Welcome to Organisational Psychology: Group Behaviour!

Hi there! This chapter dives into one of the most exciting areas of Organisational Psychology: how people behave when they work together. Whether you are part of a school club, a sports team, or a future employee, understanding groups is crucial. Groups can be incredibly productive, but they can also create conflict and poor decisions.


We will look at how groups form, why they sometimes make mistakes, how individual effort changes when others are around, and how to manage conflict effectively. Let's get started!


4.3.1 Group Development and Decision-Making

When a new team forms, they don't instantly become effective. They go through predictable stages and face specific challenges, especially when making decisions.


Stages of Group Development (Tuckman and Jensen, 2010)

Tuckman and Jensen proposed a famous model suggesting that small groups move through five sequential stages. Think of it like baking a cake—you can’t skip the mixing stage!


  1. Forming:
    • What happens? Members meet, explore objectives, and test the waters. They are often polite and independent.
    • Analogy: The first day of class, everyone is quiet and observing.
  2. Storming:
    • What happens? Conflict arises as members resist group influence and challenge the leader. There is a lot of debate over roles and processes.
    • Analogy: Arguments about who should do which job in a group project.
  3. Norming:
    • What happens? Conflict is resolved, cohesion develops, and the group establishes rules (norms) and harmony. Roles become clear.
    • Analogy: The team agrees on a set of rules for meeting attendance and communication.
  4. Performing:
    • What happens? The group is functional, interdependent, and focused on achieving shared goals effectively. They are highly productive.
    • Analogy: The final push to deliver the successful project.
  5. Adjourning: (Added later by Jensen)
    • What happens? The group disbands after the task is complete. There may be feelings of relief or sadness.

Memory Trick: Remember F-S-N-P-A (Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, Adjourning).


Belbin's Nine Team Roles

Meredith Belbin observed that effective teams need a balance of different behaviours, or "roles." These aren't job titles, but ways individuals contribute.


Belbin categorised these nine roles into three types:

  • Action-Oriented Roles (e.g., Shaper, Implementer, Completer Finisher): Focus on getting things done, turning ideas into practical actions.
  • People-Oriented Roles (e.g., Coordinator, Teamworker, Resource Investigator): Focus on communication, team cohesion, and networking with external contacts.
  • Thought-Oriented Roles (e.g., Plant, Monitor Evaluator, Specialist): Focus on ideas, analysis, and strategic thinking.

Key Takeaway: A team doesn't need nine people, but it needs all nine roles fulfilled by someone. If too many people are 'Plants' (idea generators) and no one is an 'Implementer' (doer), the project will fail!


Faulty Decision-Making

Groups often assume they make better decisions than individuals, but they are vulnerable to specific errors:


Groupthink (Janis, 1972)

Groupthink is a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, where the members' striving for unanimity overrides their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.


Simply put: Harmony is valued over accuracy.


Features of Groupthink (with examples):

  • Illusion of Invulnerability: The group feels overly confident and ignores obvious danger. (e.g., "We are too good to fail.")
  • Pressure on Dissenters: Anyone who argues against the group consensus is pressured to conform. (e.g., "Stop rocking the boat.")
  • Self-Censorship: Members hide their own doubts to avoid disrupting the group's harmony. (e.g., An employee biting their tongue during a team meeting.)

Forsyth's Cognitive Limitations and Errors

Groupthink often results from motivational errors (wanting to maintain harmony). Forsyth highlighted errors that come purely from cognitive limitations (mistakes in thinking and processing information).


  • Sins of Commission (Misuse of information):
    • Example: Using faulty or biased information because it confirms what the group already believes.
  • Sins of Omission (Overlooking information):
    • Example: Failing to seek out new information or ignoring details that are available.
  • Sins of Predilection (Biased preferences):
    • Example: A group spending too long debating the easiest parts of a decision and running out of time for the hard, necessary parts.

