Resources for the Teaching of Social Psychology

Group polarization - David Myers share this activity he has used in his social psychology classes.

A class activity on social loafing

Lost on the Moon Task - Marianne Miserandino shares her version of the Lost on the Moon task. The first link is to her handout describing how she runs the activity in her class. Here is the actual moon problem to be solved by a group. Here are the answers to the moon problem. [added 2/19/14]

The Cave Rescue Mission - group decision making task provided by Valerie Pruegger [added 2/19/14]

Hidden Profile Task - Dana Wallace offers these PowerPoint slides he uses for a group decision making task. Dana states "I’ve tried to get a hidden profile task to work in the classroom before, but the students were so excited to talk to each other that they disclosed all information! Now I use powerpoint of Jack and Jill to show the same points of how different decisions can be made based on information available." If you would like more information on this task, you can reach Dana at dwallace@jc.edu. [added 2/19/14]

Group polarization - This activity mirrors closely some of the original work when we were referring to it as "risky shift." [added 2/19/14]

Social Loafing - To introduce the topic of social loafing I sometimes divide my class in half. I have one side of the room individually make a list of as many uses they can think of for an automobile tire. I tell them that anything is acceptable. The other half of the room works as a group (or two groups if too large) on the same task. Not surprisingly, the individual side generates far more uses per person than does the group side. Of course, there are a lot of reasons for that, which we discuss. But one of the reasons is social loafing. [added 2/19/14]

Social Loafing - At the end of our discussion of social loafing, I divide the class into small groups to work on the following problem: Use the conditions research has identified that increase or decrease the likelihood of loafing in a group to identify strategies for managing workers at a fast food restaurant. [added 2/19/14]

Social Facilitation - To introduce the topic of social facilitation I ask for two volunteers who are willing to do a little math. (Not many takers for that one!) I have one volunteer stay at his/her desk and have the other volunteer come to the blackboard. I give them both the same multiplication problem (e.g., 8,347 x 348) to solve as quickly as they can. The student at the desk usually gets the wrong answer. The person at the board almost always gets the wrong answer. It provides a good example of all the different theories of social facilitation such as evaluation apprehension and distraction conflict. [added 2/19/14]

The "O" train: Teaching the power of ostracism - Lisa Zadro and Kipling Williams use this in-class activity to "show students the powerful consequences of ostracism firsthand using an engaging, validated teaching tool: the "O" train." This activity was awarded an honorable mention in the Social Psychology Network's inaugural Action Teaching Award program. [added 4/6/06]

Are more heads better than one? - Dave Myers passed along this good in-class demonstration. He refers to James Surowiecki's book, The Wisdom of Crowds, in which the author makes the point that groups can make better decisions than the average individual under certain conditions (e.g., "given freely contributed inputs from varied perspectives" -- Myers). This point can be illustrated in class using the "jelly bean challenge." As Dave suggests, "The idea would be to

* have individual class members estimate the number of beans.
* average those estimates.
* ask for a show of hands from people who were closer to the correct answer--2845 beans--than the class answer.

The anticipated result would be few hands raised, thus illustrating that, as the text will say, 'all of us together can become smarter than almost any of us alone.'" Other related questions could be explored by such variations as dividing half the class into small groups to reach a group decision about the number of jelly beans and leaving the other half to make individual judgments. [added 1/13/06]

Demonstrating deindividuation - David Dodd's article "Robbers in the classroom: A deindividuation exercise" [added 9/4/02]

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Multimedia Resources (Audio / Video)

Audio

"Separating yourself from the pack" (59:56) - A podcast from Hidden Brain

How our group loyalties can shape us (50:02) - a podcast on the topic

Social loafing - a podcast from Michael Britt [added 2/19/14]

Case studies - five different BBC radio programs looking at five different group experiences [added 3/24/09]

Video

How can leaders communicate more effectively? (5:01)

Group polarization (9:04) - George Schreer pointed me to this excellent example of group polarization. This Ted Talk describes how Google and Facebook among other sites place us in "filter bubbles" exposing us primarily to information with which we agree.

