Types of Groups

Group Dynamics

Donelson Forsyth

Forsyth, D. (2018). Group Dynamics (7th ed.). Cengage Learning US.  https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9798214344799

Chapter 1. Introduction to Group Dynamics

Groups come in all shapes and sizes and their purposes are many and varied, but their influence is universal. The tendency to join with others in groups is perhaps the single most important characteristic of humans, and the processes that unfold within these groups leave an indelible imprint on their members and on society. Yet, groups remain something of a mystery: unstudied at best, misunderstood at worst. This investigation into the nature of groups begins by answering two fundamental questions: What is a group and what are group dynamics?

What are groups?

What are the four basic types of groups?

What distinguishes one group from another?

What are group dynamics?

Why study groups and their dynamics?

Chapter Outline

1-1

What Are Groups?

1-1a

Defining Groups

1-1b

Varieties of Groups

1-1c

Characteristics of Groups

1-2

What Are Group Dynamics?

1-2a

Dynamic Group Processes

1-2a

Process and Progress over Time

1-3

Why Study Groups?

1-3a

Understanding People

1-3c

Understanding the Social World

1-3c

Applications to Practical Problems

1-4

The Value of Groups

Chapter Review

Resources

The Adventure Expedition: Groups and Their Dynamics

On May 10, 1996, just after midnight, the members of the Adventure Consultants Guided Expedition crawled from tents pitched high on Mt. Everest to begin the final leg of their journey to the top of the world. The group included ten clients who had paid hefty sums to join the expedition; guides who set the climbing lines, carried provisions, and helped climbers along the way; and Rob Hall, the team’s leader. Hall was one of the most experienced high-altitude climbers in the world; he had scaled Everest four times before.

The climb to the summit of Mt. Everest is a carefully orchestrated undertaking. Teams begin the ascent in the middle of the night to reach the peak and return in a single day. But if their progress up the mountain is too slow, even a midnight departure is not early enough to get them up to the top and back down safely. So groups typically establish and adhere to the turnaround rule: If you have not reached the summit by 2 PM—at the very latest—your group must turn back.

The Adventure Expedition broke that rule. The most experienced climbers reached the summit by early afternoon, but other group members continued their dogged ascent well after caution demanded they turn around. Many of them suffered from oxygen deprivation, for the atmosphere above 24,000 feet is so thin that most hikers breathe from tanks of compressed air. Even these supplements cannot counteract the exhaustion that comes of climbing treacherous, ice-coated terrain, and many suffered from confused thinking, nausea, and dizziness. Yet, they may still have managed to climb to safety had it not been for the storm—a rogue blizzard with 60-knot winds that cut the climbers off from camp and any hope of rescue. When the storm lifted the next day, four members of the Adventure Expedition were dead. The victims included two clients (Douglas Hansen and Yasuko Nanba), a guide (Andrew Harris), and the group’s leader (Rob Hall). Hall guaranteed his clients that they would reach the top of the mountain and return safely; he could not keep that promise (Krakauer, 1997).

Groups are and always will be essential to human life. Across all cultures and eras we have lived, worked, thrived, and died in our families, tribes, communes, communities, and clans. Our ancestors protected themselves from dangers and disasters by joining together in groups. Early civilizations—the Aztecs, Persians, Greeks, and Romans—organized their societies by forming legions, assemblies, publics, legislative bodies, and trade associations. For time immemorial, people have gathered for civic and religious purposes, including worship, celebrations, and festivals.

So why study these groups? The answer is not complicated: Groups hold the secret to the universe—the human universe, at any rate. The rare individual—the prisoner in solitary confinement, the recluse, the castaway—is isolated from all groups, but most of us belong to all manner of groups: from our small, close-knit groups such as families or very close friends to larger groups of associates and colleagues at school or where we work, to the very large groups of people with whom we share an important quality that creates a psychological bond between us all. Given we spend our entire lives getting into, getting out of, and taking part in groups, it’s best to not ignore them. Even better, it’s best to understand them: to recognize their key features, to study the psychological and interpersonal processes that continually shape and reshape them, and to learn ways to help them function effectively.

1-1. What Are Groups?

Fish swimming in synchronized unison are called a school. A gathering of kangaroos is a mob. A threesome of crows cawing from their perch on a telephone wire is a murder. A gam is a group of whales. A flock of larks in flight is an exaltation (Lipton, 1991). But what is a collection of human beings called? A group.

What Groups Do You Belong To?

Some may bemoan the growing alienation of individuals from the small social groups that once linked them securely to society-at-large, but the single man or woman who has no connection to other men and women is an extraordinarily rare human being.

Instructions

Most people belong to dozens of groups, but we can become so accustomed to them that their influence on us goes unnoticed. Before reading further, make a list (written or mental) of all the groups to which you belong.

Interpretation

Did you include your family? The people you work or study with? How about your roommates, housemates, or classmates? All of the people you have friended on Facebook? How about people of your sex, race, and citizenship and those who share your political beliefs? Are African American men, Canadians, and Republicans groups? Are you in a romantic relationship? Did you include you and your partner on your list of groups? Some people’s lists are longer than others, but a list of 40 or more groups would not be unusual.

1-1a. Defining Groups

The Adventure Expedition was, in many respects, a unique collection of people facing an enormous challenge. Rob Hall, its leader, deliberately created the group by recruiting its 26 members: climbers, guides, cooks, medical staff, and so on. Its members were united in their pursuit of a shared goal, as is so often the case with groups, but some of the members put their own personal needs above those of the group. The members not only interacted with each other face-to-face in a physical space, but they also used technology to communicate with one another and with people who were not part of the team. But Adventure Expedition, although unique in many ways, was nonetheless a group: two or more individuals who are connected by and within social relationships.

Two or More Individuals

Groups come in a staggering assortment of shapes and sizes, from dyads (two members) and triads (three members) to huge crowds, mobs, and assemblies (Simmel, 1902). Sociologist John James was so intrigued by the variation in the size of groups that he took to the streets of Eugene and Portland, Oregon, to record the size of the 9,129 groups he encountered there. He defined a group to be two or more people in “face-to-face interaction as evidenced by the criteria of gesticulation, laughter, smiles, talk, play or work” (James, 1951, p. 475). He recorded pedestrians walking down the city streets, people shopping, children on playgrounds, public gatherings at sports events and festivals, patrons during the intermissions at plays and entering movie theaters, and various types of work crews and teams. Most of these groups were small, usually with only two or three members, but groups that had been deliberately created for some specific purpose, such as the leadership team of a company, tended to be larger. His findings, and the results of studies conducted in other settings (e.g., cafeterias, businesses), suggest that groups tend to “gravitate to the smallest size, two” (Hare, 1976, p. 215; Jorgenson & Dukes, 1976; Ruef, Aldrich, & Carter, 2003).

Who Are Connected

Definitions of the word group are as varied as groups themselves, but a commonality shared by many of these definitions is an emphasis on social relations that link members to one another. Three persons working on math problems in separate rooms can hardly be considered a group; they are not connected to each other in any way. If, however, we create relationships between them—for example, we let them send notes to each other or we pick one person to distribute the problems to the others—then these three individuals can be considered a rudimentary group. Neither would we call people who share some superficial similarity, such as eye color, a favorite football team, or birth date, group members for we expect them to be connected to each other in socially meaningful ways. A family is a group because the members are connected, not just by blood but also by social and emotional relationships. Adventure Expedition was a group because the members were linked by the tasks that they completed collectively and by friendships, alliances, responsibilities, and inevitable antagonisms.

By and Within Social Relations

The relations that link the members of groups are not of one type. In families, for example, the relationships are based on kinship, but in the workplace, they are based on task-related interdependencies. In some groups, members are friends, but in others, the members are linked by common interests or experiences. Nor are the relationships linking members equally strong or enduring. Some relationships, like the links between members of a family or a clique of close friends, are tenacious, for they have developed over time and are based on a long history of mutual influence and exchange. In others, the ties between members may be so fragile that they are easily severed. Every individual member of the group does not need to be linked to every other person in the group. In the Adventure Expedition group, for example, some people were liked by all the other group members, but others had only a few friends in the group. In some cases, such as groups based on ethnicity, race, or gender, the connection linking members may be more psychological than interpersonal. But no matter what the nature of the relations, a group exists when some type of bond links the members to one another and to the group itself (Bosse & Coughlan, 2016).

What Is a Group?

No one definition can capture the many nuances of the word group. Some definers stress the importance of communication or mutual dependence. Still others suggest that a shared purpose or goal is what turns a mere aggregate of individuals into a bona fide group. Even the minimal number of members needed for a true group is debated, with some definitions requiring three members but others only two (Moreland, 2010; Williams, 2010).

Categorization: “Two or more individuals … [who] perceive themselves to be members of the same social category” (Turner, 1982, p. 15).

Communication: “Three or more people…who

(a)

think of themselves as a group,

(b)

are interdependent (e.g., with regard to shared goals or behaviors that affect one another), and

(c)

communicate (interact) with one another (via face-to-face or technological means)” (Frey & Konieczka, 2010, p. 317).

Influence: “Two or more persons who are interacting with one another in such a manner that each person influences and is influenced by each other person” (Shaw, 1981, p. 454).

Interdependence: “A dynamic whole based on interdependence rather than similarity” (Lewin, 1948, p. 184).

Interrelations: “An aggregation of two or more people who are to some degree in dynamic interrelation with one another” (McGrath, 1984, p. 8).

Psychological significance: “A psychological group is any number of people who interact with each other, are psychologically aware of each other, and perceive themselves to be in a group” (Pennington, 2002, p. 3).

Relations: “Individuals who stand in certain relations to each other, for example, as sharing a common purpose or having a common intentionality, or acting together, or at least having a common interest” (Gould, 2004, p. 119).

Shared identity: “Two or more people possessing a common social identification and whose existence as a group is recognized by a third party” (Brown, 2000, p. 19).

Shared tasks and goals: “Three or more people who work together interdependently on an agreed-upon activity or goal” (Keyton, 2002, p. 5).

Size: “Two or more people” (Williams, 2010, p. 269).

Social unit: “Persons who recognize that they constitute a meaningful social unit, interact on that basis, and are committed to that social unity” (Fine, 2012, p. 21; Kerr & Tindale, 2014).

Structure: “A social unit which consists of a number of individuals who stand in (more or less) definite status and role relationships to one another and which possesses a set of values or norms of its own regulating the behavior of individual members, at least in matters of consequence to the group” (Sherif & Sherif, 1956, p. 144).

Systems: “An intact social system, complete with boundaries, interdependence for some shared purpose, and differentiated member roles” (Hackman & Katz, 2010, p. 1210).

1-1b. Varieties of Groups

No one knows for certain how many groups exist at this moment, but given the number of people on the planet and their groupish proclivities, 30 billion is a conservative estimate. Groups are so numerous that the differences among them are as noteworthy as their similarities. Figure 1.1 brings some order to this challenging miscellany by distinguishing between four types of groups: primary groups, social groups, collectives, and categories.

Primary Groups

Sociologist Charles Horton Cooley (1909) labeled the small, intimate clusters of close associates, such as families, good friends, or cliques of peers, primary groups. These groups profoundly influence the behavior, feelings, and judgments of their members, for members spend much of their time interacting with one another, usually in face-to-face settings with many of the other members present. Even when the group is dispersed, members nonetheless feel they are still “in” the group, and they consider the group to be a very important part of their lives.

In many cases, individuals become part of primary groups involuntarily: Every member of Adventure Expedition was born into a family that provided for their well-being until they could venture out to join other groups. Other primary groups form when people interact in significant, meaningful ways for a prolonged period of time. For example, and unlike Adventure Expedition, some climbing teams have summited so many mountains on so many expeditions that these groups are more like families than expeditions. They “continue, with more or less the same people in them, for a very long time” (McGrath, 1984, p. 43), and affect the members’ lives in significant and enduring ways. They are broad rather than limited in their scope.

Cooley (1909) considered such groups to be primary because they transform individuals into social beings. Primary groups protect members from harm, care for them when they are ill, and provide them with shelter and sustenance, but as Cooley explained, they also create the connection between the individual and society at large:

They are primary in several senses, but chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of the individual. The result of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a common whole, so that one’s very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and purpose of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a “we.” (Cooley, 1909, p. 23)

Social (Secondary) Groups

In earlier eras, people lived most of their lives in primary groups that were clustered together in relatively small tribes or communities. But, as societies became more complex, so did our groups. We began to associate with a wider range of people in less intimate, more public settings, and social groups emerged to structure these interactions. Social groups are larger and more formally organized than primary groups, and memberships tend to be shorter in duration and less emotionally involving. Their boundaries are also more permeable, so members can leave old groups behind and join new ones, for they do not demand the level of commitment that primary groups do. People usually belong to a very small number of primary groups, but they can enjoy membership in a variety of social groups. Various terms been used to describe this category of groups, such as secondary groups (Cooley, 1909), associations (MacIver & Page, 1937), task groups (Lickel, Hamilton, & Sherman, 2001), and Gesellschaften (Toennies, 1887/1963).

Social groups, such as the Adventure Expedition, military squads, governing boards, construction workers, teams, crews, fraternities, sororities, dance troupes, orchestras, bands, ensembles, classes, clubs, secretarial pools, congregations, study groups, guilds, task forces, committees, and meetings, are extremely common (Schofer & Longhofer, 2011). When surveyed, 35.7% of Americans reported they belonged to some type of religious group (e.g., a congregation) and 20.0% said they belonged to a sports team or club. The majority, ranging from 50% to 80%, reported doing things in groups, such as attending a sports event together, visiting one another for the evening, sharing a meal together, or going out as a group to see a movie (Putnam, 2000). People could dine, watch movies, and travel singly, but most do not: They prefer to perform these activities in social groups. Americans are above average in their involvement in voluntary associations, but some countries’ citizens—the Dutch, Canadians, Scandinavians—are groupier still (Curtis, Baer, & Grabb, 2001).

Collectives

Some groups come into existence when people are drawn together by something—an event, an activity, or even danger—but then the group dissolves when the experience ends. Any gathering of individuals can be considered a collective, but most theorists reserve the term for larger, less intricately interconnected associations among people (Blumer, 1951). A list of examples of collectives would include crowds watching a building burn, audiences seated in a movie theater, line (queues) of people waiting to purchase tickets, gatherings of college students protesting a government policy, and panicked mobs fleeing from danger. But the list would also include social movements of individuals who, though dispersed over a wide area, display common shifts in opinion or actions. The members of collectives are joined by their common interest or shared actions, but they often owe little allegiance to the group. In many cases, such groups are created by happenstance, convenience, or a short-lived experience, and so the relations joining the members are so transitory that they dissolve as soon as the members separate.

Are People Bowling Alone?

The numbers tell the tale. In 1975, people reported playing card games together, like poker and bridge, about 14 times a year. By 2000, that number had been halved. In the 1970s, 50% of the people surveyed agreed that their family usually eats dinner together. By the end of the century, only about 33% reported regular family meals and the family vacation was also becoming rarer. Today fewer people report visiting with neighbors frequently and they are less likely to join social clubs, such as the Kiwanis and garden clubs. As the political scientist Robert Putnam (2000) wrote in his book Bowling Alone, in the 1960s 8% of all adult American men belonged to a bowling league, as did nearly 5% of all adult women. However, even though the total number of bowlers in America continues to increase over time, fewer and fewer belong to bowling leagues.

Putnam concluded that Americans’ withdrawal from groups and associations signals an overall decline in social capital. Like financial or economic capital, social capital describes how rich you are, but in interpersonal terms rather than monetary or commercial terms. A person with considerable social capital is well connected to other people across a wide variety of contexts, and these connections provide the means for him or her to accomplish both personal and collective outcomes.

Putnam’s findings suggest that the types of groups people join are changing. People are not as interested in joining traditional types of community groups, such as garden clubs, fraternal and professional organizations, or even church-based groups. But some types of groups, such as book groups, support groups, teams at work, and category-based associations (e.g., the American Association of Retired Persons), are increasing in size rather than decreasing. Individuals are also more involved in online associations, interactions, and networks, such as Facebook. These social groups are the ubiquitous “dark matter” of social capital, for they knit people together in social relations but are often overlooked in tallies that track the number and variety of more formal and official groups (Smith, Stebbins, et al., 2016).

Categories

A social category is a collection of individuals who are similar to one another in some way. For example, citizens of Ireland are Irish, Americans whose ancestors were from Africa are African Americans, and men who are sexually attracted to other men are gay. If a category has no social implications, then it only describes individuals who share a feature in common. If, however, these categories set in motion personal or interpersonal processes—if someone celebrates St. Patrick’s Day because of his Irish heritage, if people respond to a woman differently when they see she is an African American, or if a gay man identifies with other LGBTQ persons—then a category may be transformed into a highly influential group (Abrams, 2013).

As social psychologist Henri Tajfel (1974) explained, members of the same social category often share a common identity with one another. They know who is in their category, who is not, and what qualities are typical of insiders and outsiders. This perception of themselves as members of the same group or social category—this social identity—is “that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel, 1974, p. 69).

But social categories can also influence the perceptions of people who are not part of the category. When perceivers decide a person they encounter is one of “those people,” they will likely rely on any stereotypes they have about the members of that social category to formulate an impression of the person. Social categories tend to create divisions between people, and those divisions can result in a sense of we and us versus they and them.

