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Group Dynamics
A field in social psychology focusing on the study of groups and group process, especially the study of small groups. The famous social psychologist Kurt Lewin is usually credited with coining the term group dynamics. Lewin used the phrase to designate the scientific discipline that studies group dynamics.
Scholars and teachers use terms such as perceptions, motivation, goals, organization, interdependency, and interaction to define important qualities of groups. Group dynamics research has examined topics such as individual versus group performance, brainstorming, the risky shift phenomenon, groupthink, diffusion of responsibility, pressures to uniformity, power in groups, and motivational and structural properties of groups. Small-group research also has examined many characteristics of groups, including the physical environment (e.g., interaction distance, seating arrangements, leadership emergence, communication networks), personal environment ...