Month: December 2019

One concept we learned about recently was social loafing. This phenomenon regards how individuals will put in less effort towards a goal when they are in a group, versus when they are tested individually. For example, in a study where participants were asked to pull on a rope, they put in less effort when they thought they were on a team, compared to when they thought they were doing it alone.

I think social loafing occurs quite a lot in the every day world. I have found that almost every single time I have been part of a group project, most people have tended to slack off, as they believed other people would carry the extra weight. In particular, in one of my classes last semester, I was in a group of five, working on a presentation for a history class. Because there were five of us, not everyone put in a fair amount of work, and some people simply stood idly by while others hurried to finish everything. When one knows they are not alone in working on a task, it makes sense that they would naturally put in less effort than usual. Sometimes it works out, as when one is in a group and people pool their talents. However, sometimes it results in people taking advantage of the fact that there are others to shoulder the burden.

We discussed in class the relationship between conformity and obedience within the human mind. For starters, almost obvious, behavior is contagious, people follow other people’s behavior in order to fit in and conform with the group. We discussed in class the experiment done by Solomon Asch and the group of people in an elevator. Whenever a group of people that were a part of the experiment changed positions or were standing facing away from the door in the elevator, nonparticipants followed the group, changing their behavior to match the group (conformity). Obedience is a little different, people comply with social pressures like conformity, but obedience adds in commands of an authority figure, which makes people even more pressured to conform. We also can discuss the Chameleon effect, which is unconsciously mimicking other’s expressions, postures, and voice tones.

All throughout high school, I was always a leader, specifically on my varsity sports teams I was captain. Of course, when you are captain, you want to lead by example and show the rest of the team how to act and work hard. By me always working hard, listening to my coach, having a positive attitude, etc. it got others to follow me, and most of the time the entire team to conform to this behavior. No one wanted to be the odd man out, or risk getting in trouble by our coaches, so if I led by example, my teammates were likely to follow this behavior since behavior is contagious. The Chameleon effect is a big deal on sports teams. If my teammates see me talking back to my coach, having a bad attitude or acting like I do not care, they will follow these expressions, postures, and “voices” themselves; therefore, I needed to make sure at all times these three aspects were always positive because I never knew who was watching me at any time. Even though I always tried my best to get my entire team to comply with similar attitudes and actions like mine, not everyone always would follow, which is where obedience comes into play. Some people needed that higher authority figure like my coach in order to behave, or the social pressures of fans and the other team and games in order to comply. As you can see, conformity and obedience play a big role in places like school and sports teams, especially at levels like middle and high school with many social pressures.

During lecture 24 of our Psychology 100 class, Dr. Wede explained the idea of “In-group Bias” to us. After learning about this and thinking about it in more depth, it is something that is prevalent in all types of groups around the world. Whether it is a group of friends in school, or a band, or a sports team, whichever group you are in you are going to always believe that is the best group to be in. The actual definition of in-group bias is, “The in-group bias is the tendency that people have to favor their own group above that of others. This bias can have a powerful influence on both individual and group behavior.” Everyone always will feel more comfortable in their own group, and as great as the bond might be, there are also some negative effects that this can have on a person/group.

In-group bias can have an effect that causes something such as deindividuation. What this means is when you are in a group you might lose your sense of self-awareness and just do as the group does. This can be dangerous especially when it comes to rioting and things of that nature. Another example of in-group bias would be to think of any of the gangs that are out there. No matter what other gangs are out there, whether they are bigger, stronger or anything like that, the people in their specific gang will always think they are the best. The deindividuation comes into play when there is a gang fight and someone is killed, even if they were not even doing anything wrong. It is always nice to be considered apart of a group, although, I believe it is prudent to know when it draw the line when it comes to what you should or should not do for your group/team. If you are not careful group power is very contagious and can cause you to do things you did not think you were capable of doing.

 

Source: https://www.explorepsychology.com/ingroup-bias/