Small Groups

Key Readings

John M. Levine, Richard L. Moreland

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781135471392
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Research on small groups is highly diverse because investigators who study such groups vary in their disciplinary identifications, theoretical interests, and methodological preferences. The goal of this volume is to capture that diversity, and thereby convey the breadth and excitement of small group research by acquainting students with work on five fundamental aspects of groups. The volume also includes an introductory chapter by the editors which provides an overview of the history of and current state-of-the-art in the field. Together with introductions to each section, discussion questions and suggestions for further reading, make the volume ideal reading for senior undergraduate and graduate students interested in group dynamics.

PART 1
Group Composition

From the viewpoint of outsiders, the most striking aspect of a group may be its composition—the number and types of people who belong. Unfortunately, research on group composition is relatively scarce, and even when it is done, researchers are often more interested in other aspects of group life that are affected by composition, rather than in composition itself. Nevertheless, some interesting and important research on group composition has been done. This work can be organized along three dimensions (see Moreland & Levine, 1992).

First, different characteristics of group members can be studied. Some researchers study the size of a group, noting the simple presence or absence of members, whereas others study the types of people who belong, focusing on their demographic characteristics (e.g., age, race, sex), abilities (e.g., intelligence, skills), opinions (e.g., beliefs, values), or personalities (e.g., traits, motives, neuroses). Second, group members’ characteristics can be measured in different ways. Some researchers prefer measures of central tendency, assessing the proportion of group members who have a characteristic or the mean level of that characteristic within the group. Other researchers prefer measures of variability, assessing the range of a characteristic in a group or classifying the group as heterogeneous or homogeneous for that characteristic. A few researchers even examine special configurations of characteristics among group members, such as the compatibility of their psychological needs (Schutz, 1958). Finally, different analytical perspectives on group composition can be taken.

Some researchers view the composition of a group as a consequence that depends on the operation of various sociological or psychological processes. A few researchers view it as a context that moderates other phenomena. Most researchers, however, view group composition as a cause that can influence other aspects of groups, such as their structure, dynamics, and performance. Because of their importance, these analytical perspectives deserve further commentary.

Group Composition as a Consequence

Research on groups often occurs in laboratories, where group composition can be controlled.

Researchers who want to study composition effects do so by creating groups of different types. But for many researchers, composition effects are just a nuisance that must somehow be controlled.

Standardization often serves that purpose. A researcher can make every group the same size, for example, and other member characteristics (e.g., sex) that might affect the research results can be held constant through restricted sampling. The random assignment of people to groups can also be used to distribute the effects of member characteristics (e.g., abilities) evenly across groups. All of this contrasts sharply with the world outside of laboratories, where group membership is rarely controlled by a central authority. Even when such control is exerted, the creation of interchangeable groups is rarely the goal. Natural groups thus can and do vary in their composition. Some groups are larger than others, and different groups contain distinct types of members. There is evidence, for example, that groups tend to be small (Desportes & Lemaine, 1988) and that members of the same group are similar (Jackson, Brett, Sessa, Cooper, Julin, & Peyronnin, 1991; Maccoby, 1998) and different from the members of other groups (Carroll, 1993;

McPherson & Rotolo, 1996). Several theories offer possible explanations for these findings (see Moreland & Levine, 2003).

Group Composition as a Context

Every psychological phenomenon occurs in some context, and many (maybe most) phenomena occur in the context of friendship cliques, families, and other groups. Thus, it would not be surprising if those phenomena were shaped by the composition of such groups. Consider the intellectual development of children, which occurs in the context of families (and other groups to which children belong). As they age, children get smarter, and the general rate of their development is well known. But what about the families in which children grow up? Those families vary in their composition—some are larger than others, some contain mostly boys rather than girls, and some contain a child with special needs. These composition differences among families could alter the rate of intellectual development in their children. In larger families, for example, children might interact less often, or in more superficial ways, with their parents, which could suppress their rates of intellectual development and prevent them from becoming as smart as they could have been if their families were smaller (Zajonc & Markus, 1975).

Group Composition as a Cause

Many researchers study group composition as a cause, maybe because such work promises to reveal how groups could be formed or altered to produce better outcomes, such as greater cohesion and performance. Consider, for example, efforts by lawyers to shape trial verdicts by selecting some potential jurors and rejecting others during the voir dire process, or efforts by coaches and owners of sports teams to improve their teams’ win/loss records by changing player rosters during the off-season. Anyone who relies on groups, and who can control at least some aspects of their composition, would be eager to know how those groups should be composed.

Research that reflects this analytical perspective can be organized by the member characteristics that one might try to control. The most basic of these is the presence or absence of group members, which determines a group’s size. Many studies comparing groups of different sizes have been performed, and they have revealed several important differences.

Some of these differences favor larger groups; others favor smaller groups. Larger groups, for example, may perform better because they have access to more member resources, such as time, money, expertise, and contacts. Larger groups also tend to be more diverse, which could improve their performance as well. Finally, larger groups often seem more legitimate, which may discourage interference and encourage support from outsiders. Larger groups can also suffer from many problems, however. For example, they may experience coordination problems (e.g., scheduling difficulties, confusion about task responsibilities), as well as motivation problems (e.g., free riding, social loafing, “sucker effects”), all of which can harm their performance. There is also greater conflict in larger groups, their members are generally less cooperative with one another, and several forms of member misbehavior (e.g., cheating) occur more often in larger groups. Finally, participation levels tend to be lower and more variable in larger groups, where a few people tend to dominate all the rest.

Membership in larger groups is often less satisfying as a result.

All of this suggests that there may be no “optimal” group size. So instead of making a group larger or smaller, it might be wiser for its members to develop coping methods that maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses associated with its size. Planning and process coordination, for example, could help solve coordination problems in larger groups, and team building and goal setting could help solve their motivational problems.

