Groups, relationships and intergroup processes
Introduced| English |
|---|
| social loafing/ˈsəʊʃl ˈləʊfɪŋ/ |
| bystander effect/ˈbaɪstændə ɪˈfekt/ |
A decision before an answer
- People work less hard in a rope-pulling team than alone, but only when nobody can tell who pulled how hard.
- Your goal: Predict group-performance effects from task and identifiability.
Read the group effect
- Social facilitation: the presence of others strengthens dominant responses, helping well-learned tasks and hurting novel ones. Social loafing: effort falls when individual contributions are unidentifiable.
- Groupthink: cohesive groups under pressure suppress dissent and reach poor decisions; deindividuation: anonymity in a crowd lowers self-restraint.
Friendship formation between residents of the same dorm floor best illustrates:
Physical proximity — propinquity — predicts liking and friendship.
Explain the attraction
- Attraction is predicted first by propinquity — physical or functional proximity, as in making friends on the same dorm floor — then similarity and reciprocal liking; mere exposure breeds familiarity-based liking.
- Social exchange theory reads relationships as outcomes minus costs against a comparison level; interdependence analyses use each partner's payoff structure.
Prejudice is best distinguished from discrimination as:
Prejudice is evaluative affect; discrimination is the behaviour; stereotypes are the beliefs.
Separate the intergroup trio
- Stereotypes are beliefs about groups, prejudice is evaluative affect, discrimination is behaviour. The minimal-group paradigm shows in-group favouritism from arbitrary assignment alone; realistic conflict theory ties hostility to competition over resources.
- The contact hypothesis reduces prejudice under equal status, common goals and cooperative contact, not mere exposure.
Friends cluster on the same dorm floor — propinquity. A tug-of-war team slacks when pulls are pooled — social loafing under unidentifiable contributions. Arbitrary badge colours producing in-group preference is the minimal-group effect. Nobody calling for help in a crowded plaza is diffusion of responsibility.
Help becomes less likely as witnesses increase through diffusion of ____.
Each witness assumes another will act; adding pluralistic ignorance compounds it.
Break the bystander pattern
- The bystander effect: help falls as witnesses increase, through diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance (each reads others' calm as no emergency).
- Aggression research links frustration to aggression and shows how residual arousal (excitation transfer) can escalate conflict; altruism is helped by clear identification of a single victim.
Writing stereotype, prejudice and discrimination as synonyms, or promising that any contact fixes prejudice; contact works under conditions, not by default.
Which answer fits this case?
Predict group-performance effects from task and identifiability
Contact between groups reduces prejudice whenever it occurs.
The contact hypothesis requires equal status, common goals and cooperation; mere exposure is not enough.
Keep the distinctions
- social loafing 社会惰化 — Reduced individual effort when contributions are pooled and unidentifiable.
- bystander effect 旁观者效应 — Help becomes less likely as the number of witnesses grows, via diffusion of responsibility.
- Predict group-performance effects from task and identifiability.
- Explain attraction through proximity, similarity and exchange.
- Separate stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination with their remedies.
Match each term with its precise meaning in this lesson.
Keep the distinctions stated in the teaching example.
Put this lesson’s reasoning or event sequence in order.
The order follows the stated process; check each stage before the next.