The Psychology of Groups

Psychologists study groups because nearly all human activities—working, learning, worshiping, relaxing, playing, and even sleeping—occur in groups. The lone individual cut off from all groups is rare–even during a pandemic. Most of us live our lives in groups, and these groups have a profound impact on our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Many psychologists focus on single individuals, but social psychologists expand their analysis to include groups, organizations, communities, and cultures.

The chapter reviews some critical findings from group studies. Researchers have asked many questions about people and groups: Do people work as hard as they can in groups? Do groups take more risks than individuals? Do they make wiser decisions than single individuals? Sometimes, the answers are not what common sense and folk wisdom might suggest.

The Psychological Significance of Groups

Many people proclaim their autonomy and independence. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson, they avow, “I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions . . . . I will seek my own” (1903/2004, p. 127). Even though people can live separately and apart from others, they join with others because groups meet their psychological and social needs.

The Need to Belong

Across individuals, societies, and eras, humans consistently seek inclusion over exclusion, membership over isolation, and acceptance over rejection. As Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary (1995) wrote, humans need to belong: “a pervasive drive to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and impactful interpersonal relationships” (p. 497). Most of us satisfy this need by joining groups. According to the 2010 Census, the average household size is 2.58 people. When surveyed, 87.3% of Americans reported living with other people, including family members, partners, and roommates (Davis & Smith, 2007). The majority, ranging from 50% to 80%, reported regularly doing things in groups, such as attending a sporting event together, visiting one another for the evening, sharing a meal, or going out as a group to see a movie (Putnam, 2000).

People respond negatively when their need to belong is unfulfilled. Accepted members of a group tend to feel happier and more satisfied. But should they be rejected by a group, they feel unhappy, helpless, and depressed. Studies of ostracism—the deliberate exclusion from groups—indicate this experience is highly stressful and can lead to depression, confused thinking, and even aggression (Williams, 2007). When researchers used a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner to track neural responses to exclusion, they found that people left out of a group activity displayed heightened cortical activity in two specific areas of the brain—the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula. These areas of the brain are associated with the experience of physical pain sensations (Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003). It hurts, quite literally, to be left out of a group. According to Medical New Today, depression rates significantly increased during the first year of the pandemic.

Affiliation in Groups

Groups not only satisfy the need to belong, but they also provide their members with information, assistance, and social support. Leon Festinger’s theory of social comparison (1950, 1954) suggested that, in many cases, people join with others to evaluate the accuracy of their personal beliefs and attitudes. Stanley Schachter (1959) explored this process by putting individuals in ambiguous, stressful situations and asking them if they wished to wait alone or with others. He found that people affiliate in such situations—they seek the company of others.

Although any companionship is appreciated, we prefer those who provide us with reassurance, support, and accurate information. In some cases, we also prefer to join others who are even worse off than us. Imagine, for example, how you would respond when the teacher hands back the test and yours is marked 85%. Do you want to affiliate with a friend who got a 95% or a friend who got a 78%? People seek out and compare themselves to the less fortunate to maintain a sense of self-worth. This process is known as downward social comparison.

Identity and Membership

Groups are not only founts of information during times of ambiguity but also help us answer the existentially significant question, “Who am I?” People are defined not only by their traits, preferences, interests, likes, and dislikes but also by their friendships, social roles, family connections, and group memberships. The self is not just a “me” but also a “we.”

Even demographic qualities such as sex or age can influence us if we categorize ourselves based on how people identify. Social identity theory, for example, assumes that we don’t just classify other people into such social categories as man, woman, Anglo, elderly, or college student, but we also categorize ourselves. Tajfel and Turner (1986) state social identities are directed by our memberships in particular groups—or social categories. If we strongly identify with these categories, we will ascribe the characteristics of the typical member of these groups to ourselves and so stereotype ourselves. If, for example, we believe that college students are intellectual, then we will assume we, too, are intellectual if we identify with that group (Hogg, 2001).

Groups also provide a variety of means for maintaining and enhancing a sense of self-worth, as our assessment of the quality of the groups we belong to influences our collective self-esteem (Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990). If a personal setback shakes our self-esteem, we can focus on our group’s success and prestige. In addition, by comparing our group to other groups, we frequently discover that we are members of the better group and can take pride in our superiority. By denigrating other groups, we elevate our personal and collective self-esteem (Crocker & Major, 1989).

