What makes a group, why people join, Tuckman’s stages, roles, norms, status and cohesiveness, types of groups, social facilitation and loafing, groupthink and polarisation.
Key ideas
A group is two or more interacting, interdependent people with shared goals, roles, norms and a sense of belonging; a crowd has none of this structure.
Groups form through proximity, similarity and common goals; people join for security, status, self-esteem, needs, goals and information.
Group structure has roles (expected behaviour), norms (unspoken rules), status (ascribed or achieved) and cohesiveness (the “we feeling”).
Groups can be primary or secondary, formal or informal, ingroups or outgroups; Tajfel showed people favour even a trivial ingroup.
Others present can improve a well-learned task (social facilitation), but pooled effort can drop (social loafing).
Groupthink (Janis) is a drive for agreement that overrides careful judgement; polarisation makes a group’s first view stronger.
each member’s share = group total ÷ members; fall = alone − share
Reducing loafing
make each effort identifiable, raise commitment and importance, build cohesiveness
Preventing groupthink
reward disagreement, look at alternatives, bring in outside experts
Team
complementary skills and mutual accountability
Watch out
Calling any crowd a group: a group needs interaction, interdependence and structure.
Putting storming before forming or after norming.
Mixing up social loafing (less effort in a group) with social facilitation (better performance when watched).
Worked example
Suppose students clap as loudly as they can: alone, each makes 15 units of noise; in a group of 4, the total is 36 units. (a) What is each member’s average? (b) By how much did each person’s effort fall? (c) Name the process.
Working: 36 ÷ 4; 15 − 9
Answer: (a) 9 units (b) 6 units (c) social loafing