A light will be shed on the characteristics of group formations, peer effects, obedience, “People will obey a figure of authority, even if it means hurting another person” (Milgram, 1963) and “When individuals perceive another person as having authority over them, they no longer feel responsible for their actions” (Milgram, 1963).

1. THE MINDSET OF GROUPS
NOTES IN PSYCHOLOGY

2. THE MINDSET OF GROUPS
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3. INTRODUCTION
A light will be shed on the characteristics of group formations, peer effects, obedience, “People will
obey a figure of authority, even if it means hurting another person” (Milgram, 1963) and “When
individuals perceive another person as having authority over them, they no longer feel responsible
for their actions” (Milgram, 1963). In addition, group conformity, which is the act of matching
attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours to group norms, and their impacts on the economy, business and
policy. “Conformity, the process in which an individual ’s behaviours, attitudes or belief either
unconsciously or consciously is adjusted to meet the ones of the group’s, is well described in the
psychological literature” (Kenrick et al., 1999). Groups are made of heterogeneous and
homogeneous individuals, where individual’s beliefs, norms and cultural aspects may vary among
the group’s members; nevertheless, groups have their own identity, norms and cultural attributes.
The effects of group’s influence on the individual’s preferences and judgements are whether
Informational Social Influences or Normative Social Influences. Where informational influence
tends to be evident in situations where ambiguity or uncertainty is the key determinant to a
decision or a judgement. People turn to their social groups or to knowledgeable personnel for
advice, informational influence “an influence to accept information obtained from another as
evidence about reality” (Deutsch & Gérard, 1955) often results in internationalisation or private
acceptance where people individually believe that the information is correct.

4. INTRODUCTION
Normative social influence “an influence to conform with positive expectations of
another” (Deutsch & Gérard, 1955) is where the individuals confirm to be part of a group,
wanting to be accepted and not wanting to be left out “Implies that people will go along with
something they know is wrong because they want to fit in with the majority.” (Ash, 1951). This
results in public compliance doing or saying something without believing it; normative social
influence does not necessarily result in private acceptance.
“Private responses are likely to be under the control of informational influence, and to be relatively
unaffected by normative influence, whereas public responses will be affected by both” (Deutsch
and Gerard, 1955). One of the Elements that affect group conformity is the level of attraction
“Some people may have a higher attraction towards their group, thus having a higher chance to
conform” (Forsyth, 1983).

5. INTRODUCTION
Attractiveness is the ordinary conduct of individuals and groups to approach extrinsic activities
“the individual’s or group’s intrinsic tendencies to involve in extrinsic communications”.
Attractiveness tends to form informative “The Law of Social Attraction” or authoritative “The Law
of Authoritative Attraction” attraction channels. The level of attraction determines the degrees of
freedom of information consumption and cognitive digestion “conscious or unconscious”. And the
influences of the information flow “conformity or obedience” and the significance of reluctance or
conformity “the degree of which the deviations from or the tendency to tightly or loosely cluster
around the group’s identity have impact on the individual and the group, the amount of
transitivity and conformity, the amount of public compliance or private acceptance”.
Law of Authoritative Attraction “Is the group’s or the individual’s authoritative abilities of
resource control that attracts individuals or groups unconsciously or unwillingly to conform to the
norm, values and beliefs of the authoritative governance ’s policy and regulations, it’s a type of
social obedience”. Authoritative attraction is a lower level function of the individual’s cognitive
abilities and is unconsciously more gravitational and more attractive than social attraction.

