good leader because different
  conditions require different leadership
  qualities.
• The same leader who may be appropriate for
  fighting a war may be inappropriate for waging
  peace.

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Three Basic Styles of Leadership

• 1. Authoritarian where leaders simple give
  orders.
• 2. Democratic where leaders seek group
  consensus.
• 3. Laissez faire where leaders seem easy going
  and make little attempt to direct or organize the
  group.
• In the U.S. democratic style leadership is
  usually the most effective style in holding small
  groups together and accomplishing goals.
• Authoritarian leaders are usually less effective
  because groups can get bogged down in internal
  conflicts.
• Laissez faire leaders are less effective because
  the group loses goals and directives.

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Three Basic Styles of Leadership

• However, there are situations where democratic
  leadership is less effective.
• In emergency situations where speed and
  efficiency are primary, an authoritarian style
  produces the most effective leader.
• In ordinary friendship situations where folks are
  just hanging out and relaxing, the laissez-faire
  style works well.
• Within any formal organization or bureaucracy,
  there may be different situations that call for
  different styles of leadership.
• It is not uncommon to see an authoritarian style
  of leadership being used on the job when a
  democratic style would be more effective.
• Americans are socialized into democratic ideals
  and tend to react negatively to authoritarian
  leaders in non-crisis situations.

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Group Decision Making

• When it comes to making decisions, are two heads
  better than one?
• Yes, but only for determinate tasks. These are
  problems that have only one correct solution.
• Two heads are not necessarily better than one
  when a problem has no necessarily-correct
  solution. In other words, for indeterminate
  tasks.
• When several solutions seem correct, group
  decision making may not be the best way to go.

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How do groups come to a decision?

• Usually, through consensus.
• Only rarely does a majority impose its view on a
  reluctant minority.
• No matter what the views of the individual
  members at the outset, the general tendency is
  for discussion to bring about general conformity.
• This insight has applications for understanding
  the jury deliberation process. Juries usually
  move toward general agreement and certainty.
• The only exception to this pattern toward
  consensus is when members represent the fixed
  opinions of others outside the group, such as in
  union-management bargaining.

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Group Decision Making

• Because members tend to arrive at a consensus,
  are groups likely to make less risky or more
  risky decisions than individuals?
• Generally groups are likely to make more risky
  decisions than individuals.
• This is called the risky shift and is partly
  explained by individuals being absolved of
  personal responsibility for the decisions made by
  the group.
• An example of a disastrous risky shift was the
  decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Recent evidence
  shows that the CIA and other security agencies
  adopted a risky shift policy under pressure from
  President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

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Group Decision Making

• Conclusion
• The process of group discussion tends to
  intensify members opinions at the same time that
  consensus begins to emerge.
• Discussion toward consensus breeds boldness in
  group decision-making.
• In other words, the initially tentative opinions
  of members becomes more bold as the group moves
  toward consensus.
• The problem is that unanimous decisions that are
  boldly stated can cause major problems if the
  decision happens to be wrong. Part of the issue
  involves groupthink.

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Groupthink

• Groupthink is the informal norm associated with
  small groups that says that loyalty to the group
  (or group harmony) is more important than asking
  the tough questions that may cause group
  arguments.
• Groupthink keeps members from rocking the boat
  by disagreeing with each other. An atmosphere of
  consensus is assumed.
• Historical American foreign policy examples where
  groupthink occurred
• 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion (John Kennedy)
• 1965 Vietnam escalation (Lyndon Johnson)
• 2003 Iraq invasion (George Bush)
• In each of these historical blunders, either the
  President permitted little disagreement (thus
  encouraging groupthink) and/or groupthink emerged
  among the inner circle of policy advisors.

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Groupthink

• Policy Implication
• Beware of leaders who surround themselves with
  members who dont like to rock the boat.
• Their decisions may be bold, but wrong. Their
  decisions may be overly risky, they are overly
  certain that they are right, and their decisions
  may be a product of groupthink.

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Group Conformity

• The smaller the group, the greater the intensity
  of social interaction. Therefore the pressure to
  conform is particularly powerful in the small
  group due to the intense atmosphere.
• This insight was confirmed by the research of
  Solomon Asch (1951, 1955, 1956).
• Asch found that unanimous group pressure of 4 or
  more people to conform to a wrong answer swayed
  one-third of his subjects away from their
  (obviously) right answer to the (obviously) wrong
  unanimous group answer.

