scholarly journals Measuring Dynamical Interdependence in Small-Group Collaborations

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
Peter Halpin
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Reliability And Validity ◽  
Mathematics Assessment ◽  
Network Structures ◽  
Individual Group ◽  
Online Chat ◽  
Dynamical Network ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Group Member

This paper addresses dynamical interdependence among the actions of group members. I assume that the actions of each member can be represented as nodes of a dynamical network and then collect the nodes into disjoint subsets (components) representing the individual group members. Interdependence among group members’ actions can then be defined with reference to a K-partite network, in which the partitions correspond to the group member components. Independence among group members’ actions can be defined with reference to a network in which the group member components are disconnected from one another. The degree to which the interactions of actual groups correspond to either of these theoretical network structures can be characterized using modified versions of existing network statistics. Taking this approach, I propose a number of network-based measures of dynamical interdependence, discuss the interpretation of the proposed measures, and consider how to assess their reliability and validity. These ideas are illustrated using an example in which dyads collaborated via online chat to complete a grade 12 level mathematics assessment.

The Epistemology of Groups

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lackey
Keyword(s):  
Group Level ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Individual Group ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Normative Requirements ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Belief Justification ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Trump Administration

Groups are often said to bear responsibility for their actions, many of which have enormous moral, legal, and social significance. The Trump Administration, for instance, is said to be responsible for the U.S.’s inept and deceptive handling of COVID-19 and the harms that American citizens have suffered as a result. But are groups subject to normative assessment simply in virtue of their individual members being so, or are they somehow agents in their own right? Answering this question depends on understanding key concepts in the epistemology of groups, as we cannot hold the Trump Administration responsible without first determining what it believed, knew, and said. Deflationary theorists hold that group phenomena can be understood entirely in terms of individual members and their states. Inflationary theorists maintain that group phenomena are importantly over and above, or otherwise distinct from, individual members and their states. It is argued that neither approach is satisfactory. Groups are more than their members, but not because they have “minds of their own,” as the inflationists hold. Instead, this book shows how group phenomena—like belief, justification, and knowledge—depend on what the individual group members do or are capable of doing while being subject to group-level normative requirements. This framework, it is argued, allows for the correct distribution of responsibility across groups and their individual members.

scholarly journals Prey synchronize their vigilant behaviour with other group members

2007 ◽  
Vol 274 (1615) ◽  
pp. 1287-1291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Pays ◽  
Pierre-Cyril Renaud ◽  
Patrice Loisel ◽  
Maud Petit ◽  
Jean-François Gerard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Predation Risk ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Prey Species ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Group Member

It is generally assumed that an individual of a prey species can benefit from an increase in the number of its group's members by reducing its own investment in vigilance. But what behaviour should group members adopt in relation to both the risk of being preyed upon and the individual investment in vigilance? Most models assume that individuals scan independently of one another. It is generally argued that it is more profitable for each group member owing to the cost that coordination of individual scans in non-overlapping bouts of vigilance would require. We studied the relationships between both individual and collective vigilance and group size in Defassa waterbuck, Kobus ellipsiprymnus defassa , in a population living under a predation risk. Our results confirmed that the proportion of time an individual spent in vigilance decreased with group size. However, the time during which at least one individual in the group scanned the environment (collective vigilance) increased. Analyses showed that individuals neither coordinated their scanning in an asynchronous way nor scanned independently of one another. On the contrary, scanning and non-scanning bouts were synchronized between group members, producing waves of collective vigilance. We claim that these waves are triggered by allelomimetic effects i.e. they are a phenomenon produced by an individual copying its neighbour's behaviour.

scholarly journals Monkey see, monkey feel? Marmoset reactions towards conspecifics' arousal

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Edvaldo de Oliveira Terceiro ◽  
Erik P. Willems ◽  
Arrilton Araújo ◽  
Judith M. Burkart
Keyword(s):  
Prairie Vole ◽  
Contagion Effect ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Group Member ◽  
Marmoset Monkeys ◽  
Three Components

Consolation has been observed in several species, including marmoset monkeys, but it is often unclear to what extent they are empathy-based. Marmosets perform well in at least two of three components of empathy-based consolation, namely understanding others and prosociality, but it is unknown to what extent they show matching with others. We, therefore, tested whether non-aroused individuals would become aroused themselves when encountering an aroused group member (indicated by piloerection of the tail). We found a robust contagion effect: group members were more likely to show piloerection themselves after having encountered an aroused versus relaxed conspecific. Moreover, group members offered consolation behaviours (affiliative approaches) towards the aroused fellow group members rather than the latter requesting it. Importantly, this pattern was shown by both aroused and non-aroused individuals, which suggests that they did not do this to reduce their own arousal but rather to console the individual in distress. We conclude that marmosets have all three components of empathy-based consolation. These results are in line with observations in another cooperative breeder, the prairie vole.

Can Simple Group Heuristics Detect Hidden Profiles in Randomly Generated Environments?

