Advanced Social Psychology

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Advanced Social Psychology

• The problem of individual and group

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• the master problem of social psychology
  (Allport 1962)
• What is the psychological status of the group?

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Overview

• Group Mind theories
• Le Bon
• McDougall
• Allports individualism

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Group mind

• Collective behaviour qualitatively different from
  individual behaviour
• Role of group-level phenomena in distinguishing
  psychology from sociology
• Durkheims argument
• Crowd theory fell b/w psych socio
• Tarde Sighele question of criminal
  responsibility
• Crowds vs organized groups

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Le Bon

• The law of mental unity of crowds a
  psychological crowd emergence of a group mind
• Not the sum of individual psychologies
• Individual psychology rational, conscious and
  logical
• Collective psychology irrational, unconscious
  and instinctual

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Evidence

• Discontinuity b/w lone and collective behaviour
• French revolutionary crowds (Taine)
• Enlightened citizens of peaceful habits
  endorsed savage proposals

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• Heroic crowds
• Contagion
• Leadership
• Paradox of the collective as a force for good

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Trotter (1916)

• Wartime people come together and sacrifice their
  lives for others in the service of the nation
• herd instinct a non-reducible properly of
  the collective

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McDougall

• We may sum up the psychological character of the
  unorganized or simple crowd by saying that it is
  excessively emotional, impulsive, violent,
  fickle, inconsistent, irresolute and extreme in
  action, displaying only the coarser emotions and
  the less refined sentiments extremely
  suggestible, careless in deliberation, hasty in
  judgement, incapable of any but the simpler and
  imperfect forms of reasoning easily swayed and
  led, lacking in self-consciousness, devoid of
  self-respect and of sense of responsibility,

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• and apt to be carried away by the consciousness
  of its own force, so that it tends to produce all
  the manifestations we have learned to expect of
  any irresponsible and absolute power. Hence its
  behaviour is like that of an unruly child or an
  untutored passionate savage in a strange
  situation, rather than that of its average
  member and in the worst cases it is like that of
  a wild beast, rather than like that of human
  beings (p. 64)

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• Otherwise rational and peaceful people could
  behave abominably in a group 
• while in the year 1906 the newspapers contained
  many reports of almost incredible brutalities
  committed by the peasants in many different parts
  of Russia, an able correspondent, who was
  studying the peasants at that very time, ascribed
  to them, as the most striking quality of their
  characters, an exceptional humaneness and
  kindliness (p. 65)

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• BUT the civilization process takes place through
  participation in groups
• all mans highest expressions, including art,
  science, morality etc. were social products
• distinction between organized and unorganized
  groups

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Group mind accounts

• Le Bon
• instincts and unconscious forces
• McDougall
• emergent functions of collectively such as system
  and organization
• conscious perception and knowledge can operate in
  the collective

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McDougalls The Group Mind

• group mind as a system of relations between
  individuals in the group
• mind an organized system of mental or
  purposive forces (p. 9)
• this could apply as much to a group as to an
  individual

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• the more organized the group, the more complex
  its psychology and the more developed its group
  mind
• minimal conditions for a group mind
•  
• 1.     Some common object of mental
  activity
• 2.     A shared emotion or reaction to this
  common object
• 3.     Reciprocal influence between members in
  terms of their reaction to this object
• 4. Additionally, but not necessarily,
  an awareness of the group as a whole

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• The presence of a developed collective mind
  overcomes the excesses of primitive crowds.
• Conditions for such a development
• 1.     Continuity in the existence of the group
• 2.     Self-awareness of the group in the minds
  of its members
• 3.     Relations with other groups, which
  promotes this group self-awareness
• 4.     The development of traditions and customs
• 5.     The development of organization, social
  structure and a division of labour, which raises
  the level of group performance.

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• Key difference from Le Bon
• Group mind only in organized groups
• McDougall later regretted using the term group
  mind.
• there is no consciousness except that of
  individuals
• His criteria for a group mind was most clearly
  fulfilled in the case of nations

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Freud

• Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
  (1921)
• Identification with others in the group and with
  a leader-figure
• a psychology of groups distinct scope,
  categories and topics, non-reducible to
  individual psychology

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Individualism

• Floyd Allport
• Stimulus-response principles of learning theory
• (Reductionist)
• you cant trip over a group
• There is no psychology of groups which is not
  essentially and entirely a psychology of
  individuals (1924, p. 4)

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• there is no mind separate from the minds of the
  individuals making up the group
• The group as a psychological entity is therefore
  a nominal fallacy
• behaviour of collective entities the behaviour
  of individual people

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Collective vs individual behaviour

• Allport stimulation
• Same observation as Le Bon etc., different
  process (individual)
• existing (similar) constitutions
• social facilitation
• the individual in a crowd behaves just as he
  would behave alone only more so (p. 295)

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methodology

• Laboratory experiments to demonstrate social
  facilitation
• hand-grip strength
• cyclists
• Tripletts fishing reels
• Social facilitation vs rivalry

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• Enhancing of existing responses
• (quantitative not qualitative)
• Dominant responses/learned behaviours vs
  difficult actions

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Allports (1962) partial recantation

• Ultra-individualism as a product of its time?
• Responding to Sherif, Asch
• Problem with the personification of the group
• Group real but not of same order as individual

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• Three key points

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Summary

• Group mind theories distinctive psychological
  properties and processes in group behaviour
• Le Bon collective psychology as irrational,
  unconscious, instinctual
• Trotter, McDougall paradox of the collective as
  a force for good
• McDougall distinction between organized and
  unorganized groups

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• McDougall group-mind as system of relations
• Allport applied s-r principles to social
  psychology
• Group behaviour due to existing individual
  constitutions and social facilitation
• Hence group behaviour only quantitatively
  different from individual behaviour