Mark Leary’s sociometer model goes so far as to suggest that “self-esteem is part of a sociometer that monitors peoples’ relational value in other people’s eyes” (2007, p. 328). He maintains self-esteem is not just an index of one’s sense of personal value but also an indicator of acceptance into groups. Like a gauge that indicates how much fuel is left in the tank, a dip in self-esteem indicates exclusion from our group is likely. Disquieting feelings of self-worth prompt us to search for and correct characteristics and qualities that put us at risk of social exclusion. Self-esteem is not just high self-regard but the self-approbation we feel when group members (Leary & Baumeister, 2000).

Evolutionary Advantages of Group Living

Groups might be humans’ most helpful invention, for they provide us with the means to reach goals that would elude us if we remained alone. Individuals in groups can secure advantages and avoid disadvantages plaguing lone individuals. In his theory of social integration, Moreland concludes that groups tend to form whenever “people become dependent on one another for the satisfaction of their needs” (1987, p. 104). The advantages of group life may be so significant that humans are biologically prepared to seek membership and avoid isolation. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, because groups have increased humans’ overall fitness for countless generations, individuals who carried genes that promoted solitude-seeking were less likely to survive and procreate than those with genes that prompted them to join groups (Darwin, 1859/1963). This process of natural selection culminated in the creation of a modern human who seeks membership in groups instinctively, for most of us are descendants of “joiners” rather than “loners.”

Motivation and Performance

Social Facilitation in Groups

Do people perform more effectively when alone or when part of a group? Norman Triplett (1898) examined this issue using empirical studies in psychology. While watching bicycle races, Triplett noticed that cyclists were faster when they competed against other racers rather than against the clock. To determine if the presence of others leads to the psychological stimulation that enhances performance, he arranged for 40 children to play a game that involved turning a small reel as quickly as possible (see Figure 1). When he measured how quickly they turned the reel, he confirmed that children performed slightly better when playing the game in pairs than when they played alone (see Stroebe, 2012; Strube, 2005).

Triplett succeeded in sparking interest in a phenomenon now known as social facilitation: the enhancement of an individual’s performance when that person works in the presence of other people. However, Robert Zajonc (1965) specified when social facilitation does and does not occur. After reviewing prior research, Zajonc noted that the facilitating effects of an audience usually only occur when the task requires the person to perform dominant responses (i.e., ones that are well-learned or based on instinctive behaviors). Suppose the task requires nondominant responses (i.e., novel, complicated, or untried behaviors that the organism has never performed before or has performed only infrequently). In that case, the presence of others inhibits performance. Hence, students write poorer quality essays on complex philosophical questions when they labor in a group rather than alone (Allport, 1924), but they make fewer mistakes in solving simple, low-level multiplication problems with an audience or a co-actor than when they work in isolation (Dashiell, 1930).

Social facilitation depends on the task: other people facilitate performance when the task is so simple that it requires only dominant responses, but others interfere when the task requires nondominant responses. However, several psychological processes combine to influence when social facilitation, not social interference, occurs. Studies of the challenge-threat response and brain imaging, for example, confirm that we respond physiologically and neurologically to the presence of others (Blascovich, Mendes, Hunter, & Salomon, 1999). Other people also can trigger evaluation apprehension, particularly when we feel that our performance will be known to others, and those others might judge it negatively (Bond, Atoum, & VanLeeuwen, 1996). The presence of other people can also cause perturbations in our capacity to concentrate on and process information (Harkins, 2006). Distractions due to the presence of other people have been shown to improve performance on specific tasks, such as the Stroop task, but undermine performance on more cognitively demanding tasks(Huguet, Galvaing, Monteil, & Dumas, 1999).

Social Loafing

Groups usually outperform individuals. A single student working alone on a paper will get less done in an hour than four students working on a group project. One person playing a tug-of-war game against a group will lose. A crew of movers can pack up and transport your household belongings faster than you can by yourself. As the saying goes, “Many hands make light the work” (Littlepage, 1991; Steiner, 1972).

