Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group, or between social groups. The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decision-making behaviour, tracking the spread of diseases in society, creating effective therapy techniques, and following the emergence and popularity of new ideas and technologies. These applications of the field are studied in psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, epidemiology, education, social work, leadership studies, business and managerial studies, as well as communication studies.
Miles Ronald Cole Hewstone is a British social psychologist who is well known for his work on social relations.
In psychology and other social sciences, the contact hypothesis suggests that intergroup contact under appropriate conditions can effectively reduce prejudice between majority and minority group members. Following WWII and the desegregation of the military and other public institutions, policymakers and social scientists had turned an eye towards the policy implications of interracial contact. Of them, social psychologist Gordon Allport united early research in this vein under intergroup contact theory.
Jennifer A. Richeson is an American social psychologist who studies racial identity and interracial interactions. She is currently the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology at Yale University where she heads the Social Perception and Communication Lab. Prior to her appointment to the Yale faculty, Richeson was Professor of Psychology and African-American studies at Northwestern University. In 2015, she was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences. Richeson was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022. Since 2021, she has been a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
Mahzarin Rustum Banaji FBA is an American psychologist of Indian origin at Harvard University, known for her work popularizing the concept of implicit bias in regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, and other factors.
Henri Tajfel was a Polish social psychologist, best known for his pioneering work on the cognitive aspects of prejudice and social identity theory, as well as being one of the founders of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology.
Susan Tufts Fiske is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs in the Department of Psychology at Princeton University. She is a social psychologist known for her work on social cognition, stereotypes, and prejudice. Fiske leads the Intergroup Relations, Social Cognition, and Social Neuroscience Lab at Princeton University. Her theoretical contributions include the development of the stereotype content model, ambivalent sexism theory, power as control theory, and the continuum model of impression formation.
Social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group.
Michael A. Hogg is a British psychologist, and Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Claremont Graduate University in Los Angeles. He is also an honorary Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Kent in the UK.
Stephen David Reicher is Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Social Psychology at the University of St Andrews.
Elena Lieven is a British psychology and linguistics researcher and educator. She was a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology in Leipzig, Germany. She is also a professor in the School of Health Sciences at the University of Manchester where she is Director of its Child Study Centre and leads the ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD).
Mark van Vugt is a Dutch evolutionary psychologist who holds a professorship in evolutionary psychology and work and organizational psychology at the VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Van Vugt has affiliate positions at the University of Oxford, Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology (ICEA).
Daniel Bar-Tal is an Israeli academic, author and Branco Weiss Professor of Research in Child Development and Education at School of Education, Tel Aviv University.
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal that covers research in the field of social psychology, including organizational and management sciences, political science, sociology, language and communication, cross cultural psychology, and intergroup relations, among others. The journal's editors-in-chief are Dominic Abrams and Michael Hogg. It was established in 1998 and is currently published by SAGE Publications.
Melanie Killen is a developmental psychologist and Professor of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, and Professor of Psychology (Affiliate) at the University of Maryland, and Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. She is supported by funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her research. In 2008, she was awarded Distinguished Scholar-Teacher by the Provost's office at the University of Maryland. She is the Director of the Social and Moral Development Lab at the University of Maryland.
The imagined contact hypothesis is an extension of the contact hypothesis, a theoretical proposition centred on the psychology of prejudice and prejudice reduction. It was originally developed by Richard J. Crisp and Rhiannon N. Turner and proposes that the mental simulation, or imagining, of a positive social interaction with an outgroup member can lead to increased positive attitudes, greater desire for social contact, and improved group dynamics. Empirical evidence supporting the imagined contact hypothesis demonstrates its effectiveness at improving explicit and implicit attitudes towards and intergroup relations with a wide variety of stigmatized groups including religious minorities, the mentally ill, ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, and obese individuals. Researchers have identified a number of factors that influence the effectiveness of the imagined contact hypothesis including vividness of the imagery and how typical the imagined outgroup individual is. While some researchers question the effectiveness of the imagined contact hypothesis, empirical evidence does suggest it is effective at improving attitudes towards outgroups.
Richard J. Crisp is an author, blogger, scientist and Professor of Psychology at Durham University. He is co-originator of the imagined contact hypothesis and a major contributor to the field of social psychology.
Diane M. Mackie is a social psychologist known for her research in the fields of intergroup relations and social influence. She is Professor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Intergroup relations refers to interactions between individuals in different social groups, and to interactions taking place between the groups themselves collectively. It has long been a subject of research in social psychology, political psychology, and organizational behavior.
Lucy Yardley is a British psychologist and professor of health psychology based at both the University of Bristol and University of Southampton. She is a senior investigator at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and has a continuing role at the University of Southampton as Director of the LifeGuide Research Programme, and the Behavioural Science theme of the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre.