Leadership - An author on leadership, Jim Collins, provides some brief videos on the topic. H/T Dana Wallace [added 2/19/14]

Group polarization - (1:05:24) The authors of the article mentioned above discuss their research on the increased polarization of American political attitudes along party lines. [added 2/19/14]

"Is the Web making you narrow-minded?" - (9:05) The first link takes you to an excellent and scary TED talk on how the Internet is being filtered for us so that we don't see and hear what everyone else does. Here - (25:02) is an interesting episode of PsychFiles from Michael Britt on this topic of possible group polarization of the Web. [added 6/25/12]

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Class Assignments

Projects

Group Dynamics course - Here is a unique approach to teaching a group dynamics course with some experiential assignments. Here is a link to an observation assignment in which students analyze the group dynamics of a classroom. This link takes you to an assignment in which a small group observes the dynamics of another group anywhere they find one. [added 9/25/10]
Group presentations: Jonahue! - While knocking around in Don Forsyth's site, I couldn't help remembering the times I taught Group Dynamics many years ago (using Don's excellent text). So, bear with me as I reminisce and share a rather odd class assignment. I was looking for some way for my students to learn about group dynamics while working in groups, and at the same time I wanted to develop their oral speaking skills. But I didn't want them to give the usual oral presentations in which they delivered a prepared speech. They got enough of that (or at least some of that) in their other courses. I wanted them to learn to speak extemporaneously and knowledgeably about a topic. So, I asked myself, where do we find experts speaking publicly extemporaneously? One venue I thought of was the talk show. Sometimes experts are invited to come on a talk show, not to give a speech, but to answer questions. At the time, one of the talk shows doing this was hosted by Phil Donahue. My first name is Jon, and, voila... "Jonahue" was born! Each week I turned my Group Dynamics classroom into a talk show. I, Jonahue, was the host. A group of three students was "invited" to be the guests on the show because they were experts (if they prepared well) on a particular group dynamics topic. More specifically, the group was there to use its expertise on the topic to apply it to a specific topic-related problem. The other members of the class were the audience and were required to ask questions. As host, I also asked questions. And, I recorded my wife asking questions I prepared for her that I played during class as if she were a live caller to the show. Each group of three students went through this ordeal three times during the term. It was fun! And, more importantly, I think it worked. [added 3/6/02]

Examples

Group polarization "Online radicalization is among the most vexing challenges the world faces today. Here, we demonstrate that homogeneity in moral concerns results in increased levels of radical intentions."

Group polarization (9:04) - George Schreer pointed me to this excellent example of group polarization. This Ted Talk describes how Google and Facebook among other sites place us in "filter bubbles" exposing us primarily to information with which we agree.

Illusion of consensus/grouthink - Author makes the point that the same mistakes leading up to the Iraq war are being repeated. [added 4/3/13]

What happens if the mayor is your jury foreman? - interesting case of former New York Mayor Guiliani serving as foreman of a jury [added 6/3/08]

At the World Trade Center site after the 9-11 attack - a brief summary of the book by William Langewiesche which details many examples of social influence in the aftermath [added 3/23/04]

Deindividuation

Deindividuation - This link suggested by Steve Jones includes lots of good examples of deindividuation. More examples here. [added 2/19/14]

In class we discussed that being in a group leads to deindividuation. I recently watched the movie "To Kill A Mockingbird." In it, there is a scene where a mob has gathered at the jail. They want to lynch a black man who they believe has raped a white woman. The men in the mob are acting together in a ugly unison of threats and violence until the little daughter of the man trying to stop the mob speaks up. She calls out to one of the men in the mob by name, reminding him who she is, reminding him of his visits to their house, reminding him that she plays with his son, etc. The man finds these statements embarrassing. They increase his self-awareness and strip away the mob mentality that he was a part of. He can no longer hide behind the mob as the blame for the violence. He now can see the responsibility on his shoulders not just diffused on others. All of this causes him to announce in a loud voice that he's leaving and thinks the other mob members should do the same, which they do.

A couple weeks ago I chaperoned a trip to Bloomington for the ISU high school marching band competition. My son's last words as we got to the high school were, "Dad, please don't embarrass me by yelling at everyone on the bus." Much to his delight I was assigned to another bus. I'm sure that each of these band members individually are fine young persons. But nowhere has deindividuation been more obvious than on that bus. Screaming, yelling, climbing over seats, and general mayhem seemed to be the order of the day. Keeping in mind what my son had said, I tried a little informational influence to get them to conform to the rules. I tried to explain how they might get hurt climbing over the seats, and how they needed to rest and conserve energy to be at their best for the competition. That didn't work very good. I didn't think normative influence would work because the group norm seemed to be acting wild and crazy. I concluded that authority influence was the only way. Several loud "SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP's" did the trick.

