THE MINDSET OF GROUPSNOTES IN PSYCHOLOGY

THE MINDSET OF GROUPS

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INTRODUCTION

A light will be shed on the characteristics of group formations, peer effects, obedience, “People will obey a figure of authority, even if it means hurting another person” (Milgram, 1963) and “When individuals perceive another person as having authority over them, they no longer feel responsible for their actions” (Milgram, 1963). In addition, group conformity, which is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours to group norms, and their impacts on the economy, business and policy. “Conformity, the process in which an individual ’s behaviours, attitudes or belief either unconsciously or consciously is adjusted to meet the ones of the group’s, is well described in the psychological literature” (Kenrick et al., 1999). Groups are made of heterogeneous and homogeneous individuals, where individual’s beliefs, norms and cultural aspects may vary among the group’s members; nevertheless, groups have their own identity, norms and cultural attributes.

The effects of group’s influence on the individual’s preferences and judgements are whether Informational Social Influences or Normative Social Influences. Where informational influence tends to be evident in situations where ambiguity or uncertainty is the key determinant to a decision or a judgement. People turn to their social groups or to knowledgeable personnel for advice, informational influence “an influence to accept information obtained from another as evidence about reality” (Deutsch & Gérard, 1955) often results in internationalisation or private acceptance where people individually believe that the information is correct.

INTRODUCTION

Normative social influence “an influence to conform with positive expectations of another” (Deutsch & Gérard, 1955) is where the individuals confirm to be part of a group, wanting to be accepted and not wanting to be left out “Implies that people will go along with something they know is wrong because they want to fit in with the majority.” (Ash, 1951). This results in public compliance doing or saying something without believing it; normative social influence does not necessarily result in private acceptance.

“Private responses are likely to be under the control of informational influence, and to be relatively unaffected by normative influence, whereas public responses will be affected by both” (Deutsch and Gerard, 1955). One of the Elements that affect group conformity is the level of attraction “Some people may have a higher attraction towards their group, thus having a higher chance to conform” (Forsyth, 1983).

INTRODUCTION

Attractiveness is the ordinary conduct of individuals and groups to approach extrinsic activities “the individual’s or group’s intrinsic tendencies to involve in extrinsic communications”. Attractiveness tends to form informative “The Law of Social Attraction” or authoritative “The Law of Authoritative Attraction” attraction channels. The level of attraction determines the degrees of freedom of information consumption and cognitive digestion “conscious or unconscious”. And the influences of the information flow “conformity or obedience” and the significance of reluctance or conformity “the degree of which the deviations from or the tendency to tightly or loosely cluster around the group’s identity have impact on the individual and the group, the amount of transitivity and conformity, the amount of public compliance or private acceptance”.

Law of Authoritative Attraction “Is the group’s or the individual’s authoritative abilities of resource control that attracts individuals or groups unconsciously or unwillingly to conform to the norm, values and beliefs of the authoritative governance ’s policy and regulations, it’s a type of social obedience”. Authoritative attraction is a lower level function of the individual’s cognitive abilities and is unconsciously more gravitational and more attractive than social attraction.

INTRODUCTION

The natural Behaviour of individuals and groups is the tendency to acquire, ensure and maintain the necessary foundations for survival. Authoritative conformity is highly more noticeable and influential than social conformity because of the controlling or the governing Behaviour of resources important to individuals and groups of individuals. Causing more dependence “Public Compliance” on the group’s norms, values and beliefs in order to ensure eligibility or group acceptance for the resources to be given or shared among the eligible “Conforming” individuals of the group.

Elementary analysis of the Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy (1943, “A Theory of Human Motivation”) discloses the inevitability to conform reluctantly and instinctively with authoritative and societal guidelines in order to satisfy the physiological and the safety essentials. The physiological requirements are those that are fundamentally significant for the survival of the human beings, “whereby the absence of the physiological elements impairs the individuals abilities to exist, think and prosper” thus the less conformity to authoritative entities the superior the intensity of sociological and physiological consequences.

INTRODUCTION

“The security fundamental of the individuals is the continual need for the physical and metaphysical, logical and sentimental, economic and health constancy”, the ceaseless need for ensuring physiological provisions imposes greater instinctive influences to conform unwillingly to extrinsic rules and guidelines to mitigate economic and sociological volatility, hesitancy of conforming to extrinsic influences effects societal eligibility.

“Thus conformity evidently ensures sociological and economic security other than reluctance”. Authoritative hierarchies weaken the natural communications of social networks. Individual and group communications require feedback and recursive feedback pipelines or channels to ensure unbiased associations. whereby the authoritative magnetism rejects the individual’s and the group’s abilities to originate feedback and recursive feedback pipelines to guarantee authenticity, eligibility and harmony of conveyed information, resulting in high distortions and disinclinations, which in turn increases the private rejection of information and increases the public compliance towards satisfying the sociological needs.

