People in interactive, brainstorming groups generally produce fewer and less creative ideas than they would have if they were working individually. [1] Production blocking, the tendency for one individual during a group discussion to block or inhibit other people from offering ideas, is a major reason for this. [2]
Production blocking occurs when people are prevented from thinking or participating because they are listening to other people instead. For example, if one person in a six-person group is talking about his or her idea, then the other five people are "blocked" and less able to provide their own creative input. [3] Another factor to consider is that in group discussions, individuals may end up having off-topic conversations with other members. This can lead to production blocking because group members are not contributing to the goal of generating ideas.
Production blocking is a form of distraction. It differs from both evaluation apprehension and social loafing, two other factors that can cause people to produce fewer ideas in real, interactive groups than those in nominal groups. With evaluation apprehension, individuals may be reluctant to share their suggestions, fearing that they may be negatively criticized. [4] With social loafing, they may not share ideas because they believe other group members will do so instead. [5]
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.
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 in 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 social sciences, a social group is defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties. For example, a society can be viewed as a large social group. The system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group or between social groups is known as group dynamics.
Team building is a collective term for various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within teams, often involving collaborative tasks. It is distinct from team training, which is designed by a combine of business managers, learning and development/OD and an HR Business Partner to improve the efficiency, rather than interpersonal relations.
Brainstorming is a creativity technique in which a group of people interact to suggest ideas spontaneously in response to a prompt. Stress is typically placed on the volume and variety of ideas, including ideas that may seem outlandish or "off-the-wall". Ideas are noted down during the activity, but not assessed or critiqued until later. The absence of criticism and assessment is intended to avoid inhibiting participants in their idea production.
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.
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.
Collective memory refers to the shared pool of memories, knowledge and information of a social group that is significantly associated with the group's identity. The English phrase "collective memory" and the equivalent French phrase "la mémoire collective" appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century. The philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs analyzed and advanced the concept of the collective memory in the book Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (1925). Collective memory can be constructed, shared, and passed on by large and small social groups. Examples of these groups can include nations, generations, communities, among others. Collective memory has been a topic of interest and research across a number of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, and anthropology.
The Ringelmann effect is the tendency for individual members of a group to become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases. This effect, discovered by French agricultural engineer Maximilien Ringelmann (1861–1931), illustrates the inverse relationship that exists between the size of a group and the magnitude of group members’ individual contribution to the completion of a task. While studying the relationship between process loss and group productivity, Ringelmann (1913) found that having group members work together on a task actually results in significantly less effort than when individual members are acting alone. Ringelmann discovered that as more and more people are added to a group, the group often becomes increasingly inefficient, ultimately violating the notion that group effort and team participation reliably leads to increased effort on behalf of the members.
Collaborative innovation is a process in which multiple players contribute towards creating new products with customers and suppliers.
In social psychology, superordinate goals are goals that are worth completing but require two or more social groups to cooperatively achieve. The idea was proposed by social psychologist Muzafer Sherif in his experiments on intergroup relations, run in the 1940s and 1950s, as a way of reducing conflict between competing groups. Sherif's idea was to downplay the two separate group identities and encourage the two groups to think of themselves as one larger, superordinate group. This approach has been applied in many contexts to reduce intergroup conflict, including in classrooms and business organizations. However, it has also been critiqued by other social psychologists who have proposed competing theories of intergroup conflict, such as contact theory and social categorization theory.
The nominal group technique (NGT) is a group process involving problem identification, solution generation, and decision-making. It can be used in groups of many sizes, who want to make their decision quickly, as by a vote, but want everyone's opinions taken into account. The method of tallying is difference. First, every member of the group gives their view of the solution, with a short explanation. Then, duplicate solutions are eliminated from the list of all solutions, and the members proceed to rank the solutions, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and so on.
