European Journal of Social Psychology

doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2420160301pmid: N/A

Von Cranach, Mario; Ochsenbein, Guy; Valach, Ladislav

doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2420160302pmid: N/A

Human social systems, and groups in partlcular, are conceived as units which, as a whole, actively strive towards the achievement of external and internal goals. This ‘group action’ consists of simultaneous integrated processes on various individual and social levels. Our theory comprises four groups of constructs, which refer to task structure, group structure, information processing and execution. In an ongoing group action, the task structure is projected on the group structure; according to the resulting pattern, the group processes its action related information and executes the act. The latter two processes proceed on two levels, on an individual and on a group level. There are cognition, emotion and volition on the individual, and communication on the group level of information processing; execution proceeds in individual action and in cooperation. A specific part of the theory concerns analogies between individual cognition and intragroup communication.

Irle, Martin; Dickenberger, Dorothee

doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2420160303pmid: N/A

The four granting strategies of the German Science Foundation (DFG) are introduced in order to demonstrate the place special granting (‘Sonderförderung’) has within the general funding policy of the DFG. A look back to the beginning and the development of the Sonderforschungsbereich 24 (SFB 24): ‘Social scientific decision research’, exhibits reasons for problems concerning cooperation beiween projects and research strategies.

Ng, Sik Hung

doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2420160304pmid: N/A

Decisions to allocate rewards to ingroup and outgroup members are under the dual pressures of equity and intergroup bias. This study examined variations in equity and bias resulting from the incongruity and salience of intergroup status. Incongruity arose from a mismatch between high subjective and low accorded status. Congruity occurred when subjective status and accorded status were both high or both low. By pairing school classes with known subjective and accorded statuses, an incongruous and a congruous status setting were derived naturally. The setting was made either salient or nonsalient experimentally. It was hypothesized that bias would progressively increase, and equity would progressively decrease, with incongruity and salience. Each set of hypotheses was partially supported. Further data analysis showed a robust tendency to under‐reward both ingroup and outgroup members. This interpersonal negativity bras was shown by incongruous status allocators either when rewarding superior performance or in the salient condition. Apparently, it served to safeguard personal rather than social identity. The implications for equity and social identity theories were discussed.

Kette, Gerhard

doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2420160305pmid: N/A

The experiment deals with the impact of self‐esteem and liking for the partner on the attribution of agreement and deadlock in bargaining. Fifty‐eight male and 70 female students played the Harsanyi‐Selten bargaining game with incomplete information eight times, allegedly each time with a randomly selected partner. In fact in four games a computer program simulated the partner. Combining an experimental variation of liking (liking—disliking), own costs (low, high), partner costs (low, high) the experiment followed a 2×2×2 repeated measures design. As predicted by a path model from balance theory (a) failure (deadlock) was attributed more to the partner and less to self than success (agreement), (b) success was attributed more to the liked than the disliked partner, whereas failure was attributed more to the disliked than the liked partner.

Petzold, Peter

doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2420160306pmid: N/A

In the present study it was investigated how information about the profession affects the judgment of a person characterized by traits. Two main effects in judgments of likeability were found. More responsible professions produce a lower overall mean of judgments (contrast effect) and more polarized judgments than less responsible professions do. Additionally, an interaction of these effects with the scale value of the traits could be found. For higher scale values a striking difference between the polarization scores for more and less responsible professions was obtained, whereas for lower scale values this difference was small. To obtain more insight into the process underlying the influence of profession response probabilities were analysed using psychometric functions. Two mechanisms seem to mediate this influence: Firstly, the acceptability of the person to be judged is integrated as a peripheral dimension together with the likeability as a focal dimension into a decision continuum. Secondly, a neutral point of the function representing the relation between acceptability and likeability is integrated into an internal standard the value of the decision continuum is to be compared with. The analogy of findings in attitude research is discussed.

Maass, Anne; Clark, Russell D

doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2420160307pmid: N/A

This study tested whether reactance theory can account for private acceptance of a minority opinion under simultaneous majority/minority influence (reactance against majority rather than conversion toward minority). Subjects were either exposed to simultaneous majority /minority influence or to a majority source only. As predicted by conversion theory, subjects moved away from the majority only in private and in the presence of a consistent minority. In the absence of a consistent minority, subjects accepted the majority opinion in private, ruling out reactance as an alternative explanation.