10: Working Groups - Performance and Decision Making
- Page ID
- 257125
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Chapter Overview
Social groups are an important part of everyday life, shaping how we think, behave, perform, and make decisions. This chapter examines how groups form, how people develop social identities through group membership, and how groups change over time.
The chapter then explores group performance, including how the presence of others can improve or interfere with individual performance. You will examine social facilitation and inhibition, social loafing, group tasks, and the process gains and losses that influence how successfully groups accomplish their goals.
Next, the chapter considers group decision making. Although groups can benefit from the knowledge and perspectives of multiple members, processes such as groupthink, poor information sharing, ineffective brainstorming, and group polarization can reduce decision quality. The chapter also considers these processes in the context of jury decision making.
Finally, you will explore strategies for improving group performance and decision making, including motivation, effective communication, information sharing, goal setting, and diversity. Throughout the chapter, you will consider how social psychological principles can help explain why some groups work effectively while others struggle and how groups can make better collective decisions.
Chapter Learning Objectives
1. Understanding Social Groups
- Define the factors that create social groups and perceptions of entitativity.
- Define the concept of social identity, and explain how it applies to social groups.
- Review the stages of group development and dissolution.
2. Group Performance
- Describe the situations under which social facilitation and social inhibition might occur, and review the theories that have been used to explain these processes.
- Outline the effects of member characteristics, process gains, and process losses on group performance.
- Summarize how social psychologists classify the different types of tasks that groups are asked to perform.
- Explain the influence of social loafing on group performance.
3. Group Decision Making
- Explain factors that can lead to process gain in group versus individual decision making.
- Explain how groupthink can harm effective group decision making.
- Outline the ways that lack of information sharing can reduce decision-making quality in group contexts.
- Explain why brainstorming can often be counterproductive to sound decision making in groups.
- Describe how group polarization can lead groups to make more extreme decisions than individuals.
- Explore important factors that lead juries to make better or worse decisions.
4. Improving Group Performance and Decision Making
- Review the ways that people can work to make group performance and decision making more effective.
- Explore the role of motivating people to perform better due to self-interest.
- Outline ways to improve communication and information sharing in groups.
- Review research on setting effective group goals.
- Outline the benefits of challenges of diversity in regards to group performance and decision making.
- 10.1: Prelude to Working Groups - Performance and Decision Making
- This page highlights the rise in gender diversity in corporate leadership, noting an increase in female board members, particularly in Europe, and suggests that mixed-gender boards enhance business performance. Additionally, it explores the influence of social groups on human existence, examining their positive and negative dynamics. Key concepts related to social groups are connected to broader psychological themes regarding decision-making and performance.
- 10.2: Understanding Social Groups
- This page explores social groups, highlighting their formation, identity, and developmental dynamics. It introduces entitativity, the cohesiveness of a group, influenced by similarity and communication. Social identity theory links group membership to enhanced self-esteem. Furthermore, it details Tuckman and Jensen's development model, which includes forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning stages.
- 10.3: Group Performance
- This page explores group dynamics, emphasizing the balance between process gains and losses in performance. It identifies different task types—maximizing (quantitative) and intellective (qualitative)—and their influence on group effectiveness. Social loafing and coordination losses are highlighted as key challenges, particularly in larger groups, where individual motivation may wane. Factors such as task significance and cultural influences affect these dynamics.
- 10.4: Group Decision Making
- This page examines group decision-making, highlighting effective and ineffective factors. It addresses benefits like shared insights and the risks of groupthink, shared information bias, and production blocking in brainstorming. Additionally, it discusses group polarization, especially in jury contexts, where discussions can amplify initial opinions. While conformity pressures can dominate group dynamics, juries often mitigate biases through deliberation.
- 10.5: Improving Group Performance and Decision Making
- This page emphasizes the critical role of advocacy in enhancing group decision-making and preventing groupthink. It highlights the significance of understanding group dynamics, motivating members, encouraging diverse opinions, and fostering open communication for effective group performance. Smaller groups often perform better due to reduced social loafing.
- 10.6: Thinking Like a Social Psychologist about Social Groups
- This page examines small working groups in terms of task performance and decision-making, noting their benefits and challenges. While groups can boost performance, they may face pitfalls like overconfidence, conformity, and social loafing. Strategies to enhance effectiveness include promoting open discussion and identifying harmful behaviors, ultimately aiming to improve productivity and decision quality.
- 10.7: Chapter Summary
- This page explores the dynamics and performance of social groups, focusing on shared perception, interaction, and group structure. It details concepts like social facilitation and process losses, as well as the pros and cons of group decision-making, including groupthink and shared information bias.
- 10.8: Additional Learning Opportunities
- This page provides application activities to reinforce group dynamics concepts, encouraging students to analyze roles, norms, social facilitation, and decision-making biases. It also prompts evaluation of process gains and losses while suggesting video resources and critical thinking questions to enhance understanding.
- 10.9: References
- This page provides a detailed compilation of scholarly works focusing on social psychology, group dynamics, and decision-making. Key themes include self-categorization, empowerment, social loafing, group cohesion, and the effects of diversity on creativity and group performance.
Thumbnail: Group Performance and Decision Making. (CC BY-SA 4.0; via Wikimedia Commons).