People

Adam Stivers

Group Processes

The major focus of my research is to understand what motivates different individual attitudes and behaviors in group settings.  One line of research addresses the question: "Why do individuals choose to compete?"  In social dilemmas, individuals are faced with choices that promote self-interest (compete) or promote collective interest (cooperate).  Social psychological research investigating social motives for these decisions has typically focused on why individuals cooperate, with the underlying assumption that competition is simply motivated by rational self-interest.  Recent evidence demonstrates that this assumption may be flawed or at least incomplete, a group labeled "aversive competitors" is not responsive to monetary incentives, but become more cooperative with social feedback from their social dilemma partner.  Aversive competitors may be motivated by fear and distrust of others, and social feedback can be a more effective mechanism for encouraging cooperation among Aversive Competitors than traditional (and more costly) rewards and punishments.

A second major line of research is focused on dissent in group decision-making processes.  Social psychology has a long history of demonstrating the extraordinary circumstances under which individuals will conform, comply, and obey authorities (ex: Milgram experiment, Stanford Prison experiment, and Asch autokinetic effect studies).  However, in each of these provocative experiments, there are participants who fail to conform, resist authority, and voice dissent.  A voice of dissent is widely viewed as a factor that can nullify group-decision making pitfalls such as group polarization and groupthink, where groups arrive at substandard outcomes due to biases and social pressures.  Despite the powerful role of dissent in these theories, we still know very little about dissent and the individuals who choose to voice it.  A collaborative effort between UD and Lehigh University seeks to identify what types of people are more likely to dissent, under what circumstances are they more likely to dissent, and how does dissent affect group outcomes.