Essay Quiz Chapter 9

What is a group? Explain entitativity, common bond, and common

identity. What other features affect belonging to a group? Why do
people join groups? How does belonging to a group affect self-esteem?
Describe your membership in a group as it relates to the material you
have read on group membership.

A group is a collection of individuals who have relations to one another that

make them interdependent to some significant degree. As so defined, the
term group refers to a class of social entities having in common the property
of interdependence among their constituent members (slide1).
Entitativity-the extent to which a group is considered by others to be a real
entity having unity, coherence, and internal organization rather than a set of
independent individuals (slide 2). Common bond is the degree of relationship
between group members required before such persons can be members of a
group (slide 2). Common-identity groups comprise members who share a
social category and are attracted to the group as a whole as well as its
overarching identity. More specifically, members of common-identity groups
are attracted to the group's norms, goals, activities, and other defining
features. Joining groups satisfies the need to belong, gain information and
understanding through social comparison, define our sense of self and social
identity, and achieve goals that might elude us if we worked alone. People
who belong to many groups, whatever their nature, have higher self-esteem. I
take leadership in group activities.
What is the purpose of a social dilemma? Include a discussion of public
goods dilemmas.
Social dilemmas pit self-interest against a larger social goal. Public goods
dilemma is valued resource continues to exist only if everyone contributes to
its support (slide 11).
Explain distribution games.
Distribution games are games constructed so one person or the whole group
decides resource distribution in a group (slide 12).
When are people most likely to cooperate in a group? What are the
major reasons people cooperate in a group?

People tend to be cooperative only if their perceive partners' behavior as fair

and this fairness is attributed to situational factors, personality traits and
culture influences. People cooperate for many reasons (oxytocin or
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation) such as immediate benefit,
sustenance of an established system, need to achieve the objectives of an
organization, reciprocity, carrying out the set responsibilities and duties of an
organization, proper utilization of resources and opportunities (slide 13).
What is the Prisoner's Dilemma? Explain the role of trust in the
Prisoner’s Dilemma.
A prisoner's dilemma is a situation where individual decision-makers always
have an incentive to choose in a way that creates a less than optimal outcome
for the individuals as a group. Trust in prisoner’s dilemma, describes a conflict
between safety and social cooperation and its role is to speed up decision
making in a group.
What role did evolution play in human’s agreement on norms of
fairness?
Evolution fairness norms are seen in punishment for unfair offers and selfless
actions and fairness norms vary across cultures, as these develop to help
govern the needs of expanding societal networks.
Explain social facilitation theory in detail. Explain the Triplett study
(1898). Explain Zajonc’s (1965) social facilitation theory. Make sure you
address how it developed from Triplett’s theory.
Social facilitation, the theory, originated out of the field. of experimental social
psychology as a means of explaining individual's. behavior in social situations.
Social facilitation is described as enhancing one's dominant response simply
by being in the presence of others. The first social psychology laboratory
experiment was undertaken in this area by Norman Triplett in 1898. Their task
was to wind in a given amount of fishing line and Triplett reports that many
children worked faster in the presence of a partner doing the same task. In
1965 Zajonc proposed his generalized drive hypothesis for social facilitation
as the stern Activation theory, which is also referred to as Zajonc theory.
Zajonc argued that presence of others heightens arousal and thus increases
an organism's ability to perform habitual and well-learned tasks.
Explain Zajonc’s perspective on the role of arousal and task-dependent
physiological response. Include a discussion of his study using
cockroaches. When have you engaged in task-dependent physiological
response?
The extra arousal contributed by the presence of others takes us past our
optimum level of arousal and result in the dominant response being
something we can do easily, not something which is new or demanding. This
is supported by the Zajonc’s perspective on the role of arousa.
Explain the role of evaluation and its relation to performance. What
happens to people when they perform in front of others? Discuss the
different types of threats. When have you had to perform in front of
others? How did you react to the evaluation of others on your
performance?
Performance Evaluation is a formal and productive procedure to measure an
results based on their responsibilities. Performance evaluation also plays a
direct role in providing periodic feedback. Performance in front of others
threat of social evaluation tends to bring distracting thoughts to mind and
drain working memory capacity.
Explain social loafing. Include a discussion of low accountability. What
has your experience been with either being the social loafer or working
in a group with a social loafer?

Social loafing describes the tendency of individuals to put forth less effort
when they are part of a group. Because all members of the group are pooling
their effort to achieve a common goal, each member of the group contributes
less than they would if they were individually responsible. I have experienced
social loafing where there was diffusion of responsibility and a shift of focus
from individual performance to group performance.
 Explain deindividuation. Make sure you discuss deindividuation in
wars, riots, concerts (e.g., Astralworld Festival) etc.
Deindividuation is the tendency to lose one’s sense of individuality when in a
group. In wars, deindividuation theory holds that people who lose their sense
of self-identity are more likely to lay aside internally held morals and look to
the situation or the dominant morality of a crowd for guidance.
Explain group polarization. Why do people tend to lean to the more
extreme alternative?

Group polarization is defined as a phenomenon when “members of a

deliberating group move toward a more extreme point in whatever direction is
indicted by the members' predeliberation tendency. For example, a group of
women who hold moderately feminist views tend to demonstrate heightened
pro-feminist beliefs following group discussion.
What is group think? Make sure you discuss what happened with the
Challenger on January 28, 1986 and its relationship to group think. Why
does group cohesion play a strong role in group think?
Group think is a phenomenon that occurs when the desire for group
consensus overrides people's common sense desire to present alternatives,
critique a position, or express an unpopular opinion. Here, the desire for group
cohesion effectively drives out good decision-making and problem solving.
Summarize the different types of leaders. What qualities makes an
effective leader? Include a discussion of charismatic leaders, task-
oriented leaders, and relationship-oriented leaders. What type of
leadership style did Mother Theresa have?
Effective leaders focus on the needs of followers (Bass, 1985) charismatic
leaders, task-oriented leaders and relationship-oriented leaders
The different leaders are authoritarians, participative, delegative,
transactional, and transformative. Mother Theresa is an ultimate example of
transformational leadership, a model for helping others aspire to, and attain
high levels of performance for themselves and the organization.
How does the attainment of power influence a change in people’s
behavior? Make sure you discuss loosened inhibitions, and less
empathy.
Power is the ability to impose your will on others, whereas influence is the
ability to deeply affect behaviors and beliefs. People with power are able to
influence others behavior to achieve a goal or objective. Others may resist
attempts to make them do certain things, but an effective leader is able to
overcome that resistance.
Explain social dominance theory. Make sure you discuss power
distance and legitimatizing hierarchies.
Social Dominance Theory predicts that people who oppose group-based
dominance in general will support social and political policies and practices
that promote low-power groups. In addition, Social Dominance Theory
predicts that this relationship will be stronger for group distinctions that are
especially salient in people's society. A primary assumption in social
dominance theory (SDT) is that racism, sexism, nationalism, and classism are
all manifestations of the same human disposition to form group-based social
hierarchies. Human social hierarchies are seen to consist of a hegemonic
group at the top and negative reference groups at the bottom.
Explain system justification theory. Make sure you discuss idealizing
high status and mitigating comparisons.
System justification theory builds off the cognitive dissonance framework, in
that it posits people will justify a social system in order to retain a positive
image of that social system, due to the fact that they inherently play a role
(whether passive or active) in perpetuating it. system justification is a
potentially strong motivator of human behavior because it addresses
fundamental human needs to reduce uncertainty, threat, and social discord.