Collectivus: An Exploration Into Group Behavior

Group behaviour is a complex phenomenon. The study of how people behave in groups is generally carried out in the field of social psychology, a branch of psychological science concerned with how individuals influence each other’s thoughts, feelings, and actions (Gazzaniga, 2019). Each scientific discipline sets out to understand the factors responsible for relationships between events; social psychology aims to uncover the factors that explain group behaviour (Gergen, 1973). While generally considered neutral, it is widely debated whether groups are innately good or innately bad (Mullen, 1987). In this essay, we discuss various theories of group behaviour. Exploring how people behave in groups has wide-ranging implications on our lives, aiding us in understanding and reducing intergroup tension characteristic of human societies.

Throughout human evolution, resources necessary for survival and reproduction such as food, water, shelter, and sexual mates were limited; our ancestors likely competed for these resources (Gazzaniga, 2019). Forming groups made it easier to defend, hunt, and gather (Buss & Kenrick, 1998 as cited in Gazzaniga, 2019, p. 470). One of the most common ways of categorizing people is to divide them into ingroups, composed of those who we have an affinity toward, and outgroups, composed of those a group does not identify with (Aronson, 2011; Gregory, 2011). Two notable consequences of group formation are ingroup favouritism, a bias toward ingroup members which can lead to outgroup hostility (Brewer & Kramer, 1985), and the outgroup homogeneity effect, the proclivity to view outgroup members as less varied than ingroup members. The consequences of aversive group activity can be seen in the Rwandan genocide, where a history of intergroup tension between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes led to over 800,000 deaths (Hogg & Williams, 2000). Seeing as outgroups may be competitors or attackers, ingroup-outgroup thinking was adaptive during our species’ development (Aronson, 2011). 

Navigating increasingly complex social environments often require cognitive shortcuts. Allowing for rapid decision-making, heuristics can be seen as both energy-saving and life-preserving devices (Macrae et al., 1994). While serving an evolutionary advantage in helping us avoid disease and death, heuristics can lead to irrational behaviour. For example, the contagion heuristic describes the tendency to avoid entities viewed as microbially or morally contaminated (Rozin et al., 2005). Despite the reported impossibility of contracting the virus through casual contact, researchers found that a sweater worn by a person with AIDS and then washed proved 71% less desirable than a sweater worn by a person without the disease (Rozin et al., 2005). This research suggests that the seemingly illogical and aversive group behavior that can result from heuristic thinking facilitated survival throughout human evolution.

Making judgements based on incomplete information is known as stereotyping. Stereotypes can be both positive and negative (Kunda & Spencer, 2003). Two common outcomes of stereotypes are prejudice, negative attitudes toward individuals generalized to a group as a whole (Aronson, 2011), and discrimination, the unjust treatment of a group and its members (Gazzaniga, 2019). Bodenhausen (1988) found that information consistent with cultural stereotypes, such as “all young Black men are prone to violence”, is processed more readily than inconsistent information. Such prejudicial attitudes may lead to the wrongful conviction of innocent persons based on stereotyping (Daly & Pattenden, 2005). This research suggests that stereotyping focuses on generalizing the group’s behaviour for the sake of ease over accuracy.

As they evolved, humans were forced to adapt to an increasingly complex social environment. The Social Brain Hypothesis (SBH) (Dunbar, 1998) claims that the size of an anthropoid primates’ social group is directly correlated to the volume of the species’ neocortex, suggesting the neocortex increased in size as a result of adaptation to living in a group (Acedo-Carmona & Gomila, 2016). Supporting research from Eisenberger et al. (2015) found brain regions associated with pain were more active in participants ostracized from a group, indicating that our neocortex developed in part out of the necessity to stay within a group. These studies suggest that instinct toward survival plays a role in how we behave in groups.

Group membership is an important part of social identity. Social identity theory (Tajfel, 1979) holds a group consists of individuals who perceive themselves as part of the same social category (e.g., sex, class, or race), who in turn inherit a sense of pride from being part of that group (Gazzaniga, 2019). Supporting social identity theory is research by Lazerus et al. (2016), who found participants viewed ingroup members’ facial expressions as more favourable than the same expressions from outgroup members, suggesting a positivity bias toward ingroup members. On the other hand, Gray et al. (2004) suggested only two factors are necessary for groups to form: reciprocity, making exchanges for mutual benefit or harm, and transitivity, sharing the opinions of others. Multiple studies examining real-world populations— American students, Tanzanian hunter-gatherers —support Gray’s findings, demonstrating group formation under conditions of reciprocity and transitivity (Apicella et al., 2012; Ingram & Morris, 2007). These results suggest that tribal thinking, which can form the basis for racial and ethnic bias (Aronson, 2011), is an ingrained human tendency that can be activated with ease.

History has shown that obedience, the tendency for individuals to change their behaviour to comply with an authority figure, is a powerful factor in group behaviour. Attempting to gain insight into the atrocities carried out by groups of soldiers throughout World War Ⅱ, Stanley Milgram (1963) explored how obedience affects the behavior of individuals. Recruiting a sample of 40 males, Milgram’s study was fixed so that participants were assigned the role of teacher, while confederates were assigned the role of learner, the latter of whom were allied with the experimenter. The experimenter instructed the teacher to administer electrical shocks to the learner for each mistake made in a basic word game, increasing in intensity to the point where it was clear through the actors’ reactions that harm was being done. Results showed that 65% of participants obeyed the experimenter through to the end. This investigation indicates that when pressured by an outside force, individuals may fall prey to groupthink, the tendency to make dysfunctional decisions to preserve in-group unanimity (Janis, 1971), and deindividuation, acting in ways they would not if they were self-aware (Gazzaniga, 2019).

Another component of group behavior is conformity, the tendency to alter your thoughts and actions to match perceived expectations of others. Solomon Asch (1951) explored individual conformity within groups, aiming to measure the number of errors influenced by the distorted measurements of the majority. Except for one non-confederate participant, the group was instructed to give wrong judgements on purpose. In this way, the non-confederate participant was forced to either 1) contradict the group by pointing out the correct measurement, or 2) conform with the rest of the groups’ incorrect judgement. One-third of participants conformed, choosing to match the answer given by the majority. This research suggests that when under pressure, people can readily conform to social norms.

Group behaviour is a highly variable phenomenon, affected by biological, psychological, and social forces. The human experience is characterized by living and working in groups; as Mullen (1987) noted, “we all belong to countless groups: family groups, work groups, play groups, political groups” (p. 1). Many atrocities throughout human history— the Holocaust, Red October, the Rwandan genocide, the Troubles —have been the result of intergroup conflict. Furthering our understanding of how people behave in groups brings the potential to better mediate the intergroup tension characteristic of humankind, engendering a more equitable society for all.

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