6. INTRODUCTION
The natural Behaviour of individuals and groups is the tendency to acquire, ensure and maintain
the necessary foundations for survival. Authoritative conformity is highly more noticeable and
influential than social conformity because of the controlling or the governing Behaviour of
resources important to individuals and groups of individuals. Causing more dependence “Public
Compliance” on the group’s norms, values and beliefs in order to ensure eligibility or group
acceptance for the resources to be given or shared among the eligible “Conforming” individuals of
the group.
Elementary analysis of the Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy (1943, “A Theory of Human Motivation”)
discloses the inevitability to conform reluctantly and instinctively with authoritative and societal
guidelines in order to satisfy the physiological and the safety essentials. The physiological
requirements are those that are fundamentally significant for the survival of the human beings,
“whereby the absence of the physiological elements impairs the individuals abilities to exist, think
and prosper” thus the less conformity to authoritative entities the superior the intensity of
sociological and physiological consequences.

7. INTRODUCTION
“The security fundamental of the individuals is the continual need for the physical and
metaphysical, logical and sentimental, economic and health constancy”, the ceaseless need for
ensuring physiological provisions imposes greater instinctive influences to conform unwillingly to
extrinsic rules and guidelines to mitigate economic and sociological volatility, hesitancy of
conforming to extrinsic influences effects societal eligibility.
“Thus conformity evidently ensures sociological and economic security other than reluctance”.
Authoritative hierarchies weaken the natural communications of social networks. Individual and
group communications require feedback and recursive feedback pipelines or channels to ensure
unbiased associations. whereby the authoritative magnetism rejects the individual’s and the
group’s abilities to originate feedback and recursive feedback pipelines to guarantee authenticity,
eligibility and harmony of conveyed information, resulting in high distortions and disinclinations,
which in turn increases the private rejection of information and increases the public compliance
towards satisfying the sociological needs.

8. INTRODUCTION
The greater the authoritative intensity the authoritative entity enforces on the group’s members
the greater the transitivity, the greater the public compliance “The higher the unauthenticated
acceptance of the group’s norms, values and beliefs extrinsically and unwillingly by the individual
group members”.
The less the private acceptance “The higher the rejection of the group’s norms, values and beliefs
intrinsically which negates the authenticated and the logically significant personal norms, values
and beliefs”. The greater the consequences “The significance of being prohibited group
membership results in multiple prohibitions transitively to other groups and affiliations which
signifies the limitations to resource acquisition and preservation”. the stronger the chain of
reaction is, “The authoritative governance implications are strongly apparent with the fact that
changes highly impact cohesive or collectivist cultures, cultures that exhibit stronger
dependability, and the more closer the authoritative distance among the individuals the more
susceptible they are to changes and implications ”.

9. INTRODUCTION
The Law of Social Attraction “Is the group’s or the individual’s social or cultural gravitational
abilities to attract other individuals or groups through reinforcing behaviours or mutual beneficial
channels, it’s an influential act of informational conducts, it’s the act of satisfying the conforming
individual’s or the group’s uncertainties and provides a cohesive standardised cultural framework
that ensures productivity and performance”.
Social attraction is a higher level strategic function of the individual ’s cognitive abilities; the
individuals tendency to continually pursue for excellence and cognitive actualisation, a
sentimentally independent process “where the psychological impacts of group obedience and
unconscious conformity to unjustified norms or beliefs for resource acquisition is not the primary
concern of individuals”.

10. INTRODUCTION
Whereby each individual selectively agrees upon the norms, values and beliefs of others “The
intrinsic or private acceptance of the norms, values and beliefs of others willingly and
spontaneously with no extrinsic influences, is the case where the individual’s intrinsic tendencies
reflect the desired Behaviour with complete independence”. The individual’s approach is
formulated as the sociological and the logical significance of the relation “whereby individuals tend
to approach groups where the formulated significance is approximately relevant to the individuals
intrinsic norms, beliefs and values, which in turn satisfies the equilibrium of intrinsic and extrinsic
inequality”.
Analysis of the Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy (1943, “A Theory of Human Motivation”) shows the
importance of social attraction to satisfy the higher-level cognitive requirements of the individual
“self-esteem and self-actualisation”.