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Soloman Asch on group conformity

• Subjects were shown lines of different lengths
  and asked to match the lines. Without group
  pressure they did fine. But when the subject
  witnessed others mis-matching the lines, there
  was group pressure on the subject to conform to
  the groups mismatched lines. In one-third of
  the cases, the subjects over-rode their own
  assessment and adopted the unanimous wrong
  assessment held by the others.

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Soloman Asch on group conformity

• Conclusion group pressure can override an
  individuals own physical senses. People may
  yield to the group by giving the answer they
  think the group wants.
• They may suspect or know it to be the wrong
  answer, or they may allow the group to override
  their own assessment and believe they are wrong.

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Soloman Asch on group conformity

• Why did some of the people conform to the wrong
  answer?
• Researchers asked the subjects this question and
  learned that
• 1. People want to be well liked, so they conform
  to the group rather than rock the boat.
• 2. People doubt their own correct answers when
  everyone else provides a consistently wrong
  answer.
• The group pressure implied by the opinion of
  others can lead to self-modification, effectively
  making you see almost anything.
• Later psychological research suggests that the
  actual perception of line length changed as a
  function of exposure to others views of its
  length. It is less of a conscious judgment.

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Solomon Asch on group conformity

• Asch varied the number of conspirators who gave
  the wrong answers between 1 and 15.
• He found that the subjects conformed to a group
  of 3 or 4 as readily as they did to a larger
  group.
• Researchers varied the Asch experiment to address
  the issue of unanimous group consensus.
• If the group was not unanimous, then subjects
  felt much freer to stick to their original
  opinion. All it took was one other person
  disagreeing with the group, and under this
  circumstance less than 10 of subjects adjusted
  their opinion to the majority group (wrong)
  opinion.

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Group Pressure and Obedience

• Both the Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram studies
  suggest that
• 1. People tend to obey legitimate authority
  figures even when there is evidence it may be
  wrong behavior.
• 2. Some people will conform to group pressure
  even when there is physical evidence such
  conformity may be incorrect.
• In the Asch experiments, people did not attribute
  their wrong behavior to an authority figure.
  Rather, they attributed their wrong behavior to
  misjudgment or poor eyesight.
• This misjudgment can occur at the perceptual
  level, causing people to doubt their own senses
  in favor of the group definition. The group has a
  powerful effect on perception.

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Obedience the Zimbardo research

• Another famous study which contributes to why
  people conform was done by Philip Zimbardo.
• Zimbardo learned that people do not just obey
  from the pressure of authority and/or from group
  pressure - they also obey from the pressure of
  particular social situations and their implied
  statuses and roles.
• Role expectations play an important part in how
  we behave.

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Philip Zimbardo Status and Role in a Mock Prison
(1971)

• Zimbardo set up a social psychological experiment
  that quickly went awry. He had undergraduates
  play the role of prisoners and prison guards in a
  mock prison environment.
• What is the role expectation of prison guard or
  prisoner?
• The experiment was cut short after only 6 days
  because those playing the role of prison guard
  quickly became mean and sadistic, while the
  prisoners became depressed and passive.
• Link to youtube clip The Stanford Prison
  Experiment

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Zimbardo

• Zimbardo found that even the temporary adoption
  of a status can quickly affect ones personality.
• At the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (2004), American
  guards quickly became sadistic in much the same
  way that the student guards did back in 1971.
• Conclusion
• The social situation and its implied roles are
  powerful influences of how people can be expected
  to behave.
• Good people can do harm to others if they find
  themselves in particular social situations within
  the context of socially approved roles, rules,
  norms, a legitimizing ideology, and institutional
  support that transcends individual agency.
• See Zimbardos recent book, The Lucifer Effect,
  for more information.

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Ingroups and Outgroups

• Every group has membership boundaries.
• Note that these boundaries may be vague in some
  cases (like peer groups).
• All groups tend to maintain their boundaries by
  developing a sense of us and them.
• Ingroup a social group commanding a members
  esteem and loyalty.
• Outgroup a social group one does not belong to
  toward which one feels competition or opposition.
  
• People tend to regard their ingroups as special.
  By the same token, they regard the outgroup as
  less worthy or perhaps even with hostility.

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Ingroups and Outgroups

• The very presence of an enemy outgroup tends to
  promote ingroup solidarity or loyalty.
• Thus, conflict between groups increases the
  loyalty and solidarity of members within each
  group.