Characteristics of Groups

Each one of the billions of groups that exist at this moment is a unique configuration of individuals, processes, and relationships. The Adventure Expedition mountaineering group, for example, differed in a hundred ways from the other teams of climbers on Mt. Everest that season. But all groups, despite their uniqueness, share some common features. Some of these features, such as the size of the group and the tasks they are attempting, are relatively obvious ones. Other qualities, such as the group’s cohesiveness or the permeability of the group’s boundaries, must be uncovered, for they are often overlooked, even by the group members themselves.

Composition: Who Belongs to the Group?

To understand a group, we must know something about the group’s composition: the qualities of the individuals who are members of the group. The Adventure Expedition team, for example, differed from the other teams on Mt. Everest that year because each member of that group was a unique individual with specific talents, weaknesses, attitudes, values, and personality traits. Hall, the group’s leader, was a world-class high-altitude climber. Andy Harris, a guide, was outgoing, physically fit, and passionate about climbing, but he had never been to Mt. Everest before. Beck Weathers, Frank Fischbeck, and Lou Kasischke were all clients: Weathers was “garrulous,” Fischbeck was “dapper” and “genteel,” and Kasischke was tall and athletic (Krakauer, 1997, p. 37).

Groups may be more than the sum of their parts but each part defines the whole (Moreland, 2013). A group with a member who is naturally boisterous, mean-spirited, hard-working, chill, or close-minded will be different from the group with a member who is domineering, self-sacrificing, lazy, anxious, or creative. A group with many members who have only just joined will differ from one with mostly long-term, veteran members. A group whose members differ from each other in terms of race, sex, economic background, and country of origin will differ from a group with far less diversity. Were we to assign 100 people to twenty 5-person groups, each group would differ from every other group because it joins together 5 unique individuals.

Boundaries: Who Does Not Belong?

The relationships that link members to one another define who is in the group and who is not. A group is boundaried in a psychological sense; those who are included in the group are recognized as members and those who are not part of the group are excluded outsiders. In some cases, these boundaries are publicly acknowledged: Both members and nonmembers know who belongs to an honor society, a rock band, or a baseball team. But in other cases, the boundaries may be indistinct or known only to the group members themselves. A secret society, for example, may not reveal its existence or its membership list to outsiders. A group’s boundary may also be relatively permeable. In open groups, for example, membership is fluid; members may voluntarily come and go as they please with no consequences (and they often do), or the group may frequently vote members out of the group or invite new ones to join. In closed groups, in contrast, the membership roster changes more slowly, if at all. But, regardless of the reasons for membership fluctuations, open groups are especially unlikely to reach a state of equilibrium since members recognize that they may lose or relinquish their place within the group at any time. Members of such groups, especially those in which membership is dependent on voting or meeting a particular standard, are more likely to monitor the actions of others. In contrast, closed groups are often more cohesive as competition for membership is irrelevant and group members anticipate future collaborations. Thus, in closed groups, individuals are more likely to focus on the collective nature of the group and to identify with the group (Ziller, 1965).

Are Social Networks Groups?

Social networks are in most respects very group-like. Their members are linked to each other by social relationships, which can vary from the inconsequential and ephemeral to the deeply meaningful and long-enduring. Networks, however, lack clear boundaries that define who is in the network and who is not. To become part of a social network, an individual need only establish a relationship of some sort with a person who is already part of the network. In most social networking sites, for example, the only requirement to join a network is the acceptance of a link request from someone already linked to others in the network. If Helen and Rob are already linked, then Pemba can join their network by establishing a relationship with Helen or Rob. In consequence, social networks tend to be more fluid in terms of membership than groups with clearly identified boundaries, but they can also attract more diverse members to their ranks (Svensson Neumayer, Banfield-Mumb, & Schossböck, 2015).

Size: How Large Is the Group?

Jon Krakauer (1997), who chronicled the experiences of Adventure Expedition as it attempted its climb of Mt. Everest, admitted he was unsettled by the size of the group: “I’d never climbed as a member of such a large group … all my previous expeditions had been undertaken with one or two trusted friends, or alone” (p. 37).

A group’s size influences many of its other features, for a small group will likely have different structures, processes, and patterns of interaction than a larger one. A two-person group is so small that it ceases to exist when one member leaves, and it can never be broken down into subgroups. The members of dyads (e.g., best friends, lovers) are sometimes linked by strong emotional bonds that make their dynamics so intense that they belong in a category all their own (Levine & Moreland, 2012). Larger groups can also have unique qualities, for the members are rarely connected directly to all other members, subgroups are very likely to form, and one or more leaders may be needed to organize and guide the group.

A group’s size also determines how many social ties—links, relationships, connections, edges—are needed to join members to each other and to the group. The maximum number of ties within a group in which everyone is linked to everyone else is given by the equation n(n – 1)/2, where n is the number of people in the group. Only one relationship is needed to create a dyad, but as Figure 1.2 illustrates, the number of ties needed to connect all members grows as the group gets larger. Three relationships would be needed to join each member of a three-person group, but six, ten, and fifteen relationships are needed to link the members of four-, five-, and six-person groups. Even larger groups require even more ties. For example, a group the size of the Adventure Expedition (26 members) would require 325 ties to completely link each member to every other member.

Because of the limits of most people’s capacity to keep track of so many social relationships, once the group surpasses about 150 individuals, members usually cannot connect with each and every member of the group (Dunbar, 2008). In consequence, in larger groups, members are connected to one another indirectly rather than directly. Beck Weathers might, for example, be linked to guide Mike Groom, and Groom might establish a bond with Jon Krakauer, but Weathers may not get to know Krakauer. In even larger groups, members may only feel connected to the group as a whole, or to subgroups within the larger group (Katz et al., 2005). Larger groups are more schismatic than smaller ones; they more easily break up into smaller groups.

Interaction: What Do Members Do?

Groups are the setting for an infinite variety of interpersonal actions. If we were to watch a group for even a few minutes, we would see people doing all sorts of things: talking over issues, getting into arguments, and making decisions. They would upset each other, give each other help and support, and take advantage of each other’s weaknesses. They would likely work together to accomplish difficult tasks, find ways to not do their work, and even plot against the best interests of those who are not a part of their group. Many of the most interesting, influential, and entertaining forms of human action are possible only when people join with others in a group.

Sociologist Robert Freed Bales (1950, 1999), intrigued by the question “What do people do when they are in groups?” spent years watching and recording people in relatively small, face-to-face groups. He recognized the diversity of group interaction, but eventually concluded that the countless actions he had observed tend to be of two types: those that focused on the task the group was dealing with and those that sustained, strengthened, or weakened interpersonal relationships within the group. Task interaction includes all group behavior that is focused principally on the group’s work, projects, plans, and goals. In most groups, members must coordinate their various skills, resources, and motivations so that the group can make a decision, generate a product, or achieve a victory. When a jury reviews each bit of testimony, a committee discusses the best course of action to take, or the Adventure Expedition plans the approach they will take to the summit, the group’s interaction is task-focused.

But groups are not simply performance engines, for much of what happens in a group is relationship interaction (or socioemotional interaction). If group members falter and need support, others will buoy them up with kind words, suggestions, and other forms of help. When group members disagree with others, they are often roundly criticized and made to feel foolish. When a coworker wears a new suit or outfit, others in his or her work unit notice it and offer compliments or criticisms. Such actions sustain or undermine the emotional bonds linking the members to one another and to the group. We will review the method that Bales developed for objectively recording these types of interactions, Interaction Process Analysis (IPA), in Chapter 2.

Why Do Humans Have Such Big Brains?

Humans have done well, evolutionarily speaking. Their large, sophisticated brains provide them with the means to store and share information, solve problems, and plan for future contingencies. To account for the rapid development of humans’ intellectual prowess, conventional explanations usually suggest big brains helped early humans find food and shelter and survive environmental threats. But what if humans’ brains developed to deal with the mental demands of group life?

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar’s (2008) social brain hypothesis assumes that group life is more psychologically demanding than a more isolated, independent one. With groups come not only survival advantages, but also substantial amounts of new information to continually process. Individuals must be able to recognize other members of the group, track shifting patterns of alliances and coalitions, and remember who can be trusted and who is likely to refuse to share. To deal with the increasing complexity of their social worlds, humans’ ancestors needed bigger brains capable of processing more information.

Dunbar tested this hypothesis by studying a variety of group-living species. When he correlated the size of the average group for a species with the brain size of the species, he discovered that species with bigger brains did tend to live in larger social groups. Dunbar’s findings also suggest that, given the size of the human neocortex, humans were designed by evolution to live in groups of 150 people or less; anything more would overload humans’ information-processing capacity. Dunbar sees evidence of this constraint in his studies of the size of naturally occurring groups. Although the size of traditional hunter-gatherer societies varies with habitat, in many cases, they range up to—but not over—150 members. Until recently, small communal villages and townships included about 150 people. Armies often organize soldiers into divisions of about 150 soldiers. Some businesses and organizations, too, have learned that productivity and solidarity suffer when too many people work in one place. If they need to expand their operation, they do not add more people to an existing plant; instead, they build an additional plant next to the old one and fill it with another 150 personnel. Dunbar’s recommendation: To avoid taxing the processing capacity of members, limit your groups to 150 members or fewer.

Interdependence: Do the Members Depend on Each Other?

The acrobat on the trapeze drops to the net unless her teammate catches her outstretched arms. The assembly line worker is unable to complete his work until he receives the unfinished product from a worker further up the line. The business executive’s success and salary are determined by how well her staff complete their work; if her staff fail, then she fails as well. In such situations, members are obligated or responsible to other group members, for they provide each other with support and assistance. This interdependence means that members depend on one another; their outcomes, actions, thoughts, feelings, and experiences are partially determined by others in the group.

Some groups create only the potential for interdependence among members. The outcomes of people standing in a queue at a store’s checkout counter, audience members in a darkened theater, or the congregation of a large mega-church are hardly intertwined at all. The individuals within these groups can reach their goals on their own without making certain their actions mesh closely with the actions of those who are nearby. Other groups, such as gangs, families, sports teams, and military squads, create far higher levels of interdependency since members reliably and substantially influence one another’s outcomes over a long period of time and in a variety of situations. But even the interdependencies in these tightly meshed groups are rarely invariant or undifferentiated. As Figure 1.3 suggests, in symmetric groups with a flat, nonhierarchical structure, the influence among members is equal and reciprocal (Figure 1.3a). But more typically interdependencies are asymmetric, unequal, and hierarchical. In a business, for example, the boss may determine how employees spend their time, what kind of rewards they experience, and even the duration of their membership in the group (Figure 1.3b). In other cases, the employees may be able to influence their boss to a degree, but the boss influences them to a much greater extent (Figure 1.3c). Interdependency can also be ordered sequentially, as when C’s outcomes are determined by B’s actions, but B’s actions are determined by A (Figure 1.3d).

Structure: How Is the Group Organized?

Group members are not connected to one another at random, but in organized and predictable patterns. In all but the most ephemeral groups, patterns and regularities emerge that determine the kinds of actions that are permitted or condemned: who talks to whom, who likes whom and who dislikes whom, who can be counted on to perform particular tasks, and whom others look to for guidance and help. These regularities combine to generate group structure—the complex of roles, norms, and intermember relations that organizes the group. Roles specify the general behaviors expected of people who occupy different positions within the group. The roles of leader and follower are fundamental ones in many groups, but other roles—information seeker, information giver, and compromiser—may emerge in any group (Benne & Sheats, 1948). Group members’ actions and interactions are also shaped by the group’s norms that describe what behaviors should and should not be performed in a given context.

Roles, norms, and other structural aspects of groups, although unseen and often unnoticed, lie at the heart of their most dynamic processes. When people join a group, they initially spend much of their time trying to come to terms with the requirements of their role. If they cannot meet the role’s demand, they might not remain a member for long. Norms within a group are defined and renegotiated over time, and conflicts often emerge as members violate norms. In group meetings, the opinions of members with higher status carry more weight than those of the rank-and-file members. When several members form a subgroup within the larger group, they exert more influence on the rest of the group than they would individually. When people manage to place themselves at the hub of the group’s information-exchange patterns, their influence over others also increases.

If you had to choose only one aspect of a group to study, you would probably learn the most by studying its structure. The Adventure Expedition’s structure, for example, improved the group’s overall efficiency, but at a cost. When researchers surveyed expert mountain climbers asking them to evaluate the wisdom of hiking in a team with a clear chain-of-command versus one with a less leader-centered culture, these experts favored a hierarchical structure for its efficiency. However, they also warned that such groups were not as safe as groups that were more egalitarian, since members were less likely to share information about threats and concerns. These researchers then confirmed the experts’ prognosis by examining the records of 5,104 group expeditions in the Himalayas. Sure enough, more climbers reached the top of the summit when they hiked in teams with hierarchical cultures, but more climbers also died in these groups during the expedition. The researchers concluded: “Hierarchy, structurally and as a cultural value, can both help and hurt team performance” (Anicich, Swaab, & Galinsky, 2015, p. 1340).

Goals: What Is the Group’s Purpose?

Humans, as a species, seem to be genetically ready to set goals for themselves—“what natural selection has built into us is the capacity to strive, the capacity to seek, the capacity to set up short-term goals in the service of longer-term goals” (Dawkins, 1989, p. 142)—and that tendency is only amplified in groups. A study group wants to help members get better grades. A jury makes a decision about guilt or innocence. The members of a congregation seek religious and spiritual experiences. The team Rob Hall created, the Adventure Expedition, pursued its goals relentlessly and, for some members, fatally. The groups Bales (1999) studied spent the majority of their time (63%) dealing with goal-related activities and tasks. The members of groups pursue their own goals, but because their goals are interdependent, groups promote the pursuit of other members’ goals and group-level goals (Fitzsimons, Finkel, & vanDellen, 2015).

The goals groups pursue are many and varied. One approach to their classification suggests that a broad distinction can be made between intellectual and judgmental tasks (Laughlin, 1980). Another emphasizes three different categories: production, discussion, and problem-solving goals (Hackman & Morris, 1975). A third model, proposed by social psychologist Joseph E. McGrath (1984), distinguishes among four basic group goals: generating ideas or plans, choosing a solution, negotiating a solution to a conflict, or executing (performing) a task. As Figure 1.4 indicates, each of these basic categories can be further subdivided, yielding a total of eight goal-related activities.

Generating: Groups concoct the strategies they will use to accomplish their goals (Type 1: planning tasks) or create altogether new ideas and approaches to their problems (Type 2: creativity tasks)

Choosing: Groups make decisions about issues that have correct solutions (Type 3: intellective tasks) or questions that can be answered in many ways (Type 4: decision-making tasks)

Negotiating: Groups resolve differences of opinion among members regarding their goals or decisions (Type 5: cognitive conflict tasks) or settle competitive disputes among members (Type 6: mixed-motive tasks)

Executing: Groups do things, including taking part in competitions (Type 7: contests/battles/competitive tasks) or creating some product or carrying out collective actions (Type 8: performances/psychomotor tasks) McGrath’s task circumplex model also distinguishes between conceptual–behavioral tasks and cooperation–conflict tasks. Groups dealing with conceptual tasks (Types 2–5) generally exhibit high levels of information exchange, social influence, and process-oriented activity. Groups dealing with behavioral tasks (Types 1, 6, 7, 8) are those that produce things or perform services. Members of these groups perform a series of motor tasks that range from the simple and relatively individualistic through to the complex and highly interdependent. Conflict tasks (Types 4–7) pit individuals and groups against each other, whereas cooperative tasks require collaboration (Types 1–3, and 8). Some groups perform tasks from nearly all of McGrath’s categories, whereas others concentrate on only one subset of goals.

Origin: Founded or Formed?

Groups tend to fall naturally into two categories: planned groups, which are deliberately formed by its members or an external authority for some purpose, and emergent groups which come into existence spontaneously when individuals join together in the same physical location or gradually over time as individuals find themselves repeatedly interacting with the same subset of individuals. People found groups (planned), but they also find them (emergent).

Arbitration boards, civil rights groups, commissions committees, expeditions, juries, legislative bodies, military units, musical groups, research teams, self-help groups, social agencies, sports teams, study groups, task forces, therapy groups, trade associations, veterans organizations, work groups, and the Adventure Expedition are all examples of planned groups; they tend to be organized, task-focused, and formal. Such groups generally define their membership criteria clearly, and so at all times they know who is and who is not in the group. They often operate under a set of bylaws, contracts, or similar regulations that describe the group’s acceptable procedures and practices. The group’s structure may even be formalized in an organizational chart that defines who has more authority than others, who reports to whom, and how subgroups within the overall group are connected. Such groups, despite their overall level of organization and definition, may also lack emotional substance. They may be characterized by considerable routines, ceremonies, and procedures, but they may also be devoid of any warmth or emotional depth.

Emergent groups, such as audiences at events, bystanders at a crime scene, crowds, customers at a club, gangs, families, friendship networks in work settings, mobs, people waiting to board an airplane, and all manner of queues and lines, arise over time and through repeated association of the eventual members. These groups are not explicitly organized, but they often develop elements of structure as members determine what kinds of behaviors are expected of members, who is more or less liked, who leads and who follows, and so on. Such groups often have unclear boundaries, for they allow members to come and go rather than requiring them to join in a formal way. They have no written rules, but they likely develop unwritten norms that define what behaviors are appropriate and what behaviors are inappropriate. Unlike planned groups, membership in an emergent group is sought as a means in and of itself: people don’t join to gain some goal but because they find satisfaction in associating with the group members.