Groups, though, tend to be underachievers. Studies of social facilitation confirmed the positive motivational benefits of working with other people on well-practiced tasks in which each member’s contribution to the collective enterprise can be identified and evaluated. But what happens when tasks require a genuinely collective effort? When people work together, they must coordinate their activities and contributions to reach maximum efficiency—but they rarely do (Diehl & Stroebe, 1987). For example, three people in a tug-of-war competition invariably pull and pause at slightly different times, so their efforts are uncoordinated. The result is coordination loss: the three-person group is stronger than a single person but not three times as strong. People don’t exert as much effort when working on a collective endeavor or expend as much cognitive effort trying to solve problems as they do when working alone. They display social loafing (Latané, 1981).

Bibb Latané, Kip Williams, and Stephen Harkins (1979) examined coordination losses and social loafing by arranging for students to cheer or clap alone or in groups of varying sizes. The students cheered alone or in 2- or 6-person groups or were led to believe they were in 2- or 6-person groups (those in the “pseudo-groups” wore blindfolds and headsets that played masking sound). As Figure 2 indicates, groups generated more noise than solitary subjects, but productivity dropped as the groups grew. In dyads, each subject worked at only 66% of capacity, and in 6-person groups, at 36%. Productivity also dropped when subjects merely believed they were in groups. If subjects thought that one other person was shouting with them, they shouted 82% as intensely, and if they thought five other people were shouting, they reached only 74% of their capacity. These losses in productivity were not due to coordination problems; this decline in production could be attributed only to a reduction in effort—to social loafing (Latané et al., 1979, Experiment 2).

Teamwork

Social loafing is not a rare phenomenon. When sales personnel work in groups with shared goals, they tend to “take it easy” if another salesperson is nearby who can do their work (George, 1992). People trying to generate new, creative ideas in group brainstorming sessions usually put in less effort and are thus less productive than people who generate new ideas individually (Paulus & Brown, 2007). People carrying out all sorts of physical and mental tasks expend less effort when working in groups, and the larger the group, the more they loaf (Karau & Williams, 1993).

Groups can, however, overcome this impediment to performance through teamwork. A group may include many talented individuals, but they must learn how to pool their abilities and energies to maximize the team’s performance. Team goals must be set, work patterns structured, and a sense of group identity developed. Individual members must learn how to coordinate their actions, and any strains and stresses in interpersonal relations need to be identified and resolved (Salas, Rosen, Burke, & Goodwin, 2009).

Group Development

Making Decisions in Groups

Groups are particularly useful when deciding, as groups can draw on more resources than lone individuals. A single individual may know a great deal about a problem and possible solutions, but the combined knowledge of a group far surpasses his or her information. Groups generate more ideas and possible solutions by discussing the problem and can more objectively evaluate the options they generate during discussion. Before accepting a solution, a group may require that a certain number of people favor it or that it meets some other standard of acceptability. People generally feel that a group’s decision will be superior to an individual’s.

Groups, however, do not always make good decisions. For example, juries sometimes render verdicts that contradict the evidence presented. Community groups take radical stances on issues before thinking through all the ramifications. Military strategists concoct plans that seem, in retrospect, ill-conceived and short-sighted. Why do groups sometimes make poor decisions?

Group Polarization

Let’s say you are part of a group assigned to make a presentation. One of the group members suggests showing a short video that, although amusing, includes some provocative images. Even though initially you think the clip is inappropriate, you change your mind as the group discusses the idea. The group decides, eventually, to throw caution to the wind and show the clip—and your instructor is horrified by your choice.

This hypothetical example is consistent with studies of groups making decisions that involve risk. Common sense suggests that groups exert a moderating, subduing effect on their members. However, when researchers looked at groups closely, they discovered that many groups shift toward more extreme decisions rather than less after group interaction. Discussion, it turns out, doesn’t moderate people’s judgments after all. Instead, it leads to group polarization: judgments made after group discussion will be more extreme in the same direction as the average of individual judgments made before the discussion (Myers & Lamm, 1976). If most members feel that taking risks is more acceptable than exercising caution, the group will become riskier after a discussion. For example, in France, where people generally like their government but dislike Americans, group discussion improved their attitude toward their government but exacerbated their negative opinions of Americans (Moscovici & Zavalloni, 1969). Similarly, prejudiced people who discussed racial issues with other prejudiced individuals became even more damaging, but relatively unprejudiced people exhibited even more acceptance of diversity when in groups (Myers & Bishop, 1970).

Common Knowledge Effect or Shared Information Bias

One advantage of making group decisions is greater access to information. When seeking a solution to a problem, group members can see their idea,  knowledge, and judgments with each other through discussions. But all too often, groups spend much of their discussion time examining common knowledge—information that two or more group members know in common—rather than unshared information. This common knowledge effect or shared information bias will result in a bad outcome if something known by only one or two group members is very important.

