Unit 5: Groups

Group psychology in high-performance settings studies how two or more interdependent individuals combine effort, identity and interaction to reach shared goals. A group is not a mere aggregate of people; it is a bounded social unit whose members influence one another and share a common fate. This orientation section fixes the definitions the later sections lean on.

• Working definition: A group is two or more interacting, interdependent individuals who come together to achieve particular objectives (Robbins & Judge).
• Interdependence: Members' outcomes depend on one another's actions — the defining feature separating a group from a crowd.
• Shared identity: Members perceive a "we", a psychological boundary between in-group and out-group.
• Common goal: A superordinate objective (winning a match, shipping a product) that no member fully controls alone.
• Structure: Recurring roles, norms, status and size that stabilise interaction over time.
• Formal vs informal: Formal groups are defined by an organisation's structure (a project team, a squad); informal groups arise spontaneously from social need (a friendship clique on the same team).

II. Understanding Groups

What a group is and why individuals join one.

A. Nature and Types of Groups

Groups are classified by how they form and what binds members.

• Formal group: Assigned by organisational design with designated tasks — e.g. a relay team of four sprinters, a surgical unit.
• Informal group: Emerges from proximity and shared interest, not decree — e.g. teammates who train together after hours.
• Command vs task group: Command groups follow the reporting hierarchy (a coach and the athletes reporting to them); task groups form to complete a specific job and may cut across the hierarchy.
• Interest vs friendship group: Interest groups unite around a common concern (players negotiating fixtures); friendship groups share personal attributes.

B. Why People Join Groups

Membership satisfies needs the individual cannot meet alone.

• Security: Reduces the insecurity of "standing alone"; strength in numbers.
• Status and self-esteem: Belonging to a valued group confers recognition and reinforces self-worth.
• Affiliation: Fulfils the social need for interaction and belonging.
• Power: Collective action achieves what individuals cannot.
• Goal achievement: Pooling skills and knowledge enables complex tasks — a task no soloist could complete.

III. Foundations of Group Behaviour

The structural properties that explain and predict how members act.

A. Roles

A role is a set of expected behaviour patterns attributed to someone occupying a given position.

• Role identity: Attitudes and actual behaviours consistent with a role; people shift behaviour when the role changes (a player promoted to captain adopts leadership conduct).
• Role perception: One's own view of how to act in a situation, learned from observing others.
• Role expectations: How others believe you should behave — formalised in the psychological contract, the unwritten agreement of mutual expectations between member and organisation.
• Role conflict: Competing expectations pull the individual in different directions — e.g. a player-coach torn between peer loyalty and disciplinary duty.

B. Norms

Norms are acceptable standards of behaviour shared by members that specify what one ought and ought not do.

• Performance norms: Cues on how hard to work, output levels, quality — often more powerful than management targets.
• Appearance norms: Dress, loyalty signals, when to look busy.
• Social arrangement norms: How members interact off-task.
• Conformity: Adjusting behaviour to group standards; demonstrated by Asch's line-judgement experiments, where ~35% of responses conformed to an obviously wrong majority.
• Reference group: The group whose norms a person accepts and wants to belong to, giving norms their pull.

C. Status

Status is a socially defined rank or position given to groups or members.

• Sources (Status Characteristics Theory): Power a person wields over others; ability to contribute to goals; personal characteristics valued by the group.
• Status and norms: High-status members enjoy more freedom to deviate ("idiosyncrasy credit").
• Status equity: Perceived fairness between what one invests and one's rank; inequity breeds resentment and reduced cooperation.

D. Size

Group size affects both individual behaviour and collective output.

• Performance trade-off: Smaller groups act faster and complete tasks quicker; larger groups are better at problem-solving and gathering diverse input.
• Social loafing: The tendency to exert less effort collectively than individually — Ringelmann's rope-pulling study found per-person force dropped as group size rose.
• Countermeasures: Make individual contributions identifiable, set group goals, use peer evaluation.
• Odd numbers: Groups of 5–7 are effective; odd sizes avoid deadlocked ties.

E. Cohesiveness

Cohesiveness is the degree to which members are attracted to one another and motivated to stay.

