In order to investigate further the relationships between group identification, group diversity, group norms and group functioning, a second laboratory study was devised. This study was designed to investigate the same issues as the previous study, but in a more simplistic way. This time however a slightly different set of group functioning variables were used than in previous work outlined in the thesis. It was considered that these represented a broader range of aspects of group functionality. This included factors such as cooperation, communication, organisational citizenship behaviour and group efficacy. In addition, to simplify the experimental design further, the study had only two between group conditions; one in which the group had a pro-diversity group culture and the other in which
there was an pro-uniformity culture. Both groups now had high levels of subgroup and individual diversity. The hypotheses were the same as those in the previous laboratory experiment.
The following predictions were made in this study.
It was predicted that groups with a “pro-diversity norm”, would be more likely to have higher levels of group identification and more positive group outcomes. Group outcomes were assessed in this study using a range of measures including pro-social organisational citizenship behaviour, group decision making processes, group efficacy and group effort.
6.4 Method
Participants and Design Seventy two people participated in this study in exchange for an ice-cream voucher. Participants were recruited outside the ANU refectory with the offer of the ice-cream in exchange for ten to fifteen minutes worth of participation. Participation took place at the table where they were recruited and was supervised by the experimenter. The mean age of participants was 21.9 (standard deviation of 0.6) and of the participants twenty eight were men and forty four were women.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four between subjects experimental conditions, with a 2(Diversity Norm) X 2(Order of alienation measures) design. In addition to this design, for the dependent variable of “Alienation”, there was a two level within-subjects factor, with the two levels of the design being “subgroup alienation” and “individual alienation”. This factor will be referred to as “Target of Alienation”.
Procedure To begin with, participants read a short consent form containing information about this study and then indicated their informed consent by signing the form.
They were then randomly assigned to an experimental condition and given the appropriate vignette questionnaire booklet. Participants then read through the scenario presented in the first part of the booklet and answered the questions in the second part. Once participants completed the questionnaire, they were thanked for their time, given an information sheet about the research and then given a redeemable $3 ice cream voucher.
Materials Materials used in this study included a consent form, four different types of questionnaire booklet (one for each of the experimental conditions), and an information sheet.
The questionnaire booklet contained two sections, the first section outlined the scenario and the second contained the measures of the dependent variables.
The scenario was described by means of a vignette at the beginning of the booklet. To begin with participants were asked to imagine themselves in what was described as a hypothetical scenario. They were told that the situation would be about a recreational expedition group of which they were to imagine themselves as being a part. Next participants were told about the expedition. In this vignette the expedition was described as being organised by a company called “Live Your Life Expeditions” (LYLE) which runs trips to remote yet beautiful areas of Australia. The current expedition was described as running for 14 days and involved camping, hiking, kayaking and caving.
The next part of the vignette described the people on the expedition. Participants were told that there were nine expedition members including themselves. They were told that two of the expedition members were from LYLE; the expedition leader Matt and his assistant James. They were then told that the other group members were four men and two women, all of a similar age to the participant. The group was then described visually as can be seen in Figure 6.3 with the visual distances between members representing social distances.
At this point in the vignette the manipulation of the within subjects variable “Target of Alienation” was introduced. Visually it was apparent that there was a distinct subgroup of two members (Rob and Glen) and an individual (Ben) who seemed further apart than the other group members. This was described in the vignette in the following way.
“As shown in this diagram, not all expedition group members are close to one another. Rob and Glen, who have much prior experience of expeditions such as this tend to spend a lot of time together and do not mix much with other members of the expedition group. Also Ben, who seems to have much stronger personal, individual goals for the expedition, spends a lot of time on his own reflecting about things.”
This passage in conjunction with the diagram was intended as an operationalisation of the “Target of Alienation”, with the potential target of “subgroup alienation” being Rob and Glen and the potential target of “individual alienation” being Ben. Both subgroup and individual were highlighted as having a high degree of social distance from other people and were described as being normatively (or descriptively) distinct.
The next part of the vignette contained the manipulation of the between subjects variable “Diversity Norm”. This was done by having the participants read an excerpt from the group leader, Matt’s journal. This passage was introduced as the group leader’s journal and they were told that this would give them insight into how the group functions as well as its strengths and weaknesses. The journal was intended to give the participant a sense of what the group’s norms, and culture was like with respect to whether they valued diversity or conformity. There were two versions of the journal, with one intended to create a sense of a group that valued diversity (pro-diversity norm) and the other for valuing conformity (pr-conformity norm). Half of the participants received the “pro-diversity norm” journal entry the other half received the “pro-conformity norm” journal entry.