Social psychologists Holly Arrow, Joseph E. McGrath, and Jennifer L. Berdahl (2000) extend this distinction between planned and emergent groups by asking a second question: Is the group created by forces within the group (internal origins) or forces outside of the group (external origins)? Arrow and her colleagues combine both the planned-emergent dimension and the internal-external dimension to generate the following fourfold taxonomy of groups:

Concocted groups are planned by individuals or authorities outside of the group. A team of laborers digging a trench, a flight crew of an airplane, and a military squad would all be concocted groups, since those who created them are not actually members of the group.

Founded groups are planned by one or more individuals who remain within the group. A small Internet start-up company, a study group, a expeditionary team, or grassroots community action group would all be founded groups.

Circumstantial groups are emergent, unplanned groups that arise when external, situational forces set the stage for people to join together, often temporarily, in a unified group. A group of travelers stranded together when their bus breaks, a mob breaking shop windows and setting parked cars on fire, and patrons at a movie theater would be circumstantial groups.

Self-organizing groups emerge when interacting individuals gradually align their activities in a cooperative system of interdependence. Parties, gatherings of surfers waiting for waves just offshore, drivers leaving a crowded parking lot through a single exit, and a half dozen adolescents who hang out together are all organized groups, but their organization is generated by implicit adjustments of each member to each other member.

Unity: How Cohesive Is the Group?

In physics, the molecular integrity of matter is known as cohesiveness. When matter is cohesive, the particles that constitute it bond together so tightly that they resist any competing attractions. But when matter is not cohesive, it tends to disintegrate over time as the particles drift away or adhere to some other nearby object. Similarly, group cohesion is the integrity, solidarity, social integration, unity, and groupiness of a group. All groups require a modicum of cohesiveness or else the group would disintegrate and cease to exist as a group. Close-knit, cohesive groups suffer little from turnover or intragroup conflict. Cohesive groups hold on to their members tightly, and members usually value their membership, and are quick to identify themselves as members. A group’s cohesiveness, however, is often based on commitment to the group’s purposes, rather than on social bonds between members. Individuals may not like each other a great deal, and yet, when they join together, they experience powerful feelings of unity as they work collaboratively to achieve an important end (Dion, 2000).

Entitativity: Does the Group Look like a Group?

Observers back at basecamp who watched the Adventure Expedition climb that day did not just see single individuals scaling Everest through their binoculars and telescopes: They saw an intact, organized group making its way ever upward (Viesturs, 1996).

Social psychologist Donald Campbell (1958a) coined the term entitativity to describe the extent to which a group seems to be a single, unified entity—a real group. Campbell grounded his analysis of group entitativity in the principles of perception studied most closely by gestalt psychologists (e.g., Köhler, 1959). The researchers identified these principles in their studies of the cues people rely on when perceptually organizing objects into unified, well-organized wholes (gestalts). An automobile, for example, is not perceived to be four wheels, doors, a trunk, a hood, a windshield, and so on, but a single thing: a car. Similarly, a collection of individuals—say four young men walking down the street—might be perceived to be four unrelated individuals, but the observer may also conclude the individuals are a group. Entitativity, then, is the “groupiness” of a group, perceived rather than actual group unity or cohesion.

Entitativity, according to Campbell, is substantially influenced by similarity, proximity, and common fate, as well as such perceptual cues as pragnanz (good form) and permeability. Say, for example, you are walking through a library and see a table occupied by four women. Is this a group—four friends or classmates studying together—or just four independent individuals? Campbell predicts that you would, intuitively, notice if the four have certain physical features in common, such as age, skin color, or clothing. You would also take note of the books they were reading, for if they were studying the same subject, you would assume they share a common goal—and hence are more likely to be a true group (Brewer, Hong, & Li, 2004; Ip, Chiu, & Wan, 2006). Their emotional displays would also provide you with information about their entitativity. If the women all seem to be happy or sad, then you would be more likely to think the group is responsible for their emotional state and that the group itself is a unified one (Magee & Tiedens, 2006). Proximity is also a signal of entitativity, for the smaller the distance separating individuals, the more likely perceivers will assume they are seeing a group rather than individuals who happen to be collocated (Knowles & Bassett, 1976). The principle of common fate also predicts perceived entitativity, for if all the members begin to act in similar ways or move in a relatively coordinated fashion, then your confidence that this cluster is a unified group would be bolstered (Lakens, 2010).

Social psychologist Brian Lickel and his colleagues (2000) investigated Campbell’s theory of entitativity, asking people to rate all sorts of human aggregations in terms of their size, duration, permeability, amount of interaction among members, importance to members, and so on. These analyses, as they expected, yielded four natural groupings that were very similar to the four categories listed in Figure 1.1 (which they labeled intimacy groups, task groups, loose associations, and social categories). Primary groups, such as professional sports teams, families, and close friends, received the highest entitativity ratings, followed by social groups (e.g., a jury, an airline crew, a team in the workplace), categories (e.g., women, doctors, classical music listeners), and collectives (e.g., people waiting for a bus, a queue in a bank). These findings suggest that people are more likely to consider aggregations marked by strong bonds and frequent interactions among members to be groups, but that they are less certain that such aggregations as crowds, waiting lines, or categories qualify as groups (Lickel et al., 2000, Study 3). They also suggest that social categories—which include vast numbers of people whose only qualification for membership in the category may be a demographic quality, such as sex or nationality—were viewed as more group-like than such temporary gatherings as waiting lines and audiences and, in some cases, task-focused groups (Spencer-Rogers, Hamilton, & Sherman, 2007).

When Does a Group Look like a Group?

The sociologist W. I. Thomas stated that “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas & Thomas, 1928, p. 572); this statement is now known as the Thomas Theorem. Applied to groups, this theorem predicts that if people define groups as real, they are real in their consequences. Once people think an aggregate of people is a true group—one with entitativity, as Donald Campbell (1958a) suggested—then the group will have important interpersonal consequences for those in the group and those who are observing it.

This shift in thinking—construing a group to be a true group rather than many individuals—triggers a series of psychological and interpersonal changes for both members and nonmembers. As entitativity increases members identify more with the group and its goals, they value their membership more, and they feel more bonded to the group (Castano, Yzerbyt, & Bourguignon, 2003; Jans, Postmes, & Van der Zee, 2011). When members feel they are part of a high-entitativity group, they are more likely to think that they fit well within the group, they believe that they are similar to other group members in terms of values and beliefs, and they are more willing to accept the consequences of group-level outcomes as their own (Mullen, 1991). For example, when researchers repeatedly told women working in isolation that they were nonetheless members of a group, the women accepted this label and later rated themselves more negatively after the group failed—even though the group existed only in their perceptions (Zander, Stotland, & Wolfe, 1960). Even children as young as 5 years of age know they can count on others in their group to help them and share with them: but only if the group is high in entitativity (Plötner et al., 2016).

Entitativity also influences those who are not in group, often biasing their judgments, attitudes, and intergroup actions. As entitativity increases, perceivers are more like to perceive the group members in stereotypical ways, since they expect that the group members are essentially interchangeable: they are thought to be all the same (Rydell et al., 2007). A sense of essentialism may also permeate perceivers’ beliefs about groups that are high in entitativity. They may assume such groups have deep, relatively unchanging essential qualities that give rise to their more surface-level characteristics (Yzerbyt & Demoulin, 2010). In consequence, even though entitativity is difficult to pronounce, its influence on people is not to be underestimated. Thinking a group is real makes the group real in the eyes of those who are in it and outside of it.

1-2. What Are Group Dynamics?

Why did the Adventure Expedition end tragically? The answer lies, in part, in the motivations, actions, and intentions of the individual members of the expedition: Hall’s decision to continue climbing late into the afternoon, client Doug Hansen’s intense desire to reach the summit, client Jon Krakauer’s superb mountaineering skills, and guide Andy Harris’s mental confusion in the high altitude. But a full accounting of the expedition and its outcomes must also recognize that the individual climbers were members of a group, and that the interpersonal processes that unfolded in that group significantly influenced the thoughts, emotions, and actions of each one of the group’s members.

1-2a. Dynamic Group Processes

The word dynamic comes from the Greek dynamikós, which means to be strong, powerful, and energetic. Dynamic implies the influence of forces that combine, sometimes smoothly but sometimes in opposition, to create continual motion and change. Group dynamics, then, are the influential interpersonal processes that occur in and between groups over time. These processes not only determine how members relate to and engage with one another, but they also determine the group’s inherent nature and trajectory: the actions the group takes, how it responds to its environment, and what it achieves. For example, groups tend to become more cohesive over time. Larger groups often break down into smaller subgroups. In most groups, one person is allowed to exert more influence over the other members. Even in the most temperate of group climates, disagreements can lead to prolonged conflicts. Why? Because these processes occur with predictable regularity in groups.

These processes are reviewed here, but only briefly: for the rest of this book is devoted to the analysis of the dynamic processes that create groups, sustain them over time, and ultimately, determine their fate.

Formative Processes

In April 1996, the members of the Adventure Expedition group assembled in the village of Lukla, at the foot of Mt. Everest, to prepare to climb the world’s tallest mountain. The climbers exchanged some pleasantries over the evening meal, but were reluctant to discuss their personal views and values with people they knew so little about. As Krakauer (1998, p. 37) recounts, “I wasn’t sure what to make of my fellow clients,” and concluded: “they seemed like nice, decent folks.” But this period of reserve did not last long. As their initial inhibitions subsided, the climbers began exchanging information about themselves and their goals. Recognizing they needed the group to survive the climb, they appraised one another’s experience, strengths, and weaknesses. Once at basecamp, they spent nearly all their time with their own group, and actively excluded from the circle of compatriots those who were not part of their team. As reliable alliances took root, the group achieved a rudimentary level of cohesion.

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 examine the personal and interpersonal processes that turned these strangers into a true group. Chapter 3, Inclusion and Identity, suggests that groups satisfy a very basic human need—the need to belong—and the consequences of shifting from an individualistic, self-focused orientation to a group-level perspective. Chapter 4, Formation, explores the personal and situational forces that prompt people to join groups or remain apart from them, as well as the part interpersonal attraction plays in creating stable relationships among group members. Chapter 5, Cohesion and Development, reviews theory and research examining one of the most central concepts in the field of group dynamics, cohesion, the many factors that increase the unity of a group, and the way those factors wax and wane as the group changes over time.

Influence Processes

No group would exist for very long if the members refuse to coordinate their actions with the actions of others in group. Once Krakauer, Weathers, and the other climbers agreed to join the Adventure Expedition, they were no longer entirely in control of their actions and outcomes. Members of groups, to get along with one another, must often go along: They must find their place in the group, comply with the group’s standards, accept guidance from the group’s leaders, and learn how to best influence one another.

A host of group processes operate to transform individuals, with their own personal motives, inclinations, and preferences, into a socially coordinated, smooth-functioning collective. Chapter 6, Structure, argues that in even the most rudimentary of groups structural processes organize the group’s procedures, interaction patterns, and intermember relations. Members take on specific roles within the group that generate regularities in their actions, and they accept and conform to the group’s norms that define what the group expects of them. Distinctive networks of communication and influence often develop in groups, as some members of the group enjoy strong, positive interpersonal ties with others in the group but others’ capacity to influence others atrophies.

A group is a complex social system—a microcosm of powerful interpersonal forces that significantly shape members’ actions—and Chapters 7, 8, and 9 examine the flow of information, influence, and interaction in that microcosm. Chapter 7, Influence, looks at the way group members sometimes change their opinions, judgments, or actions so that they match the opinions, judgments, or actions of the rest of the group (conformity). Chapter 8, Power, extends this topic by considering how group members make use of social power to influence others and how people respond to such influence. Individuals in the group who are more influential than others are often recognized as the group’s leaders, and Chapter 9, Leadership, examines the processes that determine who emerges as a group’s leader and their effectiveness when in that position.

Performance Processes

The climbers equipped themselves with ropes, tents, snow axes, and all manner of cold-weather gear as they prepared for their arduous ascent of Mt. Everest. But, even more critical than their equipment was their personnel, for no one has succeeded in climbing Mt. Everest alone. It is a task so daunting, so complex, and so dangerous that it required the combined skills and energy of a group.

Groups get things done. Across the gamut of human experience, we find example after example of interdependent individuals pooling their personal efforts to reach specifiable goals. Chapter 10, Performance, examines the processes that facilitate and inhibit people’s performance in groups and concludes that groups outperform individuals when interpersonal processes boost members’ motivation. Chapter 11, Teams, continues the analysis of group performance by examining the unique features of groups whose members are highly interdependent, task-focused, and productive. The Adventure Expedition functioned as a team in most respects. Unfortunately, when the group members encountered obstacles during the summit to the top of Mt. Everest, they made the wrong decision: they continued to climb, when caution warranted retreating back down the mountain. The processes that guide groups’ choices and decisions are examined in Chapter 12, Decision Making.

Conflict Processes

Conflict is omnipresent in and between groups. When conflict occurs in a group, the actions or beliefs of one or more members of the group are unacceptable to and resisted by one or more of the other members. These tensions tend to undermine the cohesiveness of the group and cause specific relationships within the group to weaken or break altogether. Many group and individual processes conspire to create conflict in a group, but as Chapter 13, Conflict, explains, the most common sources are competition, disagreements over the distribution of resources, power struggles, uncertainty and disagreement over a decision, and personal antipathies. Some conflicts turn member against members, but others turn group against group. Intergroup relations, the subject of Chapter 14, can be harmonious and cooperative, but in many cases they are rife with tension and conflict.

Contextual Processes

An analysis of the Adventure Expedition group would not be complete if it failed to take into account the group’s location: one of the coldest, most remote, and dangerous places on Earth.

All groups are embedded in a social and environmental context, and Chapter 15, Groups in Context, considers how the physical environment affects a group’s dynamics. Chapter 16, Growth and Change, reviews the use of groups to promote adjustment, human development, and therapeutic change, including helping, supportive, and change-promoting groups. Chapter 17, Collectives, concludes this analysis by examining processes that influence people when they are part of larger, more diffuse, but nonetheless very influential groups, such as mobs, crowds, and social movements.

1-2b. Process and Progress over Time

The members of cliques, teams, crews, families, gangs, peer groups, military squads, professional associations, clubs, congregations, and the like are linked to one another by social relationships, but these relationships are rarely static. The dynamic processes that occur in groups and summarized in Table 1.1—emerging patterns of likes and dislikes among the members, shifts in influence and power as members vie for social status, pressures put on individual members to adhere to the group’s standards, the eruption of conflict and discord as members find that others do not share their beliefs or interests—continually change the group and the relationships among members that the group sustains.

But nearly every theorist who has ever wondered about some aspect of groups and their dynamics has also speculated about regularities in the way groups change over time. In most groups, the same sorts of issues arise over time, and once resolved new processes are initiated that further change the nature of the group and its members. Educational psychologist Bruce Tuckman, for example, identified five process stages in his theory of group development (see Figure 1.5; Tuckman, 1965; Tuckman & Jensen, 1977). In the orientation (forming) phase, the group members become oriented toward one another. In the conflict (storming) phase, conflicts surface in the group as members vie for status and the group sets its goals. These conflicts subside when the group becomes more structured and standards emerge in the structure (norming) phase. In the performance (performing) phase, the group moves beyond disagreement and organizational matters to concentrate on the work to be done. The group continues to function at this stage until it reaches the dissolution (adjourning) stage. As Chapter 5 explains in more detail, groups also tend to cycle repeatedly through some of these stages as the members strive to maintain a balance between task-oriented actions and emotionally expressive behaviors (Bales, 1965).

1-3. Why Study Groups?

If you were limited to a single word, how would you describe the activities, processes, operations, and changes that transpire in social groups? What word illuminates the interdependence of people in groups? And what word adequately summarizes a group’s capacity to promote social interaction, create patterned interrelationships among its members, and bind members together to form a single unit?

Kurt Lewin (1951), recognized by many as the founder of the field, chose the word dynamic. Groups tend to be powerful rather than weak, active rather than passive, and fluid rather than static. Lewin also used the term group dynamics to describe the scientific discipline devoted to the study of these dynamics. Later, psychologists Dorwin Cartwright and Alvin Zander supplied a formal definition, calling it a “field of inquiry dedicated to advancing knowledge about the nature of groups, the laws of their development, and their interrelations with individuals, other groups, and larger institutions” (1968, p. 7).

But let’s return to the question asked at the beginning of the chapter: Why study groups? Why investigate the nature of groups and their dynamics when one can investigate brain structures, rocks, cultures, biological diseases, organizations, ancient civilizations, or even other planets? In the grand scheme of things, how important is it to investigate groups?

1-3a. Understanding People

Groups may be everywhere, doing just about everything, but they stand outside the limelight that shines on most people’s explanation of what makes the world go around. Consider, for example, the well-known face–vase visual illusion. This image can be construed as either a vase or the faces of two individuals looking at each other (see Figure 1.6). Illustrating the figure–ground gestalt principle of perception, when people report seeing a vase, the image of the vase becomes the figure, and the individuals become the ground. Conversely, when people report seeing two individuals looking at each other, the faces become figure and the vase retreats into the background. But the image hides yet a third image—a two-person group—but the group is rarely noticed.