Strategies to Avoid Groupthink and Cognitive Errors:

To keep decision-making sharp, organisations should:

  1. Assign a Devil's Advocate (someone whose role is to critique the plans).
  2. Seek external, objective opinions.
  3. Break into smaller, independent sub-groups to develop separate ideas.

Quick Review 4.3.1: Groups progress through F-S-N-P-A. Effective groups need a mix of Belbin's roles. Watch out for Groupthink (harmony over accuracy) and Forsyth’s cognitive mistakes!


4.3.2 Individual and Group Performance

Have you ever noticed that you run faster when others are watching, but you work less hard during a group clean-up? This section explains why individual effort changes when we are in a group.


Social Facilitation and Social Loafing

Social influence can have two opposite effects on performance:


Social Facilitation (Getting Better)

Definition: The tendency for the presence of others to improve a person's performance on simple or well-learned tasks, but to hinder performance on complex or novel tasks.


Drive Theory (Zajonc): The presence of others creates increased physiological arousal (energy/tension). This arousal makes the person more likely to perform their dominant response (the action that comes most naturally).

  • Simple Task: The dominant response is usually the correct one, so performance improves. (e.g., professional athlete performing a routine skill).
  • Complex Task: The dominant response may be incorrect, so performance suffers (e.g., learning a new skill in front of an audience).

Evaluation Apprehension: We perform better or worse because we are worried about how others are judging our performance. If the audience is blindfolded, the effect often disappears.


Social Loafing (Slacking Off)

Definition: The tendency for individuals to exert less effort when working as part of a group towards a common goal compared to when working alone.


Did you know? Social loafing was first studied using tug-of-war teams! People pulled harder individually than they did as part of a team.


Social Impact Theory (Latane): This theory suggests that the social pressure (impact) to work hard is diffused across all members of the group. As the group size increases, the responsibility felt by any one member decreases.


Strategies to Avoid Social Loafing:

  • Make individual contributions identifiable (monitor everyone's output).
  • Make the task challenging and important (so people care about the outcome).
  • Keep the group size small.

Group Performance Across Cultures (Earley, 1993)

Social loafing is often viewed differently depending on culture, linking to the cultural differences debate.


  • Individualistic Cultures (e.g., USA, Western Europe): Focus on personal success and recognition. Social loafing is more common because people feel less accountability to the group and prefer individual rewards.
  • Collectivist Cultures (e.g., East Asia, Latin America): Focus on group harmony and collective goals. Social loafing is often less common, and sometimes the opposite effect (Social Striving) is seen, where individuals work harder to meet group expectations.

Key Study: Performance Monitoring of Employee Productivity (Claypoole and Szalma, 2019)

This study investigated how monitoring (specifically Electronic Performance Monitoring or EPM) affects an employee's ability to maintain attention over time (sustained attention).


Context and Aim (Experiment 1 Focus):

EPM involves using technology (like keystroke tracking or video) to measure employee output. The study aimed to see how the presence of EPM affected participants’ performance on a vigilance task (a task requiring sustained attention).


Design and Procedure:

  • Research Method: Laboratory experiment.
  • Task: Participants performed a Vigilance Task where they had to watch a monitor and detect small, infrequent signals (targets) over a 40-minute period.
  • IV: Whether the participants were told they were being monitored (Monitored condition) or not (Control condition).
  • DV: The participants’ performance on the task, specifically their concentration level (measured by the rate of correct detections and reaction times).

Results and Conclusions:

  • The group that was told they were being monitored performed better overall in terms of sustained attention and accuracy (higher detection rate).
  • However, the monitored group showed a steeper vigilance decrement (a faster drop-off in concentration) over the 40 minutes compared to the control group.

Main Discussion Points:

Being monitored acts like a situational factor leading to Social Facilitation—it initially boosts effort and attention because of Evaluation Apprehension (they want to look good). However, the pressure of constant monitoring might lead to increased stress or fatigue, causing their concentration to deplete faster over a long task period.


