Group Behaviour

What does 'group' mean?

A group is two or more people who:

-> e.g. they have to co-operate, there we can see how people behave being/working in a team

-> they share a set of norms

-> they have role relationships

-> they have experience interdependent behaviours

* Groups are often capable of producing higher quality work and better decisions than can an individual working alone.
* Group can be more willing to take on large project than an individual.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Need

Maslow's Hierarchy of Need mostly is presented as a pyramid. Levels on the bottom are considered as basic needs while the needs which are on top of the pyramid are more complex needs.

* Physiological Needs:

This stage include the most basic needs like:

-> food

-> water

-> warm

-> sleeping

-> clothing

-> breathing








Maslow believed that these needs are the mosst basic in the hierarchy.

* Safety Needs:

These include needs for security and safety like:


-> health

-> employment

-> property

-> family

-> social stability







* Belongingness & Love Needs

These include needs for love and affection:







-> family

-> sense of connection

-> intimacy

-> friendship









* Esteem Needs

These include the need for thing that reflect on self-esteem, personal worth and social recognition:





-> respect of others

-> the need to be a unique individual

-> achievement

-> confidence












* Self - Actualization

This is the highest level on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. There are needs like:


-> morality

-> creativity

-> acceptance

-> experience purpose

-> spontaneity

Marketers and advertisers use 'belonging' as a pivotal message in ad campaigns.
Here are an example of that kind of ad:

GROUP TYPES:
There are 8 different types of group

SOCIAL COMPARISON THEORY
- this is a theory initially proposed by social psychologist Leon Festinger, in 1954;

- this theory explains how individuals evaluate their own opinions and desires by comparing themselves to others;

- consumers are selective about whom they use for benchmarks;


Group behaviour depends on your perceptions.

- perceptions influence human behaviour in a variety of ways;
- different people will have different perceptions;

Solomon Asch became famous in the 1950s, following experiments which showed that social pressure can make a person say something that is obviously incorrect. Here is presented the experiment:

"This experiment was conducted using 123 male participants. Each participant was put into a group with 5 to 7 “confederates” (People who knew the true aims of the experiment, but were introduced as participants to the naive “real” participant). The participants were shown a card with a line on it, followed by another card with 3 lines on it labeled a, b, and c. The participants were then asked to say which line matched the line on the first card in length. Each line question was called a “trial”. The “real” participant answered last or penultimately. For the first two trials, the subject would feel at ease in the experiment, as he and the other “participants” gave the obvious, correct answer. On the third trial, the confederates would start all giving the same wrong answer. There were 18 trials in total and the confederates answered incorrectly for 12 of them, these 12 were known as the “critical trials”. The aim was to see whether the real participant would change his answer and respond in the same way as the confederates, despite it being the wrong answer.

Solomon Asch thought that the majority of people would not conform to something obviously wrong, but the results showed that participants conformed to the majority on 37% of the critical trials. However, 25% of the participants did not conform on any trial. 75% conformed at least once, and 5% conformed every time. "