Because people, when they encounter a group of some type, tend to see only the individuals in these groups and not the groups themselves, they resist explanations that highlight group-level influences. Even though people speak of such concepts as teamwork, leadership, and cohesion, they tend to translate these group-level processes into individualistic ones. Why was Adventure Expedition cohesive? Because the individual members were very focused on achieving a goal they valued. Why did Hall push the group beyond its limits? Because he was a driven, high achiever. Why did Jon Krakauer live? Because he was highly skilled. The well-documented fundamental attribution error (FAE) occurs because perceivers are more likely to attribute a person’s actions to personal, individual qualities rather than external, situational forces—including groups (Ross, 1977). Perceivers are also often surprised when the same individual acts very differently when he or she changes groups, for they feel that personal, individualistic qualities are the primary causes of behavior, and that group-level processes should play only a minor role in determining one’s outcomes. Early researchers were not certain that studying groups would yield scientific insights beyond those generated by studies of the individuals who were members of the groups (Allport, 1924).

Group researchers, however, are convinced that if one wishes to understand individuals, one must understand groups. In one of the earliest experimental studies in the field, Norman Triplett (1898) verified what is too often forgotten—that people behave differently when they are part of a group rather than alone—and this group effect has been documented time and again in studies of motivation, emotion, and performance. (Many have suggested that Triplett’s study marks the start of the scientific investigation of interpersonal processes, but in all likelihood the field’s roots reach even further back in time; see Stroebe, 2012.) As Cooley (1909) explained, people acquire their attitudes, values, identities, skills, and principles in groups. As children grow older, their peers replace the family as the source of social values (Harris, 1995), and when they become adults, their actions and outlooks are then shaped by an even larger network of interconnected groups (Barabási, 2003).

But groups also change people in ways that are not subtle at all. The earliest investigations of groups described the abrupt changes in people’s behavior when immersed in crowds, and many concluded that the person who is a member of a group is very different, psychologically, than the person who is all alone (Baumeister, Ainsworth, & Vohs, 2016). People, when in groups, conform to group pressures, and as a result engage in all sorts of behaviors that they would never do had they been isolated from the group’s influence. And although in many cases the group’s influence is short-lived and ends when the person leaves the group, people who join religious or political groups that stress secrecy, obedience to leaders, and dogmatic acceptance of unusual or atypical beliefs (cults) often undergo fundamental and relatively permanent changes in their beliefs and behaviors.

Theories about groups have also proven to be particularly resilient, scientifically speaking, when put to an empirical test. In the last 100 years, researchers have conducted more than 25,000 studies involving over 8 million participants. A review of these studies suggests that much can be learned by studying people’s attitudes, cognitions, personalities, and relationships, but one area of study surpassed all others in terms of providing an explanation for human social behavior. Leading the way, across all 18 topics examined in the review, was the scientific study of groups and their dynamics (Richard, Bond, & Stokes-Zoota, 2003).

Is Living in Groups a Cultural Universal?

Without exception, humans in all societies join with other humans to form groups, but because each society is unique in its traditions, culture, and ecology, the groups within any given culture may display unique interpersonal processes. The groups of the Ghorbat of Central Asia and the Balkans are highly egalitarian with no permanent leadership roles and no hereditary positions of authority. The Kpelle of Liberia, before Westernization, formed secret societies within their villages based on animal magic, and members reaffirm their bonds by performing certain sacred rituals. The Hubeer and the Rahanweyn of Somali cited kinship ties as the basis of their groups, yet many of the groups included “adopted” individuals who were unrelated to anyone in the group (Human Area Relations Files, 2012).

Social and organizational psychologist Geert Hofstede’s theory of national cultures offers one way of identifying similarities and differences in values and cultural norms. In the late 1960s, Hofstede, working with a large international corporation (IBM), collected data about the beliefs, outlooks, and perspectives of employees in countries located all over the world. He then used these data to describe the culture-specific beliefs, traditions, practices, and philosophies shared by members of a group or region; what Hofstede calls “the collective programming of the mind” (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010). His analyses identified a number of key dimensions that underlie variations in cultural outlooks, including:

The Power Distance Index (PDI) is an indicator of inequality within a given culture, across individuals, groups, and classes. When PDI is low, cultures strive to minimize inequalities in the distribution of power within society, but when PDI is high, both those with and without power accept hierarchy as the natural order of things.

Individualism (IDV) contrasts group-centered and more individualistic cultures. In more individualistic cultures, ties between people are looser, for each person focuses on his or her own needs (or those of their immediate family). In collective cultures, people are integrated into cohesive groups that support them in exchange for their loyalty.

Masculinity (MAS) refers to the extent to which masculinity and its associated elements—competition, assertiveness, machismo—are manifested in the culture’s practices, including role expectations associated with men and women.

Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) describes the extent to which the culture’s practices minimize uncertainty and ambiguity, generally by developing extensive social and legal guidelines, emphasizing security, and adopting religious or philosophical beliefs that define how one should behave.

These dimensions of variation leave their mark on the group dynamics that occur within cultures. For example, in cultures with high levels of power distance (e.g., Russia, Panama, Malaysia) rather than low levels (e.g., Austria, New Zealand, Israel), people prefer a group’s leader to be directive rather than participative, and they are less interested in seeking feedback about their impact on others in the group. They are more likely to trust others in the group but do not express that trust openly since they are more guarded in displaying their emotions. The degree of individualism, too, has marked effects on group processes. Most Western, industrialized cultures are individualistic—the United States, Australia, and Great Britain have the highest scores on Hofstede’s individualism dimension—whereas Eastern countries and those with more agrarian rather than manufacturing economies tend to be more communal (e.g., Columbia, Pakistan, Thailand). Chapter 3 considers the impact of these cultural differences on a number of group processes, for individualism is associated with self-promotion, confrontation, and independence, whereas collectivism increases accommodation, compromising, the degree of identification with groups and organizations, and a preference to work in teams (Taras, Kirkman, & Steel, 2010).

These differences in group processes across cultures should not be altogether unexpected. Humans in all societies join with other humans to form groups, but the groups within any given culture may display unique interpersonal processes, as may the individuals within those groups and cultures. In consequence, even when a finding is obtained in one particular country, it is best to exercise caution before generalizing those findings to other people, places, and situations.

1-3b. Understanding the Social World

The study of groups and their dynamics is not only essential for understanding people, but also for understanding organizations, communities, and society itself. Groups are the interpersonal microstructures that link individuals to society. Societies of all types, from the tribes of hunter/gatherers to postindustrial societies, are defined by the small groups that create them. Just as characteristics of the specific individuals who belong to a group shape that group’s basic nature, so the groups within a social system determine that society’s culture and institutions. Legal and political systems, religious institutions, and educational and economic systems are based, at core, on small groups and subgroups of connected individuals. As sociologist Gary Alan Fine (2012) writes, “the group, a level between self and society, should properly have a central place in sociological theorizing. … it creates allegiance; members know each other, come to create a culture and shared history, and can use the group as a basis of connection to the larger society” (p. 32).

1-3c. Applications to Practical Problems

These days, anyone who wants to get something accomplished should probably understand groups and their dynamics. Groups are now the makers, the builders, and producers of nearly everything the world needs and consumes. Groups, too, are the world’s deciders. Who judges guilt and innocence? Juries. Who will decide how to maximize an organization’s financial success? The company’s executive team. Who will plan and execute a military operation: elite forces such as the U.S. Navy SEa, Air and Land teams (SEALs). Even medical doctors, who once worked alone in their practice, now more often than not are part of a medical team whose members each perform functions vital to the health of the patient. Groups, too, are often used by those in mental health fields to help individuals find the motivation to change their thoughts and behaviors.

This pragmatic orientation gives the field of group dynamics an interdisciplinary character. Although the listing of disciplines that study group dynamics in Table 1.2 is far from comprehensive, it does convey the idea that the study of groups is not limited to any one field. As A. Paul Hare and his colleagues once noted, “This field of research does not ‘belong’ to any one of the recognized social sciences alone. It is the common property of all” (Hare, Borgatta, & Bales, 1955, p. vi).

1-4. The Value of Groups

In 1996, the Adventure Expedition climbed to the top of the world’s tallest mountain. The group did not survive that climb, however, for the one that set off for the summit at midnight on April 10 never returned. Some of the individual members managed to descend from the peak but the original group itself was gone.

For centuries, philosophers and scholars have debated the value of groups. Groups are often the arena for profound interpersonal conflicts that end in violence and aggression. Even though group members may cooperate with one another, they may also engage in competition as they strive to outdo one another. When individuals are members of very large groups, such as crowds, they sometimes do things that they would never do if they were acting individually. Many of the worst decisions ever made in the history of the world were made not by lone, misguided individuals but by groups of people who, despite working together, still managed to make a disastrous choice. The Adventure Expedition provides a case in point, for this group failed to take advantage of the expertise and skill of its members. Given these problems, perhaps “humans would do better without groups” (Buys, 1978a, p. 123).

This satirical suggestion—Eliminate All Groups!—is a reminder that groups are neither all good nor all bad. Groups can and do result in challenges, hardships, and even disaster for their members and for society. Yet, they are so “beneficial, if not essential, to humans” that “it seems nonsensical to search for alternatives to human groups” (Buys, 1978b, p. 568). Through membership in groups, we define and confirm our values and beliefs and take on or refine our social identity. When we face uncertain situations, we join groups to gain reassuring information about our problems and security in companionship. Even though we must sometimes bend to the will of a group and its leaders, through groups we can reach goals that would elude us if we attempted them as individuals. Our groups are sometimes filled with conflict, but by resolving this conflict, we learn how to relate with others more effectively. Groups are the bedrock of humans’ social existence, and we must accept the charge of understanding them.

Resources

Chapter Case: The Adventure Consultants Guided Expedition

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (1997) is an engagingly written description of the group that attempted to climb Mt. Everest in 1996 (see, too, Boukreev & DeWalt, 1997).

Introduction to Groups

Encyclopedia of Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, edited by John M. Levine and Michael A. Hogg (2010), is a two-volume, 998-page compendium of current knowledge about groups and their relations, with over 300 entries ranging from action research to xenophobia.

Group Processes, edited by John Levine (2013), includes chapters on all the key topics and processes in the field of group dynamics, including group composition, affective processes, conflict and negotiation, influence, performance, and decision-making.

Groups: Characteristics and Processes

“Elements of a Lay Theory of Groups” by Brian Lickel, David L. Hamilton, and Steven J. Sherman (2001) reviews the perceptual processes that determine when a group will be considered to be a true group or just a gathering of unrelated individuals.

Small Groups as Complex Systems by Holly Arrow, Joseph E. McGrath, and Jennifer L. Berdahl (2000) uses systems theory to examine the formation, performance, and dissolution of small, performance-focused groups.

Contemporary Group Dynamics

“Prospects for Group Processes and Intergroup Relations Research: A Review of 70 Years’ Progress” by Georginia Randsley de Moura, Tirza Leader, Joseph Pelletier, and Dominic Abrams (2008) documents the growing interest in group-level analyses of interpersonal behavior across a range of disciplines.

Tiny Publics: A Theory of Group Action and Culture by Gary Alan Fine (2012) provides a compelling argument for recognizing the fundamental impact that groups and group processes have on individuals, organizations, communities, and cultures.

Resources

Chapter Case: The Adventure Consultants Guided Expedition

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (1997) is an engagingly written description of the group that attempted to climb Mt. Everest in 1996 (see, too, Boukreev & DeWalt, 1997).

Introduction to Groups

Encyclopedia of Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, edited by John M. Levine and Michael A. Hogg (2010), is a two-volume, 998-page compendium of current knowledge about groups and their relations, with over 300 entries ranging from action research to xenophobia.

Group Processes, edited by John Levine (2013), includes chapters on all the key topics and processes in the field of group dynamics, including group composition, affective processes, conflict and negotiation, influence, performance, and decision-making.

Groups: Characteristics and Processes

“Elements of a Lay Theory of Groups” by Brian Lickel, David L. Hamilton, and Steven J. Sherman (2001) reviews the perceptual processes that determine when a group will be considered to be a true group or just a gathering of unrelated individuals.

Small Groups as Complex Systems by Holly Arrow, Joseph E. McGrath, and Jennifer L. Berdahl (2000) uses systems theory to examine the formation, performance, and dissolution of small, performance-focused groups.

Contemporary Group Dynamics

“Prospects for Group Processes and Intergroup Relations Research: A Review of 70 Years’ Progress” by Georginia Randsley de Moura, Tirza Leader, Joseph Pelletier, and Dominic Abrams (2008) documents the growing interest in group-level analyses of interpersonal behavior across a range of disciplines.

Tiny Publics: A Theory of Group Action and Culture by Gary Alan Fine (2012) provides a compelling argument for recognizing the fundamental impact that groups and group processes have on individuals, organizations, communities, and cultures.

Chapter 4 Formation

Groups form through a combination of personal, situational, and interpersonal processes. Formation depends on the members themselves; some people are more likely than others to join groups. Groups also come into existence when the press of environmental circumstances pushes people together rather than keeping them apart. They also spring up, sometimes unexpectedly, when people discover that they like one another, and this attraction provides the foundation for the development of interpersonal bonds.

Who joins groups and who stays apart?

When do people affiliate with other people?

What processes generate bonds of interpersonal attraction between members of groups?

Chapter Outline

4-1

Joining Groups

4-1a

Personality Traits

4-1b

Anxiety and Attachment

4-1c

Social Motivation

4-1d

Men, Women, and Groups

4-1e

Attitudes, Experiences, and Expectations

4-2

Affiliation

4-2a

Social Comparison

4-2b

Stress and Affiliation

4-2c

Social Comparison and the Self

4-3

Attraction

4-3a

Principles of Attraction

4-3b

The Economics of Membership

Chapter Review

Resources

The Impressionists: The Group That Redefined Beauty

The group was born in Paris in 1862. Four young men, all students at a small school of the arts on the Rue de l’Ouest, formed its core: Frederic Bazille, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. They banded together to refine their artistic styles and techniques, but also to ridicule long-held assumptions about what qualified as good art. They were soon joined by other disgruntled artists, including the unconventional Edouard Manet, the detail-oriented Gustave Caillebotte, the contentious Edgar Degas, the irritable Paul Cézanne, and the tactful Camille Pissarro.

Other than their work, they had little in common. Some were the sons of wealthy families but others had working-class backgrounds. Some were outgoing and confident but others were quiet and uncertain. Some had been working at their craft for many years and others were struggling to learn the basics. But they were united in their opposition to the state-supported Academy of Fine Arts. The academy alone determined which paintings and sculptures could be displayed at the Exhibition of the Works of Living Artists (the “Salon”), and most artists acquiesced to the academy’s guidelines. But this small group of renegade painters shared a different vision. They wanted to capture the beauty of everyday life, outdoor scenes, and real people instead of posed portraits and technically precise studio paintings of religious, historical, and mythic scenes.

The young artists developed a new approach to painting. They left the studio to journey into the countryside to paint landscapes. They sometimes painted side by side and critiqued one another’s work. They met in cafés in Paris to discuss technique, artistic philosophies, and politics.

They borrowed brushes, paints, and canvases from one another, shared meals and models, and slept on each other’s floors when no better bed could be had. They competed with one another constantly, but when one of them fell ill or faced financial crises, the others were there to provide support. Some became fast friends, others remained more at the group’s fringes, but together they worked to change the public’s attitudes about their work. Art critics rejected their approach for years, and the artists scarcely earned enough money to survive. But, in time, they were recognized by the art community as a new school of painting. Separately, they were just artists learning their craft, defining their style, and earning enough to pay the bills. But when they joined together to form a group, they transformed themselves and their art, and in time they redefined the world’s conception of beauty. They were the Impressionists (Farrell, 1982, 2001).

We can ask many questions about the Impressionists. How did they make decisions and strategize? Why did Manet rank so high in status, and why did one of the group’s finest painters—Degas—become the malcontent? How did the group counter the constraints imposed by the status quo? But one question—perhaps the most basic one of all—asks why did it come into existence in the first place? In 1858, Manet, Monet, Degas, and the others were busy pursuing their careers independently. But by the late 1860s, they had joined to form the most influential artists circle of all time. What were the circumstances that drove these individuals to combine their resources in a group that endured for more than 30 years?

This chapter answers this question in three parts. It begins with the artists themselves, for people’s personalities, preferences, and prior experiences influence the extent to which they seek out membership in groups. Some are joiners; some are loners. Next, it considers the situation, for even a collection of highly sociable joiners must affiliate on at least one occasion before a group will form. Some situations push people together; others keep them apart. Affiliation, however, only sets the stage for group formation. If the individuals who find themselves together are not attracted to each other, then a long-lasting group like the Impressionists likely will not form. Some people like each other; some do not.

4-1. Joining Groups

Monet and Vincent van Gogh were both brilliant artists, both dropped out of traditional schools of art, and both experimented continually as they struggled to perfect their craft. But Monet joined with other artists, whereas van Gogh kept to himself. Not everyone who joins a group is a “joiner,” and people who prefer independence over association are not necessarily “loners.” But people differ from each other in many ways—in personality, motivations, and past experiences—and these differences predispose some people to join groups and others to remain apart.

4-1a. Personality Traits

When Monet learned that Renoir, Bazille, and Sisley were meeting each evening, he was quick to join the group. Why? Part of the answer lies in his basic personality. He was energetic, creative, optimistic, and relentless in the pursuit of his goals. Some described him as egotistical, but most thought he was a warm, friendly person who enjoyed being with other people. Once he joined a group, he quickly became its leader. Monet’s style of painting changed over time, but his basic personality remained steady throughout his adult life.

The five-factor model (FFM) of personality provides one explanation for the idiosyncratic consistencies in individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and actions over time. Why was Caillebotte so conscientious in organizing the Impressionists’ exhibitions? Why was Monet so adept at influencing others and making friends, whereas Cézanne was bad-tempered and melancholy? Why was van Gogh unable to relax, even when physically exhausted? The FFM explanation: People who vary on the five fundamental traits of personality—extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience—exhibit consistent differences across diverse times and situations.

