In our work building social software, the question I am most frequently trying to answer is:“What is it that persuades the largest number of people to do something meaningful?”
Answering this question is the primary aim of a field we have christened “Groupology”. Groupology is—simply put—the study of groups.
From this starting point follow questions of wider application such as:
- “How is the group persuaded to do something above and beyond the norm?”,
- “What factors create the most successful teams?”,
- “How is group conflict exacerbated and resolved?”,
- “How does digital influence group behaviour?” and
- “What is the future of the global community?”
Groupology brings together related fields of study including social psychology, rhetoric, sociology, evolutionary biology, cognitive & behavioural psychology, online community and organisational behaviour.
Groupology Timeline
The following is a timeline of Groupology and online community. Theories and experiments are in bold; publications are in italics.
469 — 399 BCE Socrates — In Plato’s Republic (380 BCE): the individual and the state
427 — 347 BCE Plato — Why we form a society; Social life
384 — 322 BCE Aristotle — Nicomachean Ethics (350 BCE). On Friendship; Rhetoric (367 BCE).
341 — 270 BCE Epicurus — On Nature.
1332 — 1406 Ibn Khaldun — Muqaddimah (1378) “Group feeling” or Asabiyyah.
1469 — 1527 Niccolo Machiavelli — The Prince (1515).
1588 — 1679 Thomas Hobbes — Leviathan (1651)
1632 — 1677 Baruch Spinoza — Mind, body and human nature
1632 — 1704 John Locke — Personal Identity
1712 — 1778 Jean-Jacques Rousseau — The Social Contract (1762)
1723 — 1816 Adam Ferguson — History of Civil Society (1767)
1806 — 1873 John Stuart Mill — Utilitarianism and Individual Liberty
1798 — 1857 Auguste Comte — Coined “social physics” later “Sociology“
1802 — 1876 Harriet Martineau — Authored Society in America (1837).
1844 — 1900 Friedrich Nietzsche — The Herd mentality
1843 — 1904 Gabriel Tarde — Social Laws — an Outline of Sociology (1899).
1818 — 1883 Karl Marx — Contrasting Comte: focused on class struggle and social change.
1824 — 1903 Steinthal & Lazarus — Founded journal devoted to Volkerpsychologie (Folk Psychology) (1860)
1858 — 1917 Emile Durkheim — The Division of Labour in Society (1893).
1832 — 1920 Wilhelm Wundt — First experimental laboratory of psychology in Liepzig (1879).
1841 — 1931 Gustav Le Bon — The Crowd, a study of the Popular Mind (1896). “Group Mind”.
1861 — 1931 Norman Triplett — Theory of Social Facilitation (1898).
1820 — 1903 Herbert Spencer — Social Statics (1851).
1861 — 1934 James Mark Baldwin — Story of the Mind (1898).
1849 — 1936 Ivan Pavlov —Conditioned reflex — Pavlov’s dog (1901)
1864 — 1920 Max Weber — The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Captialism (1905). Bureaucracy.
1858 — 1918 George Simmel — Interactionism. Soziologie (1908)
1871 — 1938 William McDougall — Collective Behaviour (1908) GroupMind.
1866 — 1951 Edward Alsworth Ross — Social Psychology (1908)
1871 — 1938 Theodore Vail — Network Effect / Network Externality (1910)
1890 — 1978 Floyd Henry Allport — Social Psychology (1924)
1856 — 1939 Sigmund Freud — Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1922)
1880 — 1949 George Elton Mayo — Professor of Harvard Business Schoool
1863 — 1931 George H Mead — Mind, Self and Society (1934). Symbolic Interactionism.
1899 — 1959 Alfred Schutz — Interactionism
1891 — 1937 Antonio Gramsci — The Prison Notebooks (1929 — 1935)
1859 — 1938 Edmund Husserl — Founder of Phenomenology
1889 — 1974 Jacob Moreno — Coined “Group Psychotherapy”, devised Sociometry.
1887 — 1961 Carl Murchison — Handbook of social psychology (1935)
1906 — 1988 Muzafer Sherif — Norm formation experiment (1935)
1899 — 1986 LaPiere & Farnsworth — Attitudes vs. Actions (Social Forces, 1934);
1896 — 1980 Jean Piaget — Cognitive Psychology (1936)
1898 — 1974 Roethlisberger & Dickson— Management and the worker (1939).
1874 — 1949 Edward Thorndike — Theory of Learning
1900 — 1980 Miller & Dollard —Social Learning and Imitation (1941).
1907 — 1996 Solomon Asch — Gestalt-based configural model of impression formation (1946)
1907 — 1996 Solomon Asch — Primacy effect (1946).
1902 — 1979 Talcott Parsons — Action theory
1907 — 1996 Solomon Asch — Social Conformity experiments (1951)
1910 — 1989 George Homans — The Human Group (1951). Group formation.
1890 — 1947 Kurt Lewin — Coined “Group Dynamics”, Gestalt psychology.
