Exercises — Chapter 37: Group Dynamics, Conformity, and Collective Behavior

Part A: Social Facilitation and Loafing

Exercise 37.1 — Performance Under Observation

Social facilitation and inhibition operate in your daily life. This exercise maps where.

Identify three tasks you perform regularly — one that is well-practiced and easy for you, one that is at the edge of your competence (complex or still being learned), and one in between.

For each: 1. How does your performance change when observed or working in the presence of others? 2. Do you perform better, worse, or the same with an audience? 3. Does the type of observer matter (expert, peer, stranger)? 4. What does this pattern suggest about the optimal conditions for your performance vs. your learning?

Design implication: Based on your patterns, identify one context where you should deliberately seek an audience (performance of well-practiced skill) and one where you should deliberately protect privacy (learning or developing a new skill).

Exercise 37.2 — Social Loafing Inventory

Social loafing research shows effort decreases when contributions are pooled. This exercise examines your own experience.

Recall three group projects, team assignments, or collective endeavors from your recent past.

For each: 1. Did you exert full effort? (1 = much less than alone, 5 = same as alone, 10 = more than alone) 2. If less than full: Why? (contributions not visible? task not meaningful? others not pulling weight? low personal investment?) 3. If more than full: Why? (visible contribution? meaningful task? high cohesion? strong personal investment?) 4. Were you aware of others loafing in this context? Did it affect your effort?

Reflection: Social loafing is not a character flaw — it is a predictable response to collective task structure. What task structures reliably draw your full effort? What structures reliably produce less than full effort?

Part B: Group Decision-Making

Exercise 37.3 — Groupthink Symptom Audit

Irving Janis identified eight symptoms of groupthink. This exercise applies the diagnostic to groups you have participated in.

Select one group decision (work, family, committee, community organization) that you now believe was wrong, poorly considered, or produced a bad outcome.

Evaluate whether any of Janis's eight symptoms were present: - [ ] Illusion of invulnerability (excessive optimism about the plan) - [ ] Collective rationalization (dismissing warning signs) - [ ] Belief in inherent morality (not examining ethical concerns) - [ ] Stereotyped views of outgroups (dismissing those who disagreed) - [ ] Pressure on dissenters (social pressure on members who objected) - [ ] Self-censorship (members withheld their concerns) - [ ] Illusion of unanimity (silence taken as agreement) - [ ] Self-appointed mindguards (some members filtered out contrary information)

1. How many symptoms were present?
2. What conditions made groupthink more likely in this case?
3. At what point could the process have been interrupted? What would have been required?

Exercise 37.4 — Devil's Advocate Practice

Janis's primary groupthink remedy is the devil's advocate role — a designated member assigned to challenge the group's preferred direction. This exercise builds the skill.

Select a current group decision you are involved in (or a recent one you remember well). The decision should be one where the group has a preferred direction.

1. Write the group's preferred decision and the reasons supporting it.
2. Now write the strongest possible case against the preferred decision — not a weak objection but the most serious challenge you can construct.
3. Write the best response to your devil's advocate case.
4. After completing the exercise: Does the preferred decision look different? Are there elements of the devil's advocate case that the group hasn't fully addressed?

Reflection: The devil's advocate role is most valuable when the person in it takes it seriously — constructing the best possible challenge, not a token objection that is easily dismissed. The exercise of constructing a genuine challenge builds a skill that is transferable to any group decision context.

Exercise 37.5 — Wisdom vs. Madness of Crowds

Surowiecki's conditions for collective wisdom: diversity of opinion, independence, decentralization, aggregation. This exercise evaluates groups you participate in against those conditions.

Select two groups you participate in — one you think is collectively wise, one you think is collectively foolish or at least prone to error.

For each, evaluate the four conditions: 1. Diversity of opinion: Do members have genuinely different information and perspectives, or do they largely share the same background and viewpoint? 2. Independence: Are judgments formed before social influence operates, or does everyone know what the others think before forming their own views? 3. Decentralization: Is local, distributed knowledge being incorporated, or only the knowledge of central decision-makers? 4. Aggregation: Is there a mechanism for combining diverse views, or do vocal members dominate?

Prediction: Based on your analysis, which group should produce better collective judgments? Does this match your experience?

Part C: The Bystander Effect

Exercise 37.6 — Bystander Situation Analysis

The bystander effect research shows that diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance reduce helping. This exercise examines your own bystander experience.

Recall a specific situation where you were a bystander to something that needed intervention — an emergency, a conflict, a person in distress, a situation requiring someone to speak up in a meeting, a moment where action was needed and you were one of several people who could have taken it.

1. Did you intervene? If so, what prompted you? If not, what held you back?
2. Were others present? How many?
3. Did you look to others to determine whether the situation was an emergency (pluralistic ignorance)?
4. Did you feel less personally responsible because others were present (diffusion of responsibility)?
5. What would have made you more likely to intervene?

Now identify one specific situational feature that would increase the probability you would intervene in a future similar situation. (Examples: explicitly assigning yourself responsibility; treating every ambiguous situation as requiring your assessment rather than others'; making eye contact and speaking directly to one specific person.)

