The Social Psychology of Behaviour in Small Groups

Donald C. Pennington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317724605
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The Social Psychology of Behaviour in Small Groups covers theories of group behaviour and their application in organizational psychology. Topics include the structure and formation of groups and the roles that individuals play within groups, as well as more applied areas such as co-operation and conflict, teamwork, leadership and decision-making in small groups.
Throughout the book theory, research and concepts are applied to real-life and everyday social behaviour. The book is well illustrated and includes many mental exercises to engage the reader. Donald Pennington has provided a lively, accessible and systematic text suitable for undergraduates studying social psychology and those studying organizational psychology on psychology and business studies courses.

Chapter 1

Introduction to the social psychology of behaviour in small groups

	Introduction
	What are small groups?
	Definitions
	Formal and informal groups
	Work groups
	Self-help groups
	Joining groups and group membership
	Why do people join groups?
	Types of membership
	Communication in small groups
	The communication process
	Barriers to communication
	Facilitating communication
	Communication networks
	Electronic communication
	The environment of small groups
	The physical environment
	The social environment
	The temporal environment
	Cross-cultural considerations
	organisation of this book
	Summary
	Further reading

Introduction

I MAGINE THE WORLD one hundred years into the future; the use of electronic communications technology has developed to a point where people no longer meet and interact in face-to-face situations. Groups of people do not come together as a project team, work group, leisure group or self-help group. All communication and interaction is done electronically through computers. Would you enjoy living in such a world? Psychologically, do you think you would miss interaction with other people and working with others and interacting face-to-face in a small group?

Who knows where the world of electronics will take us and what the psychological consequences will be. However, if you think about it, this extreme picture of a possible future world starkly shows just how much of our life at work, at home and in leisure activities centres around being a part of a small group of people. This book provides an introduction to the social psychology of small group behaviour, based on a world in which face-to-face interaction in small groups is a central and important feature of most aspects of each of our lives.

In this chapter we will look at some of the fundamentals of small groups: definitions of and different types of small groups; why people join groups and different types of group membership; communication in small groups; and the physical, social and temporal environment of small groups. These topics are dealt with in this first chapter since they underly the particular topics related to behaviour in small groups that are dealt with in subsequent chapters.

What are small groups?

To understand better what social psychologists consider to represent small groups we will take a number of different perspectives. First, a definition will be suggested to provide guidance as to what may be regarded as a small group for social psychological purposes; second, we will see how groups may be classified along a formal–informal dimension; third, two different types of groups, self-help groups and work groups, will be looked at more closely.

Definitions

This book is about the social psychology of small group behaviour, and since the term ‘group’ may be widely applied to describe a wide range of different collections of people, some definitional considerations will prove useful. One distinction that can readily be made is between aggregates of people and a psychological group (Buchanan and Huczynski, 1997). These are defined as follows:

• A psychological group is any number of people who interact with each other, are psychologically aware of each other and perceive themselves to be in a group.

• An aggregate is a collection of unrelated people who happen to be in close proximity for a short period of time.

First, the important features of a psychological group concern interaction between members of the group. This interaction may be face-to-face, through tele-conferencing with a video link and through other electronic means such as e-mail. The point is that meaningful interactions, perhaps not necessarily verbal, take place between group members. Second, each member of the group is aware of other group members and the number of other people in the group. Finally, each of the group members must know that they are members of a particular group. Given this definition, consider the following list and identify which you think represents a psychological group based on this definition:

1 the audience watching a film at the cinema

2 members of a hockey team

3 a jury retiring to agree a verdict in a criminal case

4 people in the same carriage on a train journey

5 a Government committee, such as the Cabinet

6 a project team in a large organisation.

How did you do? The definitions given above would mean that (1) and (4) would be an aggregate of people and (2), (3), (5) and (6) a psychological group. Notice, however, that with (4) there may be some travellers in the train carriage who form a psychological group.

This definition of a psychological group would allow very large groups – for instance, all people working for a large organisation such as Coventry University – to be classified as a psychological group. This book is about small groups, which has been taken to mean between two and up to 30 members. It is difficult to be precise about the upper limit, but beyond 30 (perhaps over 20) a group becomes difficult to manage and to prevent from breaking into smaller subgroups. In this book the most common size of group, and examples used, varies between three or four to 15 or 20 group members.

Additional defining features of psychological groups that are of interest to social psychologists include the group having shared goals and a structure. Shared goals of the group should normally be agreed upon by group members. It is also usually assumed that the goals are best achieved or may only be achieved by a small group rather than an individual working alone. Reference to group structure includes such things as norms and rules, a leader or leaders, followers and roles of individual group members (see Chapter 3).

Formal and informal groups

Jennifer works for a local authority council as part of a group dealing with planning applications for new houses, extensions and so on. In addition, Jennifer is a member of a group of employees of the council who all have an interest in keeping fit, and regularly go as a group to the local fitness centre. The first group described here is a formal group and the second an informal group; these may be defined as follows:

• Formal groups are created by an organisation to help achieve its collective purpose or mission. Formal groups are set organisational tasks and are held responsible for their achievements.

• Informal groups are collections of individuals who have a common interest and develop interdependencies, influence each other’s behaviours and contribute to mutual need satisfaction (Buchanan and Huczynski, 1997).

Formal groups tend to be task-oriented, endure over time, have a formal structure and are recognised as a defined group by the organisation and other formal groups in the organisation.

Informal groups develop and exist to meet more personal needs of individuals such as belongingness, good social relationships, sharing common interests and so on. Usually an organisation does not plan such groups, but would encourage their development, as long as they did not interfere with work, to foster greater employee satisfaction and motivation.

To highlight the distinction and points made here you might find it useful to think about an organisation you know about and, if appropriate, work in. Try to identify the formal and informal groups – you should find that most informal groups have to do with leisure activities and common interests of staff in the organisation.

Work groups

Formal work groups are normally task-oriented and usually clear about the task that has been set the group. The words ‘normally’ and ‘usually’ are deliberately used here since a formal group may allow relationships in the group to take priority over the task (for example, see Chapter 7 – Groupthink) or not be certain what its task or purpose is (for example, see Chapter 6 – Leadership). With these caveats in mind work groups have to deal with a number of issues as depicted in Table 1.1 (Chapters 3 to 7 consider these in more detail). You may wonder how small groups can be effective given that so many different issues have to be considered and dealt with.

An approach different from that common in western organisations is the Japanese approach to work groups. Rather than have a primary focus on roles, functions and group structure, the Japanese analyse group processes in terms of cohesion, consensus and morality (Pascale and Athos, 1982). Of particular importance in a Japanese work group is the acceptance of the leader by all group membe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Series preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction to the social psychology of behaviour in small groups
• 2 Measuring behaviour in small groups
• 3 Individuals and groups
• 4 Group development and group structure
• 5 Co-operation, conflict and social influence within small groups
• 6 Leadership
• 7 Individual and group decision-making
• Glossary
• References
• Index