INTRODUCTION

The greater the authoritative intensity the authoritative entity enforces on the group’s members the greater the transitivity, the greater the public compliance “The higher the unauthenticated acceptance of the group’s norms, values and beliefs extrinsically and unwillingly by the individual group members”.

The less the private acceptance “The higher the rejection of the group’s norms, values and beliefs intrinsically which negates the authenticated and the logically significant personal norms, values and beliefs”. The greater the consequences “The significance of being prohibited group membership results in multiple prohibitions transitively to other groups and affiliations which signifies the limitations to resource acquisition and preservation”. the stronger the chain of reaction is, “The authoritative governance implications are strongly apparent with the fact that changes highly impact cohesive or collectivist cultures, cultures that exhibit stronger dependability, and the more closer the authoritative distance among the individuals the more susceptible they are to changes and implications ”.

INTRODUCTION

The Law of Social Attraction “Is the group’s or the individual’s social or cultural gravitational abilities to attract other individuals or groups through reinforcing behaviours or mutual beneficial channels, it’s an influential act of informational conducts, it’s the act of satisfying the conforming individual’s or the group’s uncertainties and provides a cohesive standardised cultural framework that ensures productivity and performance”.

Social attraction is a higher level strategic function of the individual ’s cognitive abilities; the individuals tendency to continually pursue for excellence and cognitive actualisation, a sentimentally independent process “where the psychological impacts of group obedience and unconscious conformity to unjustified norms or beliefs for resource acquisition is not the primary concern of individuals”.

INTRODUCTION

Whereby each individual selectively agrees upon the norms, values and beliefs of others “The intrinsic or private acceptance of the norms, values and beliefs of others willingly and spontaneously with no extrinsic influences, is the case where the individual’s intrinsic tendencies reflect the desired Behaviour with complete independence”. The individual’s approach is formulated as the sociological and the logical significance of the relation “whereby individuals tend to approach groups where the formulated significance is approximately relevant to the individuals intrinsic norms, beliefs and values, which in turn satisfies the equilibrium of intrinsic and extrinsic inequality”.

Analysis of the Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy (1943, “A Theory of Human Motivation”) shows the importance of social attraction to satisfy the higher-level cognitive requirements of the individual “self-esteem and self-actualisation”.

INTRODUCTION

The social attraction implies that “in order to satisfy the individual’s esteem ‘self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others and respect by others’, and actualisation ‘morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice and acceptance of facts’, individuals must first ensure belongingness and ensure the fulfilment of the basic requirements of each and every individual”.

Such logical utilities require the satisfaction of the lower level functions of the individual. Mutually the law of authoritative attraction and the law of social attraction require the concept of belongingness “the process by which being part of a group”. (Murray, 1938), (Herzberg, 1959), (McClelland, 1961), (Covey, 1989) and supplementary psychologists and behavioral theorists highlighted the significance of group affiliations and societal belongingness about social motivation, achievement and performance. The authoritative attraction implies that the stronger the conformity or the eligibility of the individuals towards the norms, values and beliefs of the authoritative group the greater the actualisation of the basic needs of the individual “physiological, security ‘security of body, employment, resources, morality, family, health and property’ and belongingness ‘friendship, family and sexual intimacy’”.

INTRODUCTION

The law of the social attraction implies the belongingness to a group or a set of groups is essential to satisfy the cognitive requirements of the individual. Therefore, both proof the concept and the significance of group conformity. Group hierarchies form multiple inner groups, whereby each group exhibit implicit deviations from the normal or agreed upon Behaviour of the group members, where the Behaviour illustrated by norms, values and beliefs.

The psychological, cognitive and sociological heterogeneity results in dynamical social structures, whereby individuals within a particular group form subgroups of homogeneous significance. The significance of the inner groups are because of social intelligence and group emotions, the greater the homogeneity the greater the psychological conformity and obedience. The greater the gravitational sociology of the social networks the superior the imitation of the eligible behaviours, the increase of susceptibility to group suggestions, the greater the social facilitation and vicarious conditioning.

INTRODUCTION

The size of the group “Although it seems reasonable to assume that the larger the majority the greater the pressure to conform, the magnitude of such pressure is likely to depend on just who the majority are and on the context” (Bond, 2005) Nevertheless “a small majority may be sufficient to exert near maximum pressure” (Bob, 2005).

The size of the group, the cultural and the demographical characteristics results in varying levels of conformity “Conformity was significantly higher the larger the size of the majority and the greater the proportion of female respondents” (Bond and Smith, 1996). “Women show somewhat higher levels of conformity than men” (Cooper, 1979; Eagly, 1978; Eagly & Carli, 1981). And cultural aspects such that “Individualistic “where individuals tend to approach and value intrinsic behaviours and self-orientation and have negligence towards the group’s mentality” cultures showed lower levels of conformity than collectivist “where individuals tend to value group’s identity and always strive for group communications and commitments” cultures” (Bond and Smith 1996).

INTRODUCTION

The study of the sociological and psychological elements introduces the foundations necessary for the understanding of the basic principles of social networks and their impacts on economy.