2005 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torsten Reimer ◽  
Ulrich Hoffrage
Keyword(s):  
Group Discussion ◽  
Unit Weight ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Individual Group ◽  
Take The Best ◽  
Sum Score ◽  
Exchange Information ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Hidden Profile ◽  
The Individual

Research on the hidden-profile effect ( Stasser, 1992 ) has revealed that groups often fail to detect the choice alternative with the highest sum score if the individual group members’ information points to another alternative. We conducted a simulation study in which we randomly generated distributions of information such that they did or did not contain a hidden profile. The simulated groups solved the tasks by applying a unit weight linear model or a fast and frugal heuristic (Minimalist or Take The Best). Overall, a communication-based lexicographic heuristic performed best across the different environments. This fast and frugal heuristic makes cue-wise comparisons of alternatives while pooling information during group discussion. Moreover, results show that performance depends on whether group members share and exchange information on valid or on invalid cues. Directions for future research are discussed.

scholarly journals Defending Joint Acceptance Accounts of Justification

Episteme ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Lukas Schwengerer
Keyword(s):  
Individual Group ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Group Acceptance

Abstract Jennifer Lackey (2016) challenged group acceptance accounts of justification by arguing that these accounts make the possession of evidence arbitrary and hence lead to illegitimate manipulation of the group's evidence. She proposes that the only way out is to rely on the epistemic propriety of the individual group members, which leads to a dilemma for group acceptance views: either they are wrong about justification, or they cease to rely only on group acceptances. I argue that there is a third option based on general expectations of epistemic propriety that restricts the group's maximal justification. A group cannot be more justified than any individual in the group's position could be expected to be. I motivate this solution by a discussion of normative defeat and epistemic expectations as proposed by Goldberg (2018).

scholarly journals Strategic Self-Regulation in Groups: Collective Implementation Intentions Help Cooperate When Cooperation Is Called for

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Lukas Thürmer ◽  
Frank Wieber ◽  
Peter M. Gollwitzer
Keyword(s):  
Implementation Intentions ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Social Dilemmas ◽  
Investment Game ◽  
Prisoners Dilemma ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Group Member

Groups need contributions that are personally costly to their members. Such cooperation is only adaptive when others cooperate as well, as unconditional cooperation may incur high costs to the individual. We argue that individuals can use We-if-then plans (collective implementation intentions, cIIs) to regulate their group-directed behavior strategically, helping them to cooperate selectively with group members in the situation planned for. In line with this prediction, a cII to consider group earnings increased cooperative decisions in a prisoners’ dilemma game when playing against another group member but not when playing against a stranger (i.e., non-group member). Moreover, cIIs to cooperate in the prisoners’ dilemma game did not increase cooperation in a structurally similar investment game that participants had not planned for. We discuss the role of collective planning in solving social dilemmas.

scholarly journals Preprint: When Does Group Information Influence the Automatic and Deliberate Judgment of Individual Group Members?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayan Navon ◽  
Yoav Bar-Anan
Keyword(s):  
Impression Formation ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Relative Effect ◽  
The Other ◽  
Individual Member ◽  
Individual Group ◽  
Group Information ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individuating Information

According to some impression formation theories, when people perceive an individual member of a social group, the information about the group is activated more spontaneously and easily than information specific to the individual. Therefore, the judgment of individual group members might be more sensitive to group information (relatively to individuating information) the more automatic (fast, unintentional, and effortless) the judgment is. We tested this premise with a minimalistic impression formation paradigm that provided evaluative information about eight individuals and assigned them to two novel groups. In one group, three members behaved positively, and one member behaved negatively. In the other group, three members behaved negatively and one positively. In seven main experiments and 12 auxiliary experiments, we examined whether people’s automatic (but not deliberate) judgment of the atypical group members would be determined by the valence of the typical behavior in the group (group information) or the valence of the typical behaviors of that person (individuating information). Individuating information had a larger effect on automatic and deliberate evaluation than group information. The relative effect of group information (vs. individuating information) was slightly stronger on automatic than on deliberate judgment. This discrepancy increased when we increased the salience of group membership upon judgment, or when participants belonged to one of the groups. Our findings suggest that, inherently, automatic judgment of individuals is only slightly more biased than deliberate judgment by group information. Yet, under circumstances that are common in everyday life, that bias increases in automatic but not in deliberate judgment.

scholarly journals Who Can Be in a Group? 3- to 5-Year-Old Children Construe Realistic Social Groups Through Mutual Intentionality

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Straka ◽  
Adam Stanaland ◽  
Michael Tomasello ◽  
Sarah Gaither
Keyword(s):  
General Framework ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Individual Group ◽  
Minimal Group ◽  
Group Type ◽  
Cognitive Framework ◽  
Group 3 ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Group Member

Recent research suggests that young children’s causal justification for minimal group membership can be induced via a cognitive framework of mutual intentionality. That is, an individual can become a group member when both the individual and group agree to membership. Here, we investigated if children ages 3-5 understand groups formed by mutual intentions and whether they apply mutual intentions to realistic groups with varying entitative and essentialized qualities. In two studies (N = 197), we asked 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children if a novel character could join an existing group based on intentionality (mutual, individual-, group-only) and group type (task, friends, family). We find that 4- and 5-year-olds robustly relied on mutual intentions to constitute group membership and 3-year-olds also demonstrated emerging usage of this cognitive framework. Moreover, children employed mutual intentionality across different group types, suggesting a general framework for children’s understanding of different social groups.

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