Social and Group Behavior Flashcards

A team of highly skilled programmers is tasked with developing a new piece of software. As the project progresses, one senior programmer, Alex, notices his colleagues are becoming less critical of the lead developer's ideas, even when they seem flawed. Dissenting opinions are discouraged, and the team seems more focused on maintaining harmony than on realistically appraising alternatives. This scenario is a classic example of:

Answer: Groupthink

Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon where the desire for conformity and harmony within a group leads to an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Key symptoms include self-censorship, an illusion of unanimity, and direct pressure on dissenters, all of which are present in this scenario.

Which of the following best describes the fundamental attribution error?

Answer: The tendency to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for others' behavior while under-emphasizing situational factors.

The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to explain someone's behavior based on internal factors, such as personality or disposition, and to underestimate the influence that external, situational factors have on another person's behavior.

During a class project, a professor notices that when students are assigned to larger groups, the total effort exerted by the group is often less than the sum of the individual efforts if each student had worked alone. This reduction in individual effort when working in a group is known as:

Answer: Social Loafing

Social loafing is the phenomenon where individuals tend to exert less effort when working collectively as part of a group compared to when they are working individually. It is often caused by a diffusion of responsibility, where individuals feel less accountable in a group setting.

A person who strongly believes in animal welfare and donates to animal rights charities recently purchased a new winter coat made with real fur. To reduce the mental discomfort from this inconsistency, they begin to rationalize their purchase by telling themselves, "The animals were raised ethically on a farm, so it's not the same as wild hunting." This attempt to resolve the conflict between their beliefs and actions is a prime example of:

Answer: Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort experienced by a person who holds contradictory beliefs, values, or ideas, or participates in an action that goes against one of them. To reduce this dissonance, the individual will often change their attitudes, beliefs, or actions, or, as in this case, rationalize their behavior.

In Solomon Asch's classic conformity experiments, what was the primary reason participants often gave an obviously incorrect answer to a simple line-judging task?

Answer: They wanted to fit in with the unanimous majority and avoid social disapproval.

Asch's experiments demonstrated the power of normative social influence. Most participants conformed not because they believed the group was correct (informational influence), but because they felt pressure to align with the group to avoid standing out or being ridiculed. The desire for social acceptance overrode their own clear perception.

An emergency occurs on a busy city street, and despite many people witnessing the event, no one immediately steps forward to help. This phenomenon, where the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening, is best explained by:

Answer: Diffusion of Responsibility

Diffusion of responsibility is a key mechanism underlying the bystander effect. It occurs when individuals in a group feel a diminished sense of personal responsibility to act because they assume others will or should intervene. The more people present, the more this responsibility is diffused among them.