Quick Review 4.3.2: The presence of others can cause Social Facilitation (better performance on easy tasks, driven by arousal) or Social Loafing (less effort in groups, due to diffused responsibility). Monitoring (EPM) can boost initial performance but may cause concentration to drop off quicker over time (Claypoole and Szalma).


4.3.3 Conflict at Work

Conflict isn't always bad (sometimes it leads to innovative solutions), but destructive conflict can ruin team cohesion and productivity. Organisational Psychology studies how to manage these clashes.


Levels and Causes of Group Conflict

Conflict can occur at different levels within an organisation:

  • Intra-individual: Conflict within a single person (e.g., job role requires you to do something unethical).
  • Inter-individual: Conflict between two people (e.g., personality clash between colleagues).
  • Intra-group: Conflict within one group or team (e.g., team members disagree on the strategy).
  • Inter-group: Conflict between two different groups (e.g., the Sales department argues with the Marketing department over budget allocation).

Causes of Organisational and Interpersonal Group Conflict:

  • Organisational Causes: These stem from the structure and conditions of the workplace:
    • Competition for limited resources (e.g., budget, staff, time).
    • Ambiguity of roles or responsibilities (who is supposed to do what?).
  • Interpersonal Causes: These stem from individual differences:
    • Personality differences or differing values.
    • Miscommunication or incompatible goals.

Thomas-Kilmann's Five Conflict-Handling Modes

The Thomas-Kilmann model describes five main strategies people use to handle conflict, based on two dimensions:

  • Assertiveness: Trying to satisfy one's own concerns.
  • Cooperativeness: Trying to satisfy the other person's concerns.

  1. Competing (High Assertive, Low Cooperative): Using power to win. Goal is to achieve one's own goal at the other's expense (Win-Lose). (Example: "My way or the highway.")
  2. Avoiding (Low Assertive, Low Cooperative): Ignoring or sidestepping the conflict entirely. Goal is to delay or withdraw (Lose-Lose). (Example: Refusing to discuss the issue.)
  3. Compromising (Medium Assertive, Medium Cooperative): Finding a middle ground where both sides give up something. Goal is partial satisfaction for both (Partial Win/Partial Lose). (Example: Splitting the budget exactly in half.)
  4. Accommodating (Low Assertive, High Cooperative): Sacrificing one's own goals to satisfy the other person. Goal is to yield to maintain harmony (Lose-Win). (Example: Giving in immediately to the colleague’s request.)
  5. Collaborating (High Assertive, High Cooperative): Working together to find a solution that completely satisfies both parties. Goal is problem-solving (Win-Win). (Example: Brainstorming until a perfect, shared solution is found.)

Important Note: No one mode is always 'best'. The best approach depends on the situation (e.g., Competing might be necessary in an emergency).


Bullying at Work (Einarsen, 1999)

Workplace conflict can escalate into bullying, defined as repeated, negative, and unwelcome behaviour directed at one or more employees by superiors or colleagues.


Types of Bullying:

  • Person-related: Directly targeting the victim (e.g., insults, spreading rumours).
  • Work-related: Undermining the victim's professional role (e.g., withholding information, delegating impossible tasks).

Phases of Bullying:

Einarsen suggests bullying often follows a process:

  1. Critical Incident: A specific conflict or event triggers the start of the negative process.
  2. Bullying and Stigmatisation: The victim is regularly exposed to negative acts and is labelled as "difficult" or "incompetent."
  3. Formalisation: Management or HR gets involved, often with poor outcomes for the victim.
  4. Exclusion: The victim is eventually forced out of the workplace or resigns due to chronic stress.

Causes of Bullying:

  • Individual (Dispositional): Aggressive personality traits in the bully; or perceived weakness/difference in the victim.
  • Organisational (Situational): Poor leadership, high stress/high competition environments, or lack of clear policy against bullying.

Quick Review 4.3.3: Conflict happens at four levels (intra-individual to inter-group). We handle conflict using five modes, balancing assertiveness and cooperation (Thomas-Kilmann). Bullying is a serious, phased escalation of conflict often caused by poor organisational conditions.