Category: Social psychology

The keys to understanding human behaviour—our lives as citizens, as workers, as friends—are in the research on group psychology.

This post provides an overview and you can follow the links to explore the experiments that reveal the power groups hold over us.

The influence of group psychology

The seeds of group behaviour are sown even before its members meet.

Just knowing that some people are on ‘our side’ and others are not begins to shape our social identity.

Group affiliation soon grows even stronger, though, bending our behaviour further, if we undergo an initiation rite.

A rite as simple as reading rude words out loud can produce a measurable effect (see 10 rules that govern groups, #1, #2).

Once we are in a group it starts to shape us through conformity, pulling our attitudes and behaviour in line with others, threatening us with ostracism if we dare to rebel and, when facing rival groups, firing our competitive spirit (see 10 rules that govern groups, #3, #4, #10).

We try to shape the group as well, perhaps by repeating our opinions.

This helps to convince others we are voicing the majority view. Still, people are notoriously resistant to change.

One way newcomers can influence groups is by displaying loyalty, toeing the line and by creating psychological distance from previous group affiliations.

A group takes its cue from a leader, but where do leaders come from?

When leaders are allowed to emerge naturally from a group, they do so first by being the ultimate conformers, then later starting to lead in new directions (see 10 rules that govern groups, #6).

Whether conforming or not, a sure sign of a leader is someone who talks first, and most often.

By the time groups are well-established chatter flows easily up and down the grapevine.

This is not just rumour and suspicion, though, as research has found that grapevines are surprisingly accurate with up to 80% being true (see 10 rules that govern groups, #9, #6).

How group psychology affects productivity

The amount and quality of the work we do (or don’t do) is regulated by the group.

Sometimes groups have a social facilitation effect on performance, spurring us on to greater achievements.

This is most likely to happen when our own contribution is obvious and when we are judged in comparison to others.

At other times groups encourage social loafing, resulting in a drop in our productivity—sometimes by as much as 50%, perhaps more.

This is likely to happen when it’s easier to hide in the group, when we think the task isn’t important and when our individual performance isn’t being judged separately.

Psychologists have found that social loafing can be decreased by boosting group and task importance as well as decreasing the ‘sucker effect’: the feeling that others are slacking off.

Group psychology changes decision-making

One of the most important functions of modern groups is decision-making.

The fates of our families, our corporations, even our nations, hang on our collective ability to make good decisions.

Unfortunately psychologists have found that groups suffer all kinds of biases and glitches that lead to poor choices.

Happily, though, experiments have revealed some straightforward remedies for these failings.

Because group members are often very similar in background and values they are quick to adopt majority decisions.

Psychologist call this groupthink.

We can combat groupthink by nurturing authentic dissent.

This is no mean feat as dissenters are often shunned because of the challenge they present.

Support for dissenters needs to come from leaders.

It seems only natural that groups will average out the preferences of its members, but psychologists have shown this often isn’t true.

In fact people are likely to display group polarization when together: initial preferences actually become exaggerated by group discussions.

We can reduce this by avoiding homogeneity in group composition.

Finally, the most baffling of our behaviours in groups is our inability to share information effectively.

Instead of revealing vital information known only to ourselves, time and again research has shown that we talk about things everyone already knows.

We can reduce this counter-productive behaviour by recalling relevant information before meetings and ensuring each is aware of others’ expertise.

Creativity

Creativity fosters economic growth, artistic innovation and technical breakthroughs, on all of which our society thrives.

Groups, though, if badly organised, can stifle lofty ambitions.

Psychologists have long known that the practice of ‘brainstorming‘ is a sure road to fewer new ideas and less innovation than that produced when we work individually.

In groups we loaf, feel anxious and our own ideas are soon forgotten while we listen to others.

It turns out that groups are better at evaluating ideas than they are at their generation.

Despite its longevity, brainstorming is best avoided for its original purpose.

Even when we are physically distant from our groups they can still impede creativity through the unconscious standards they impose on their members.

What psychologists call group norms can kill creativity by redefining it as mere conformity.

It’s no accident that some of the greatest breakthroughs in science and the arts have come from those working outside the orthodoxy.

Sometimes it really is better to go it alone.

The power of groups

Groups may impose unwritten norms on us, warp or exaggerate our decisions, even dull our creativity, but these effects are often the flip side of forces that make groups strong.

Despite the modern trend towards fractured neighbourhoods, families and workplaces, humanity cannot survive without banding together.

We draw our psychological identity and strength from belonging, and groups provide us support when times are hard (see the research on mutual support groups).

We just need to be careful that leaders are chosen for the right reasons, that conformity doesn’t trump reason, strangle creativity or limit our options.

We must try to understand and respect the power that groups hold over us so that we can benefit from them rather than becoming their victims.

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The Dunning-Kruger effect is that the poorest performers are unaware of their shortcomings.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the finding that the poorest performers are the least aware of their own incompetence.

“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”

The quote above comes from the philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Psychological research has now shown he was right.

The Dunning-Kruger effect has been:

“…replicated among undergraduates completing a classroom exam (Dunning, Johnson, Ehrlinger, & Kruger, 2003), medical students assessing their interviewing skills (Hodges, Regehr, & Martin, 2001) clerks evaluating their performance (Edwards, Kellner, Sistrom, & Magyari, 2003), and medical lab technicians evaluating their on-the-job expertise (Haun, Zeringue, Leach, & Foley, 2000).” (From Ehrlinger et al., 2008)

The reason for the Dunning-Kruger effect seems to be that poor performers fail to learn from their mistakes.