• Productivity link: Cohesion raises productivity most when performance norms are high; high cohesion with low norms lowers productivity.
• Building cohesion: Smaller size, member agreement on goals, time together, moderate difficulty of entry, competition with out-groups, rewarding the group not individuals.

IV. Group Formation

How a collection of individuals develops into a functioning group over time.

A. Tuckman's Five-Stage Model

Groups pass through a predictable sequence of maturation.

1. Forming   – orientation, testing, uncertainty about purpose/roles
2. Storming  – intragroup conflict over control and leadership
3. Norming   – cohesion develops; norms and close relationships form
4. Performing – energy directed to the task; structure fully functional
5. Adjourning – wrapping up; disbandment of temporary groups

• Forming: Members test boundaries and accept the group's existence; ends when they see themselves as part of a group.
• Storming: Conflict over who leads and how power is distributed; ends with a clear leadership hierarchy.
• Norming: A common set of expectations of correct member behaviour solidifies.
• Performing: Fully functional; for permanent teams this is the last stage.
• Adjourning: Applies to temporary groups (a tournament squad) — disengagement rather than task focus.
• Caveat: The model implies a group is more effective as it advances, but high conflict (storming) can raise performance; stages are not strictly sequential.

B. The Punctuated-Equilibrium Model

Temporary task groups with deadlines follow a different rhythm.

• Phase 1: Direction set in the first meeting is largely fixed; inertia follows.
• Midpoint transition: At roughly the halfway point of allotted time, a burst of change occurs as members realise the deadline looms.
• Phase 2: A new equilibrium of heightened activity; a final push completes the task at the deadline.
• Contrast with Tuckman:
  1. Tuckman: Universal linear maturation, best for ongoing groups.
  2. Punctuated equilibrium: Deadline-driven and non-linear, best for task forces on the clock.

V. Group Dynamics

The forces of interaction and influence operating within and between members.

A. Group Decision-Making

Groups decide differently — and often better or worse — than individuals.

• Strengths: More complete information and knowledge, diversity of views, higher solution acceptance, greater legitimacy.
• Weaknesses: Time-consuming, conformity pressures, domination by a few, ambiguous responsibility.
• Groupthink: The drive for unanimity overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives — symptoms include illusion of invulnerability, pressure on dissenters, self-censorship, and mind-guards. Classic case: the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
• Groupshift / group polarisation: Discussion exaggerates the group's initial leaning, producing a more extreme (often riskier) position than any member held alone.

B. Techniques to Improve Decisions

Structured methods curb conformity and loafing.

• Brainstorming: Idea generation with no criticism — but suffers production blocking as members wait to speak.
• Nominal group technique: Members write ideas independently, then discuss and rank — limits verbal domination.
• Electronic meeting: Anonymous computer input; fast and honest but loses richness of discussion.

C. Social Influence Processes

Members shape one another's behaviour in measurable ways.

• Social facilitation: The presence of others improves performance on simple/well-learned tasks and impairs it on complex/novel ones (dominant-response effect).
• Deindividuation: Loss of self-awareness and restraint in a group, weakening accountability.
• Conformity, compliance, obedience: Escalating forms of influence — matching norms, agreeing to requests, obeying authority (Milgram).

D. Intragroup Conflict and Communication

How members clash and connect determines effectiveness.

• Task conflict: Disagreement over content and goals — moderate levels can raise performance.
• Relationship conflict: Interpersonal friction — almost always dysfunctional.
• Communication networks: Centralised networks (wheel) speed simple tasks; decentralised networks (all-channel) suit complex problems and raise member satisfaction.

E. Cohesion, Leadership and Group Effectiveness

Dynamics converge on whether the group actually performs.

• Leadership emergence: In high-performance groups, leaders arise who align member effort with shared goals and manage the storming stage.
• Team synergy: Effective group process yields output greater than the sum of individual contributions (positive synergy); social loafing reflects negative synergy.
• Effectiveness drivers: Clear goals, mutual accountability, complementary skills, and cohesion anchored to high performance norms together convert a group into a genuinely high-performing team.