ANCHO DE CALZADA

The debate as to whether human behaviour can be reduced entirely to ‘individual’ processes can be traced back to the pre-experimental theorists of the early twentieth century. On one side, theorists such as LeBon, Allport and Taylor considered the behaviour of a group to be nothing more than the sum of the actions of each individual. On the other were Gestaltists like McDougall and others such as Mayo, Asch and Sherif, who believed in processes unique to the group, and that the group was more than just the sum of its parts.

For example, LeBon’s work on collective behaviour suggested that when crowds of people acted together, they descended to a less civilised form of behaviour. He did not argue that this was due to ‘group’ processes, but rather the individual mind taking

advantage of the ‘anonymity’ that the crowd provided and being influenced through a process of ‘contagion’ whereby ideas are disseminated through the crowd (Hogg, 1992). In his work group behaviour was simply individuals acting in a similar way. Frederick Taylor also made similar points in his work on ‘scientific management’. He argued that as far as productivity was concerned ‘individualising’ each worker so that they performed their task using the ‘one best way’ was the best way to maximise productivity. Taylor believed that groups ‘undermine accurate cognition and useful action’ (Haslam, 2001, p. 26). In this way he did not so much argue that groups were irrelevant, but rather that they were not something that should be encouraged from a productivity point of view.

The point that groups were merely just aggregates of individuals however was most strongly made by Floyd Allport. He argued that ‘there is no psychology of groups which is not essentially, and entirely a psychology of individuals’ (Allport, 1924, p. 4). Allport was an early experimental social psychologist and his work centred on the principle that understanding the individual was the key to understanding group-based behaviour. The importance of the ‘individual’ can also be traced back to Münsterburg’s ‘individual difference paradigm’, which saw the measuring of differences between people as a way of finding the ‘best person for a job’ (Haslam, 2001). His work can be seen to be very influential even today, with much research into human social behaviour being based on individual differences (personality) rather than characteristics of a group or an individual’s relationship to a group.

On the other hand a number of early psychologists argued that in order to understand human social behaviour fully, one needed to understand the processes that occurred on a group level: processes that were not reducible to individual functioning. For example William McDougall, in his influential book The Group Mind argued that in order to understand individuals and groups, the relationship between the two needed to be taken into account. He also argued that ‘the group … is more than the sum of the individuals, has its own life, proceeding according to laws of group life, which are not the laws of individual life’ (McDougall, 1921, p. 13). McDougall’s perspective is that of a Gestaltian: that is the belief that a whole can be more than simply the sum of its parts. So in some ways the debate is philosophical in nature rather than simply psychological. On one had there is the reductionist perspective which suggests if we reduce something to its base processes, we can induce the higher order processes from these. The alternate position suggests that processes occur which are independent of the processes at the lower level.

This position that the ‘group’ could not be ignored in social psychology was taken up by influential researchers such as Elton Mayo, who’s work in the Hawthorn studies, lead to the conclusion that group processes rather than characteristics of the individuals or working procedures per se, were producing changes in workplace performance. Mayo recognised that group norms could be detrimental to group functioning (e.g., social loafing, poor performance) but also that they could serve to foster higher group performance. Further work by Solomon Asch also supported the notion that group membership could have a direct impact on individual outcomes. In his famous line studies, Asch (1952) showed that peoples’ perception of the length of lines could be altered by the opinions of others. Here he demonstrated that what the ‘group’ thought about a problem influenced the cognition of the individual.

The later half of the 20th century saw a growing body of evidence in favour of group-based processes impacting upon individual cognition and behaviour. Despite this however the ‘individual’ still dominates in areas such as organisational psychology (Haslam, 2001). As pointed out in the previous chapter, the ‘individual’ also dominates in space psychology. This may have occurred in part due to the ‘individualistic’ culture of the western countries where much of the research has taken place, or may simply be due to the notion that programs targeted towards the ‘individual’ are easier to comprehend and require less abstraction. It is much easier to simply believe that if we find the right person for the job (or space mission), then everything else will fall into place. This position however is problematic, as a growing body of evidence suggests that group processes and group dynamics can contribute considerably to the variation in human social behaviour.

One of the more influential theories, arguing for a more direct consideration of the role of the group in human psychological functioning, is social identity theory (Tajfel, 1972, Tajfel & Turner, 1979), which arose from a series of studies which were conducted in order to understand how being a member of a group could lead to discrimination and prejudice. Social identity theory (SIT) developed into a much broader theory however, with a range of predictions regarding how the nature of intergroup relations could affect group behaviour. In particular the focus was on low status disadvantaged groups and the conditions under which they would accept or challenge the high status dominant group.

SIT also introduced the idea of a social identity, that is a part of one’s self concept which is concerned with the membership of a specific social group. Following on from the work on SIT, self-categorization theory (SCT) was developed by John Turner and

colleagues (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher & Wetherell, 1987), as a way of understanding the processes by which people come to identify with a particular group. These two theories together have often been referred to as the ‘social identity perspective’ (Turner & Reynolds, 2001), and have been expanded on and backed up by three decades of research. These theories form the core framework of this thesis and for this reason are outlined in more detail in the remained of this chapter.