Its underlying mechanics develops a theoretical framework towards analysing the significance and appropriately adjusting the continuous need for economists to incorporate social sciences into the realm of economics. The premise is that the basic principles of an individual’s nature is to communicate and to socialise, whereby the individuals identity mutates and evolves through groups and societies, the individual ’s ability of making decisions are stronger among groups. Where groups drive and strengthen the capabilities of individuals to communicate, collaborate, innovate and evolve in thoughts and Behaviour, Individuals on their own exhibit deteriorations of thoughts and facts, tendency to incorrect and biased judgements.

Individuals learn and evolve through other individuals, societies and cultures, they inherit principles, norms and cultural characteristics through observational or supervised learning ‘Imitation and vicarious conditioning’, and they are influenced by the mechanics of the natural cohesion of the human nature, the nature of being part of a group. Learning and feedback pipelines are an important asset of group cultures, collectivism.

INTRODUCTION

Where the information are shared and the thoughts are collaborated and integrated into generations of implicit and explicit knowledge that eventually lead to human revolution, a revolution whereby societies closely cluster around agreed upon norms and beliefs, which serve the whole community as a whole and each entity as an individual. Group conformity, obedience and other behavioral mechanics evolved over the years as tools and techniques to join and sustain memberships in groups. Such tools endorsed individuals to be classified and organised into cultural clusters, clusters where humans tend to neglect their own personal preferences and conform to other norms and beliefs to share resources, social acceptance and status, constellations of a majority or a minority that possess health and wealth, political or social authority, knowledge or wisdom.

Elements in a space of elements governed by a common culture considered dependent. Whereby the probability of effect on other elements of the governing space is apparent, the chain reaction is where the effect propagates into the space of elements resulting in a complete awareness of the event, and since hypothetically assuming that the space organised into a mesh topology. Where the elements are strongly connected, ensuring vertical and horizontal connectivity, the probability of causing a complete chain reaction equipped with the facts of social dynamics is strong.

INTRODUCTION

Therefore, we assume the transitivity of social networks “The transitivity of social networks. Imply that if there exist any authoritative or conformal link or links ‘complete or partial’ to one or more homogeneous or heterogeneous social networks neighbouring the originating network or networks ‘groups or groups within groups’, spontaneously transfers the information through cross heterogeneous universe of networks”.

Partial connectivity is where heterogeneous groups are partially connected via connector groups that share common grounds or mutual benefits with other groups, even though such groups are not considered homogeneous, the probability of a chain reaction is also strong. Reference groups and affiliations cause other groups and individuals to conform on values and beliefs (Bernheim, 1994), therefore ensuring connectivity among the individual groups also considered a dynamic and an ordinary nature of individuals and groups.

Events might take the form of internal link dynamics or externalities, internally caused by group intelligence and collaborative efforts that cause a revolutionary development of the group’s norms, beliefs and values, alternatively externalities are forces of homogeneous and heterogeneous adjacent group’s intelligence or other environmental, political or regulatory events. Relational hierarchies throughout the Group’s classifications and relations are also an important part of economic analysis.

INTRODUCTION

Groups formed in reference to class and power. Which constitutes to the concept of social stratification, whereby groups classified into a hierarchical organisation according to resource access, power and perceived social worth. Class is the structural position whereby groups hold to the economic, social, political and cultural resources of a society.

Social classifications exhibit stronger dependence relations among the groups and within the individuals of the group, the relations highly describe group domination and group control over resources and the necessity of individuals and groups to conform and abide (Kenrick et al., 1999) to share and collaborate. Groups are emotional in nature “Emotions are alive, well and living in groups” (Kelly and Barsade, 2001), resulting in a unique and a responsive identity, groups respond cohesively to events as individuals do, the more cohesive the group is the more symmetrical their corresponding behaviours and responses are.

INTRODUCTION

This tendency for group associations led many scientists to become more involved into understanding the principles of the human nature, afterwards other disciplines adopted the methodologies to incorporate human factors into wide a verity of sciences. In business, anthropologists and industry scholars studied the social and the cultural behaviours, the effectiveness of individual and group work, the efficiency of collaboration and coordination among team members and the effects of managerial hierarchies on the essentials of productivity and performance.

Human resource management studied the psychology of individuals and groups and the types of elements that contribute to the success or failure of workforce in multidimensional diversified environments, and the significant factors that might increase the levels of loyalty and decrease the levels of low morale and turnover. Sales and marketing studied the Behaviour of individuals and the tendency of individuals to accept certain products and services through controlling sociological and psychological variables.

FURTHER READING

The Digital Marketplace

Social interactions and the sociological dynamics of social networks have many contributions that lead to many developments to our daily lives, it shaped the ways we interact, share and achieve.

The Theory of Motivation

The etymology of the word ‘motivate’ descends from Old French motif, from late Latin motivus, from movere ‘to move’ in the 1800’s. Motivation is a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way.

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