Social Groups and Formal Organizations

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Group = People who think of themselves as belonging

together and who interact with one another. Groups are the essence of life in society.

Groups are vital for our well being.

They provide intimate relationships

And a sense of belonging.

Groups are important because they affect our behavior

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Examples: Asch Study

Studied the effects of peer pressure

Used a set of cards

6 stooges and a non-stooge

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Asch tested 50 people ◦ 33% gave into the group half of the time- providing

what they knew were wrong answers

◦ 40% gave wrong answers, but not as often

◦ 25% always gave the correct answer, defying the group.

Imagine if people are willing to conform to the group on something so small as line length, what will people do when it “really matters”?

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Aggregate – People who temporarily share a space but

don’t see themselves as belonging together.

Category- People who share similar characteristics E.g., = People with red hair

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Primary Groups

◦ Family and Friends

◦ Provide intimate, face-to-face interaction

◦ Give you your identity, a feeling of who you are

◦ Fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of who you are.

◦ Charles Cooley referred to primary groups as “the springs of life”

◦ Tend to be smaller than other groups

◦ Very personal

◦ We can be our true self

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Secondary Groups ◦ Larger and more anonymous than primary groups

◦ More formal and impersonal

◦ Based on shared interests or activities

◦ Members interact on the basis of specific status (manager, worker, student, etc).

◦ Contemporary society could not function without secondary groups

◦ Part of the way we get our education, make a living, spend money, and use leisure time.

◦ Fail to satisfy deep needs for intimate association.

◦ Tend to break down into smaller primary groups.

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Voluntary Associations

Volunteers who organized on Basis of Mutual Interest

Can be local or national

Can be small with only a few volunteers or very large

Many different voluntary associations in the United States

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

A significant aspect of voluntary associations is that the key members (inner circle) often grow distant from regular members. ◦ The “Inner Circle” becomes convinced that only they

can be trusted to make the group’s important decisions. Example: Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW)

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

◦ Iron Law of Oligarchy = Organizations come to be dominated by a small, self perpetuating elite.

People are excluded from leadership because they don’t

represent the inner circle’s values, or background / the way they look.

Actually more like “copper” law = if the oligarchy gets too far out of line it runs the risk of a grassroots rebellion.

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

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Founded in 1854 in Ripon, WI

This can also be done with the Democratic Party

Social Groups and Formal Organizations

In-Groups – People feel a loyalty towards their in-groups

Out-Groups – Groups towards which we feel antagonism

Examples: Crips & Bloods, Democrats & Republicans, Plastics and rest of high school

Positive consequence of in-groups: People feel a sense of belonging

Negative consequence of in-groups and out-groups: Intense rivalries can

develop

◦ “We vs. Them” mentality

◦ Dividing the world into a “we” and “them” leads to discrimination

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Humans are inclined to separate into groups and form identities based on group membership. Once part of a group, members tend to evaluate in-group members positively and out-group members negatively. When concrete rewards are involved, they reward in-group members more generously than out-group members.

It turns out that people will do this based on almost any characteristic and, in fact, will even do so when they are grouped randomly and informed that the groups are random. This is called the minimal group paradigm.

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

In-groups shape your: ◦ Perception of the world

◦ View of right and wrong

◦ Behavior

We tend to view the traits of our in-group as a virtue while we perceive those same traits as vices in out-groups. ◦ Example: Aggression and Gender

Aggressive man = assertive

Aggressive woman = pushy / bitch

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

This also matters because… ◦ It is the same reason that many

“ordinary” and “good” Germans shared Nazi views and defended the Holocaust.

◦ You see the same patters of language in current rhetoric about al-Qaeda

◦ Child immigration

◦ And ISIS / ISIL

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

What happens when you “create” an “Us” vs. “Them”

Ethics and research?

Video 1

Video 2

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

How does this apply today?

Zimbardo The Psychology of Evil

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Groups that we use to evaluate ourselves

◦ Reference Groups will change as we go through the life course.

◦ Reference Groups sometimes contradict the values of other groups

◦ Examples: Family, Neighbors, Teachers, Classmates, Co-Workers, Members of Religious Organization When you see yourself as measuring up to a reference groups standards you feel pleased. When your behavior or aspirations does not match the group’s standards you feel turmoil. 1

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

People who are linked to one another.

◦ Includes your family, friends, acquaintances, people at work,

school, and “friends of friends”.

◦ Linked In, Facebook, Instagram, etc

◦ Your Social Network as a Spider Web

◦ Can be impersonal and fail to meet the needs of intimacy

◦ Clique = clusters within a group

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Analysis of social networks has become a part of applied sociology.

Social Scientist wonder just how extensive the connections are among social networks? ◦ Stanley Milgram

“Addressed a letter to “targets” = the wife of a divinity student in Cambridge and a stockbroker in Boston

Sent the letter to “starters” = people who did not know the “target”

Ask “starter” to send letter to someone they knew on a first-name basis who might know “target”

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Milgram found that on average it takes 6 jumps for the letter

Lead to popular “6 degrees of separation” and game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”

What are some flaws???