In the passages used to manipulate the group norm, key phrases were changed to reflect the different conditions. For example in the “pro-diversity” norm condition the group was described as valuing the different opinions and diversity of members, while the pro-conformity group was described as reaching decisions quickly and valuing conformity amongst members. In the pro-diversity group, it was also stated that people often voiced different opinions, where as in the in the pro-conformity group, it was stated that people were more focused on reaching agreement than voicing their own opinions. Passages for
both the conditions were phrased in such a way as to avoid one seeming more positive or effective than the other.
This marked the end of the vignette and the beginning of the second part of the booklet. The second part contained a series of statements, to which participants indicated their extent of agreement or disagreement. This was done by way of a Likert scale ranging from one to seven, with one representing “disagree completely” and seven representing “agree completely”. This section was introduced by asking participants “In light of these comments, what are your views about this group?” and then asked them to circle the number which reflected their feelings about the group. Each question was designed to measure one of the dependent variables, with most dependent variables having multiple questions. The dependent variables measured and their corresponding questions can be seen in Table 6.12.
Table 6.12. Variables and Items used in Study Three
Variable Item
Manipulation of Diversity Norm
-“I think that this is a group that values diversity above conformity” -“I think that this group would be open to new ways of doing things”
Endorsement of Group Norms
-“It seems as if people in this expedition group are able to voice their opinions freely”
-“It seems that people in this expedition group can readily disagree in order to solve problems”
-“It seems that in this expedition group important differences are being glossed over and ignored” (reverse coded)
-“It seems that in this expedition group everyone is forced to think the same way”
(reverse coded) Identification with the
expedition group
-“I identify with other members of this expedition group” -“I am like other members of this expedition group” -“I am proud to be a member of this expedition group” -“I respect the people who are on this expedition group” -“I think I will fit in well in this group”
(These items were adapted from Ellemers, Kortekaas & Ouwerkerk, 1999) Group Functioning
- Decision Making
“It seems that this expedition group provides opportunities for members to participate in meaningful discussion”
-“It seems that this expedition group allows everyone’s “voice” to be heard during decision making”
Group Functioning - Success
-“This expedition group would be successful in achieving its goals”
Group Functioning - Efficacy
- “This expedition group would be able to adapt to new situations”
-“This expedition group would be able to deal effectively with an emergency situation”
Group Functioning - Cooperation
- “When solving problems, this group of people are very good at cooperating with one another”
“The people on this expedition would feel very motivated towards doing things for one another”
Group Functioning - Communication
“The people on this expedition group would be very good at communicating with each other”.
Group Functioning – Importance
- “The expedition group is very important to all its members”
Group Functioning – Organisational Citizenship Behaviour
- “If a member of this expedition group saw a problem with the way work was being done, they would call attention to it”
-“Members of this expedition group would put the group’s interests above their own”
Group Functioning – Effort
-“When working with other group members, people from this expedition would put in as much effort as possible”.
Leadership -“This expedition group would be a good one to lead”
-“On this expedition the leader would often be challenged in this group” -“On this expedition the leader would get quality input from group members during decision making”
Alienation - Individual
-“Ben would feel included as part of this expedition group” -“Ben would be valued as a member of this expedition group” -“People on this expedition would help Ben out”
-“On this expedition Ben’s knowledge, skills and abilities would be fully utilised”
Alienation - Subgroup
-“Rob and Glen would feel included as part of this expedition group” -“Rob and Glen would be valued as members of this expedition group” -“People on this expedition would help Rob and Glen out”
-“On this expedition, Rob and Glen’s knowledge, skills and abilities would be fully utilised”
Group member satisfaction
-“I personally would be very willing to join an expedition like this one” -“I personally would find an expedition like this very enjoyable”
The part of the questionnaire concerning the alienation measures included the manipulation of the other between subjects factor “Order of alienation measures”. This manipulation was done by having half of the participants answering the “individual
alienation” questions first and the other half answering the “subgroup alienation” measures first.
Finally the questionnaire contained a number of demographic variables, which measured participants “experience with camping expeditions”, “age” and “gender”. The last line of the booklet simply thanked participants for their time and effort.
