Exam 9: Group Processes: Influence in Social Groups

Professor Smith has long used group projects in her courses. The groups have always performed extraordinarily well, and students seem to learn a great deal from such projects. Having just taken a new job at a different college, Dr. Smith finds that the group projects are of considerably lower quality. What might you conclude given the work of Karau and Williams (1993)?

According to your authors, there are three theories that can explain the role of arousal in social facilitation. Which of the following best represents the three theories?

In social groups, interdependence is reflected in

Mullen's (1986) analysis of newspaper accounts revealed that the larger the lynch mob, the more savagely the mobs murdered their victims; Watson's (1973) cross-cultural study revealed that warriors wearing face or body paint were more likely to torture or kill captives than were warriors who wore no such "war paint." These findings suggest that one reason why mobs often commit heinous acts is that the individuals involved

A group of five students are sharing a house. All of the students like to take long, hot showers in the morning, but when they do, there is not enough hot water for their housemates. Which of the following will be least successful in getting the students to take shorter showers?

Why do group members tend to be homogeneous?

Is it true that deindividuation always leads people to act negatively or violently?

Which of the following is not a benefit associated with groups, according to the authors of your text?

The financial crisis of 2007 had some of the signs of groupthink. Which of the following did it have?

You will be working with a group of students on a class project soon, and your instructor lets you choose whom you would want in your group. Based on the established gender and cultural differences in terms of social loafing, whom would you most want in your group, and why?

Social facilitation and social loafing are two very different phenomena that occur in the presence of other people. When does each occur, and what determines whether performance is enhanced or diminished?

In order to avoid the phenomenon of groupthink, the leader of a group should

The evaluation apprehension explanation for the source of arousal that produces social facilitation posits that ________ leads to increased arousal-and thus to enhanced performance on simple tasks.

The presence of others will facilitate performance for

With regard to leadership, most social psychologists would agree that

Recall that the "trucking" game (Deutsch & Krauss, 1960, 1962) puts participants in a conflict situation. Each participant wants to get his or her truck to the destination as quickly as possible. Deutsch and Krauss introduced a novel twist; they sometimes gave one participant a gate with which to threaten an opponent; other times, they gave both participants such a gate, and still other times, neither participant had a gate with which to threaten his or her opponent. What happened?

The text described a recent situation in which novelist Stephen King began publishing a novel called The Plant in installments over the Internet, asking readers to pay $1 per installment. He indicated that if at least 75 percent of the people who downloaded the novel paid the fee, he would keep writing and posting new installments, but if fewer than 75 percent paid the fee, he would stop writing and people would never get the rest of the novel. King posed a ________ dilemma for his readers.

Recall that in the Stanford Prison Study conducted by Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo (1973), guards became increasingly aggressive and prisoners became increasingly submissive and withdrawn, all in under a week. Results of this (aborted) study suggest that

According to the definition provided in your text, which of the following qualifies as a true group?

Deutsch and Krauss (1960, 1962) found that cooperation between adversaries is most likely to occur when