In Chapter 2 we briefly discussed social groups a parts of social structure. Students learned about the size of a group (dyad, triad), and the level of intimacy (primary, secondary). In this chapter, students will gain a more detailed understanding of how groups operate and how they influence individuals. To emphasize, sociologists distinguish between social aggregates, social groups, and social categories. Social categories refer to people sharing a common characteristic or feature (race, gender); social aggregates are people who happen to be at the same place at the same time (people in the elevator). Sociologists limit their categorization of social groups to people who interact with each other on a regular basis, share similar goals and values, and are aware of belonging to a group such as a sports team, religious group, knitting club etc.
One aspect of belonging to a group is conformity. William H. Whyte, Jr (1917-1999) coined the term groupthink, and Irving Janis (1918-1990) expatiated on the concept. Janis defines groupthink as “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action (Janis, 8, 1977).” The concept of groupthink has been used to assess the disastrous launch of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 (Moorhead et. Al 1991). The Challenger space shuttle exploded 73 seconds after take off, killing all seven astronauts aboard. Even though some engineers feared that the high crosswinds at the launch site on the scheduled take off, the shuttle was nonetheless launched. Researchers believe that “cohesive group,” “leader preference,” and “insulation from experts” were the “antecedent conditions” for group think. People are less likely to challenge the group with cohesion. Leaders may have a preference for certain decisions and will promote and listen to advisers whom they already agree with, and hierarchy and structure may insulate those who are making the top decisions from the people in the bottom doing the daily work. Pressure to dissent within the group, specifically against the top level management of NASA, led engineers to conform, and the feeling of invulnerability in their work led the top engineers to ignore the opinions of the lower-level engineers.
Experiments of groupthink and conformity, where the environment is controlled, has to disturbing results. Solomon Asch (1907-1996) was a social psychologist interested in analyzing the effects of social pressure on an individual. Subjects were told that they were participating in an experiment testing visual perception. Cards such as the one below was shown to the subjects in a group of eight to ten people. Each person in the group was asked which one of the three lines matches the single line.
What the subject did not know is that the other people in the group were confederates, or an accomplice of the experimenter. They were told to choose a wrong line. Each person in the group had to say out loud their answer, and the subject was strategically placed so he/she would say his answer after most of the people in the group had spoken. Each group had 18 trials, so each subject gets a chance to compare the cards 18 times. So the subject is left with a dilemma: it is easy to see which of the three lines corresponds to the single line, but if everyone in the group is answering unanimously against your better judgment, would you trust your self or conform? 74% of the subjects conformed to the majority at least once during the experiment and 33% of the subjects conformed or gave the wrong answer at least 9 times during the 18 trials.
Trying to understand how group characteristic influences conformity, Asch varied the size of the group. However, the level of conformity was not significantly different for large and small groups. What did affect the level of conformity was alliance. If some of the confederates gave the correct answer, then the subject was more likely to not conform.
The card on the left is the reference line and the subjects were asked to choose which one of the comparison lines on the card with the letters. Subjects were asked which one of the lines (A, B, or C) was the most similar to the line on the left.