6.4.2 Results
Scale Reliability Scales for each of the dependent variables were constructed using the items described. For most of the variables, scale reliability was very high, with the majority of the Cronbach’s Alphas ranging between α = .84 and .96. Cronbach’s Alphas for each of the scales can be seen in Table 6.13. (Note: the third and fourth “endorsement of norms” items were reverse scored).
There were however problems with both the “group functioning” scale and the “leadership” scale. “Group functioning” was problematic in that despite having a high Cronbach’s Alpha (.85), conceptually there were quite different elements within the Scale. Because of this Reliability was assessed for each of the subscales. Only two of the subscales had multiple items; these were “efficacy” and “organisational citizenship behaviour”. Both of these subscales had low Cronbach’s Alphas however (α = .45 and α = .10 respectively), and so individual items were treated as separate subscales. This was done as it was thought that each of the four items considered unique aspects of group functioning. These new variables will be referred to as “efficacy 1”, “efficacy 2”, “OCB 1” and “OCB 2”. Analysis was conducted on both the “group functioning” scale and all of its subscales.
“Leadership” however was problematic with a low α of .50. A marginal improvement was found by dropping the first item from the scale (α = .68). On closer inspection it was considered that the second and third items related to a leader’s input from group members, where as the first item referred to a more general sense of leadership effectiveness. Because of this leadership was treated as having two subscales, “leadership 1” (effectiveness) and “leadership 2” (group input).
Table 6.13. Reliability of Scales and Subscales
Multiple Item Scales Number of Items Cronbach’s Alpha
manipulation check 2 .85**
endorsement of norms 4 .85**
ingroup identification 5 .87**
group member participation 2 .95**
group functioning 9 .86**
efficacy 2 .45
organisational citizenship behaviour 2 .10
leadership (original) 3 .50
leadership 2 2 .68*
individual alienation 4 .84**
subgroup alienation 4 .85**
satisfaction 2 .91**
** indicates high reliability, * indicates medium reliability Primary Analysis
A 2(Diversity Norm) X 2(Order of alienation measures) ANOVA was carried out for each of the dependent variables and statistics can be seen in Table 6.14. As can be seen from the table, there were no significant main effects for “Order”, however there was one significant interaction between “Order” and “Diversity Norm” for “effort” which will be discussed later. “Order” will not be discussed any further for the other variables however, due to the lack of main effects and interactions (All Fs close to or less than 1). The following section will deal with differences across the “Diversity Norm” conditions for each of the dependent variables in turn.
Table 6.14. Results from 2(Diversity Norm) X 2 (Order of alienation measures) analysis of variance for each of the dependent variables.
Dependent Variable “pro-diversity norm” Mean (standard deviation) “conformity norm” Mean (standard deviation) F(1,68) “Diversity Norm” F(1,68) “Order of alienation measures” manipulation check 5.5 (0.2) 2.6 (0.2) 127.6** 1.1 endorsement of norms 5.4 (0.1) 2.9 (0.1) 183.6** 1.7 ingroup identification 5.1 (0.2) 3.4 (0.2) 51.1** 0.0 group decision making 5.5 (0.2) 2.7 (0.2) 87.1** 0.0 group functioning 4.8 (0.1) 3.4 (0.1) 43.5** 0.1 leadership 1 4.4(0.3) 3.9(0.3) 1.3 0.1 leadership 2 5.6(0.2) 2.9(0.2) 121.0** 1.5 individual alienation 4.3(0.2) 3.1(0.2) 19.6** 0.4 subgroup alienation 4.9(0.2) 3.7(0.2) 18.5** 0.2 satisfaction 4.9(0.2) 2.8(0.2) 55.8** 0.2
* indicates significance at p < .01, ** indicates significance at p < .001
A significant difference was found between conditions, with those in the “pro- diversity” groups scoring higher on the manipulation check than those in the “conformity” groups, with means of 5.5 (0.2) and 2.6 (0.2) respectively. This indicated that the “pro diversity” group perceived their group to have more of a pro-diversity norm than the “conformity norm” group. This confirms that the manipulation of the “Diversity Norm” was successful.
Results from a comparison of the “pro-diversity” condition and the “pro- conformity” condition, indicate that participants endorsed the norms appropriate to their experimental condition. The mean level of “endorsement of norms” for the “pro-diversity” groups was higher than for the pro-confmity groups (Ms and standard deviations (in brackets): 5.4 (0.1) and 2.9 (0.1), respectively). (Note: Higher scores represented greater endorsement of the pro-diversity norm and lower scores greater endorsement of the conformity norm).
