D567 Task 2 Group Observation Analysis Example

Eleven Volunteers and One Compost Pile: An Observation of Group Behavior at a Composite Community Garden Workday, Read Through Norms, Roles, Social Loafing and Conformity

Student Name

Leavitt School of Health, Western Governors University

D567: Social Psychology, Task 2

Course Instructor

Month Day, Year

Eleven Volunteers and One Compost Pile: An Observation of Group Behavior at a Composite Community Garden Workday, Read Through Norms, Roles, Social Loafing and Conformity

Introduction

Groups shape behavior in ways their members rarely notice. People work harder or less hard, speak up or stay quiet, and adopt habits they did not bring with them, all because of the others around them. This paper reports a two-and-a-half-hour observation of a volunteer workday at a neighborhood community garden and analyzes the group's behavior using concepts and research from social psychology: norms, roles, social facilitation and social loafing, conformity and the difference between newcomers and established members.

Method and Setting

The observation took place on a Saturday morning in May at a community garden of about 40 plots on a vacant lot in a mid-sized Midwestern city. The garden holds a workday twice a month for shared tasks such as turning compost, weeding paths and repairing raised beds. I attended as a first-time volunteer, told the coordinator that I was observing group behavior for a psychology course, and took brief notes during breaks. Eleven volunteers took part: five regulars who had attended many workdays, four newcomers and a coordinator and her teenage son. To protect privacy, people are described here by role and approximate age only, and no photographs were taken.

Because I was also a participant, my presence may have changed the group slightly, and my own experience as a newcomer shaped what I noticed. These limits are discussed at the end.

Observation Summary

The coordinator, a woman in her fifties, opened with a five-minute welcome, listed four tasks on a whiteboard and asked people to choose. The regulars went to the compost pile and the bed repairs without discussion. The newcomers hesitated, then all four chose path weeding, the task with the clearest instructions. For the first hour the compost crew worked steadily and talked constantly, while the weeding group worked in near silence. When the coordinator joined the weeders for twenty minutes, their pace and talking both increased; when she left, both dropped.

Two patterns stood out. First, at the compost pile, three regulars turned the pile while two stood leaning on their pitchforks, talking. No one commented. Second, at the midmorning break, a regular brought out a cooler of iced tea and everyone gathered, but the regulars stood in a circle near the shed and the newcomers stood slightly apart. One newcomer, a man in his thirties, had brought his own gloves and a kneeling pad; within half an hour two other newcomers had borrowed pads from the shed and were kneeling as well. By the final task, one regular invited two newcomers to help rebuild a raised bed, and the group mixed for the first time.

Analysis: Norms and Roles

Group norms are shared expectations about how members should behave. Several were visible but never stated: regulars take the physical tasks, everyone stops for the tea break, and no one criticizes a fellow volunteer's effort. Newcomers learned the norms by watching, which is why they gathered at the break without being told. Roles were also clear. The coordinator held a formal leadership role focused on tasks. The regular who brought the tea played a socioemotional role, keeping the mood warm and eventually bridging the two subgroups. These two kinds of roles, one focused on getting work done and one on relationships, are commonly found in small groups and both were needed here.

Analysis: Social Facilitation and Social Loafing

The weeders' faster pace when the coordinator joined them fits social facilitation, the tendency for the presence of others, especially an evaluator, to improve performance on simple, well-learned tasks. Zajonc (1965) proposed that the presence of others raises arousal, which strengthens a person's dominant response; for an easy task like pulling weeds, the dominant response is doing it well.

The two regulars leaning on their pitchforks show the opposite effect, social loafing, the tendency to exert less effort when working collectively than when working alone. Pooling 78 studies, Karau and Williams (1993) showed that loafing is more likely when individual effort cannot be identified and when the task seems less meaningful to the person. At the compost pile, no one could tell who had turned how much, and the task had no visible endpoint. The weeders, by contrast, each cleared a visible section of path, which made individual effort easy to see.

Analysis: Conformity and Newcomers

The spread of kneeling pads is a small example of conformity. Deutsch and Gerard (1955) distinguished informational influence, following others because they seem to know what is correct, from normative influence, following others to be accepted. The newcomers who copied the kneeling pad were probably responding to informational influence; one volunteer had found a better way to weed, and others adopted it. Gathering at the tea break, and standing where others stood, reflects normative influence, the wish to fit in.

The separation at the break reflects the line between an established ingroup and newcomers. Regulars shared history and jokes, while newcomers had not yet been included. The regular's invitation to rebuild a raised bed together changed that. Working on a shared task with a common goal is one of the conditions under which contact between groups most reduces distance, and after that task the group stood together for the first time.

Limitations

This analysis is based on one observation of one group, so it cannot show that these patterns are typical of volunteer groups. My dual role as participant and observer may have made the coordinator more attentive to newcomers, and my interpretation of who was loafing is based on brief observation rather than measured effort. A second observation, or a short survey of volunteers, would test whether the patterns hold.

Conclusion

In one morning, a volunteer group showed unspoken norms, distinct leadership and relationship roles, social facilitation, social loafing, both kinds of conformity influence and an ingroup that opened to newcomers through shared work. Social psychology explains each of these patterns and suggests simple changes, such as assigning visible individual tasks and pairing newcomers with regulars from the start.

References

Deutsch, M., & Gerard, H. B. (1955). A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51(3), 629-636. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0046408

Karau, S. J., & Williams, K. D. (1993). Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(4), 681-706. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.65.4.681

Zajonc, R. B. (1965). Social facilitation. Science, 149(3681), 269-274. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.149.3681.269