Prosocial behavior, or intent to benefit others, is a social behavior that "benefit[s] other people or society as a whole", "such as helping, sharing, donating, co-operating, and volunteering". Obeying the rules and conforming to socially accepted behaviors are also regarded as prosocial behaviors. These actions may be motivated by empathy and by concern about the welfare and rights of others, as well as for egoistic or practical concerns, such as one's social status or reputation, hope for direct or indirect reciprocity, or adherence to one's perceived system of fairness. It may also be motivated by altruism, though the existence of pure altruism is somewhat disputed, and some have argued that this falls into philosophical rather than psychological realm of debate. Evidence suggests that pro sociality is central to the well-being of social groups across a range of scales, including schools. Prosocial behavior in the classroom can have a significant impact on a student's motivation for learning and contributions to the classroom and larger community. In the workplace, prosocial behaviour can have a significant impact on team psychological safety, as well as positive indirect effects on employee's helping behaviors and task performance. Empathy is a strong motive in eliciting prosocial behavior, and has deep evolutionary roots.
A leadership style is a leader's method of providing direction, implementing plans, and motivating people. Various authors have proposed identifying many different leadership styles as exhibited by leaders in the political, business or other fields. Studies on leadership style are conducted in the military field, expressing an approach that stresses a holistic view of leadership, including how a leader's physical presence determines how others perceive that leader. The factors of physical presence in this context include military bearing, physical fitness, confidence, and resilience. A leader's conceptual abilities include agility, judgment, innovation, interpersonal tact, and domain knowledge. Leaders are characterized as individuals who have differential influence over the setting of goals, logistics for coordination, monitoring of effort, and rewards and punishment of group members. Domain knowledge encompasses tactical and technical knowledge as well as cultural and geopolitical awareness.
In computer supported brainstorming, team members contribute their ideas through electronic means either synchronously or asynchronously. The brainstorming software selected by the team mediates the individual interactions and helps to organize and shape the products of the brainstorming session. Computer supported brainstorming can be implemented using a wide variety of electronic technologies.
Ernst Joachim Wolfgang Stroebe is a German social psychologist and Emeritus Professor of Social Psychology at the Utrecht University and now visiting professor at the University of Groningen, particularly known for his work on social and health psychology.
Reuven Bar-On is an Israeli psychologist and one of the leading pioneers, theorists and researchers in emotional intelligence. Bar-On is thought to be the first to introduce the concept of an “EQ” to measure “emotional and social competence”, although the acronym was used earlier to describe ideas that were not associated with emotional intelligence per se. In the first copy of his doctoral dissertation, which was submitted in 1985, Bar-On proposed a quantitative approach to creating “an EQ analogous to an IQ score”.
Team diversity refers to the differences between individual members of a team that can exist on various dimensions like age, nationality, religious background, functional background or task skills, sexual orientation, and political preferences, among others. Different types of diversity include demographic, personality and functional diversity, and can have positive as well as negative effects on team outcomes. Diversity can impact performance, team member satisfaction or the innovative capacity of a team. According to the Input-Process-Output Model, team diversity is considered an input factor that has effects on the processes as well as on the team outputs of team work.
Groupism is a theoretical approach in sociology that posits that conformity to the laws/norms of a group such as family, kinship, race, ethnicity, religion and nationality brings reciprocal benefits such as recognition, right, power and security. It is the principle that a person's primary or prioritised identity is that of membership in a social network. Groupists assume that individuals in a group tend to have stronger affinity and obligation to a particular group when the influence of an authority figure brings a common goal. The concept of groupism can be defined and criticized in varied ways for disciplines such as sociology, social psychology, anthropology, political history and philosophy. Group-ism is defined in most dictionaries as the behavior of a member of a group where they think and act as the group norm at the expense of individualism. The term originated around mid 19th century and the first known use of the word recorded was in 1851. It is a general definition often used in Indian English as the tendency to form factions in a system setting. The term had also been used for “the principles or practices of Oxford Group movement” which is now historical and rare.
Sociology of small groups is a subfield of sociology that studies the action, interaction and the types of social groups that result from social relations. In social life, society is a large social group which contains many subgroups. It is a characteristic of social groups that small groups are in large groups. The sociology of small groups covers the various small groups contained in societies at the microsociological level.
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