Richard Hackman developed a synthetic, research-based model for designing and managing work groups. A community is born when its members reach a stage of "emptiness" or peace. Examples of common barriers are: expectations and preconceptions prejudices ideology, counterproductive norms, theology and solutions the need to heal, convert, fix or solve and the need to control. Peck describes the stages of a community as:Ĭommunities may be distinguished from other types of groups, in Peck's view, by the need for members to eliminate barriers to communication in order to be able to form true community.
Scott Peck developed stages for larger-scale groups (i.e., communities) which are similar to Tuckman's stages of group development. Also, a combination of evolution and game theory has been used to explain the development and maintenance of cooperative behavior between individuals in a group. Examples include mechanisms for dealing with status, reciprocity, identifying cheaters, ostracism, altruism, group decision, leadership, and intergroup relations. As humans social environments became more complex, they acquired adaptations by way of group dynamics that enhance survival. Increasingly, research has applied evolutionary psychology principles to group dynamics. Throughout his career, Lewin was focused on how the study of group dynamics could be applied to real-world, social issues. In 1945, he established The Group Dynamics Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the first institute devoted explicitly to the study of group dynamics.
)Įventually, the social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) coined the term group dynamics to describe the positive and negative forces within groups of people.
(The concept of a collective consciousness is not essential to group dynamics. Other key theorists include Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) who believed that crowds possessed a 'racial unconscious' with primitive, aggressive, and antisocial instincts, and William McDougall (psychologist), who believed in a 'group mind,' which had a distinct existence born from the interaction of individuals. On the sociological side, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who was influenced by Wundt, also recognized collective phenomena, such as public knowledge. Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), credited as the founder of experimental psychology, had a particular interest in the psychology of communities, which he believed possessed phenomena (human language, customs, and religion) that could not be described through a study of the individual. )Īs a field of study, group dynamics has roots in both psychology and sociology. (The proposition remains questionable, since modern biologists and game theorists do look to explain the 'structural laws of the whole' in terms of 'the way the elements fit together'. In 1924, Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer proposed ‘There are entities where the behaviour of the whole cannot be derived from its individual elements nor from the way these elements fit together rather the opposite is true: the properties of any of the parts are determined by the intrinsic structural laws of the whole’ (Wertheimer 1924, p. 7). The history of group dynamics (or group processes) has a consistent, underlying premise: 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.' A social group is an entity that has qualities which cannot be understood just by studying the individuals that make up the group. 4.2.1 Contact hypothesis (intergroup contact theory).3.9.1 Social facilitation and performance gains.3.7 Group influence on individual behaviour.3.4 Group membership and social identity.