Group Interaction Literature Review

This literature review will discuss different disturbances that can occur in group interactions. The focus will be more on the psychological side: how will these disturbances affect people’s emotions and needs. When conversing with other people there are many things that we need to take in consideration than just how we use our words. The in-group context, participators and social setting have all their own effect in how we perform in various social situations. Our behaviour; how we act and perceive people also affects other’s perceptions and understandings of us and our surroundings. Certain actions can increase the flow of social interaction, when others can create disturbances. The following paragraphs will review different disturbances

Marsh, Richardson, Baron and Schmidt introduce three different approaches in their article contrasting approaches to perceiving and acting with others (2006): individual level approach, cognitive dynamics approach and social synergy perspective. They discuss and compare the differences between these three approaches. The individual level approach explained by Marsh et al. (2006) examines “how others influence either perceptions or actions using the individual as the unit of analysis” (p. 2). Meaning an individual actor, while interacting with others, picks up information that they later end up mimicking themselves. The individual level approach suggests that individual psychological attributes can be picked up from others from the first encounter we have with them (Marsh et al., 2006, p. 9). The second approach introduced is called cognitive dynamics approach. This approach focuses more on the internal and psychological dynamics of an individual, that are present when other people influence them (Marsh 2006, p.15). Compared to the individual level approach, the actor in cognitive dynamics approach is not affected by others’ attributes or qualities, but rather by their own internal psychological states (Marsh et al., 2006, p. 15). The third approach that is brought up is the social synergy perspective. Marsh et al. (2006) claim that it is the most

Disruption of the fluency of the conversation can have many different effects on people. In-group context when someone is left out by others, they will experience feelings of ostracism, which may affect the way they act in the future. The participants of the social interaction can easily affect each other’s perceptions of how they view certain things. This can lead to generalizations or exaggerations of stereotypes. When interacting with others, people may start to pick up their behaviour without noticing it themselves. We can see similarities of this in intergroup discussions and discrimination as well as in all cases when we interact with other human beings. The needs and perceptions that people have of each other, depend on the in-group, social setting and how one perceives