Extraversion: engagement and interest in social interactions, including friendliness, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement seeking, and cheerfulness.

Agreeableness: cooperative orientation to others, including acceptance, frankness, compassion, congeniality, modesty, and sympathy.

Conscientiousness: persistence in the pursuit of tasks, including self-confidence, orderliness, meeting of obligations, achievement striving, self-regulation, and measured responding.

Neuroticism: strong emotional proclivities, including anxiety, hostility, negative affect, shyness, lack of impulse control, and reactivity to stressors.

Openness to Experience: active pursuit of intellectually and aesthetically stimulating experiences, including imagination, fantasy, appreciation of art, openness to emotions and experiences, curiosity, and cognitive flexibility.

The theory assumes that people differ from one another in many ways, but much of this variability is the observable manifestation of these five basic dimensions (which, when reordered, spell OCEAN; McCrae & Costa, 2013).

Joiners and Loners

All five of the factors in the FFM of personality predict people’s interest in joining groups and their actions once they are included in those groups, but one trait is a particularly influential determinant of one’s groupishness: extraversion (Ozer & Benet-Martínez, 2006). Extraversion is the tendency to move toward people rather than away from people. Extraverts are sociable, outgoing, and active; they are likely to prefer the company of others, particularly in pleasant and enjoyable situations (Lucas & Diener, 2001). Those on the low side of this trait, the introverts, tend to be withdrawn, quiet, and reclusive. Different cultures imbue introversion and extraversion with unique, culture-specific meaning, but people all over the world spontaneously appraise their own and others’ social tendencies (Lucas et al., 2000). Monet was, in all likelihood, an extravert; van Gogh, an introvert.

Extraverts, compared to people who are more introverted, belong to more groups, they like working with other people rather than alone, they talk spontaneously to strangers, and during vacations they want to do things with other people rather than alone. They even say that “thinking about meetings with others is very pleasant for me” (Foschi & Lauriola, 2014, p. 341). Extraverts’ affinity for being part of a group may also be based on their assertiveness, for they tend to be influential group members rather than quiet followers. They may seek out groups because such interactions are stimulating, and extraverts appreciate stimulating experiences more than introverts do (Smillie, 2013).

Groups may also seek out extraverts rather than introverts. Some qualities, such as intelligence, morality, and friendliness, are difficult to judge during initial encounters, but observers are particularly good at detecting extraversion in others (Albright, Kenny, & Malloy, 1988). If a group is looking for people who will be sociable and will connect easily with others, it might recruit extraverts more actively than introverts (Duffy & Chartrand, 2015). Groups may also seek extraverts because they are, in general, happier people than introverts. This difference appears to know no cultural or national boundaries, for when researchers studied students in 39 countries those who were more extraverted were also the ones who were happiest (Lucas et al., 2000).

Why are extraverts so happy (Zelenski, Sobocko, & Whelan, 2014)? Extraverts are more sensitive to rewards than introverts, and so their positivity may be due to their more positive reaction to pleasant experiences. Alternatively, their happiness may also be due to the fact that they join more frequently with other people, and strong social relationships are a fundamental determinant of well-being. When introverts and extraverts recorded their behavior five times a day for two weeks, researchers discovered that even introverts talking to other people, interacting in groups, and so on reported experiencing more positive emotions. Reasoning that acting in an extraverted way may directly influence happiness, the researchers asked volunteers taking part in a group discussion to be talkative, energetic, and active (extraverted) or reserved, quiet, and passive (introverted). Those who acted in extraverted ways ended the study in better moods than did people who were told to act as if they were introverted (Fleeson, Malanos, & Achille, 2002; McNiel & Fleeson, 2006).

Personality–Group Fit

Extraversion predicts individuals’ overall proclivities with regard to joining groups, but all the traits in the five-factor model influence the types of groups individuals join. Extraverts are particularly attracted to organizations that are team-oriented. Those who are agreeable would just as soon avoid groups that are aggressive and competitive, but, like extraverts, they prefer groups that emphasize cooperation. Conscientious individuals, in contrast, are more attracted to groups and organizations that are detail- and task-oriented. Who joins groups like the one formed by the Impressionists—a group that emphasizes creativity, originality, and aesthetics? People whose personalities include the trait openness to experience (Judge & Cable, 1997).

Different groups seek out and accept different kinds of individuals as members. Someone who is highly conscientious, for example, is unlikely to be recruited by a gang; gang members tend to be higher in neuroticism and lower in agreeableness (Egan & Beadman, 2011). Who is more likely to seek membership in and be accepted by a sports team? Someone who is both more extraverted and also somewhat lower in conscientiousness (Allen, Greenlees, & Jones, 2013). In contrast, the Navy SEALs are quite conscientious and also extraverted; a creative introvert likely would not fit in with such a group (Braun, Prusaczyk, & Pratt, 1992). An individual who is open to experience is more likely to join an alternative spiritual movement rather than a traditional religious group (Buxant, Saroglou, & Tesser, 2010). The closer the fit between an individual’s personality characteristics and the group’s purpose and organization, the more likely the individual will seek to join the group.

4-1b. Anxiety and Attachment

Just as personality traits may push people toward groups, other personal qualities may push them away from groups. Cézanne was both shy and temperamental. He was friends with Pissarro but could not bear the company of most of the other Impressionists. van Gogh had several very close friends, but when he tried to join his fellow artists he could not sustain these relationships. Many of the artists in Paris at the time of the Impressionists preferred to work alone, without distraction, rather than painting with others. Some people are shy, socially anxious, or just less interested in being connected to other people and to groups.

Shyness

The dispositional tendency to feel uneasy, uncomfortable, and awkward in response to actual or anticipated social interaction is called shyness. Shy people do not join groups as readily as others, and they do not find group activities to be as enjoyable. As early as age 2, some children begin to display fear or inhibition when they encounter a person they do not recognize. Some grade school children consistently seek out other people, whereas others show signs of shyness and withdrawal when they are in groups. Shy people even react differently than nonshy people, neurologically, when they see a stranger’s face. Nonshy people’s brains show an activation response in the bilateral nucleus accumbens when they see unfamiliar faces, but shy people’s brains display heightened bilateral activity in the amygdala, an area of the brain that is responsible for emotional responses, including fear (Nikitin & Schoch, 2014; Schmidt & Miskovic, 2014).

Most people who are shy manage to cope with the nervousness they feel when in groups. Shy individuals often form associations with other shy individuals, and these groups adopt interaction styles and activities that better suit the social tendencies of their members (Rubin, Coplan, & Bowker, 2009). Shy individuals are also more comfortable in activity-focused groups, such as sports teams and academic groups, and, through positive interactions within such groups, they gain more social confidence (Rose-Krasnor, 2009). Shy people, when they must enter in a new group, often take a friend with them. This social surrogate helps them transition into the group by doing much of the work needed to establish connections with others. The surrogate takes the place of the shy members during initial interactions until they overcome their initial social anxieties (Bradshaw, 1998; Gabriel & Valenti, 2017).

Social Anxiety

Shyness can, in some cases, escalate into social anxiety. Social anxiety sets in when people want to make a good impression, but they do not think that their attempts to establish relationships will succeed. Because of these pessimistic expectations, when these individuals interact with other people, they suffer disabling emotional, physiological, and behavioral side effects. They become physiologically aroused to the point that their pulse races, they blush and perspire, their hands may tremble, and their voices quiver when they speak. Socially anxious people, even when they join groups, do not actively participate; they can be identified by their silence, downcast eyes, and low speaking voices. They may also engage in “innocuous sociability” (Leary, 1983): They merge into the group’s background by indicating general interest in the group and agreement with the other group members while consistently minimizing their personal involvement in the group interaction.

Is Shyness an Interpersonal Liability?

Going Solo (Klinenberg, 2012), Quiet (Cain, 2012), and Party of One (Rufus, 2003) are just a few of the books that have spoken, encouragingly, about the contributions shy, introverted people make to their groups and organizations. But groups, if given the choice, prefer those who are outgoing and vociferous to those who are quiet and reserved.

This preference for the nonshy over the shy depends, however, on one’s cultural background. When people in different countries and cultures evaluated the personality profiles of a shy person and an outgoing person, people from western countries (e.g., United States and Canada) judged outgoing people more positively and the career prospects of the shy more negatively than did individuals from East Asian countries, such as China and Korea (Rapee et al., 2011). But shyness has a different meaning in some Asian countries, for it is associated with one’s recognition of one’s place in the group and a willingness to fit in rather than stand out from the crowd. Parents of shy children in China are not concerned that they are “too withdrawn” or “friendless,” and some evidence suggests that shyness facilitates adjustment and success rather than impedes it (Chen, 2011). Eastern cultures, by tradition, believe enlightenment requires solitude rather than socializing. And some Westerners, agree. Steve Wosniak, the cofounder of Apple Computing, wrote in his memoirs that one must be wary of spending too much time with other people: “I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone” (Wosniak & Smith, 2006, p. 291).

This anxiety can cause people to reduce their social contact with others—to disaffiliate (Leary & Kowalski, 1995, p. 157). In a study that used experience sampling, college students carried with them small handheld computers that signaled them eight times a day, asking them to complete a short set of questions about their emotions, thoughts, and activities. Those who were socially anxious did not spend more time alone, but they were more likely to wish they were alone when they were with other people they did not know very well. They felt more self-conscious and their emotions were more negative when they were with others (Brown et al., 2007).

If these feelings of anxiety are paired with a pronounced fear of embarrassment or humiliation, the individual may be experiencing social anxiety disorder (SAD). This clinical disorder, which affects approximately 5% of adults (4.2% of men, 5.7% of women), is an excessive and unreasonable fear of social situations, qualifying as a phobia rather than distress and discomfort when facing a social challenge. The anxiety is also relatively unrelieved, in that the individual consistently reacts whenever exposed to the situation, although in most cases individuals cope by avoiding the source of the anxiety—all groups. Group situations that are most disturbing to individuals suffering from SAD are speaking in front of other people, including during a group meeting or a class; attending social events, including parties; and eating with other people. Women are more likely to seek pharmacological treatment for SAD, whereas men tend to use alcohol and illicit drugs to reduce their social anxiety (Altemus, Sarvaiya, & Epperson, 2014).

Attachment Style

When individuals join a group, they are agreeing, even if implicitly, to be part of a set of intertwined relationships with one or more other individuals. If you are the type of person, like Monet, who by nature is comfortable forming relationships with other people, then joining groups poses no challenge. But if you are a person who avoids forming relationships with others or experiences problems maintaining relationships, like van Gogh, then groups become one more arena where one’s relational style will find expression.

The idea that individuals differ in their orientations to their relationships is the basis of attachment theory (e.g., Bowlby, 1980). This theory suggests that, from an early age, children differ in the way they relate to others, with some children developing very secure and comfortable relationships with their caregivers but others exhibiting dependence and uncertainty. The theory suggests that these childhood differences emerge in adulthood as variations in attachment style—one’s basic cognitive, emotional, and behavioral orientation when in a relationship with others (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2014). Some people enjoy forming close relationships, and they do not worry about being abandoned by their loved ones. Others, however, are uncomfortable relying on other people, they worry that their loved ones will reject them, or they are simply uninterested in relationships altogether. The four basic styles shown in Figure 4.1—secure, preoccupied, fearful, and dismissing—reflect two underlying dimensions: anxiety about relationships and avoidance of closeness and dependency on others.

Social psychologist Eliot Smith and his colleagues theorized that people also have group-level attachment styles. They suggested that some individuals are anxious about their group experiences, for they question their acceptance by their group and report feeling as if they were unworthy of membership. They tend to agree with such statements as “I often worry my group will not always want me as a member” and “I sometimes worry that my group doesn’t value me as much as I value my group” (Smith, Murphy, & Coats, 1999, p. 110). Others, however, are avoidant; they are not interested in getting close to their group, for they agreed with such statements as “I prefer not to depend on my group or to have my group depend on me” and “I am comfortable not being close to my group” (1999, p. 110). Smith’s research team discovered that people with anxious group attachment styles spend less time in their groups, engage in fewer collective activities, and are less satisfied with the level of support they received from the group. Those with avoidant group attachment styles felt that the group was less important to them, and they were more likely to claim that they were planning to leave the group. When researchers followed up these ideas by watching people with varying attachment styles interacting in small groups, they discovered that people with secure attachment styles contributed to both the instrumental and the relationship activities of the group. Those with more anxious attachment styles, in contrast, contributed less to the group’s instrumental work, and those with avoidant attachment styles contributed less to both instrumental and relationship activities (Rom & Mikulincer, 2003). Other work suggests that individuals’ feelings of anxiety about their personal relationships covary with their anxiety about groups but that avoidance of groups and personal relations are unrelated. Both types of attachment styles, however, predicted how well individuals adjusted when they were transitioning to a new living situation (as new students on a college campus; Marmarosh & Markin, 2007).

4-1c. Social Motivation

Why did Monet rely on other people rather than pursue his goals alone? Why did Manet refuse to join the group during its first public exhibition? Why did the group try to exclude Cézanne? Such “why” questions can often be answered by considering social motives: psychological processes that guide people’s choices and the goals they seek. Social motives, as noted in Chapter 2, prompt people to take action, and those actions include seeking out and joining groups (Pittman & Zeigler, 2007).

Need for Affiliation

Individuals who are high in the need for affiliation express a stronger desire to be with other people, they seem happier when they are with people, and they are more disturbed by unpleasant interactions with others. In consequence, they tend to join groups more frequently, spend more of their time in groups, communicate more with other group members, and accept other group members more readily (see Hill, [2009], for a review). Overall, they consider group activities to be more enjoyable than do those who are low in the need for affiliation, even in situations that are task-focused rather than interpersonally oriented (Brewer & Klein, 2006).

Individuals who are high in the need for affiliation are drawn to groups, but some research suggests that they are also more anxious when they confront social situations, perhaps because they fear rejection. Some years ago social psychologist Donn Byrne (1961) demonstrated this tendency by arranging for college students to complete a series of questionnaires while seated in a room equipped with a two-way mirror. Students in the control condition just filled out their forms, but Byrne told those in the experimental group that observers behind the mirror were watching them carefully, rating each one of them on their general popularity, their attractiveness, and how likeable they seemed. Those who were low in their need for affiliation were unfazed by the idea that their social attractiveness was under review, whereas those who were high in need affiliation reported feeling more anxious and uneasy. This substrate of anxiety about rejection can cause the usual positive relationship between the need for affiliation and joining groups to reverse; those who are high in need for affiliation are less likely to join a group when they fear the group will reject them (Hill, 1991).

Need for Intimacy

Individuals who have a high need for intimacy, like those who have a high need for affiliation, prefer to join with others. Such individuals, however, seek close, warm relations and are more likely to express caring and concern for other people (McAdams, 1982, 1995). They do not fear rejection but, instead, are more focused on friendship, camaraderie, reciprocity, and mutual help. This pro-group orientation was apparent when investigators used an experience sampling method to track the thoughts and actions of college students for an entire week. They gave their participants electronic pagers and asked them to complete a short questionnaire every time they were paged over the course of seven days. They then paged them 49 times during the week, between the hours of 9 am and 11 pm. As expected, when paged, those who were high in need for intimacy were more frequently either thinking about other people or they were actually interacting with other people rather than alone. If with others, their moods were more positive than if they were by themselves (McAdams & Constantian, 1983).

Need for Power

Individuals who are high in the need for power (or power motive) exhibit an elevated desire to maintain and enhance their capacity to influence other people (Fodor, 2009). They report, for example, an interest in supervising, leading, and managing people, for they would prefer to be in positions of authority where they can make decisions that impact other people. Such individuals therefore seek out membership in groups, not because they wish to bond with others, but because groups provide them with the means to reach their more primary goal of influencing other people. In consequence, those who are high in power seek to lead the groups they join. When such individuals were asked to think about the groups they participated in recently, those with a high power motive reported taking part in relatively fewer dyadic interactions but in more large-group interactions (groups with more than four members). They also reported exercising more control in these groups by organizing and initiating activities, assuming responsibility, and attempting to persuade others (McAdams, Healy, & Krause, 1984).

FIRO

Psychologist William Schutz (1958, 1992) integrated the three basic needs for affiliation, intimacy, and power in his Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation (FIRO) theory (rhymes with “I row”). He labeled them the need for inclusion, affection, and control, and argued they combine to determine how people treat others and how people want others to treat them. Inclusion (need for affiliation) refers to peoples’ desire to join with others but also their need to be accepted by those others. Affection (need for intimacy) is a desire to like others as well as a desire to be liked by them. Control (need for power) includes the need to dominate others but also the willingness to let others be dominant. Schutz developed the FIRO-B scale (the B is for behavior), which is sampled in Table 4.1, to measure both the need to express and the need to receive inclusion, affection, and control. Inclusion and agreeableness (both wanted and expressed) are associated with gregariousness and warmth, expressed control with extraversion, and wanted control with neuroticism (Furnham, 2008).

FIRO theory assumes that people join groups, and remain in them, because they meet one or more of these basic needs. If, for example, Monet did not need to receive and express inclusion, he probably would have been content to develop his skills alone or in a more traditional teacher-led class setting. But he had a vigorous need to express inclusion, affection, and control, and so he created and maintained the circle of impressionist painters. Sisley, in contrast, wished to receive inclusion and affection but was not as strongly motivated to include others in his activities.

