Groupshift is a phenomenon in which the initial positions of individual members of a group are exaggerated toward a more extreme position. [lower-alpha 1] When people are in groups, they make decisions about risk differently from when they are alone. The decision made tends to be even more risk-averse if the group members' opinions are risk-averse on average, and even more risk-seeking if the group members' opinions are risk seeking on average. [2] In a group, people are likely to exhibit a slight preference towards riskier decisions as the risk is divided among the group members rather than borne by an individual.
An example of groupshift is when the fans of a sports team celebrate the win of their team and their celebration turns to destruction of property. What appears to happen in groups is that the discussion leads to a significant shift in the positions of members toward a more extreme position in the direction in which they were already leaning before the discussion; so conservative types become more cautious and the more aggressive types take on more risk. For example, one study examined what would occur if prejudiced students were asked to discuss racial issues and what would happen if non-prejudiced students discussed the same racial issues. The prejudiced students became more prejudiced whilst the non-prejudiced students became more non-prejudiced (Myers & Bishop, 1970). The group discussion tends to exaggerate the initial position of the group.
This idea seems to relate quite well with the basic principles of groupthink, which is a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action. Groupshift can be seen to be evident within groupthink as a sub-set of typical thinking patterns that occur in group situations and can be observed in society in situations such as student bodies, government, sporting teams and juries.
The first term for groupshift, coined in the early 1960s, was risky shift and was used to describe the tendency for groups to take more risks than the individuals within these groups would have taken had they been faced with the same problem alone (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008). There were inconsistencies with early studies however, which led some researchers to introduce the term stingy shift, which was basically the same as a risky shift in that the group would tend to agree on the decision, however in this case, the decision was to be more conservative, or stingy (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008).
There are varying explanations that attempt to provide a reason as to why groupshift occurs.
The size of the group also has an effect on how susceptible the group will be to polarization. The greater the number of people in a group, the greater the tendency toward deindividuation. In other words, deindividuation is a group-size-effect. As groups get larger, trends in risk-taking are amplified. [3]
Scientific research also suggests that males are greater risk-takers than females (Wilde 1994) a trait that likely has both physiological and social roots. Numerous accident statistics support this assertion. For example, in the period 1984-1996 in Canada, 90% of avalanche fatalities were male (Jamieson & Geldsetzer, 1996). [4]
Whatever the cause of the risky shift phenomenon or the worries regarding the generality of the phenomenon, the point of interest is that individuals may be manipulated in their decision making. The mechanism causing the post-discussion group shift causes a change in the perception of the problem domain by some or all of the group members. [5]
Peer pressure is the direct or indirect influence on peers, i.e., members of social groups with similar interests, experiences, or social statuses. Members of a peer group are more likely to influence a person's beliefs, values, and behavior. A group or individual may be encouraged and want to follow their peers by changing their attitudes, values or behaviors to conform to those of the influencing group or individual. For the individual affected by peer pressure, this can have both a positive or negative influence on them.
Crowd psychology is a branch of social psychology that deals with the ways in which the psychology of a crowd is different from the psychology of the individual persons who are the crowd. The field of crowd psychology enquires into the behaviors and thought processes of both the individual members of the crowd and the crowd as a collective social entity. The behavior of a crowd is much influenced by deindividuation, a person's loss of responsibility, and the person's impression of the universality of behavior, both of which conditions increase in magnitude with size of the crowd. Notable theorists in crowd psychology include Gustave Le Bon, Gabriel Tarde, and Sigmund Freud.
In the Abilene paradox, a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of many or all of the individuals in the group. It involves a common breakdown of group communication in which each member mistakenly believes that their own preferences are counter to the group's and, therefore, does not raise objections, or even states support for an outcome they do not want. A common phrase relating to the Abilene paradox is a desire to not "rock the boat". This differs from groupthink in that the Abilene paradox is characterized by an inability to manage agreement.
Communal reinforcement is a social phenomenon in which a concept or idea is repeatedly asserted in a community, regardless of whether sufficient empirical evidence has been presented to support it. Over time, the concept or idea is reinforced to become a strong belief in many people's minds, and may be regarded by the members of the community as fact. Often, the concept or idea may be further reinforced by publications in the mass media, books, or other means of communication. The phrase "millions of people can't all be wrong" is indicative of the common tendency to accept a communally reinforced idea without question, which often aids in the widespread acceptance of factoids. A very similar term to this term is community-reinforcement, which is a behavioral method to stop drug addiction.
In psychology, decision-making is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either rational or irrational. The decision-making process is a reasoning process based on assumptions of values, preferences and beliefs of the decision-maker. Every decision-making process produces a final choice, which may or may not prompt action.
The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological theory that states that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim in presence of other people. First proposed in 1964 after the murder of Kitty Genovese, much research, mostly in psychology research laboratories, has focused on increasingly varied factors, such as the number of bystanders, ambiguity, group cohesiveness, and diffusion of responsibility that reinforces mutual denial. If a single individual is asked to complete the task alone, the sense of responsibility will be strong, and there will be a positive response; however, if a group is required to complete the task together, each individual in the group will have a weak sense of responsibility, and will often shrink back in the face of difficulties or responsibilities. The theory was prompted by the murder of Kitty Genovese about which it was wrongly reported that 38 bystanders watched passively. Recent research has focused on "real world" events captured on security cameras, and the coherency and robustness of the effect has come under question. More recent studies also show that this effect can generalize to workplace settings, where subordinates often refrain from informing managers regarding ideas, concerns, and opinions.