11. INTRODUCTION
The social attraction implies that “in order to satisfy the individual’s esteem ‘self-esteem,
confidence, achievement, respect of others and respect by others’, and actualisation ‘morality,
creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice and acceptance of facts’, individuals must
first ensure belongingness and ensure the fulfilment of the basic requirements of each and every
individual”.
Such logical utilities require the satisfaction of the lower level functions of the individual. Mutually
the law of authoritative attraction and the law of social attraction require the concept of
belongingness “the process by which being part of a group”. (Murray, 1938), (Herzberg, 1959),
(McClelland, 1961), (Covey, 1989) and supplementary psychologists and behavioral theorists
highlighted the significance of group affiliations and societal belongingness about social
motivation, achievement and performance. The authoritative attraction implies that the stronger
the conformity or the eligibility of the individuals towards the norms, values and beliefs of the
authoritative group the greater the actualisation of the basic needs of the individual “physiological,
security ‘security of body, employment, resources, morality, family, health and property’ and
belongingness ‘friendship, family and sexual intimacy’”.

12. INTRODUCTION
The law of the social attraction implies the belongingness to a group or a set of groups is essential
to satisfy the cognitive requirements of the individual. Therefore, both proof the concept and the
significance of group conformity. Group hierarchies form multiple inner groups, whereby each
group exhibit implicit deviations from the normal or agreed upon Behaviour of the group
members, where the Behaviour illustrated by norms, values and beliefs.
The psychological, cognitive and sociological heterogeneity results in dynamical social structures,
whereby individuals within a particular group form subgroups of homogeneous significance. The
significance of the inner groups are because of social intelligence and group emotions, the greater
the homogeneity the greater the psychological conformity and obedience. The greater the
gravitational sociology of the social networks the superior the imitation of the eligible behaviours,
the increase of susceptibility to group suggestions, the greater the social facilitation and vicarious
conditioning.

13. INTRODUCTION
The size of the group “Although it seems reasonable to assume that the larger the majority the
greater the pressure to conform, the magnitude of such pressure is likely to depend on just who
the majority are and on the context” (Bond, 2005) Nevertheless “a small majority may be
sufficient to exert near maximum pressure” (Bob, 2005).
The size of the group, the cultural and the demographical characteristics results in varying levels of
conformity “Conformity was significantly higher the larger the size of the majority and the greater
the proportion of female respondents” (Bond and Smith, 1996). “Women show somewhat higher
levels of conformity than men” (Cooper, 1979; Eagly, 1978; Eagly & Carli, 1981). And cultural
aspects such that “Individualistic “where individuals tend to approach and value intrinsic
behaviours and self-orientation and have negligence towards the group’s mentality” cultures
showed lower levels of conformity than collectivist “where individuals tend to value group’s
identity and always strive for group communications and commitments” cultures” (Bond and
Smith 1996).

14. INTRODUCTION
The study of the sociological and psychological elements introduces the foundations necessary for
the understanding of the basic principles of social networks and their impacts on economy.
Its underlying mechanics develops a theoretical framework towards analysing the significance and
appropriately adjusting the continuous need for economists to incorporate social sciences into the
realm of economics. The premise is that the basic principles of an individual’s nature is to
communicate and to socialise, whereby the individuals identity mutates and evolves through
groups and societies, the individual ’s ability of making decisions are stronger among groups.
Where groups drive and strengthen the capabilities of individuals to communicate, collaborate,
innovate and evolve in thoughts and Behaviour, Individuals on their own exhibit deteriorations of
thoughts and facts, tendency to incorrect and biased judgements.
Individuals learn and evolve through other individuals, societies and cultures, they inherit
principles, norms and cultural characteristics through observational or supervised learning
‘Imitation and vicarious conditioning’, and they are influenced by the mechanics of the natural
cohesion of the human nature, the nature of being part of a group. Learning and feedback
pipelines are an important asset of group cultures, collectivism.