4-1d. Men, Women, and Groups

Nearly all the Impressionists were men; Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt were exceptions. Is the need to seek out and join groups stronger in men than women?

Studies find that men and women differ in their tendency to join groups, but the differences are not great in magnitude. Women tend to be somewhat more extraverted and agreeable than men, and these differences are pronounced in economically developed nations (Schmitt et al., 2008). Women remember more details about their relationships than do men, and they more accurately recount events that occurred in their social networks (Taylor, 2002). Women are, in general, higher in relationality—that is, their values, attitudes, and outlooks emphasize and facilitate establishing and maintaining connections to others (Gore & Cross, 2006). Women expect more reciprocity and loyalty in their one-to-one friendship relationships as well as intimacy, solidarity, and companionship (Hall, 2011). Men are more agentic than women and so are more likely to join with other men in order to perform a task or reach a goal (Twenge, 1997).

These tendencies may reflect women’s and men’s differing interpersonal orientations, with women more likely to define themselves in terms of their memberships in groups and their relationships. The sexes may also differ in their emphasis on achieving power and establishing connections with others. Both of these goals can best be achieved in groups, but they require membership in different types of groups. Men, seeking power and influence, join competitive, goal-oriented groups where they can vie for status. Women, seeking intimate relationships and, in some cases, safety, would be more likely to join small, supportive groups (Baumeister, 2010; Baumeister & Sommer, 1997; David-Barrett et al., 2015).

These sex differences are also entangled with role differences and cultural stereotypes. In cultures where men and women tend to enact different roles, the roles may shape opportunities for involvement in groups. If women are primarily responsible for domestic duties and childbearing, they may have more opportunities to join informal, localized groups but not occupational groups (Taylor, 2002). Hence, as attitudes toward the role of women have changed in contemporary society, differences in social participation have diminished (Risman & Davis, 2013). Sexism also works to exclude women and men from certain types of groups. Women, for example, were until recently deliberately excluded from juries in the United States. (The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that women could not be excused from jury duty because of their sex in 1975.) In Paris, in the 1860s, women modeled for artists, but few could be artists themselves. Morisot and Cassatt could not even join the other Impressionists in the extended discussions at the Café Guerbois. As sexist attitudes continue to decline, differences in membership in various types of groups will also abate.

4-1e. Attitudes, Experiences, and Expectations

Not everyone is thrilled at the prospect of joining groups. In many situations, people have the opportunity to join a new group—a club, a group of people who socialize together, an amateur sports team—but decline for personal reasons. Their general attitude about groups and the demands they make on members may be negative. They may have little experience in groups and so are too cautious to take part. They may value individual effort over team engagement. People’s attitudes, experiences, and expectations are all factors that influence their decision to join a group.

Beliefs about Groups

Even though humans seem to sort themselves into groups in most contexts, some remain ambivalent about them. Whereas some people look forward with breathless anticipation to their next subcommittee meeting, group-learning experience, or business meeting, others question—quite openly—the worth of these social contrivances. When management researchers Steven J. Karau and Abdel Moneim M. K. Elsaid (2009) investigated these variations, they discovered that people with more negative beliefs about groups and their effectiveness were less likely to take part in them. Karau and Elsaid began their analysis by developing the Beliefs about Groups (BAG) scale to measure people’s preferences for taking part in groups, expectations about how hard people work in groups, and predictions of the positive and negative effects groups will have on performance (see Table 4.2). Individuals who had more positive beliefs about a group’s capacity to enhance performance and effort expressed a stronger preference to join in groups, whereas those who had more negative expectations about groups were disinclined to take part in them. In addition, preference to work in groups was also related to collectivism (see Chapter 3), trust in others, agreeableness, and experience working in groups in educational settings.

Experiences in Groups

One’s previous experience in groups, whether good or bad, influences one’s interest in joining groups in the future. College students who receive low scores on assessments based on team-learning activities evaluate group work more negatively than students who get higher grades (Reinig, Horowitz, & Whittenburg, 2011). Participation in organized sports teams in adolescence predicts participation in such groups in adulthood (Walters et al., 2009). Individuals who have had a negative experience in a therapeutic group are less likely to choose that form of treatment in the future (Smokowski, Rose, & Bacallao, 2001). In some cases, too, the experience can be a vicarious one. Children who see their parents joining and enjoying memberships in civic and volunteer associations are more likely to join such groups when they themselves reach adulthood (Bonikowski & McPherson, 2007).

Social psychologists Richard Moreland, John Levine, and their colleagues studied the impact of expectations on students’ decisions to join a group when they got to college. In one of their studies, they surveyed more than 1,000 first-year students at the University of Pittsburgh, asking them if they took part in groups in high school and if they expected to join groups in college. They identified those students who had positive experiences in their high school groups—they rated their high school groups as both important and enjoyable. These students, when they enrolled in college, actively investigated the groups available to them. They tried harder to find a group on campus to join, and they were also more optimistic in their evaluations of potential groups; they expected that the positive aspects of joining a group would be particularly rewarding. Experience in groups in high school dampened that enthusiasm somewhat, at least for the specific groups that interested them. For example, those who were in student government in high school and were interested in taking part in student politics in college felt that this group would be rewarding, but they also recognized that it would impose costs as well. These students tended to be more deliberate in their review of potential groups and displayed a commitment to a specific group throughout the search process (Brinthaupt, Moreland, & Levine, 1991; Pavelchak, Moreland, & Levine, 1986).

What Is a Collaborative Circle?

There is something special about those small groups that come into existence to support and sustain the work of artists, scientists, writers, and reformers. Sociologist Michael Farrell (2001, p. 11) calls them collaborative circles: “peers who share similar occupational goals and who, through long periods of dialogue and collaboration, negotiate a common vision that guides their work.” The Impressionists were a collaborative circle, but so were the Oxford writers who joined with J. R. R. Tolkien to discuss fantasy narratives (the Inklings), Freud’s colleagues who met regularly to redefine common conceptions of the human mind (the Vienna Circle), and poets who worked at their craft when students at Vanderbilt University (the Fugitives). These groups provided members with the support, encouragement, and stimulation they needed to pursue their literary, scientific, and philosophical projects, and so served as a buffer against the unrelenting pressure to conform to the status quo. These groups are reminders that the greatest advances in the arts, sciences, and technologies are often the result of collaboration in groups rather than the labors of brilliant individuals working in isolation.

Taking Collective Action

The Impressionists were part collaborative circle but also part social movement, for its members were attempting to undo the academy’s tight hold on the Salon and the art world, in general. Many factors influence people’s decisions to join a social movement, but two factors—a sense of injustice and strong emotions—are particularly critical. Many artists in Paris in the 1860s were rejected by the Salon judges, but those who joined the Impressionists were certain that the existing system was an unfair one. Time and again the artists submitted to the Salon, and only a few of them were ever permitted to display their work. The Salon’s refusal to consider alternative, emerging views of art was considered unjust, for it harmed not only the individual artists, but the group itself. This sense of injustice against the ingroup also fueled the artists’ emotions. They were angered by the situation, and anger has been identified as a key factor in distinguishing between who will join a movement and who will not. A person may feel that a situation is unjust, but the person who is also angry about the unfairness is more likely to join with others to redress the wrong. Contempt, too, can be critical in motivating people to take action, particularly more extreme, counter-normative forms of civil disobedience (Tausch et al., 2011). Chapter 17 examines the dynamics of collective movements in more detail.

4-2. Affiliation

Birds flock, insects swarm, fish shoal, and humans affiliate. Affiliation, generally speaking, is the gathering together of conspecifics in one location. This process, as we have seen, depends in part on the personalities, preferences, and other personal qualities of the group members. Affiliation, however, also becomes more likely in some situations and less likely in others. When we face uncertain or bewildering conditions, when we experience stressful circumstances, and when we are fearful (but not embarrassed), we can gain the information and social support we need by joining a group.

4-2a. Social Comparison

The Impressionists faced uncertainty each time they stood before a blank canvas. They were convinced that the methods taught by the traditional Parisian art schools were severely limited, but they were not sure how to put their alternative approach into practice. So, they often painted together, exchanging ideas about colors and techniques, as they refined their approach to art.

Social psychologist Leon Festinger (1950, 1954) maintained that people often rely on others for information about themselves and the environment. Physical reality is a reliable guide in many cases, but, to validate social reality, people must compare their interpretations to those of other people. Monet, for example, thought that his technique of using bright colors and leaving portions of the work undeveloped was promising, but after a day’s painting, he always asked Renoir for his honest appraisal. Festinger called this process social comparison and suggested that it begins when people find themselves in ambiguous, confusing situations. Such situations trigger a variety of psychological reactions, most of which are unsettling, and so people affiliate with others to gain the information they need to reduce their confusion. As Figure 4.2 indicates, the final result of social comparison is cognitive clarity, but as the research reviewed in this section suggests, people engage in social comparison for many reasons—to evaluate their own qualities, to set personal goals, to help other people, or to bolster their self-esteem (Suls & Wheeler, 2012, 2014).

Misery Loves Company

How do people react when they find themselves in an ambiguous, and possibly dangerous, situation? Social psychologist Stanley Schachter (1959) believed that most people, finding themselves in such a predicament, would choose to join with other people to gain the information they need to allay their anxiety. To test his idea, he recruited young women college students to meet at his laboratory. There they were greeted by a researcher who introduced himself as Dr. Gregor Zilstein from the Medical School’s Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry. In serious tones, he explained that he was studying the effects of electric shock on human beings. In one condition (low anxiety), the room contained no electrical devices; the experimenter explained that the shocks would be so mild that they would “resemble more a tickle or a tingle than anything unpleasant” (p. 14). Participants assigned to the high-anxiety condition, however, faced a vast collection of electrical equipment and were informed, “These shocks will hurt, they will be painful … but, of course, they will do no permanent damage” (p. 13). The researcher then asked the participant if she wanted to wait for her turn alone or with others. Approximately two-thirds of the women in the high-anxiety condition (63%) chose to affiliate, whereas only one-third of the women in the low-anxiety condition (33%) chose to wait with others. Schachter’s conclusion: “misery loves company” (1959, p. 24).

Misery Loves Miserable Company

The majority of the women Schachter studied chose to affiliate, but what was their primary motivation for joining with others? Did they wish to acquire information through social comparison, or were they just so frightened that they did not want to be alone? Schachter examined this question by replicating the high-anxiety condition of his original experiment, complete with the shock equipment and Dr. Zilstein. He held anxiety at a high level, but manipulated the amount of information that could be gained by affiliating with others. He told half of the women that they could wait with other women who were about to receive shocks; these women were therefore similar to the participants. He told the others that they could join women who were waiting for advising by their professors; these women could only wait with people who were dissimilar. Schachter hypothesized that if the women believed that the others could not provide them with any social comparison information, there would be no reason to join them. The findings confirmed his analysis: 60% of the women asked to wait with others if they all faced a similar situation, but no one in the dissimilar condition wanted to affiliate. Schachter’s second conclusion: “Misery doesn’t love just any kind of company, it loves only miserable company” (Schachter, 1959, p. 24).

Schachter, by suggesting that people love “miserable company,” meant they seek out those who face the same threat and so are knowledgeable. So, how would people respond if offered the chance to wait with someone who had participated in the study the previous day? Such individuals would be ideal sources of clarifying information, for they not only faced the same situation—but they had also survived it. When given such an alternative, participants preferred to join someone who had already gone through the procedure (Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1988). A similar preference for someone who had “been there, done that” has been documented in patients who are awaiting surgery. When given a choice, 60% of pre-surgery patients requested a roommate who was recovering from the same type of operation, whereas only 17% wanted “miserable company”—a roommate who was also about to undergo the operation (Kulik & Mahler, 1989). The patients also reported talking with their roommate about the operation more if their roommate had already had the operation and was recovering (Kulik, Mahler, & Moore, 1996). These studies suggest that people are more interested in gaining clarifying information than in sharing the experience with someone, particularly when the situation is a dangerous one and they can converse openly with other group members (Kulik & Mahler, 2000).

Embarrassed Misery Avoids Company

Even when people need information about a situation, they sometimes refrain from joining others because they do not wish to embarrass themselves. When alone, people might feel foolish if they do something silly, but when they are in a group, foolishness turns into embarrassment. In some cases, this fear of embarrassment can be stronger than the need to understand what is happening, resulting in social inhibition instead of affiliation (McCarty & Karau, 2016).

Researchers examined this process by changing the Schachter-type situation to include the possibility of embarrassment (Morris et al., 1976). The investigators asked four to six strangers to meet in a room labeled with the sign “Sexual Attitudes: Please Wait Inside.” In the fear condition, the room contained several electrical devices and information sheets that suggested the study involved electric shock and sexual stimulation. In the ambiguous condition, the participants found only two cardboard boxes filled with computer forms. In the embarrassment (anxiety-provoking) condition, the researchers replaced the equipment and boxes with contraceptive devices, books on sexually transmitted diseases, and pictures of naked men and women. Observers behind a two-way mirror watched the group for 20 minutes.

How did the groups respond? Members were twice as likely to talk to one another when they faced a fearful situation, compared to an ambiguous or embarrassing situation. Groups who thought that the study involved sexual behavior did very little talking, and they showed more withdrawal. Embarrassment blocked affiliation in this situation, even though this situation was not a dangerous one.

4-2b. Stress and Affiliation

Schachter (1959) did not just confuse people, he frightened people. The women he studied affiliated with others to acquire clarifying information through social comparison, but they were probably also seeking reassurance. Two people, facing the prospect of receiving electric shocks, could analyze the situation, but also they could talk about their misgivings, calm each other down, and help one another should problems arise. Given a choice between people who are equal in their knowledge of the situation but vary in their emotional reaction to the threat—some are very fearful, but others are calm—people usually choose to wait with those who are calm rather than anxious (Rabbie, 1963) and caring rather than unsupportive (Li et al., 2008).

Safety in Numbers

Humans are group-seeking animals, but their gregariousness becomes particularly robust under conditions of stress (Rofé, 1984). In times of trouble, such as illness, divorce, catastrophe, natural disaster, or personal loss, people seek out friends and relatives (Bonanno et al., 2010). College students who are experiencing problems, academically or socially, spend between 28% and 35% of their time interacting with people they feel are supportive (Harlow & Cantor, 1995). Individuals experiencing work-related stress, such as the threat of layoffs, time pressures, or inadequate supervision, cope by joining with coworkers (McGuire, 2007). When reminded of their own mortality, they are more likely to sit closer to other people, even if these other individuals do not share their opinions on important social issues (Wisman & Koole, 2003).

People also react to large-scale traumatic events by joining with others. When U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, 60% of adult Americans reported seeking solace by talking to others (Sheatsley & Feldman, 1964). In the days following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, 98% of all adult Americans reported talking to others about the attacks, 60% reported taking part in a group activity, and 77% sought to strengthen their connection to their loved ones (Schuster et al., 2001). Many individuals joined online groups via the Internet. Internet usage declined overall as people watched televised news broadcasts, but discussion areas, forums, and chat room use surged, as did email rates. Individuals who were already heavy users of the Internet tended to be the ones who used this technology to affiliate with others, whereas light users were more likely to rely on more traditional methods (Kim et al., 2004).

As Figure 4.3 suggests, affiliation with others plays a key role in both fight-or-flight and tend-and-befriend responses to stress (Taylor et al., 2000, see Chapter 3). When members face an imminent threat, they can work together to fight against it; they can rally against attackers, organize a concerted response to a disaster, and so on. Groups also enhance survival as members escape. If escape routes are not restricted, the dispersion of a group can confuse attackers and increase the chances that all members of the group will escape unharmed. A group can also organize its escape from danger, with stronger members of the group helping less able members to reach safety. If, in contrast, the group faces a long-term threat, then the group may cope by increasing nurturing, protective, and supportive behaviors (tending) and by seeking out connections to other people (befriending).

Affiliation and Social Support

Monet initially sought to change the art world single-handedly, but he soon found that he needed help from others. When his work was condemned by the critics, he shared his feelings of rejection with the other artists, who offered him encouragement and advice. Frequently penniless, he sold his work to other artists so he could buy food and pay for his lodging. He could not afford his own studio, so Bazille and Renoir invited him to share one with them. When Monet injured his leg, Bazille cared for him. The group did not just provide him with cognitive clarity but with social support: comfort, caring, and companionship extended to those who are dealing with turbulence and trouble (Gleason & Iida, 2015).

Social support can take many forms, ranging from acceptance and inclusion to confirmation of identity and purpose (see Uchino, 2004).

Belonging: Groups let members know that they are valued members and reassure them that they are not alone in facing their problems; they meet members’ need to feel included and accepted.

Emotional support: Group members express their caring, concern, and affection for one another; they minimize self-doubt, tension, and vulnerability while increasing self-esteem, resilience, and self-satisfaction. Members compliment, encourage, and listen to one another.

Informational support: Groups provide members with useful information for solving problems, making decisions, and setting their goals; they offer advice, guidance, and suggestions.

Instrumental support: Groups offer tangible assistance to their members, as when they help each other with assigned tasks, loan money and materials to one another, or work collaboratively on shared tasks.

Meaning: Groups provide members with existential, or spiritual support, by allaying existential anxiety, reconfirming members’ world views, and sharing faith and perspectives.

