Implications for Social Behavior

Thus, group composition has been demonstrated to predict the extent to
which people pay attention to and are aware of, themselves and specific facets
of themselves, and to predict a variety of social behaviors including participation
in religious groups, bystander intervention in emergencies, worker productivity,
stuttering in front of an audience, and conformity.
For example, an analysis of the participation of congregation members in
their religious groups documented the powerful effect of group composition
on behavior of group members. As the size of the congregation increased
relative to the number of ministers, the congregation members
were less likely to participate in the group (in terms of activities such as attending
worship services, becoming lay ministers, or “inquiring for Christ”).
In this instance, becoming “lost in the crowd” impaired the normal selfregulation
behaviors necessary for participation. Alternatively, analysis of
the behavior of stutterers in front of an audience also documented the powerful
effects of group composition on the behavior of group members. As
the size of the audience increased relative to the number of stutterers speaking,
the verbal disfluencies (stuttering and stammering) of the speakers increased.
In this instance, becoming the center of attention exaggerated the
normal self-regulation behaviors necessary for speech, to the point of interfering
with those behaviors. Group composition’s effects of making the individual
lost in the crowd or the center of attention are not inherently good or
bad; positive or negative effects depend on the context.