Notes on the introduction to “Theories of Group Behavior”, Brian Mullen, George R. Goethals (Eds.) (1987). New York: Springer-Verlag
Emile Durkheim – proponent of using the group rather than the individual as the basic unit of analysis. Believed individuals tell us nothing about groups.
Floyd Allport – proponent of using the individual as the basic unit of analysis. The individual is more “real” than the group.
Early social psychologists saw groups as being analogous to an individual in their wants, needs, and behaviors.
LeBon (1895/1960)
Boodin (1913)
McDougall (1920)
Jung (1922) – collective unconscious
Ostrom & Pryor (chapter 9) – saw correspondence bewteen social structures and cognitive structures.
Wagner (chapter 7) – said fundamental memory of group is equal to interpersonal processes.
American research has tended to focus on the individual as the basic unit of analysis, rather than a Gestalt, wholistic approach.
Donald Campbell (1958)
Entativity is the “realness” of a group. This measurement helps decide whether the group or the individual is the proper unit of analysis. High entativity is a result of high proximity, high similarity, common fate, “good form“.
Robinson (1981) was similar to Campbell in judging the realness of a group. He looked for same size, and same activities over time, or covariation.
References
Allport, F.H. (1920). Social Psychology, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
Allport, G.W. (1968). The historical background of modern social psychology. In
G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (2nd ed.) Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Boodin, J.E. (1913). The existence of social minds, American Journal of Sociology, 19, 1-47.
Campbell, D.T. (1958). Common fate, similarity and other indices of aggregates of persons as social entities. Behavioral Science, 3, 14-25
Durkheim, E. (1938). The rules of sociological method. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Jung, C.G. (1922). Collected papers on analytic psychology (2nd edition). London: Bailliere, Tindall & Cox.
LeBon, G. (1895/1960). The Crowd. New York: Viking.
McDougall, W. (1920). The group mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Robinson, M. (1981). The identity of human social groups. Behavioral Science, 26, 114-129.
Wegner, D.M., Giuliano, T., & Hertel, P.T. (1984). Cognitive interdependence in close relationships. In W.J. Ickes (Ed.), Compatible and incompatible relationships. New York: Springer-Verlag.