In social psychology, group polarization refers to the tendency for a group to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members. These more extreme decisions are towards greater risk if individuals' initial tendencies are to be risky and towards greater caution if individuals' initial tendencies are to be cautious. The phenomenon also holds that a group's attitude toward a situation may change in the sense that the individuals' initial attitudes have strengthened and intensified after group discussion, a phenomenon known as attitude polarization.
Diffusion of responsibility is a sociopsychological phenomenon whereby a person is less likely to take responsibility for action or inaction when other bystanders or witnesses are present. Considered a form of attribution, the individual assumes that others either are responsible for taking action or have already done so.
Communication in small groups consists of three or more people who share a common goal and communicate collectively to achieve it. During small group communication, interdependent participants analyze data, evaluate the nature of the problem(s), decide and provide a possible solution or procedure. Additionally, small group communication provides strong feedback, unique contributions to the group as well as a critical thinking analysis and self-disclosure from each member. Small groups communicate through an interpersonal exchange process of information, feelings and active listening in both two types of small groups: primary groups and secondary groups.
In social psychology, social loafing is the phenomenon of a person exerting less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when working alone. It is seen as one of the main reasons groups are sometimes less productive than the combined performance of their members working as individuals. Research on social loafing began with rope pulling experiments by Max Ringelmann, who found that members of a group tended to exert less effort in pulling a rope than did individuals alone. In more recent research, studies involving modern technology, such as online and distributed groups, have also shown clear evidence of social loafing. Many of the causes of social loafing stem from individual members' feeling their individual effort will not matter to the group.
Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way. This concept is seen within the greater framework of a team, which is a group of interdependent individuals who work together towards a common goal. The four key characteristics of a team include a shared goal, interdependence, boundedness and stability, the ability to manage their own work and internal process, and operate in a bigger social system. Basic requirements for effective teamwork are an adequate team size. The context is important, and team sizes can vary depending upon the objective. A team must include at least 2 or more members, and most teams range in size from 2 to 100. Sports teams generally have fixed sizes based upon set rules, and work teams may change in size depending upon the phase and complexity of the objective. Teams need to be able to leverage resources to be productive, and clearly defined roles within the team in order for everyone to have a clear purpose. Teamwork is present in any context where a group of people are working together to achieve a common goal. These contexts include an industrial organization, athletics, a school, and the healthcare system. In each of these settings, the level of teamwork and interdependence can vary from low, to intermediate, to high, depending on the amount of communication, interaction, and collaboration present between team members. E. g. Team work coordinates the work as early as possible
Herd, mob, or pack mentality describes how people can be influenced by the majority.
Deindividuation is a concept in social psychology that is generally thought of as the loss of self-awareness in groups, although this is a matter of contention. For the social psychologist, the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social situation. As such, social psychologists emphasize the role of internal psychological processes. Other social scientists, such as sociologists, are more concerned with broad social, economic, political, and historical factors that influence events in a given society.
A hidden profile is a paradigm that occurs in the process of group decision making. It is found in a situation when part of some information is shared among group members, whereas other pieces of information are unshared. Furthermore, shared information and unshared information have different decisional implications, and the alternative implied by the unshared information is the correct one given all information available to the group. However, no group member can detect this best solution on the basis of her or his individual information prior to discussion; it can only be found by pooling the unshared information during group discussion. This topic is one of many topics studied in social psychology.
The social identity model of deindividuation effects is a theory developed in social psychology and communication studies. SIDE explains the effects of anonymity and identifiability on group behavior. It has become one of several theories of technology that describe social effects of computer-mediated communication.
Group decision-making is a situation faced when individuals collectively make a choice from the alternatives before them. The decision is then no longer attributable to any single individual who is a member of the group. This is because all the individuals and social group processes such as social influence contribute to the outcome. The decisions made by groups are often different from those made by individuals. In workplace settings, collaborative decision-making is one of the most successful models to generate buy-in from other stakeholders, build consensus, and encourage creativity. According to the idea of synergy, decisions made collectively also tend to be more effective than decisions made by a single individual. In this vein, certain collaborative arrangements have the potential to generate better net performance outcomes than individuals acting on their own. Under normal everyday conditions, collaborative or group decision-making would often be preferred and would generate more benefits than individual decision-making when there is the time for proper deliberation, discussion, and dialogue. This can be achieved through the use of committee, teams, groups, partnerships, or other collaborative social processes.
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness, in a group may produce a tendency among its members to agree at all costs. This causes the group to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation.
The false-uniqueness effect is an attributional type of cognitive bias in social psychology that describes how people tend to view their qualities, traits, and personal attributes as unique when in reality they are not. This bias is often measured by looking at the difference between estimates that people make about how many of their peers share a certain trait or behaviour and the actual number of peers who report these traits and behaviours.
Baiting crowd is a form of collective aggression; this is a situation where a group of individuals unify their aggression, while they may not even know each other, towards another individual or group.
Team Error refers to errors that occur in settings where multiple people are working together. Dependency increases the likelihood of human error due to interactions with other seemingly independent defense mechanisms. Engaging multiple people to perform a task does not ensure that the task will be done correctly. One potential dependency is team error, an error of one or more members that allows other individual members of the same group to make a mistake.
The risky shift phenomenon predicts that groups are happier to live with uncertainty than are the individuals that comprise the group. This paper reports on the replication of the Wallach et al. (1962) 12 question, choice dilemma questionnaire which highlights the risky shift and its implications for construction project risk management.