1906 — 1988 Muzafer Sherif — Looked at intergroup conflict for scarce resources (1953)
1912 — 1961 Carl Hovland — Attitude change programme
1916 — 2014 Julian Rotter — Social Learning and Clinical Psychology (1954)
1919 — 1989 Leon Festinger— Social Comparison theory. Cognitive dissonance.
1897 — 1967 Gordon Allport — Trait Theory
1920 — 2011 Bruner & Tagiuri — Implicit personality theory. Philosophies of human nature (1954)
1905 — 1967 George Kelly — Personal construct theory (1955)
1910 — 2003 Robert Merton — Criticism of Weber’s bureacracy (1957) – “dysfunctions of bureaucracy”
1896 — 1988 Fritz Heider — Theory of naive psychology. The Psychology of interpersonal relations (1958).
1921 — 2003 Thibaut & Kelley — Social exchange and interpersonal relationships (1959)
1928 — Noam Chomsky — A Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (1959)
1920 — Deutch & Krauss — Exchange theory and Interpersonal bargaining (1960)
1903 — 1981 Rensis Likert — Organisations are collections of groups rather than individual entities(1961).
1933 — 1984 Stanley Milgram— Study of Destructive Obedience (1963). Six degrees of separation.
1922 — 1982 Erving Goffman— Symbolic interation
1928 — Howard Becker — Outsiders (1963)
1917 — 2011 Harold Garfinkel — Ethnomethodology
1897 — 1990 Norbert Elias — Civilising and Decivilising processes
1925 — 2002 William Schutz — Iinclusion, control and affection (1958, 1966)
1897 — 1979 Wilfred Bion — Group Dynamics (1961) and psychoanalysis influences: Wilfred Trotter, Ernest Jones
1938 — Bruce Tuckman — Tuckman’s stages of group development (1965)
1923 — 2008 Robert Zajonc — Social facilitation of dominant and subordinate responses (1966)
1928 — 2012 Ulric Neisser — Cognitive psychology (1967)
1947 — Abelson et. al.— Cognitive consistency (1968)
1927 — 1993 Jones &Davis — Attribution theory (1965)
1929 — Darley & Latane — Prosocial behaviour (1968)
1952 — Fiske & Taylor — Naive scientist model
1916 — 1962 C. Wright Mills — Sociological imagination (1970)
1919 — 1982 Henri Tajfel — Group categorisation was enough to produce intergroup discrimination(1971)
1929 — Jurgen Habermans — Communicative rationality
1933 — Philip Zimbardo — Stanford Prison experiments (1971) — Deindivualisation
1926 — 1984 Michael Foucault
1926 — 1984 M. Scott Peck — Community stages
1927 — 1993 Jones & Goethals — Primacy effect and Recency effect (1973)
1927 — Serge Moscovici — Introduction a la psychologie sociale (1973) — social representations. (1961).
1925 — Albert Bandura — Social Learning Theory (1977). Social Foundations of Thought and Action (1986)
1947 — Theda Skocpol — States and Social Revolutions (1947)
1919 — 1982 Tajfel & Fraser — Introducing Social psychology (1978)
1919 — 1982 Tajfel & Turner — Social Identity Theory (1979)
1941 — Nisbett & Ross — Cognitive misers
1930 — 2002 Pierre Bourdieu — “Social Capital”
1930 — Immanuel Wallerstein — The modern world system
1929 — 2007 Jean Baudrillard — The Consumer Society (1970)
1926 — 1993 Donald Broadbent — Information processing (1985). Filter model of attention.
1936 — 2005 M. Scott Peck — The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace (1987).
1952 — Fiske & Taylor — Motivated Tactition (1991)
1938 — Anthony Giddens
1944 — Ulrich Beck — Risk society
1925 — Zygmunt Bauman— Social stratification
1947 — Robin Dunbar — Dunbar’s Number (1992).
J.R. Katzenbach & Smith —The Wisdom of Teams (1993) Transition from group to team
1926 — R. Meredith Belbin — The coming shape of organisation (1996). Belbin’s Nine team roles
1913 — 2001 Burns & Stalker — Mechanistic vs Organic organisation (1996).
1926 — R. Meredith Belbin — Beyond the team (2000). 6 differences between a team and group
1942 — Manuel Castells — The Rise of the Networked Society (1996)
Martin, Suls, & Wheeler — Psychology of Social Comparison (2001).
Donelson Forsyth — Group Dynamics (2006)
Aaron V. Cicourel — Cognitive Sociology (1974)
Harmon-Jones & Winkleman — Social Neuroscience (2007)
1909 — 2005 Peter Drucker — Father of modern management
1909 — 1993 Fred Emery & Eric Trist — Topology of organisational environments
1943 — Mark Granovetter — The Strength of weak ties (1973)
References
- Plato., The Republic, 360 BCE.
- Khaldun, Ibn., Muqaddimah ,378.
- Machiavelli, Niccolo., The Prince,1515.
- Ferguson, Adam., An Essay on the History of Civil Society, 1767.
- Zajonc, Robert B. & Sales, Stephen M., Social Facilitation of Dominant and Subordinate Responses, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 2, 1966. pp 160-168
- Belbin, R Meredith., Beyond The Team, Butterworth Heinemann, 2000.