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Social Networks

• Social networks are webs of relationships that
  link the individual directly to other people, and
  through them, indirectly to even more people.
• An individuals social network is not a group
  because its members dont all interact together.
• Social networks provide access to resources and
  are helpful in getting jobs and solving problems
  requiring special resources.
• In modern industrial societies the average
  individual has a network of roughly 500-2500
  acquaintances. The rise of the Internet and links
  like My Space have greatly helped
  computer-literate people widen their social
  networks.
• Today it is relatively easy to find other people
  interested in the same obscure topic or
  underground band, thanks to Internet resources.

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Reference Group

• A reference group is a group which people compare
  themselves with when they evaluate themselves.
• We constantly evaluate ourselves. We do this by
  comparing ourselves with others and the standards
  of other groups.
• The verdict of our evaluations is strongly
  influenced by the reference groups we choose to
  compare ourselves with (or the one we are
  provided with to compare).
• If a trainee evaluates their performance by
  referencing the performance of experienced
  veterans, their self evaluation will be low.
• Similarly, commercial culture teaches young women
  to rely on runway models as their reference group
  which guarantees she will feel she needs
  improvement, and thus buy something.
• It is important to use realistic reference groups
  and realistic role models.

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Formal Organizations

• Until a century ago, nearly all social life took
  place in primary groups.
• Today the social setting is dominated by large,
  impersonal, formal organizations.
• Today, we are likely to be born in a formal
  organization, just as we are likely to die in
  one.
• A formal organization is a large secondary group
  that is deliberately and rationally designed to
  achieve specific objectives.

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Formal Organizations

• In formal organizations, rights and
  responsibilities are attached mainly to the
  office or role a person occupies and not to the
  person as an individual.
• Formal orgs are a double edged sword
• On the one hand we need them for our material
  standard of living, yet on the other hand their
  size, impersonality, and power can be
  dehumanizing.
• Max Weber believed that much of the feeling of
  alienation (powerlessness) of industrial
  societies stems from the rise of bureaucracies.

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Bureaucracy

• A bureaucracy is a formal organization with an
  authority structure that is hierarchical.
• Bureaucracies are shaped like a pyramid, where
  there are a few people with a lot of power at the
  top, and there are many people with little power
  at the bottom of the pyramid.
• Those at the top command the behaviors of those
  at the bottom, making them efficient.
• The bureaucracy is highly efficient and rational.
  Many people can be processed efficiently,
  thereby allowing mass access to education,
  government, and other resources.
• Bureaucracies uphold the values of rationality,
  productivity, efficiency, obedience, and
  meritocracy.
• Because they value meritocracy and achieved
  statuses, they liberate us from the traditional
  values of ascription, racism, sexism, and other
  non-rational bigotries.

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Six Characteristics of Bureaucracy

• 1. Specialized tasks within the organization.
• 2. Hierarchy of statuses and offices.
• 3. Rules and regulations that serve as rational
  guides for behavior.
• 4. Technical competence to perform specialized
  tasks used as a criteria of evaluation.
• 5. Impersonality, where rules take precedence
  over feelings.
• 6. Formal, written records to assure rationality.

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Max Webers Analysis

• While Max Weber appreciated the rational nature
  of bureaucracies, he also found them problematic.
• To Weber, the world was becoming disenchanting as
  it became increasingly rationalized.
• Rationalization refers to the replacement of
  traditional, primary group based interaction
  (spontaneous, rule-of-thumb, emotionalized) with
  abstract, explicit, carefully calculated rules
  and procedures that are associated with secondary
  group interaction.
• Weber argued that the modern world was becoming
  increasingly dull, with its mystery and beauty
  being replaced by the new values of technical
  rationality, efficiency, predictability,
  productivity, and other dehumanizing values.

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Max Weber on Bureaucracy

• Bureaucracies bring the subordination of humans
  to the interests of impersonal, technical goals.
  The spirit of humanity, to Weber, was trapped in
  the iron cage of bureaucracy.
• Within the bureaucracy, people are treated
  impersonally as cases or numbers.
• The members of the bureaucracy are expected to
  remain impersonal in their contacts with the
  public to be detached from their own
  humanity. Feelings interfere with the efficiency
  of the system.

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The Informal Structure of Bureaucracy

• Despite Webers concerns about the cold-hearted
  nature of bureaucracies, there is also an
  informal side, where primary groups reside.
• Within all bureaucracies, informal networks
  develop and primary groups emerge.
• Therefore, all bureaucracies consist of a bundle
  of formal rules and regulations mixed with a
  bundle of informal norms and relationships.
• These informal norms are created by the members
  themselves and are a source of humanity within
  the machine.
• Note - The 1970s TV show MASH captured this
  informal side.

