Group Communication Theories

General Features

From its inception, theories of group communication have aimed to develop practical knowledge about group behavior that can aid us as group participants and facilitators. This applied emphasis has steered group theory and research toward common and purposeful group settings, particularly decision-making entities (e.g., juries and councils) and task-oriented bodies (e.g., athletic and work teams). The development of theory in a [Page 456]university setting with limited research funding has also led to an emphasis on student groups with limited shared history and straightforward assignments. Though recent research has moved in wider directions, these constraints meant that group theories had relatively little to say about principally social/emotional groups (more commonly studied in social work and psychotherapy) and long-lived clans, collectives, and organizational groups (regularly studied in sociology, anthropology, and industrial-organizational psychology).

Epistemological and methodological traditions have also shaped group communication theory. Group communication scholars have principally developed theory within an empiricist approach to knowledge. That is, group communication theorists have sought to develop general propositions about group behavior, or at least context-dependent statements about how and why groups behave the way they do. By contrast, relatively few group communication theories have concerned themselves principally with the interpretation of action (i.e., the hermeneutic investigation of the subjective experience and meaning of group life). Even rarer are critical theories of group behavior, which provide philosophical advances in our understandings of moral/ethical questions, such as modes of domination and exploitation within groups. Significant exceptions to these tendencies exist in modern approaches, particularly the more recent move toward studying bona fide groups, discussed below, and feminist critiques of group theory and practice.

Methodologically, group communication scholars have confronted formidable obstacles that have alternately spurred innovation and stunted the growth of group research. From the outset, group communication scholars had to decide what constituted group behavior; after all, a group does not have its own brain, which contains the motivations, memories, mores, and meanings that shape behavior. To rectify this problem, group researchers have pioneered means of aggregating individual-level data, such as questionnaires, to identify group-level attributes. Within-and-between statistical analysis helps theorists distinguish between with in-group variance (i.e., members' divergent levels of satisfaction with a group decision) and between-group differences (i.e., between wholly satisfied and unsatisfied groups). Group theorists have also foregrounded the concept of the decision rule (e.g., consensus vs. majority rule), a means whereby a group itself (and researchers) can determine the aggregate will of a group's members.

The methodological demands of group theory have also spurred the creation of intensive behavioral observation and coding systems. One of the most famous and widely used systems is the interaction process analysis tool created by Robert Bales in 1950 (refined as Systematic Multiple Level Observation of Groups in 1970); this tool permitted efficient categorization of each individual statement made by the members of a group. Subsequent advances made possible not only the classification of individual actions but also the recognition of patterns of communication behavior over the course of a group's life span. This allowed theorists to model how one member's statement might influence the next utterance, ultimately producing complex sequences and chains that shape the character of the group and its outcomes.

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