Social Loafing

I used to do a lot of singing. I sang in choirs, quartets, trios and did solo performances as well. Mostly in church settings, but I also did solo work when I sang in the work choir. Since I was the soprano with the highest range, the other members depended on me to carry the high notes. If I didn't hit them, nobody did. I found that after several performances, my voice would begin to show the strain and it became necessary for me to conserve it. Therefore, when we were singing in an average range, I would only mouth the words. I could do this because I knew that the others would continue to sing. However, as we approached the bars that I was to sing, I found that the crescendo of all of our voices together helped me to do a better job. That was not the case when I sang in smaller groups. When I was the "only" soprano, social loafing was not allowed. If I hadn't sung every note, the harmony would have been badly distorted. Not wanting to experience their disapproval or our mutual humiliation, I had a greater incentive to do my part.

In my Industrial Labor Relations class, we are currently doing a group project. The class is divided into two sides, 8 people on the management side, and 12 people on the union side (I'm on management). What we are trying to do is to renegotiate the labor contract between a union and a slaughter house (that is in financial trouble). This class has brought to light many examples for me to write about. The first one that comes to mind deals with social loafing. In both groups, it is present. But, after a talk with a friend on the union team, I found out that it is more prevalent on their team. This is probably due to their larger number. What also encourages this is that we are graded as teams, and the teacher never even looks up unless someone makes reference to a chart. Unless the teacher remembers the voices of the people who spoke, those who didn't will remain anonymous. A third factor that encourages the social loafing is that on both sides, there are people who really want to get good grades (me among them). The other side has two people in particular that I know desperately want an A so much that they seem to be doing the whole project. On our side, pretty much everyone wants an A, and only 1 person could be accused of social loafing (missed two important classes and does as little as possible).

Tomorrow's election affords the perfect opportunity for social loafing, and unfortunately, many people take advantage of it. The group goal is to elect qualified leaders of our choice. People tend to have less accountability and less identifiability. Next year if our leaders are doing a poor job, we can say, "I never voted for that jerk!" or "Yes, I voted for that jerk, but so did a million other people!" This allows us to diffuse our individual responsibility. Or I could tell myself that my one little vote isn't going to make any difference in the election, so why should I bother to vote at all?

It has been proven that under certain situations we are more likely to loaf. Boy, it sure is easy to loaf when you're at work. One way I noticed that my manager has tried to reduce loafing at work is by goal setting. Since I work in retail - the more we sell, the more we make! Commission is very important to all of us at work -- and it seems most of us always try to sell as good as we can -- so our reward is very nice at the end of the month. Not only does this goal setting make a profit for the employees who show the effort -- but it is also profitable for the company. I think accountability and identifiability is very important. I want to be noticed at work when I sell a three thousand dollar ring -- and when I stay after hours to help clean up -- and I want the people who choose to "loaf" to be noticed too -- and believe me -- they are!

Topic Resources

Eleven rules for leaders - Jay Van Bavel and Dominic Packer suggest these 11 rules from 1950 hold up quite well today. Which of these rules do your students think are good advice?

“’Likes’ and ‘shares’ teach people to express more outrage online”

Why the eclipse is (was) best experienced in a crowd - I just like the first picture in this article.

Whom do you look at in an audience when speaking? Nodders or frowners? - Interesting study tracked eye movements of speakers who were either high or low in social anxiety to see whom they would look at when speaking.

Debriefing after a task improves team effectiveness

Alcohol and group formation - "Sayette and his colleagues assembled various small groups using 720 male and female participants, a larger sample than in previous alcohol studies. Researchers assessed individual and group interactions using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) and the Grouptalk model for speech behavior. They concluded that alcohol stimulates social bonding, increases the amount of time people spend talking to one another, and reduces displays of negative emotions. According to Sayette, the paper introduces into the alcohol literature new measures of facial _expression_ and speech behavior that offer a sensitive and comprehensive assessment of social bonding." [added 12/24/12]

Going with the social flow - "The key finding is that the participants in the high interdependent condition were rated as more joyful than participants in the low interdependence condition, based on self-report and on scores given by trained observers who watched their facial expressions and body language." [added 3/13/10]

How much do our social networks shape our behavior? - More contagion research -- Interesting New York Times article reviewing research on the contagious nature of behavior within social networks [added 1/19/10]

The Watercooler Effect - Nick DiFonzo is the author of the book, The watercooler effect: A psychologist explores the extraordinary power of rumors. At this site he does provide some excerpts of the text as well as links to some other good resources on rumors at his site. [added 4/25/09]