Admittedly, some groups fail to deliver on their promise of support. They may even add stressors by stirring up conflicts, increasing responsibilities, exposing members to criticism, or displaying their own anxieties about the situation (e.g., Newsom et al., 2008). Nor are all members equally adept at providing social support to others, or providing the type of support that the individual experiencing problems most needs. Some work suggests that the men in a group are quicker to provide instrumental support, such as tangible assistance or practical advice, whereas the women in the group provide more emotional support, such as expressions of concern and caring (Verhofstadt, Buysse, & Ickes, 2007). Some people, too, are just naturally better at doing the sorts of things that make other people feel supported. Only some of the individuals in one study reported that they knew how to make sure their friends felt cared for and supported (Hess, Fannin, & Pollom, 2007).

Affiliation and Health

Groups, although they can sometimes irritate their members as much as they support them, are usually a safe haven from the storm of stress. People who enjoy strong social bonds tend to experience less stress in their lives, are less likely to suffer from depression and other psychological problems, and are physically healthier (Stinson et al., 2008). Stressful life circumstances leave people at risk for psychological and physical illness, but groups can serve as protective buffers against these negative consequences. Researchers verified this buffering effect in studies of stressors, including health crises, personal tragedies, terrorist attacks, and intergroup conflict. For example, individuals trying to recover from a devastating crisis (e.g., the death of a spouse or child) who were more firmly embedded in a social network of friends, relatives, and neighbors were less depressed than people who were not integrated into groups (Norris & Murrell, 1990). Firefighters who felt they were supported by their peers and their supervisor reported less stress than those who did not feel as closely connected to their group members (Varvel et al., 2007). A survey of New York City residents following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks indicated that those who were members of groups or affiliative organizations (e.g., church groups, discussion groups, or veterans groups) were more resilient to the stressful effects of the attacks (Silver & Garfin, 2016). Participants who played the role of prisoners in a simulation of a prison (in England) provided one another with substantial social support, and, in consequence, they were relatively unaffected by situational stressors (Haslam & Reicher, 2006).

These salutary effects of affiliation occur because of the close connection between the biological systems that maintain and promote health and the quality of one’s connection to other people. Just as isolation from others can cause disruptions in immune system functioning, affiliation and social support are associated with healthy changes in a body’s immune, hormonal, and neurological systems. Depleted levels of the peptides oxytocin and vasopressin not only trigger an increased desire to affiliate, but these neurochemical control systems also damp down the body’s tendency to overreact physiologically to irritating events. In consequence, genetic variants that influence the production of oxytocin and enhance its physiological effects predict both reactions to stressful circumstances and the likelihood of responding positively to others who need help and support (Poulin, Holman, & Buffone, 2012). Affiliation-related experiences may also recruit areas of the brain that are part of the opioid and dopaminergic systems; these systems have been implicated in reward-based learning and positive emotional reactions, including happiness (Panksepp, Nelson, & Bekkedal, 1996). These social neuroscience studies all suggest that there is health, as well as safety, in numbers.

4-2c. Social Comparison and the Self

Affiliation, and the social comparison processes it instigates, provide individuals with information about confusing circumstances as well as comfort and companionship in difficult times. But the impact of affiliation does not stop there. Individuals, by joining with others, gain information about their relative standing on skills, competencies, and outcomes; this information has a substantial impact on their self-satisfactions and motivations.

Upward and Downward Social Comparison

Monet gained information about art and technique when he joined with the other Impressionists. This information undoubtedly reduced his confusion, but this cognitive clarity may have come at a psychological cost. Renoir, like Monet, was experimenting with many new methods, but Renoir was prospering in terms of sales. Compared to Renoir, Monet was a failure. And how did Monet feel when he spoke to his friend Sisley? Sisley’s work was never considered to be collectible; he lived on the brink of poverty for much of his life. When Monet compared himself to Sisley, he must have felt a sense of relief that his own situation was not so bleak, but at the same time, he must have worried that his own career could take a turn for the worst at any moment.

People compare themselves to others when they lack information about the situation they face, but they are not indiscriminate when selecting targets for comparison. When they want information, they select people who are similar to them or are likely to be particularly well-informed. But when self-esteem is on the line, people engage in downward social comparison by selecting targets who are worse off than they are. Monet, for example, by contrasting himself to the struggling Sisley, could think to himself, “Things are not going so well for me, but at least I’m better off than poor Sisley.” Students reviewing their academic progress with other students, spouses discussing their relationships with other husbands and wives, patients talking with other patients about their success in coping with their illness, medical students taking part in a training class, expectant mothers talking about their pregnancies, and employees reviewing their coworkers’ performance all show the tendency to seek out, for comparison purposes, people who are doing more poorly than they are (Buunk & Gibbons, 2007).

What if Monet had, instead, compared himself to the more prosperous Renoir? Such a comparison would be an example of upward social comparison, which occurs when people compare themselves to others who are better off than they are. Renoir may have been an inspiration to Monet—when he started to wonder if he would ever be a success, he could find reassurance in Renoir’s accomplishments (Collins, 2000). Monet could also bask in the glory of Renoir’s fame; he could assimilate his friend’s accomplishments rather than reject them.

But upward social comparison can also provoke darker, more negative, emotions, such as resentment, envy, and shame rather than pride and admiration (Smith, 2000). When students were asked to keep track of the people they compared themselves to over a two-week period, they reported feeling depressed and discouraged when they associated with more competent people (Wheeler & Miyake, 1992). Academically gifted students who attend selective schools are more unsure of their abilities and their intellectual worth than equally bright students who attend schools with a wide range of student ability—the so-called big-fish-little-pond effect (Marsh et al., 2007). When people see updates of their friends on Facebook celebrating accomplishments or receiving noteworthy awards, their emotions are more negative than positive (Appel, Gerlach, & Crusius, 2016). Even if people know they have performed better than average, if they compare themselves to someone who has far outperformed them, they feel discouraged (Seta, Seta, & McElroy, 2006). In consequence, some of the happiest people are those who join groups, but don’t spend too much time comparing themselves to the other people in their group (Buunk, Nauta, & Molleman, 2005).

Self-Evaluation Maintenance

When our own accomplishments pale in comparison to those of a friend or fellow group member, social comparison often leaves us feeling more dejected than elated. But not always. As Abraham Tesser’s self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model suggests, we will graciously celebrate others’ accomplishments, provided they perform very well on tasks that are not central to our sense of self-worth (Tesser, 1988, 1991).

Tesser and his colleagues examined this tension between sharing others’ successes and highlighting their failures by asking elementary school students to identify the types of activities (sports, art, music, and math) that were personally important to them. The students also identified their most and least preferred classmate. One week later, the students rated their ability, their close classmate’s ability, and their distant classmate’s ability in one area they felt was important and one area they felt was unimportant. As Figure 4.4 indicates, if the students thought that the task was important, they judged their performance to be superior to that of their close classmate. If the task was not important to them personally, they felt that they had performed relatively worse (Tesser, Campbell, & Smith, 1984). Similarly, in a study of married couples, Tesser and his colleagues discovered that happy couples felt that it was more pleasant to be outdone by one’s partner in an area that their partner valued but to outperform the partner in an area that he or she did not value. Unhappy couples did not recognize this secret ingredient for marital bliss (Beach et al., 1998).

In sum, even though social comparison provides an indispensable social and cognitive service, it can also set in motion processes that destabilize rather than sustain the group and its members. Studies of newly formed teams suggest that members feel threatened by teammates who have superior abilities, even if they have had an opportunity to bond with their teammates before they start working together (Cleveland et al., 2011). Group members, to avoid the pain of social comparison, can turn against the highest performing members—the “tall poppies” of their group—ostracizing them or criticizing them unfairly (Feather, 1994). Given the negative consequences of outperforming others, people who perform well often keep their success to themselves—particularly when they do well on tasks that are very important to the other group members (Tal-Or, 2008). Group members may also, unfortunately, maintain their superiority over their friends and teammates by sabotaging, indirectly, others’ performances on tasks that are central to their sense of self-worth. The students in one experience sampling study recorded their interactions over a six-day period and indicated if the interaction involved academic matters or social matters, what their relationship to the person was (e.g., acquaintance, stranger, close friend), and if they shared information with that person that they thought would help the other to improve. These students gave helpful information to their friends when the interactions pertained to social matters, but when it came to academics, they helped their friends less than they helped strangers. This tendency was even more pronounced when the students thought that their friend was already performing better than they were (Pemberton & Sedikides, 2001). A similar finding was obtained when researchers studied recommendations. Individuals were willing to recommend a colleague for promotion who excelled in an area that was unrelated to their expertise, but not one who was proficient in an area where their own accomplishments had earned them high status (Garcia, Song, & Tesser, 2010).

4-3. Attraction

Renoir and Bazille met, quite by happenstance, because both were students of Gleyre. Their desire to learn more about their craft and their enrollment in the same school combined to bring them together. But this chance meeting by itself was not sufficient to spark the formation of the group that would, in time, become the Impressionists. Bazille and Renoir would not have chosen to spend more and more time together discussing art, politics, and Parisian society if they had disliked each other. Affiliation may set the stage for a group to form, but attraction transforms acquaintances into friends.

4-3a. Principles of Attraction

Social psychologist Theodore Newcomb’s classic study of the acquaintance process anticipated the methods used in many contemporary reality television programs. Those programs arrange for strangers to live together in a mansion, house, or apartment and then they just record the ebb and flow of likes and dislikes among the members. Similarly, Newcomb offered 17 young men starting their studies at the University of Michigan free rent if they answered a detailed survey of their attitudes, likes, and dislikes each week. Then, he watched as the 17 students sorted themselves out into friendship pairs and distinct groups (Newcomb, 1960, 1961, 1979, 1981).

Even though attraction is often thought to be a highly capricious and unpredictable social process, Newcomb identified a small number of principles that explain when relationships are likely to form. As the sections that follow indicate, people are more likely to associate with certain people—those who are nearby, those who express similar attitudes and values, and those who respond positively to them. Such associations often culminate in the creation of a group (see Clark & LeMay, 2010, Friedkin, 2004, for reviews).

The Proximity Principle

People often assume that their groups result from rational planning or common interests, but the proximity principle suggests that people join groups that happen to be close by. Monet, Manet, Renoir, and many other Impressionists lived in the same neighborhood in Paris. Their paths crossed and crossed again, until eventually a group was formed. City dwellers who regularly assemble in the same physical location—commuters at subway stops, patrons at local bars, and frequent picnickers in parks—eventually gel into identifiable groups (see Gieryn, 2000). Newcomb (1960) assigned the participants roommates at random, but by the study’s end, most roommates had become close friends. Teachers can create long-lasting cliques and friendships simply by assigning students to adjacent seats in their classrooms (Segal, 1974). In one study, researchers, on the first day of a psychology class in college, assigned the students to their seats at random. Students could sit anywhere in the room after that first day, but one year later the seat assignments still predicted who liked whom (Back, Schmukle, & Egloff, 2008). When people feel that their groups are cohesive or the bonds between members are particularly strong, they describe them as “close”—recognizing, if only implicitly, that propinquity implies intimacy.

Festinger and his colleagues tracked the emergence of networks of attraction in their study of Westgate and Westgate West, two housing developments filled, at random, with students and their families. These housing projects offered him an excellent opportunity to not only study group formation, but also the “relatively subtle influences which are exerted during the normal communication process among members of a group” (Festinger, Schachter, & Back, 1950, p. 7). Festinger discovered that the majority of best friends not only lived in the same building, but they also lived next door to one another; 41% of the next-door neighbors were identified as people “seen socially.” The numbers then dropped with each increase in distance so that only 22% of the neighbors two doors down were identified as members of the student’s social group, 16% of those three doors down, and only 10% of those four doors away. The distances were relatively small ones, but proximity mattered.

People do not form groups with whomever is near them because they are shallow or indiscriminating. First, when people continually encounter other people because their offices, homes, desks, or rooms are located adjacent to theirs, familiarity increases. And, the familiarity principle (or “mere exposure effect”) suggests that people show a preference for the familiar rather than the unknown. Novel, unfamiliar stimuli provoke a wariness that is likely evolutionarily adaptive; the hunter-gatherer who remained cautious when encountering an unrecognized animal, plant, or human was more likely to emerge unscathed than one who risked a closer encounter (Bornstein, 1989).

Second, proximity increases interaction between people, and interaction cultivates attraction. As Festinger’s study of Westgate revealed, people encountered some of their neighbors more frequently than others—those who lived close by and those whose apartments they passed by frequently. These were the neighbors who tended to form small groups within the apartment complex. Repeated interactions may foster a sense of groupness as the people come to think of themselves as a group and those outside the group begin to treat them as a group (Arkin & Burger, 1980). One investigator watched, for weeks, the interactions of 12 women who worked at separate desks organized in three rows. The work did not require that the individuals collaborate extensively with one another, but they frequently spoke to each other. Every 15 minutes, the observer would note who was interacting with whom and eventually recorded over 1,500 distinct conversations. The conversations took place primarily between neighbors or at least between the workers who were seated in the same row; these interactions accurately predicted the formation of smaller cliques within the larger group of women (Gullahorn, 1952).

As with any scientific law of human behavior, exceptions can be noted, particularly when the interactions that proximity promotes yield negative rather than positive outcomes. When people were asked to name their friends, most identified people who lived close by and whom they interacted with very frequently. But when they named someone they disliked, they also tended to pick a near neighbor (Ebbesen, Kjos, & Konecni, 1976). If repeated exposure reveals that those nearby have contemptible qualities, then familiarity will breed contempt rather than contentment (Norton, Frost, & Ariely, 2007).

Does the Proximity Principle Apply to Online Groups?

Distance does not apply to people who communicate using the Internet, but the proximity principle’s key corollary—frequent interaction tends to promote group formation—does. Online groups, like offline groups, result when individuals find themselves repeatedly interacting with each other. It’s just that these interactions do not occur in face-to-face encounters, but through instant messaging, in Facebook, via Twitter and Skype, on email, and so on. College students, for example, use Facebook to solidify the emergent social groups and relationships that form when they first arrive on campus. They also use Facebook as a tool for interacting with people they already know (e.g., family, classmates, and old friends). Students who report using Facebook more intensively say that they feel more closely connected to other students on their campus and to their friends (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007).

Not all Internet sites are equally effective in promoting social interaction, however. Many areas of the Web that are designed to encourage interaction between people, such as discussion areas and the comment areas of blogs, are nearly empty of commentaries because people visit only once and never return. So, when will individuals visit a second time? The best predictor of continuing engagement in the site is how they are treated during their very first visit. In one study, researchers examined the posts of 2,777 newcomers to one of six public discussion areas that dealt with various topics, including dieting, gun rights, and the NY Rangers hockey team. They discovered that 61% of the newcomers received a reply and that the reply increased the likelihood of the person returning to the site in the future by 21%. Getting an answer—interaction itself—was more important than the content of the response. It did not matter if the responder disagreed with the newcomer or if their comment was negative in its emotional tone (Joyce & Kraut, 2006).

These studies suggest that social media, by facilitating interaction between remotely located individuals, increases attraction and group formation, but since they make use of correlational designs, it is difficult to determine which came first. Did people who like each other make use of the Internet to interact with one another, or did their interactions on the Internet increase their attraction to one another? To determine the direction of this cause–effect relationship, social psychologist Harry T. Reis and his colleagues (2011) manipulated the frequency of interaction and then measured attraction. In one of their studies, they required same-sex pairs of college students who were strangers to one another to use instant messaging (IM) to exchange messages in sessions lasting 15 minutes or more. They manipulated the number of IM chat sessions, requiring only one session for some, but two, four, six, or eight sessions for others. As the proximity-turned-presence principle predicts, pairs that IM-chatted more frequently liked each other more, and these effects were mediated by increases in knowledge of one another and perceived responsiveness (e.g., “sees the ‘real’ me,” “understands me,” and “seems interested in what I am thinking and feeling”). These interactions were strictly anonymous ones, but at the end of the study, 62.5% of the dyads who had IM-chatted eight times wanted to know the name and contact information of their partner, but only 17.6% of those dyads who chatted but one time expressed interest in continuing the relationship. These investigators were thus justified in concluding that interaction causes attraction rather than attraction causing interaction—and it matters not if that interaction occurs online or in face-to-face settings.

The Elaboration Principle

Groups, as self-organizing, dynamic systems, tend to increase in complexity over time. A group that begins with only two members tends to grow in size as these individuals become linked to other nearby individuals. In systems theory, this process is termed elaboration (Parks, 2007) or percolation (Nagler, Levina, & Timme, 2011): “the basic dynamic of elaboration is the proliferation of elements and ties,” which “are linked together to form a functional unit called a group” (Arrow et al., 2000, pp. 91–92).

Newcomb’s groups, for example, conformed to this elaboration principle, for cliques usually evolved from smaller, dyadic pairings. The first friendships were two-person pairs—usually roommates or people living in adjoining rooms who became friends. Over time, these dyads expanded to include other individuals who were attracted to one or both of the original members. This same kind of self-organizing process has been documented in other emerging groups, such as adolescents’ peer group associations, leisure groups, and social movements. Gangs, for example, form when three friends refer to themselves with a shared name and recruit other friends to join the group (Tobin, 2008). Friendships are very likely to form between students who were linked to the same individuals (Gibbons & Olk, 2003). Groups form when otherwise unrelated individuals are drawn to a single individual who becomes the hub for gradually developing bonds among the various members (Redl, 1942). The Impressionists developed into a group through such a self-organizing process. Each member of the core group drew in others, until in time the group included artists, sculptors, and writers (Farrell, 2001, p. 44; see Figure 4.5).