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The Informal Structure of Bureaucracy

• In reality, the formal structure of a bureaucracy
  provides only a general framework for social
  interaction.
• Ultimately it is the people who create and
  operate an organization, and in essence the
  bureaucracy is a negotiated reality.
• Within the larger structure of a bureaucracy,
  members will negotiate informal norms and
  patterns that have little relationship to the
  formal hierarchy.

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Dysfunctions of Bureaucracy

• Max Weber appreciated the paradox of
  bureaucracies. In a mass society a bureaucracy is
  functional for most people, yet it is
  dehumanizing too.
• Weber was especially interested in how
  bureaucracies dehumanize us they detach us from
  our humanity by turning us into cold technocrats.
  
• Weber and other researchers have identified a
  number of dysfunctions of bureaucracies.

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Dysfunctions of Bureaucracy

• 1. Inefficient in unusual cases.
• 2. Inability to be innovative.
• 3. Goal displacement.
• 4. Bureaucratic enlargement.
• 5. The bureaucratic personality detached, a
  technocrat.
• 6. Oligarchy (rule by the few) and its
  anti-democratic, authoritarian nature.
• 7. De-humanization.

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McDonaldization

• George Ritzer recently expanded on Webers
  concerns about over-rationalization. He argues
  that our society is increasingly organized around
  four principles that McDonalds has perfected
• 1. Efficiency. Both product and service are
  guided by this value.
• 2. Calculability fixed amounts of product for
  fixed prices.
• 3. Uniformity and predictability. Every product
  is made the same way.
• 4. Control through automation. The human element
  is eliminated as much as possible through
  assembly lines, computers and automation.

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Other Forms of Organization

• Most formal organizations are similar in
  structure, but there are some variations.
• The Japanese Corporation
• The extraordinary achievements of Japan are
  largely due to the unique features of the
  Japanese industrial corporation.
• Emphasis upon the group over the individual.
• Membership is a reciprocal lifetime contract,
  providing job security to workers.
• All promotions are from within.
• Workers are organized into small teams, and it is
  the team not the individual which is
  evaluated. Each individual may belong to
  different teams over the years.

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The Japanese Corporation

• The top managers are not paid that much more than
  the bottom workers, perhaps 3 to 5 times more,
  but nothing like the American system where the
  top makes 400 times more.
• Decision-making is collective and discussion
  occurs from the bottom up. Top officials merely
  ratify.
• Japanese corporations go beyond strictly business
  to offer their workers welfare, including
  housing, recreation, health care, education, day
  care, etc.
• They fuse leisure activities with work
  activities.
• In turn, Japanese workers show great loyalty to
  the firm.

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The Collective

• Collectives are nonbureaucratic organizations
  often associated with progressives seeking to
  affirm participatory democracy. They have several
  features
• Little division of labor. The individual usually
  has a variety of tasks.
• Generally authority is democratic and arises from
  consensus, with a democratic leadership style.
• Individual initiative is valued.
• Members treat each others is equals.
• Strength affirms democracy and equality.
• Weakness less efficient, and only applicable to
  relatively small scale enterprises. The larger a
  collective gets, the more bureaucratic it is
  likely to get.

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Organizational Reform

• The rise of humanism during the 1960s resulted in
  the criticism of bureaucracies because of their
  tendency to stifle personal growth, and because
  of their oligarchy-emphasis. As a result, there
  has been a call to reform bureaucracies with new
  policies like
• flextime,
• periodic sabbaticals,
• paternity leave,
• job security,
• and a more egalitarian division of labor.

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Organizational Reform

• Ultimately the most significant reforms will be
  those that allow greater social control over the
  affairs of bureaucracies.
• We need to develop a means of making
  bureaucracies more accountable to the public
  interest and to their workers.
• In the final analysis organizations exist for the
  benefit of people, not the other way around.

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Humanizing the Bureaucracy

• There are at least 3 ways to make bureaucracies
  more humane
• 1. Social inclusiveness. The organization should
  make everyone feel included, and work to minimize
  outgroup hatreds.
• 2. Sharing responsibilities. Reduce rigid,
  oligarchal structures by spreading power more
  widely and keeping lines of communication open
  between super- and sub-ordinates.
• 3. Expanding opportunities for advancement.
  Reduce the number of workers stuck in dead end
  jobs and encourage new means of upward mobility.

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End of Chapter 7