"Contagious Behavior" - a lot of good articles in the APS Observer including this cover article [added 7/6/06]

Don Forsyth's group dynamic pages - A few years back I pointed you to Don Forsyth's excellent resources available online. I am pointing you to them again because 1) they are still excellent! and 2) they have moved with Don to his new address at the University of Richmond. [added 1/15/06]

"Changing America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-being by Race and Hispanic Origin" - "This chart book documents current differences in well-being by race and Hispanic origin and describes how such differences have evolved over the past several decades. The book is designed to further one of the goals of the President's Initiative on Race: To educate Americans about the facts surrounding the issue of race in America." [added 7/16/03]

"The Seven Sins of Deadly Meetings" - article by Eric Matson [added 3/6/02]

Case Studies

The Cuban Missile Crisis - Declassified documents, audio clips, chronology, analysis and more from an exhibit "The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: The 40th Anniversary" from the National Security Archive at George Washington University [added 12/1/04]

The Andes Survivors - description and resources related to true story of airplane survivors - good for the study of many group processes [added 3/6/02]

The Jonestown Massacre

Multiple resources on the massacre - This site from NPR provides audio of stories about the event, an interview with a survivor, images of the massacre, review of the events and more. [added 3/19/04]

Multiple resources on the massacre from the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University - The Department has created a website entitled, “Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple," which provides a 25th anniversary review, personal reflections, tape transcripts and more. [added 3/19/04]

Crowding

Policing crowds - A good blog entry identified by Steve Jones that offers alternative explanations to crowd behavior beyond deindividuation. Links to a report on "Crowd psychology and public order policing." [added 2/19/14]

Studying crowding in "synthetic" laboratory - "Torrens and his research team, with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), are developing a synthetic laboratory populated with thousands of artificial agents to experiment with ideas and theories about crowd behavior and dynamics that would otherwise be impenetrable to academic inquiry. Of special interest are the geographic processes that occur for a crowd to become charged and then cross over the tipping point into a full-blown riot." [7/13/09]

"Crowd clout" - Interesting look at a relatively new phenomenon in which the Internet permits large groups of people to come together for a cause or a purpose -- the primary focus of this selection is on "buying together." CROWD CLOUT: “Online grouping of citizens/consumers for a specific cause, be it political, civic or commercial, aimed at everything from bringing down politicians to forcing suppliers to fork over discounts.” [added 7/8/07]

Deindividuation and Anonymity

Anonymity on the Internet - a good article noted by Steve Jones [added 2/19/14]

Group Decision-making

"How does risky behavior spread?" "So how does risk-taking spread through an organization? The extreme uncertainty surrounding Covid-19 provided a unique environment for studying that question. With the onset of the pandemic, people around the world simultaneously questioned which behaviors were appropriate in order to reduce both individual and societal risk of exposure to the virus. That allowed us to test how canonical theories of learning work in tandem to spread risk-taking."

How do you study the myriad of factors simultaneously influencing group decision making? - These researchers are trying.

"Being in a group makes us less likely to fact-check"

"How to improve group decision making" - Meta-analysis reviews the role of information sharing in group decisions. [7/13/09]

Does asking yourself more than once improve your decision? - Blog entry reviews an interesting study. [added 8/10/08]

"Four failures of deliberating groups" - This blog entry reviews some interesting research on group decision making and possible decision failures, such as when the majority influence can override correct answers. Here is the research study. [added 8/10/08]

"Is a team different from the sum of its parts?" - This research examines whether groups or individuals are more risky in mutual fund management using "real business data." [added 4/13/08]

Group decision making: Editing Wikipedia - interesting article that starts out with a different focus, but primarily examines how entities such as Wikipedia evolve through group editing [added 12/11/07]

Group Performance

Testosterone and diversity in group performance - Interestingly, this research found that teams with high levels of testosterone work better with low diversity among its member, while the opposite is true for low-testosterone teams.

Working with friend can improve performance - Should you let your students or coworkers work with friends? A recent meta-analysis suggests that working with friends can be more effective than working with acquaintances.

Group interaction breeds creativity - very interesting New Yorker article reviewing research on brainstorming and how group interaction can foster creativity [added 7/8/12]

The N-effect and competition - Research has typically found that the larger the size of the group (the N-effect) a person is in the less motivation that person will have to compete. Some possible explanations are included in this good article. [added 12/28/10]

"Working in a team increases human pain threshold" - [added 1/19/10]

"Three perspectives on team learning" - a research paper, "Three perspectives on team learning: Outcome improvement, task mastery, and group process," from the Harvard Business School [added 12/30/06]

Groupthink

“Much of what you know about groupthink is wrong” - Unfortunately, this article is behind a paywall. If anyone finds it freely available let me know.

