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- Human beings, like all large primates except the
orangutan, are group-living animals who influence
and must get along with others.
- The presence of other people sometimes facilitates
human performance and sometimes hinders it, but in
predictable ways. Research in the area of social facilitation
has shown that the presence of others is arousing,
and that arousal increases people's tendencies to
do what they are already predisposed to do. On easy
tasks, people are predisposed to respond correctly,
and so increasing this tendency facilitates performance.
In contrast, on novel or difficult tasks, people
are not predisposed to respond correctly, and so
arousal hinders performance by making it more likely
that they will respond incorrectly.
- A number of clever experiments have indicated that it
is the mere presence of others that leads to social facilitation
effects, although other factors, including evaluation
apprehension, can intensify them. Moreover,
distraction-conflict theory explains social facilitation by
noting that awareness of another person can distract
an individual and create a conflict between attending
to the other person and to the task at hand, a conflict
that is itself arousing.
- Social loafing is the tendency to exert less effort on a
group task when individual contributions cannot be
monitored.
- There is a tendency for large groups of people to
sometimes transform into unruly mobs. This may
happen because the anonymity and diffusion of
responsibility that are often felt in large groups can
lead to a mental state of deindividuation in which one
is less concerned with the future, with normal societal
constraints on behavior, and with the consequences
of one's actions.
- The deindividuated state of "getting lost in the
crowd" stands in marked contrast to how people normally
feel, which is quite individually identifiable.
Self-awareness theory maintains that focusing attention
on the self will lead to individuation and, in turn,
careful deliberation and concern with how well one's
actions conform to internal moral standards.
- Most people overestimate how much they personally
stand out and are identifiable to others, a phenomenon
known as the spotlight effect.
- Groupthink is the tendency for members of cohesive
groups to deal with the stress of making highly consequential
decisions by pursuing consensus more vigorously
than a critical analysis of all available
information. Groupthink has been implicated in the
faulty decision making that has led to a number of
policy fiascos.
- Group decision making is affected by how cohesive a
group is, how directive its leader is, and ingroup pressures
that can lead to self-censorship, or the tendency
for people to refrain from expressing their true feelings
or reservations in the face of apparent consensus
on the part of the other group members.
- Exchanging views with fellow group members can
lead to more extreme decisions and make people
more extreme in their attitudes. When groups make
riskier decisions than individuals, the risky shift has
occurred.
- Group discussion tends to create group polarization,
whereby initial leanings in a risky direction tend to
be made more risky by discussion and initial leanings
in a conservative direction tend to be made
more conservative.
- Group polarization is produced through persuasive
arguments, in that a larger pool of information and
arguments are made available to all group members.
It is also produced through social comparison.
- People from cultures that place a high value on risk
are more likely to make risky decisions after group
discussion than people from cultures that do not
value risk as highly.
- Polarization is a particularly common outcome in
homogeneous groups, something we noted may be
a particular problem in the modern world, as people
are likely to read newspapers and watch news
programs that fit their preexisting views. This polarization
may be further reinforced through communication
on the Internet, which makes it
increasingly easy for people to exchange information
solely with those who share their opinions.
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