About 8 years ago, my husband and I were members of The Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association. It was a motorcycle group dedicated to helping veterans that were either disabled or in need of services, such as yardwork or financial assistance. We would do fundraisers as well as volunteer our time for service. We would travel in large groups on our motorcycles together to attend these events. We were often confused with outlaw motorcycle gangs because we rode together and the members had patches on their vests to signify their membership. It was very sad to me that people assumed we were “up to no good” and had assumed stereotypes of who we were. Some of the most loving and gentle people I have known were part of that group and to be considered social outcasts was just ridiculous.

Julie

Paige Sours

Instructor and Class,

Group- a collection of individuals who have relations to one another that make them interdependent to some significant degree (Gilovich et al., 2016).

I do not really belong to any groups like teams or anything. In high school I was however on the cheer team so I was apart of that group back then. Otherwise I haven’t been apart of an organized team since then.

I do consider the classroom in which I work to be a little group though. We have the teacher, and then several paras, and 2 other general education teachers who all somewhat work together as a group. The special education and general education teachers are the main groups, us paras really do not get to be involved much in decision making or anything of that matter really. However, the teachers do ask us for out observations and opinions on certain things involving the kids we work with because we spend a significant amount of time with the kids during the day where the special education teacher only seeing them for short times through out the day in a pull-out setting. In this setting i do not really feel deindividuation, or social facilitation.

When I was on the cheer team in high school I often preformed better when other groups were watching such as parents, the student body, or groups of friends. However, during practice I would sometimes experience social loafing because I knew I wasn’t being watch specifically by social groups.