For “ingroup identification” a significant difference was found between these “pro- diversity” groups and the “conformity” groups (Ms and standard deviations (in brackets):
5.1 (0.2) and 3.4 (0.2), respectively). This suggests that people identified more strongly with a group that had a pro-diversity norm compared to one with a conformity norm.
This pattern of results was also found for “group decision making” in that those in “pro-diversity” groups had a higher degree of participation than the “conformity” groups (Ms and standard deviations (in brackets): 5.5 (0.2) and 2.7 (0.2), respectively). This suggests that groups with a pro-diversity norm are more likely to have members that participate actively in decision making.
General “group functioning” was found to be higher for groups with a pro-diversity norm compared to those which had a conformity norm (Ms and standard deviations (in brackets): 4.8 (0.1) and 3.4 (0.1), respectively). This pattern was found for all of the “group functioning” subscales except for “efficacy 2”, “cooperation” and “OCB2”. Comparative means for each of the subscales can be seen in Table 6.15 as well as the results of the ANOVA. These results suggest that under conditions where there is individual and sub- group diversity, groups with a pro-diversity norm function better than those with a conformity norm.
Table 6.15. Results for “group functioning” subscales 2(Diversity Norm) X 2(Order of alienation measures), analysis of variance.
Group Functioning Subscale “pro-diversity norm” Mean (standard deviation) “conformity norm” Mean (standard deviation) F(1,68) “Diversity Norm” F(1,68) “Order of alienation measures” success 5.2 (0.2) 4.2 (0.2) 9.8* 1.3 efficacy 1 5.3 (0.2) 3.3 (0.2) 49.3** 0.2 efficacy 2 4.1(0.3) 4.3(0.3) 0.4 0.6 cooperation 4.8(0.3) 4.3(0.3) 2.0 0.2 motivation 4.3(0.2) 3.2(0.2) 12.7** 1.6 communication 4.7(0.2) 2.3(0.2) 76.0** 0.0 OCB1 5.8(0.2) 2.3(0.2) 185.2** 0.0 OCB2 4.0(0.3) 4.0(0.3) 0.0 0.1 effort 5.0(0.2) 3.2(0.2) 37.1** 0.2
general group functioning 4.8 (0.1) 3.4 (0.1) 43.5** 0.1
As mentioned earlier there was a significant interaction found between “Diversity Norm” and “Order of alienation measures” for the group functioning subscale “effort”,
F(1,68) = 4.4, p < .05. The interaction was such that the magnitude of the difference between “pro-diversity” and “conformity” groups (in terms of effort), was greater when people, answered questions about “subgroup alienation” before items about “individual alienation”. However as the questions regarding alienation were both after the question regarding “effort”, this suggests that either participants had looked ahead and this finding does have something to do with subgroup diversity or is a finding due to random factors.
For the first measure of leadership (leadership 1), no significant difference was found between those with a pro-diversity norm and those with a conformity norm (Ms and standard deviations (in brackets): 4.4 (0.3) and 3.9 (0.3), respectively). This suggests that participants thought that the effectiveness of leadership would be similar in both groups. However, in terms of how much input a leader would get from the rest of the group, participants perceived the leader of a pro-diversity group to receive more input than a group with a conformity norm (Ms and standard deviations (in brackets): 5.6 (0.2) and 2.9 (0.2), respectively).
The general trend of positive outcomes for groups with a pro-diversity norm was continued with “satisfaction”, with groups that were “pro-diversity” having higher levels of satisfaction (Ms and standard deviations (in brackets): 4.9 (0.2) and 2.8 (0.2), respectively). This suggests that people find being in a group which values the diversity of its members more satisfying than groups which value conformity.
The alienation of individuals was shown to be lower for groups which had a pro- diversity norm (Ms and standard deviations (in brackets): 4.3 (0.2) and 3.1 (0.2), respectively). This was mirrored in the alienation of subgroups, with groups which valued diversity having decreased levels of alienation (Ms and standard deviations (in brackets): 4.9 (0.2) and 3.7 (0.2), respectively. (Remember that high scores on both of these scales indicate decreased levels of alienation).
In addition to this a 2(Diversity Norm) X 2 (Order of alienation measures) X 2(Target of Alienation) mixed factorial analysis of variance was carried out, with “Target of Alienation” being the within subjects factor. A significant main effect for “Target of