Exercise 37.7 — Designing Against the Bystander Effect

If you understand the bystander effect's mechanisms, you can design against them.

Identify one context in your professional or organizational life where the bystander effect could produce a harmful outcome — a meeting where concerns go unvoiced, a safety situation where someone assumes others have reported the problem, a harassment situation where bystanders assume others are handling it.

Design a structural intervention that: 1. Reduces diffusion of responsibility (assigns clear personal accountability) 2. Reduces pluralistic ignorance (makes ambiguous situations explicitly defined as requiring response) 3. Reduces the social cost of acting (makes intervention the easy, expected default) 4. Names the bystander effect explicitly (so people who know about it are less susceptible)

Part D: Obedience and Authority

Exercise 37.8 — Authority Gradient Mapping

Milgram's research shows that obedience to authority depends on the strength of the authority gradient and the specific situational features. This exercise maps your own authority contexts.

Identify three authority relationships you currently operate in (workplace, family, professional, educational, organizational).

For each: 1. What is the authority differential? (How much more power/status does the authority have?) 2. What legitimacy does the authority have in this domain? (Is their authority genuinely expert-based, institutionally sanctioned, or primarily positional?) 3. Have you ever complied with a directive from this authority that you disagreed with? What was the directive, and what drove compliance? 4. Are there directives from this authority you would refuse? Where is the line? 5. What conditions would make you more likely to openly disagree with this authority?

Exercise 37.9 — The Milgram Scenario — Personal Analysis

This exercise asks you to engage Milgram's findings at the level of your own psychology.

Read the following scenario carefully: You are in a professional setting. A supervisor with clear institutional authority instructs you to do something that you believe is wrong — not obviously illegal, but ethically questionable, and contrary to your professional values. You are alone with the supervisor. You have agreed to participate in this project. The supervisor is applying graduated pressure.

1. Based on your honest self-assessment, what is the likelihood that you would comply?
2. What would be your first internal response to the instruction?
3. What would make compliance more likely? (Time pressure? Authority legitimacy? Gradual escalation? Isolation?)
4. What would make refusal more likely? (Peer support? Clear prior commitment to a value? Low stakes for non-compliance?)
5. Write the first sentence you would say to begin refusing. (Research shows that actually rehearsing the refusal significantly increases the probability of producing it.)

Note: The goal is not to determine whether you are an obedient or disobedient person. The goal is to identify the specific situational conditions under which your compliance would vary, and to begin building the specific behavioral responses (like the first refusal sentence) that research shows make non-compliance more likely.

Exercise 37.10 — Building Legitimate Dissent

The most effective individual-level intervention against harmful obedience is breaking the unanimity of the group. This exercise builds the dissent skill.

Identify one group context in your professional or personal life where you regularly hold back an opinion, concern, or objection because expressing it feels socially costly.

1. What is the concern you're not expressing?
2. What is the social cost you're avoiding?
3. What is the cost of not expressing it — to you, to others, to the group's decision quality?

4. Write a one-paragraph version of the concern that: - Leads with investment in the group's goals - States the concern clearly and specifically - Asks a question rather than making a flat accusation - Invites response

5. What would make this expression easier? (Relationships you'd need to build? Meeting structure that protects dissent? Lateral support from a peer?)

Part E: Collective and Group Design

Exercise 37.11 — Group Effectiveness Audit

Research on group effectiveness has identified structural conditions that predict whether groups will outperform individuals. Audit one group you currently participate in.

Select a team, committee, working group, or community organization you participate in.

Rate each condition (1 = strongly absent, 5 = strongly present):

Analysis: 1. What are the group's three strongest conditions? 2. What are the three weakest? 3. If you could change one structural feature of this group to improve its effectiveness, what would it be?

Exercise 37.12 — Designing a Psychologically Safe Meeting

Amy Edmondson's research establishes psychological safety as the strongest predictor of team effectiveness. This exercise applies the research to a specific meeting you can influence.

Select an upcoming meeting you will attend or lead where a significant decision or honest assessment is needed.

Design specific structural features for this meeting that increase psychological safety:

1. Pre-meeting: How will you gather independent views before the meeting begins? (Written input, individual conversations, pre-circulated questions?)
2. Opening frame: What will you say at the opening to establish norms for honest engagement?
3. Discussion structure: How will you ensure that all voices are heard, not only the most confident or senior?
4. Dissent protection: What specific language or role assignment will protect members who want to raise concerns?
5. Closing: How will you check for concerns that haven't been voiced? ("Before we close — is there anything we haven't fully examined?")

Reflection: Psychological safety is not simply niceness. It is the structural condition for honest information sharing. The most important safety signal in a meeting is how the leader responds to the first dissent — does it invite more, or does it produce a chill?

The group is not simply a collection of individuals. It is a system with its own dynamics, pressures, and emergent properties. Understanding those dynamics is not academic — it is the prerequisite for participating in and designing groups that produce their best rather than their worst.

Next: Quiz 37 — Test Your Knowledge of Group Dynamics, Conformity, and Collective Behavior