Exam 9: Group Processes: Influence in Social Groups

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

Assume that you are playing pool at the student union when several of your buddies surround the table to watch you play. If you are __________ player, you would __________ because of the arousing effects of their presence.

Sometimes famous performers have horrible final rehearsals in empty auditoriums prior to a big performance, yet they end up having wonderful performances in front of audiences. Why would the presence of others improve performance on a well-rehearsed task, such as a musical performance?

According to the contingency theory of leadership, in__________ situations, the leader has poor relationships with subordinates, and directs tasks that are not clearly defined.

Agentic leadership style is to __________ as __________ is to collectivism.

Members of a twelve-person jury all took slightly different notes of the testimony they heard. When they get together, everyone has written information about the physical description of the assailant, one wrote down the defendant's alibi, three people wrote details of the crime, and four other people wrote information about the credibility of the eyewitnesses. Based on how groups tend to share information (as presented in your text), which piece of information will the jury be MOST likely to spend the most time discussing?

__________ leaders set clear, short-term goals and reward followers who meet them; __________ leaders inspire followers to focus on common long-term goals.

Integrative solutions to conflict are most likely to be reached when __________.

Shelley was initially moderately in favor of a proposal to build a city bike path. At a meeting, she learns that not only will the path provide recreational opportunities and allow for some decrease in traffic, but that in towns with paths, the crime rate tends to go down and businesses along the path do better. She is now strongly in favor of the proposal. The theory that best explains her change of opinion is the __________ theory.

You are a member of a group of five people whose task it is to address and stuff 1,000 envelopes for mailing. Research on __________ suggests that it would be better to give each person 200 envelopes to address alone, whereas research on __________ suggests that it would be better to have everyone work on the task together in the same room.

Benefits to performance due to social facilitation will most likely occur when __________.

You work for a software manufacturer, and the supervisor of your division has just informed your work team that the new software designed to give people access to the Internet keeps crashing. Your supervisor is under a deadline to detect the source of the problem and fix it, so he assigns you and four other employees to a "bug detector" group to find the problem and correct it. What will determine whether or not your group succeeds?

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)?

Which person is LEAST likely to be in a group with the other three?

Compare and contrast deindividuation and social loafing.

Generally, people are more attracted to __________ groups.

Two different interpretations have been proposed to explain group polarization. The persuasive arguments interpretation is to __________ as the social comparison interpretation is to __________.

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?

In a powerful scene in the classic film, To Kill a Mockingbird; Atticus Finch, a small-town lawyer, is on the courthouse steps standing guard over Tom Robinson, an African-American prisoner whom he is defending. A mob of townspeople and local farmers approaches the courthouse, demanding that Atticus turn over Robinson; they are intent on administering their own form of vigilante justice. Suddenly, Atticus's young daughter Scout steps forward. She doesn't understand what's about to happen, and begins to address people in the crowd, "Hey, Mr. Cunningham. How's your boy? I like Walter, but I haven't seen him in a while." As Scout innocently addresses a number of individuals in the crowd, they begin to leave one by one, until the whole lynch mob is disbanded. Scout's behavior disrupts the __________ that might have led to a lynching.

What do deindividuation and social loafing have in common? In both, __________.