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Group Processes: A psychological perspective

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(Western) Psychology has primarily dealt with the study of individuals, and just lately started to research the dynamics and influences groups have on individuals in a field called Social Psychology. In eastern (collectivist) cultures, people define themselves mainly in relation to their social situation, whereas people in Western societies prefer to construct their identity by individual attributes like attitudes and traits.

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(Western) Psychology has primarily dealt with the study of individuals, and just lately started to research the dynamics and influences groups have on individuals in a field called Social Psychology. In eastern (collectivist) cultures, people define themselves mainly in relation to their social situation, whereas people in Western societies prefer to construct their identity by individual attributes like attitudes and traits. Probably one of the earliest approaches to understand group phenomena can be found in Edward Bernays book Propaganda. Bernays' ideas were first applied by the Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels, yet survived in the advertising industry until today. The form of collaboration achieved by propaganda, political as well as commercial, is hardly deliberate, but constitutes an influence that reaches into most aspects of an individuals life. Humans are social beings, and as such dependent on the opinion of their peers. Muzafer Sherif (1936) and Solomon Asch (1951) conducted experiments to determine the amount of conformity that can be reached in group situations. They found that social norms can arise which do not relate to the individuals perception of events, or even contradict them. Asch presented a group of participants with a standard line, which then had to be identified among a sets of lines with different lengths. Only one member the group was the test candidate, the others confederates. If the confederates gave a consistent wrong answer, one third of the participants adjusted their reply to this fake consent. This is just one example of what is now called Groupthink, a principle that seems to occur naturally in group situations. Groupthink speeds up decision making for the individual, but it is detrimental if the consent found is invalid. One way of preventing Groupthink, or at least to improve the quality of consent, is to institutionalize dissent, eg. by nominating a devil's advocate or actively encouraging self and other criticism. Groups can always polarize into majorities and minorities, and in collaborative situations this can easily impair to find the best solution for a given problem. Encouraging dissent and using facilitation processes (such as the Talking Stick) can increase the quality of the collaborative results.