4.3.B—Explain how being in a group can affect an individual’s behavior and mental processes

Explain how being in a group can affect an individual’s behavior and mental processes.

• Cultural phenomena such as individualism, collectivism, and multiculturalism can influence how one perceives and behaves towards oneself and others.
• Being a member of a group can influence how one behaves or experiences mental processes via group polarization, groupthink, diffusion of responsibility, social loafing, and deindividuation.
• Performing a mental or physical behavior in front of a group can lead to social facilitation.
• People often overestimate the levels to which others agree with them, known as the false consensus effect.
• Superordinate goals serve to unite disparate groups under a common goal and help reduce negative affect and stereotyping among groups. Social traps occur when individuals do not unite and act in their own self-interest to the detriment of the group.
• Industrial-organizational (I/O) psychologists study how people perform in the workplace. I/O psychologists study best practices in management of work, relationships among people working together or for a common company or program, and how people feel about work (burnout).