Suchergebnisse

A 2 (anticipated initiation or control) by 2 (male or female) laboratory study (N = 72) sought to delineate factors explaining the effects of severe initiations on group attraction. Building upon Schachter's affiliation theory, the authors formulated a severity-affiliation-attraction hypothesis (SAAH). SupportingSAAH, an anticipated-initiationconditionincreased participants'level of affiliationtendencyandgroupattractioncompared to a control condition. Also supporting the hypothesis, affiliation tendency significantly mediated the severity-attraction relationship. Interaction effects further indicated that SAAH held only for males, not for females, for whom a mere affiliation-attraction relationship was observed. Results suggest that, contrary to males, the anticipation of a threatening initiation does not appear to be effective in strengthening group attraction via affiliation-related processes for females.

In their research on individual-group discontinuity using Prisoner's Dilemma Game (PDG), Schopler, Insko, and associates observed that groups were more competitive than individuals. Alternatively, we propose that this effect can be interpreted as a group-adaptiveness phenomenon. In a 2 (individuals vs. groups)× 2 (low vs. high incentives to cooperate) PDG study, individuals groups played against a cooperative opponent. Individual-group discontiunity was found when incentives to cooperate were low, but not when incentives were high. Results further suggest that the stronger intergroup competition observed in past discontinuity research may have been triggered and perpetuated by between-group violations of cooperative proposals. These findings are consistent with our group adaptiveness perspective, which proposes that groups are not invariably more competitive than individuals, but that they are more likely to adapt their behaviors to variations in the task and/or social environment in an attempt to attain important group goals.