The demographic characteristics of group members can also be important and have thus been studied by many researchers. Much of their work has focused on the issue of diversity (Williams & O’Reilly, 1997), often through comparisons between homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. For example, groups containing only males or females may be compared with groups that contain both sexes. This research, especially as applied to school and work groups, has been motivated in part by moral and legal pressures that are weakening the barriers around many groups, allowing people who were excluded in the past (because of their sex or race, handicaps, or lifestyles) to become members.

The evidence on diversity is mixed, just as it is for group size. The main advantage of diversity (noted earlier) is that it can improve the performance of a group, especially on tasks that require creative thinking and a broad range of knowledge and skills. The main disadvantage of diversity is that it can produce conflict among group members. As a result, group cohesion may be weakened, tempting some members to leave. Those who leave are often the people who differ most from other group members (Tsui, Egan, & O’Reilly, 1992), so their departure makes the group less diverse. It could be argued, in fact, that people generally prefer homogeneous to heterogeneous groups, and they only join or remain in heterogeneous groups if external pressures force them to do so.

The advantages and disadvantages of diversity are not independent, because the performance of a group can be affected by conflict among its members. To complicate matters further, many factors can moderate the effects of diversity on group performance and conflict among group members. The optimal type or level of diversity for a group is thus unclear. So, rather than trying to change the membership of a group, it might be wiser (again) for members to develop coping methods that maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses associated with whoever already belongs.

One general strategy for minimizing the weaknesses associated with diversity is to train group members to control whatever conflicts diversity creates. Some conflicts can be prevented by educating people about their similarities and differences, encouraging greater tolerance, and improving social skills. It is also possible to build cohesion and trust through team building, and people can be taught to resolve their conflicts more effectively. One general strategy for maximizing the strengths associated with diversity, without actually changing who belongs to a group, involves a variety of tactics that just simulate diversity. These include seeking input from outsiders (e.g., consultants), and changing the group’s structure. Structural changes may involve creating new roles in a group (e.g., a “devil’s advocate” who criticizes standard operating procedures) or altering group norms (e.g., encourage people to evaluate plans more critically).

When these and similar tactics succeed, they improve the performance of a group without creating conflicts among its members.

Finally, much research has been done on the abilities, opinions, and personalities of group members. Most of this work reveals simple additive effects—as the level of some individual characteristic rises in a group, its impact on that group’s structure, dynamics, or performance becomes correspondingly larger. Thus, sports teams win more games when players are more skilled (Jones, 1974), juries render harsher verdicts when jurors are more conservative (Bersoff & Ogden, 1987), and work groups develop more rigid, hierarchical structures when members have stronger safety needs (Aronoff & Messe, 1971). Additive effects suggest that groups are like machines whose components are individual members. Each person, through his or her own characteristics, influences the group independently and would thus affect every group the same way, regardless of their members.

An intelligent person, for example, would improve the task performance of any group, and his or her impact would be the same in every group.

But what about the notion of “chemistry” among group members? As noted earlier, groups sometimes exhibit emergent properties that do not reflect the characteristics of their members in any simple way. Sports teams, for example, occasionally perform far better or worse than expected, given the skills of their players. And consider some of the decisions that the Supreme Court has made, decisions that were far more liberal or conservative than expected, given the political orientations of the justices who wrote them. Although these interactive effects are rare, some researchers have found them, especially in field research on natural groups (rather than laboratory research on artificial groups).

Interactive effects suggest that groups could be viewed as organisms rather than machines. In some cases, the influence of different members on a group may thus be interdependent, rather than independent. If so, then someone could affect different groups in different ways, depending on who else belonged. For example, an intelligent person might improve the task performance of one group more than that of another, if the intellectual mix in the former group were somehow better.

Research on group composition as a cause tends to be fragmented. Researchers who study one member characteristic seldom study other characteristics, nor do they often consider research by others on those characteristics. This seems unfortunate, because research on one characteristic of group members could clarify the effects of their other characteristics on the group. To address this problem, Moreland and Levine (see, for example, Moreland, Levine, & Wingert, 1996) developed a “generic model” of group composition effects that offers answers to three important questions.

First, which characteristics of group members are likely to be important at a given moment? A key variable here, according to Moreland and Levine, is salience, or the extent to which group members are thinking about a characteristic. Salience can vary both across characteristics and over time. Some characteristics of group members (e.g., race) are more salient than others (e.g., personality traits) because they are more readily apparent. The salience of a characteristic can also be affected by its distribution within a group. As the variance of a characteristic in a group increases (e.g., women join a group whose other members are all men), it attracts more attention. Finally, a characteristic can become salient if it seems relevant to people’s outcomes or lends meaning to their experiences.

Family members become more aware of one another’s camping skills, for example, if their summer vacation takes them to a wilderness area.

When a characteristic is salient, relevant composition effects can occur. Everyone in the group possesses some level of that characteristic and can thus contribute to such effects. This raises a second important question, namely which members are likely to have the greatest impact on the group? A key variable here, according to Moreland and Levine, is visibility, or the extent to which other members of the group notice a particular person’s characteristics. Members who participate more often in group activities or who have more status or seniority in the group tend to be more visible. As a result, the group is more likely to reflect their characteristics. And situational factors could once again be important. These include the type of task that a group must perform (e.g., a “disjunctive task,” where the performance of a group depends entirely on the performance of its best member, can make that person more visible) and the relationships group members have with outsiders (e.g., someo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• About the Editors
• Acknowledgments
• Small Groups: An Overview
• Part 1: Group Composition
• Part 2: Group Structure
• Part 3: Conflict In Groups
• Part 4: Group Performance
• Part 5: Group Ecology
• Appendix: How to Read a Journal Article In Social Psychology