The Similarity Principle

Newcomb found that the 17 men clustered naturally into two groups containing nine and seven members; one person remained at the fringe of both groups. The seven-man group was particularly unified, for when asked to indicate who they liked out of the total list of 17, they gave relatively high rankings to one another and not to those young men in the other cluster. The members of the other group did not show the same level of mutual attraction as the smaller clique.

When Newcomb (1963) examined these subgroups, he noticed that subgroup members’ values, beliefs, and interests were similar. One clique, for example, contained men who endorsed liberal political and religious attitudes, were all registered in the arts college, came from the same part of the country, and shared similar aesthetic, social, theoretical, economic, political, and religious values. The members of the second subgroup were all veterans, were majors in engineering, and shared similar religious, economic, and political values. Newcomb had found strong evidence for the similarity principle: People are attracted to those who are similar to them in some way.

Similarity is a social magnet that creates all kinds of relationships. People tend to marry people who are similar to them; they join groups composed of others who are like them; and they live in communities where people are more alike than different. Although these similarities often reflect agreements in attitudes, values, and beliefs, they are also based on demographic characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, sex, and age (Lazarsfeld & Merton, 1954). As a result, homophily—similarity of the members in attitudes, values, demographic characteristics, and so on—is common in groups. The cliques that form in large volunteer organizations tie together people who are similar in some way rather than dissimilar (Feld, 1982). If a group decreases in size, the first individual who is dropped from membership will likely be the one who is the least similar to the other members; ties between similar people are maintained, but ties with dissimilar people dissolve. “Birds of a feather flock together” describes most groups (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001).

Homophily appears to be sustained by a number of psychological, sociological, and relational factors that combine to promote contacts between people who share similarities rather than differences. People who adopt the same values and attitudes reassure each other that their beliefs are accurate, and people find association with such people very rewarding (Byrne, 1971). People may also assume, with some justification, that future group interactions will be more cooperative and conflict-free when members are all similar to one another (Insko & Schopler, 1972). Similarity’s opposite, dissimilarity, also works to push people away from each other—the dissimilarity–repulsion effect is as influential as the similarity–attraction effect (Drigotas, 1993). Similarity may also increase a sense of connectedness to the other person (Arkin & Burger, 1980). Two strangers chatting casually on an airplane, for example, feel united if they find that they share even the most trivial similarity, such as the same middle name or favorite television program (Jones et al., 2004). Disliking a person who seems similar may also be psychologically distressing. After all, if a person is similar to us, it follows logically that he or she must be attractive (Festinger, 1957).

Homophily also tends to beget homophily. Because communities, schools, and most workplaces bring people together who are similar in terms of race, attitudes, religion, and ethnicity, people’s options for relationships are limited to those who are already similar to them in these ways (McPherson et al., 2001). Also, even when individuals have the opportunity to form relationships with people who are different from them in some way, they nonetheless gravitate toward those who are similar. Researchers demonstrated this tendency by interviewing pairs of students who were attending classes at a large university (25,000 students) or one of several smaller colleges located nearby. Even though the smaller campuses constrained individuals’ friendship choices—they offered fewer people to join with—the pairs on the smaller campus were significantly more heterogeneous in their attitudes than the pairs on the larger campus. Ironically, students often choose to attend larger universities because such an environment will offer them more opportunities to make friends with a wider variety of people, but, once on campus, people who are similar in terms of attitudes and values find each other and form stable networks of association. As a result of this natural assortive process, the groups that form in an environment where diversity was greatest tended to be more homogenous (Bahns, Pickett, & Crandall, 2012).

The Complementarity Principle

The similarity principle exerts a powerful influence on groups, but in some cases opposites attract. If people’s qualities complement each other—they are dissimilar but they fit well together—then this unique form of dissimilarity may encourage people to associate with one another. Claude, for example, may enjoy leading groups, so he is not attracted to other individuals who also strive to take control of the group. Instead, he responds best to those who accept his guidance (Tiedens, Unzueta, & Young, 2007). Similarly, individuals who are forming a group may realize that the members’ skills and abilities must complement each other if the group is to be successful (Kristof-Brown, Barrick, & Stevens, 2005). These cases are consistent with the complementarity principle, which suggests that people are attracted to those who possess characteristics that complement their own personal characteristics (Miller, 2015).

In all likelihood, group members respond positively to both similarity and complementarity (Dryer & Horowitz, 1997). People who consider themselves to be warm and friendly seek out others who are sociable and positive; those who are cold and critical are more comfortable in the company of those who are cantankerous and negative. However, people generally respond to dominant behaviors by acting submissively and vice versa; so leaders seek out followers, and the strong seek out the weak (e.g., Tracey, Ryan, & Jaschik-Herman, 2001).

Schutz (1958), in his FIRO theory of groups discussed earlier in this chapter, suggested that compatibility can be based on both similarity and complementarity. Interchange compatibility exists when members have similar expectations about the group’s intimacy, control, and inclusiveness. Interchange compatibility will be high, for example, if all the members expect that their group will be formally organized with minimal expressions of intimacy, but it will be low if some think that they can share their innermost feelings, whereas others want a more reserved exchange (John et al., 2010). Originator compatibility exists when people have dissimilar, but complementary, needs with regard to expressing and receiving control, inclusion, and affection. For example, originator compatibility would be high if a person with a high need to control the group joined a group whose members wanted a strong leader.

Schutz tested his theory by constructing groups of varying compatibilities. He created originator compatibility by placing in each group one member with a high need for control, one member with a high need for inclusion, and three members with lower needs for control and inclusion. Moreover, interchange compatibility was established by grouping people with similar needs for affection. All the groups in this set were compatible, but levels of affection were high in half of the groups and low in the other half. A set of incompatible groups was also created by including group members who varied significantly in their need for affection, ranging from high to low. As Schutz predicted,

(1)

cohesiveness was higher in the compatible groups than in the incompatible groups, and

(2)

the compatible groups worked on problems far more efficiently than the incompatible groups.

He found similar results in studies of groups that formed spontaneously, such as street gangs and friendship circles in fraternities (Schutz, 1958).

The Reciprocity Principle

When Groucho Marx joked, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member,” he was denying the power of the reciprocity principle—that liking tends to be mutual. When we discover that someone else accepts and approves of us—they give friendly advice, compliment us, or declare their admiration for us—we usually respond by liking them in return. Newcomb (1979) found strong evidence of the reciprocity principle, as did other investigators in a range of different situations (e.g., Kandel, 1978). Some group members, like Groucho Marx, may not like to be liked, but these exceptions to the reciprocity principle are relatively rare. When Person A expresses liking for Person B, it implies that Person A will treat Person B with respect, compassion, and benevolence on future occasions, so Person B usually responds favorably by expressing liking for Person A (Montoya & Insko, 2008).

Negative reciprocity also occurs in groups, for disliking someone is a sure way to earn that person’s contempt. In one study, college students discussed controversial issues in groups. Unknown to the true participants in the experiment, two of the three group members were confederates of the experimenter, who either accepted or rejected the comments of the participant. During a break between the discussion and the completion of a measure of attraction to the group, the rejecting confederates excluded the participant from their discussion by talking among themselves and giving the participant an occasional dirty look. Naturally, participants were less attracted to their comembers if they had been rejected by them. The rejection also served to lower participants’ opinions of themselves (Pepitone & Wilpinski, 1960).

The Minimax Principle

Social exchange theory offers one final, and particularly important, principle for predicting group formation. This theory, as noted in Chapter 2, assumes that people are rational creatures who strive to minimize their troubles, worries, and losses and instead maximize their positive outcomes, happiness, and rewards. Like shoppers searching for a bargain, they are drawn to groups that impose few costs yet offer them the greatest rewards. If a group seems to be a costly one—it will demand much time or will require members to do things that they would rather avoid if possible—then the value of the group will drop and people will be less likely to join. But, if the group offers considerable rewards to its members, such as prestige, desired resources, or pleasant experiences, then they will seek it out. These two basic requirements, taken together, provide the basis for social exchange theory’s minimax principle: People will join groups and remain in groups that provide them with the maximum number of valued rewards while incurring the minimum number of possible costs (Blau, 1964; Homans, 1961; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959).

What kinds of rewards do people seek, and what costs do they hope to avoid (Mitchell, Cropanzano, & Quisenberry, 2012)? When researchers asked prospective group members to identify the rewards and costs they felt a group might create for them, 40% mentioned such social and personal rewards as meeting people, making new friends, developing new interests, or enhancing their self-esteem. They also mentioned such rewards as learning new skills, increased opportunities for networking, and fun. These prospective members also anticipated costs, however. More than 30% expected to lose time and money by joining a group. Other frequently mentioned costs were social pressures, possible injury or illness, and excessive demands made by the group for their time. Nonetheless, the prospective members in this study optimistically felt that the groups they were considering would offer them far more rewards than costs (Brinthaupt, Moreland, & Levine, 1991; Moreland, Levine, & Cini, 1993).

The group members themselves are also an important source of rewards and costs. People are usually attracted to groups whose members possess positively valued qualities and avoid groups of people with objectionable characteristics. People prefer to associate with people who are generous, enthusiastic, punctual, dependable, helpful, strong, truthful, and intelligent (Clark & Lemay, 2010). People tend to dislike and reject as potential group members those individuals who possess socially unattractive personal qualities—people who seem pushy, rude, self-centered, boring, or negative (Kowalski, 1996; Leary et al., 1986). Many of the Impressionists, for example, considered having to interact with Degas a major cost of membership. In a letter to Camille Pissarro, Gustave Caillebotte wrote, “Degas introduced disunity into our midst. It is unfortunate for him that he has such an unsatisfactory character. He spends his time haranguing at the Nouvelle-Athènes or in society. He would do much better to paint a little more” (quoted in Denvir, 1993, p. 181).

4-3b. The Economics of Membership

Why did such artists as Manet, Pissarro, and Bazille join with Monet to create an artists circle? As we have seen, the group offered its members a number of advantages over remaining alone. By joining Monet, the Impressionists gained a sounding board for ideas, social support, help with tasks they could not accomplish alone, and friends. But the group also created costs for members, who had to spend time and personal resources before they could enjoy the benefits the group offered. The minimax principle argues that those who joined the group must have felt that the benefits outweighed the costs (Saavedra & Van Dyne, 1999).

Why Do People Join Gangs?

Gangs are often characterized as disruptive, violent groups of delinquents who commit robberies, hijack cars, distribute drugs, murder, and generally live outside the boundaries of “normal” society. Gangs do contend against legal authorities and members may use violence to establish status and control in the group. Gangs can, however, be relatively stable associations within many communities, and their members also connect to their community through more traditional social groups (church congregations, families, and schools). Larger gangs also tend to be hierarchically organized, much like a business or formal organization, and the members vary in their commitment to their groups (Vankatesh, 2008). The few core members (called variously ancients, old gangsters, and veteranos) may remain in the group for many years, and for them the gang dominates their social lives. Most members, however, only take part in some gang-related activities (Coughlin & Venkatesh, 2003).

Gangs also form for many of the same reasons any group does. One study of gangs in East Los Angeles, for example, traced many of these groups back to a much smaller cluster of friends who lived near one another (Moore, 1991). The founders of the group were very similar to one another in terms of ethnicity and age, and they were committed to increasing the level of safety in their neighborhoods. Over time, more people joined the groups, which gradually became more formally organized, more territorial, and more likely to engage in criminal behavior. Gangs also tend to be relatively task focused (Venkatesh, 2008). When members were asked why they joined the gang, most stressed practical outcomes, such as safety and financial gain. As one member remarked, “There’s money in a gang. I want to be in it, you see a lot of money in it, man. That’s why I really got in the gang, money and all” (quoted in Decker & Van Winkle, 1996, p. 74). Many gang members also agreed that gang membership increased their status in the community and helped them socially. “One thing I like about gangs it’s more people to be around, more partners to go places with … social stuff” (quoted in Decker & Van Winkle, 1996, p. 75).

In many cases, people have many options and several may offer a favorable ratio of rewards to costs. How do people choose among the many groups that promise them a favorable reward/cost ratio? According to social exchange theorists John Thibaut and Harold Kelley (1959), the decision to join is based on two factors: the comparison level and the comparison level for alternatives. Comparison level (CL) is the standard by which individuals evaluate the desirability of group membership. The CL derives from the average of all outcomes known to the individual and is usually strongly influenced by previous relationships. If, for example, Degas’s prior group memberships yielded very positive rewards with very few costs, his CL should be higher than that of someone who has experienced fewer rewards and more costs through group membership. According to Thibaut and Kelley (1959, p. 21), groups that “fall above CL would be relatively ‘satisfying’ and attractive to the member; those entailing outcomes that fall below CL would be relatively ‘unsatisfying’ and unattractive.”

Comparison level, however, only predicts when people will be satisfied with membership in a group. If we want to predict whether people will join groups or leave them, we must also take into account the value of other, alternative groups. What if Degas could have joined several artists circles, all of which surpassed his CL? Which one would he then select? According to Thibaut and Kelley (1959), the group with the best reward/cost balance will determine Degas’ comparison level for alternatives

(

CL

alt

)

. Thibaut and Kelley argued that “

CL

alt

can be defined informally as the lowest level of outcomes a member will accept in the light of available alternative opportunities” (1959, p. 21).

Entering and exiting groups is largely determined by

CL

alt

, whereas satisfaction with membership is determined by CL (see Table 4.3). For example, why did Degas initially join the Impressionists, but eventually leave the group? According to Thibaut and Kelley, Degas intuitively calculated the positive and negative outcomes that resulted from membership in the group. This index, at least at first, favored the Impressionists. If Degas believed that joining the group would surpass his comparison level (CL), then he would likely be satisfied with membership. But over time, the demands of the group became too great and the rewards too small, the group’s value dropped below his CL, and he became dissatisfied. If the group’s value dropped below Degas’s intuitive estimations of the value of other groups (his

CL

alt

), then he would likely leave the Impressionists and join another, more promising group. He would also be more likely to exit the group if he did not feel committed to it, with commitment determined by the resources he had invested in it previously. In Degas’ case, the alternative of remaining alone established the lower level of his

CL

alt

, and he did not feel sufficiently invested in the group to remain a member (Rusbult, Agnew, & Arriaga, 2012).

The rest of the Impressionists, however, remained friends. They often exhibited their works individually and spent months in isolation, but they still provided each other with help as necessary. Indeed, for many years, they met regularly at the Café Riche, where they would discuss art, politics, and literature. In time, they reached their goal of fame and fortune. By the turn of the century, most were invited, at last, to present in traditional shows, and collectors paid handsome prices for their work. As individuals, they came to Paris to learn to paint, but as a group they changed the world’s definition of fine art.

Resources

Chapter Case: The Impressionists

Collaborative Circles by Michael P. Farrell (2001) provides a richly detailed analysis of the Impressionists and a number of other influential groups and offers a stage theory that describes how these highly creative groups develop over time.

Formation

Small Groups as Complex Systems by Holly Arrow, Joseph E. McGrath, and Jennifer L. Berdahl (2000) uses the conceptual framework of systems theory to examine the formation, performance, and dissolution of small, performance-focused groups.

Affiliation

“Affiliation, Acceptance, and Belonging” by Mark R. Leary (2010) thoughtfully reviews theory and research examining the factors that draw people into social interaction with other people, but also the processes that lead to rejection and exclusion.

Handbook of Social Comparison: Theory and Research, edited by Jerry Suls and Ladd Wheeler (2000), includes chapters on all aspects of social comparison processes.

“Social Comparison: The End of a Theory and the Emergence of a Field” by Abraham P. Buunk and Frederick X. Gibbons (2007) is a masterful review of the voluminous literature dealing with comparison processes.

The Tending Instinct by Shelley E. Taylor (2002) discusses the scientific support for and implications of her tend-and-befriend theory of sex differences.

Attraction

“Close Relationships” by Margaret S. Clark and Edward P. Lemay, Jr. reviews the nature of close, intimate relationships, defining them as the reliable giving and receiving of responsiveness from others.

Intimate Relationships by Rowland S. Miller (2015) surveys the copious research and theory examining the causes of attraction and intimacy in relationships.

Chapter Case: The Impressionists

Collaborative Circles by Michael P. Farrell (2001) provides a richly detailed analysis of the Impressionists and a number of other influential groups and offers a stage theory that describes how these highly creative groups develop over time.

Formation

Small Groups as Complex Systems by Holly Arrow, Joseph E. McGrath, and Jennifer L. Berdahl (2000) uses the conceptual framework of systems theory to examine the formation, performance, and dissolution of small, performance-focused groups.

Affiliation

“Affiliation, Acceptance, and Belonging” by Mark R. Leary (2010) thoughtfully reviews theory and research examining the factors that draw people into social interaction with other people, but also the processes that lead to rejection and exclusion.

Handbook of Social Comparison: Theory and Research, edited by Jerry Suls and Ladd Wheeler (2000), includes chapters on all aspects of social comparison processes.

“Social Comparison: The End of a Theory and the Emergence of a Field” by Abraham P. Buunk and Frederick X. Gibbons (2007) is a masterful review of the voluminous literature dealing with comparison processes.

The Tending Instinct by Shelley E. Taylor (2002) discusses the scientific support for and implications of her tend-and-befriend theory of sex differences.

Attraction

“Close Relationships” by Margaret S. Clark and Edward P. Lemay, Jr. reviews the nature of close, intimate relationships, defining them as the reliable giving and receiving of responsiveness from others.

Intimate Relationships by Rowland S. Miller (2015) surveys the copious research and theory examining the causes of attraction and intimacy in relationships.