15. INTRODUCTION
Where the information are shared and the thoughts are collaborated and integrated into
generations of implicit and explicit knowledge that eventually lead to human revolution, a
revolution whereby societies closely cluster around agreed upon norms and beliefs, which serve
the whole community as a whole and each entity as an individual. Group conformity, obedience
and other behavioral mechanics evolved over the years as tools and techniques to join and sustain
memberships in groups. Such tools endorsed individuals to be classified and organised into
cultural clusters, clusters where humans tend to neglect their own personal preferences and
conform to other norms and beliefs to share resources, social acceptance and status, constellations
of a majority or a minority that possess health and wealth, political or social authority, knowledge
or wisdom.
Elements in a space of elements governed by a common culture considered dependent. Whereby
the probability of effect on other elements of the governing space is apparent, the chain reaction is
where the effect propagates into the space of elements resulting in a complete awareness of the
event, and since hypothetically assuming that the space organised into a mesh topology. Where the
elements are strongly connected, ensuring vertical and horizontal connectivity, the probability of
causing a complete chain reaction equipped with the facts of social dynamics is strong.

16. INTRODUCTION
Therefore, we assume the transitivity of social networks “The transitivity of social networks. Imply
that if there exist any authoritative or conformal link or links ‘complete or partial’ to one or more
homogeneous or heterogeneous social networks neighbouring the originating network or
networks ‘groups or groups within groups’, spontaneously transfers the information through cross
heterogeneous universe of networks”.
Partial connectivity is where heterogeneous groups are partially connected via connector groups
that share common grounds or mutual benefits with other groups, even though such groups are
not considered homogeneous, the probability of a chain reaction is also strong. Reference groups
and affiliations cause other groups and individuals to conform on values and beliefs (Bernheim,
1994), therefore ensuring connectivity among the individual groups also considered a dynamic and
an ordinary nature of individuals and groups.
Events might take the form of internal link dynamics or externalities, internally caused by group
intelligence and collaborative efforts that cause a revolutionary development of the group’s norms,
beliefs and values, alternatively externalities are forces of homogeneous and heterogeneous
adjacent group’s intelligence or other environmental, political or regulatory events. Relational
hierarchies throughout the Group’s classifications and relations are also an important part of
economic analysis.

17. INTRODUCTION
Groups formed in reference to class and power. Which constitutes to the concept of social
stratification, whereby groups classified into a hierarchical organisation according to resource
access, power and perceived social worth. Class is the structural position whereby groups hold to
the economic, social, political and cultural resources of a society.
Social classifications exhibit stronger dependence relations among the groups and within the
individuals of the group, the relations highly describe group domination and group control over
resources and the necessity of individuals and groups to conform and abide (Kenrick et al., 1999)
to share and collaborate. Groups are emotional in nature “Emotions are alive, well and living in
groups” (Kelly and Barsade, 2001), resulting in a unique and a responsive identity, groups respond
cohesively to events as individuals do, the more cohesive the group is the more symmetrical their
corresponding behaviours and responses are.

18. INTRODUCTION
This tendency for group associations led many scientists to become more involved into
understanding the principles of the human nature, afterwards other disciplines adopted the
methodologies to incorporate human factors into wide a verity of sciences. In business,
anthropologists and industry scholars studied the social and the cultural behaviours, the
effectiveness of individual and group work, the efficiency of collaboration and coordination among
team members and the effects of managerial hierarchies on the essentials of productivity and
performance.
Human resource management studied the psychology of individuals and groups and the types of
elements that contribute to the success or failure of workforce in multidimensional diversified
environments, and the significant factors that might increase the levels of loyalty and decrease the
levels of low morale and turnover. Sales and marketing studied the Behaviour of individuals and
the tendency of individuals to accept certain products and services through controlling sociological
and psychological variables.

19. FURTHER READING
The Digital Marketplace
Social interactions and the sociological dynamics of social networks have many contributions that lead to many developments to
our daily lives, it shaped the ways we interact, share and achieve.
The Theory of Motivation
The etymology of the word ‘motivate’ descends from Old French motif, from late Latin motivus, from movere ‘to move’ in the
1800’s. Motivation is a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way.

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