The proposed solution is that the incompetent should be directly told they are incompetent.

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Unfortunately the problem with the Dunning-Kruger effect is that incompetent people have probably been getting this type of feedback for years and failed to take much notice.

Despite failing exams, messing up at work and irritating other people, the incompetent still don’t believe they’re incompetent.

As Socrates once said:

“The only true wisdom is to know that you know nothing.”

But even this can go too far.

It turns out that people with real talent tend to underestimate just how good they are.

The root of this bias is that clever people tend to assume other people find things as easy as they do, when actually this is their talent shining through.

• Read on: The Worse-Than-Average Effect: When You’re Better Than You Think

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Eight heart-warming social psychology studies that show people are basically good.

Many social psychology studies show that people are naturally good.

We are prosocial creatures motivated to help each other out — whether they are friends, family or even strangers.

Most people will return lost wallets, intervene in fights and pay forward acts of kindness.

And helping others out makes us happier than focusing on ourselves.

Below are eight of my favourite modern social psychology studies showing just how good people really are.

Click the links for a fuller description of each study including the reference.

1. People are surprisingly honest

Seventy-two percent of people will report a lost wallet containing a large sum of money, a recent study finds.

Indeed, the more money is in the lost wallet, the more likely it is to be reported.

The findings suggest that many people are basically honest.

When asked, people say that the more money is in a wallet, the more it feels like stealing not to return it.

2. Bystanders will help 90% of the time

A study of real public fights caught on CCTV showed that bystanders intervened 90 percent of the time to help victims of violence.

The 219 fights included in the study had broken out on the streets of Amsterdam, Cape Town and Leicester (in the Netherlands, South Africa and UK, respectively).

Nine-out-of-ten times at least one person tried to intervene, sometimes more than one.

This strongly suggests that trying to help is the norm in public, rather than the exception.

The study contrasts with 60s research on bystander apathy.

3. We are naturally generous

People are surprisingly generous to each other — even to strangers.

They will try to help each other out, even to their own cost and even when their motivations do not align.

In fact, psychologists have found four motivators for people being generous to others:

1. People who receive a kindness from another are motivated to repay it to that person.
2. People who receive a kindness from another are motivated to ‘pay it forward’ to someone else.
3. Someone who witnesses a kindness is motivated to be generous to a third person.
4. People do good deeds when they can be observed by others who might reward them.

4. Children make us compassionate

The mere presence of children makes adults more generous and compassionate.

When children are around, adults are twice as likely to donate to  a charity.

The effect seems to work whether adults are parents or non-parents, men or women, older or younger.

Even people who dislike children become more generous when they are around.

5. The brain craves social contact

The brain craves social contact when lonely in the same way it craves food when hungry.

After one day’s isolation, people’s brain activate in the same to seeing other people having fun together as it does to a plate of cheesy pasta.

People whose brains were most strongly affected by isolation were those who routinely had richer social lives.

6. Being nice is contagious

Acts of kindness can spread easily between people — just by observing someone else being generous.

They activate parts of the brain involved in motivating action and of social engagement.

In turn, we are also more likely to ‘pay it forward’.

Scientists call this the ‘moral elevation’ effect.

7. Helping others makes you happy

Being kind to others boosts mood and wellbeing more than being kind to yourself.

It may be partly because being kind to others helps nurture social relationships.

People tend to feel greater pride in themselves after doing a good deed for others than when they do a good deed for themselves.

8. Family is what motivates people

Family is the most important social motivation to people.

People around the world consistently rank their long-term relationships and family above seeking status, finding mates, preserving health, being part of a team or protecting themselves.

Those who focus more on their families and long-term relationships are generally happier with life, the researchers also found.

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Before age 12 children largely do their own thing and are unaffected by others.

Children start conforming with others from the age of 12 onwards, research finds.

Before that, children largely do their own thing and are unaffected by others.

From 12, though, people are more strongly influenced by society.

Some older children in the study followed other people’s advice even when they knew it was wrong.

It is well-known that adolescents are especially susceptible to social influence.

Dr Imogen Large and co-authors, write:

“Our results show that although young neurotypical children seem to be unaffected by social influence, adolescents develop a systematic bias of their responses in the direction of social influence and appear to do so by integrating social information into visual perceptual processing.”

For the study, 155 children aged 6 to 14 played a computer game that involved maneuvering around an object that was twisting one way or another.

Each child was given an advisor who sometimes fed them incorrect information about which way the object was twisting.

However, the child could see the direction by themselves.

This, then, put the child’s own perceptions in conflict with the social influence of another person.

The results showed that up to the age of 12 children tended to believe their own eyes and ignore incorrect advice.

After that, though, the power of social influence could be seen.

Those over 12 sometimes disregarded what they could see to go along with someone else’s advice.

Autistic children are an exception, however, and are much less affected by other people.

The authors write:

“That the same bias did not appear to emerge in autistic adolescents in this study may explain some of their difficulties in social interactions.”

→ Read on: the classic study on social conformity.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Large et al., 2019).