Researchers have studied this bias using the hidden profile task. On such tasks, information known to many group members suggests that one alternative, Option A, is best. However, Option B is the better choice, but all the facts that support Option B are only known to individual group members—they are not common knowledge in the group. As a result, the group will likely spend most of its time reviewing the factors that favor Option A, and never discover any of its drawbacks. Consequently, groups often perform poorly when working on problems with nonobvious solutions that can only be identified by extensive information sharing (Stasser & Titus, 1987).

Groupthink

Groups sometimes make spectacularly wrong decisions. In 1961, a special advisory committee to President John F. Kennedy planned and implemented a covert invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs that ended in total disaster. In 1986, NASA carefully and incorrectly decided to launch the Challenger space shuttle in temperatures that were too cold.

Irving Janis (1982), intrigued by these kinds of blundering groups, carried out several case studies of such groups: the military experts that planned the defense of Pearl Harbor, Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs planning group, and the presidential team that escalated the war in Vietnam. Each group, he concluded, fell prey to a distorted style of thinking that rendered the group members incapable of making a rational decision. Janis labeled this syndrome groupthink: as “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action” (p. 9).

Janis identified the telltale symptoms that signal the group is experiencing groupthink and the interpersonal factors that combine to cause groupthink. These symptoms include overestimating the group’s skills and wisdom, biased perceptions and evaluations of other groups and people who are outside of the group, strong conformity pressures within the group, and poor decision-making methods.

Janis also singled out four group-level factors that cause groupthink: cohesion, isolation, biased leadership, and decisional stress.

• Cohesion. Groupthink only occurs in cohesive groups. Such groups have many advantages over groups that lack unity. People enjoy their membership much more in cohesive groups, they are less likely to abandon the group, and they work harder in pursuit of the group’s goals. But extreme cohesiveness can be dangerous. When cohesiveness intensifies, members become more likely to accept the group’s goals, decisions, and norms without reservation. Conformity pressures also rise as members become reluctant to say or do anything against the group’s grain, and the number of internal disagreements—necessary for good decision-making—decreases.
• Isolation. Groupthink groups too often work behind closed doors, keeping out of the limelight. They isolate themselves from outsiders and refuse to modify their beliefs to align them with society’s beliefs. They avoid leaks by maintaining strict confidentiality and working only with people who are members of their group.
• Biased leadership. A biased leader who exerts too much authority over group members can increase conformity pressures and railroad decisions. In groupthink groups, the leader determines the agenda for each meeting, sets limits on discussion, and can even decide who will be heard.
• Decisional Stress. Groupthink becomes more likely when the group is stressed, particularly with time pressures. When groups are stressed, they minimize their discomfort by quickly choosing a plan of action with little argument or dissension. Then, through collective discussion, the group members can rationalize their choice by exaggerating the positive consequences, minimizing the possibility of negative outcomes, concentrating on minor details, and overlooking more significant issues.

You and Your Groups

Most of us belong to at least one group that makes decisions from time to time, such as a community group that needs to choose a fund-raising project; a union or employee group that must ratify a new contract, a family that must discuss your college plans; or the staff of a high school discussing ways to deal with the potential for violence during football games. Could these kinds of groups experience groupthink? Yes, they could if the symptoms of groupthink discussed above are present, combined with other contributing factors, such as cohesiveness, isolation, biased leadership, and stress. To avoid polarization, the common knowledge effect, and groupthink, groups should emphasize open inquiry of all sides of the issue while admitting the possibility of failure. The group’s leaders can also do much to limit groupthink by requiring complete discussion of pros and cons, appointing devil’s advocates, and breaking the group up into small discussion groups.

If these precautions are taken, your group has a greater chance of making an informed, rational decision. Furthermore, although your group should review its goals, teamwork, and decision-making strategies, the human side of groups—the strong friendships and bonds that make group activity enjoyable—shouldn’t be overlooked. Groups have instrumental, practical, emotional, and psychological value. In groups, we find others who appreciate and value us. In groups, we gain the support we need in difficult times but also have the opportunity to influence others. In groups, we find evidence of our self-worth and secure ourselves from the threat of loneliness and despair. For most of us, groups are the secret source of well-being.