Fighting groupthink with dissent - a blog entry -- h/t Steve Jones [added 2/19/14]

Groupthink framework - graphical depiction of theoretical framework of groupthink

Group Polarization

"How our digital world is fueling polarization" - Eleven experts explain.

"How we polarize, and what we can do about it"

Fighting group polarization - This research suggests one possible path for cutting through the increasing ideological and political polarization that is occurring.

Group polarization - a blog entry on the topic -- h/t Steve Jones [added 2/19/14]

Group polarization in today's climate - "The polarization of extremes" is an interesting essay arguing that polarization is even greater now because it is even easier to seek out similar views and ignore disconfirming views. [added 3/23/08]

Ostracism

"Children's and teenagers' reasons for excluding others" - "Eighty-four children were interviewed: 28 7-year-olds, 28 11-year-olds and 28 17-year-olds. A clear difference emerged with age. The younger children rarely described themselves as having any choice when they'd excluded others. They mostly mentioned practical reasons - 'We were playing piggy-back wars ... another kid wanted to play ... we didn't have any more people for him,' or peer pressure - 'We were playing jump roping and somebody else wanted to play with us, but then my friend said no.' Their pleas of innocence contradict behavioural observations showing that young children often leave other kids out deliberately. The 17-year-olds, by contrast, were more up front, most often giving the reason that they disliked the excluded person - 'We didn't invite this one girl because she's not open-minded ... ,' was a typical comment." [added 12/24/12]

Acetomeniphen reduces pain of social rejection - Yep, soon there will be a pill for everything. Apparently, "social rejection and physical pain really do share some of the same brain circuits." The first link is to the journal article; the second link is to a blog entry about it. [added 7/21/10]

"Does social exclusion literally feel cold?" - "In another experiment, instead of relying on volunteers' memories, the researchers triggered feelings of exclusion by having the volunteers play a computer-simulated ball tossing game. The game was designed so that some of the volunteers had the ball tossed to them many times, but others were left out. Afterwards, all the volunteers rated the desirability of certain foods and beverages: hot coffee, crackers, an ice-cold Coke, an apple, and hot soup. The findings were striking. As reported in the September issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, the "unpopular" volunteers who had been ostracized during the computer game were much more likely than the others to want either hot soup or hot coffee. Their preference for warm food and drinks presumably resulted from physically feeling cold as a result of being excluded." [added 4/25/09]

Cyberball! - Kipling Williams offers downloads of Cyberball, "a virtual ball-toss game that can be used for research on ostracism, social exclusion, or rejection." Could also possibly be used for lab activities. [added 1/8/06]

Social Facilitation

Social facilitation - a blog entry on the topic -- h/t Steve Jones [added 2/19/14]

"The Dynamogenic Factors in Pacemaking and Competition" - classic article by Norman Triplett on bicycle racing and social facilitation (1897)

Social Loafing

The benefit of the "extra-milers" - On the other end of the spectrum from social loafers are extra-milers. They can be very helpful to a group. [added 6/5/15]

"How to prevent social loafing at the office" - An excellent infographic describes the antecedents and consequences of social loafing. H/T Steve Jones. [added 2/19/14]

Social loafing - another good blog entry on the topic -- h/t Steve Jones [added 2/19/14]

Cults

Heaven's GateCult Controversies - resources from the Washington Post describing various controversial cults since the 1950s [added 12/1/06]

F.A.C.T.Net.org - F.A.C.T.Net (Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network) "focuses on protecting freedom of mind from harms caused by all forms of mind control and unethical influence" - lots of information and resources on cults, scientology and attempts at mind control [added 12/06/02]

"A social psychological critique of "brainwashing" claims about recruitment to new religions" - article by James T. Richardson - from J. Hadden and D. Bromley, eds. (1993), The Handbook of Cults and Sects in America. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, Inc., pp. 75-97. [added 3/6/02]

International Cultic Studies Association -- "Founded in 1979, the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) is a global network of people concerned about psychological manipulation and abuse in cultic groups, alternative movements, and other environments. ICSA is tax-exempt, supports civil liberties, and is not affiliated with any religious or commercial organizations.