Summary
Pros and cons of working within groups and what contributes to process loss or gain
As you might suspect, there are a lot of pluses to working within a group, but there are minuses to it as well. I want to delve deeper into these complexities and their processes and which is of greater benefit in certain situations.
According to the Social Facilitation Model (Robert Zajonc), there seems to be certain process that contribues to either group loss or group gain. According to this model, just the presence of having others around us produces arousal, which then increases the likelyhood of a dominent response occuring (dominent response being the action that we are most likely to emit in any given situation.). If the dominent response is correct, then the task at hand will be performed better, and if it is not, the task will be performed more poorly. According to this theory, the mere presence of others can either increase or decrease performance. If a task at hand is one that is practiced often and well known, then the outcomes success odds increase. However, if this is a task that the person is still acquiring, the arousal can hinder us and cause the outcome performance to be worse. How well versed we are in our skills can be a deciding factor in whether or not there will be individual gains that can or cannot contribute to a group.
Something called process gain is when people in groups perform better individually than they would alone. A reason for this is often a motivating factor caused by other people’s presence within the group. Process loss would be a term for its opposite. Contributing factors towards process loss would be difficulties in motivation and coordination, and also groupthink. Loafing is a common phenomenon where certain members do more work than others. Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs when a group is made up of members who may be competent at their work, but when in a group cave to conformity pressures, making less quality decisions.
I’m sure a lot of us, in our every day work situations, see the pros and cons to working in groups. While an individual may have a lot of great ideas, implimenting these ideas most often times requires a lot of people. Unless, a task only requires a single person to execute, it is important to know what can increase process gain and what can cause process loss in order for us to be more efficient and productive.
References
Principles of Social Psychology, 2015, University of Minnesota, Ch. 11.2 Group Processes, The Pluses and Minuses of Working Together, 2024