Psychology 2070A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Group Dynamics, Social Facilitation, Insular Cortex

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2070A/B
• Professor: Graeme Haynes

Document Summary

Group: three or more persons who are interacting with and/or influencing one another. Intimacy groups: family, friends, 3-6 members, homogeneous attract similar people, encourage conformity, task groups, committees, sports teams, orchestra. Loose associations: neighbourhood, people who like the same movie. Why join groups: baumeister and leary, survival advantage. Innate need to belong: motivates collective action, protests, movements. Intragroup processes: triplett (1898, social facilitation, people biked faster against other people than against a timer, had children crank fishing reels either alone or in groups, children were faster when competing. Zajonc (1965: the presence of others increases likelihood of a dominant response on a task, simple/well-learned task: perform well is dominant response, difficult/novel task: make more mistakes is dominant response, explanations, the presence of others increases our arousal. Social loafing: people exert less effort when working as a group, latane et al. (1979, participants blindfolded and told to clap and cheer as loud as they could.