Psychology 3 Marks Question

Conditions which facilitate group formation:
Basic to group formation is - some contact and some form of interaction between people. It is facilitated by:

• Proximity - Individuals with similar background, interests, attitudes, values and opinions when have repeated interaction with each other, get a chance to know each other and develop a mutual liking. This facilitates group formation.
• Similarity - being exposed to someone over a period of time makes an individual assess similarities. Assessment of similarities paves the way for formation of groups.
• Explanation given psychologists is that when people meet similar people, they reinforce and validate their opinions and values. They feel that they are right and thus start liking one another.
• Common motives and goals - When a number of people have common objectives or goals, they tend to get together and form a group, which may facilitate goal attainment.

For e.g. Commuters in a train may form a group which can work towards facilitating their travel in the train.

Components of Human Communication:

• Encoding.
• Decoding.
• Speaking.
• Communication channel.
• Listening.
• Reception.
• Attention.
• Paraphrasing.

Stages of group formation:
According to Tuckman groups are formed through five stages.

1. Forming stage - excitement, apprehension, uncertainty about the group, the goal and planning.
2. Storming stage - conflict among the members because of role, hierarchy and goal attainment.
3. Norming stage - setting the rules and developing positive group identity.
4. Performing stage - group moves towards achievement of group goals.
5. Adjourning stage - once the function is over, the group may be disbanded.

Social loading is a negative group influence. For the quality performance of the group, it should be reduced.
It can be reduced through the following methods:

1. By making the efforts of each person identifiable.
2. Increasing the pressure to work hard (making group-members committed to successful tasks performance).
3. Increasing the apparent importance or value of a task.
4. Making people feel that their individual contribution is important.
5. Strengthening group cohesiveness which increases the motivation for successful group outcome.

• Identity refers to the aspect of one's self-concept that is based on group-membership.
• Our identity tells us what we are in a larger context.
• After one develops an identity, he/ she internalises the norms emphasized in a group and adopts them.
• Identity provides a member of a group with a shared set of values, beliefs and goals about the social world.
• Identity helps to co-ordinate attitude and behaviour.
• The development of identity leads to the devaluation of the out group.

Groups may be co-operative or competitive. Technically, the behaviour that yields maximal joint profit for all the parties involved is called co-operation. The behaviour that yields maximal relative gain is labelled competition.

• Co-operative goals are those, which are defined in such a way that each individual can attain the goal if other members are also attaining their goals. There is interdependence in goal attainment.

Effects of co-operation:

• Goal achievement becomes easy.
• Interpersonal relations get strengthened.
• Cohesiveness rises in the group.
• Group-members become ready to work for others.
• Willingness to accept other’s divergent view-point.

Obedience: It is most direct form of social influence. Obedience refers to accepting commands/ orders from the authority. Authority refers to a person who has inherent power to give reward or punishment.
If a person has power over another, obedience can be demanded; such a person usually has the means to enforce orders.

• Milligram's studies seem to suggest that the ordinary people are willing, may be with some reluctance, to harm an innocent person if ordered by someone in authority.

It has been observed that obedience to authority relieves the individual from the responsibility of their actions.

• Individual believes that if he/ she will not obey then it will attract penalty.
• Authority commands for destructive obedience are gradually increased from lesser to greater levels of violence.

Sometimes events involved in destructive obedience move so quickly, that the people obeying orders have little time for thinking logically.