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

In reality Judith Kleinfeld (2002) found that Milgram’s study

stacked the deck in favor of finding a small world.

Targets and Starters in Milgram’s study were of the same social class.

Most letters (70%) did not reach their “targets”

◦ It is NOT a small world… AND people are dramatically separated by social barriers: geography, social class, gender and race-ethnicity.

◦ Technology has changed this drastically

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Bureaucracies: A type of organization that dominates social life.

Five Characteristics of Bureaucracies

1) Separate levels, with assignments flowing down &

accountability going up?

2) Division of Labor- each worker has specific tasks

3) Written Rules- larger it grows more rules it has

4) Written Communication and Records

5) Impersonality & Replaceability = Each worker is a

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Bureaucracies tend to take on a Life of their Own

Suffers from Goal Displacement –When the old goal is

reached in a bureaucracy and a new goal is created to keep the

bureaucracy running.

◦ Example: March of Dimes

◦ Original = Fight Polio,

◦ Then = Fight Birth defects,

◦ Now = “Stronger, healthier babies”

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Red Tape = so bound by rules that the results defy logic

Alienation =

Workers are replaceable

Workers are cut off from the finished product of their

labor

Workers feel more like objects than people.

Resisting Alienation = people form primary groups at work to have some form of control over their work

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Self-fulfilling Stereotypes in the “Hidden Corporate Culture” ◦ Stereotypes can be self-fulfilling = they produce

the very characteristics they are built around.

What it takes to get ahead = looks /acts very much like people who are currently in charge.

Workers who don’t look or act like corporate leaders = assumed to be less capable.

Given fewer opportunities by their boss

Workers realize they are working beneath their abilities

Lose motivation, become less committee, and don’t perform well.

This confirms the original stereotype.

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

At one point- most workers were white males

Now, ◦ 47% of works are women and 31% are minorities

Blatant racism and sexism once made no difference to profit. Today, they do. ◦ Corporations have “diversity training”

◦ Research finds that forcing workers to participate in diversity

training produces resentment.

◦ Setting goals for increasing diversity and making managers accountable = increase the diversity of a company’s workers

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

“Little brothers” ◦ Computers now monitor millions of workers

◦ Cameras, recorded phone calls, e-mail surveillance

◦ Delete does not mean erase

◦ Cyberloafing / Cyber Slacking

Use of computers at work for personal purposes

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

How groups influence us and how we influence groups

Small Group- group small enough so that each member

can interact directly with all the others. Can be primary or

secondary.

Dyads – Two people ◦ Most intense or intimate of human groups

◦ Unstable – both members must participate and if 1 loses interest

they collapse.

Triads – Three People ◦ Addition of a 3rd member changes the group.

◦ Creates strain, also unstable, produce an arbitrator/mediator.

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

As a group increases in size it becomes more

formal and more stable. Also intimacy decreases.

◦ Each new person comes into a group the connections amount people

multiply. (See next slide)

As groups grow the develop a more formal structure

Specialized roles = leader, president, secretary, treasurer.

As a group gets larger, smaller groups may form

Greater Diffusion of Responsibility may occur in

larger groups – “Someone else will take care of it”

These findings are different in lab and real world

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

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Figure 5.2 The Effects of Group Size on Relationships

Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Leaders are People Who Influence Others’ Behaviors,

Opinions, and Attitudes

People who become leaders are perceived by group members as

strongly representing their values or as able to lead a group out of a

crisis.

Leaders tend to be more talkative, outgoing, determined, and self-

confident.

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

1. Instrumental Leader – a leader who keeps the group

on track towards meeting its goals. ◦ Task oriented

◦ Can create friction because they are focused on a task

2. Expressive Leader – tries to life the groups morale

through motivation ◦ Socio-emotional

◦ Usually more popular

Let’s look at your examples.

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Authoritarian – Gives instructions with little to no information.

◦ People become dependent on leader ◦ People become either apathetic or aggressive

Democratic – Tries to gain a group consensus ◦ Friendlier and look to co-workers/peers for approval ◦ Continue to work when leader leaves the room

Lassiez-Faire – Totally hands off leader, lets

the group lead ◦ Goofed off a lot and notable for lack of achievement

◦

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Researchers’ preference for Democratic Leadership might be because they were a product of a democratic society

Experiments only involved boys. Interesting to see what would happen if girls were included.

Leadership style will change as situation changes.

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Milgram and Shock Experiments

Studied the affects of authority figures

Teacher and a learner

Controversial experiment

Video short

Video long

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Global Consequences

GroupThink- the influence of authority and peers can lead to a narrowing of thought by a group of people.

◦ Leads to the perception that there is only one correct answer and suggesting alternatives is a sign of disloyalty

◦ Collective Tunnel Vision ◦ Examples: “Bay of Pigs” or Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster

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Social Groups and Formal Organizations

Australian commercial for Toyota Corolla

A class divided

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