Observer's Expectation For The Behavioral Consistency Of Group Members:the Role Of Action Goal And Action Means

The effective prediction for the actions of others plays a key role in ensuring the smooth progress of social activities.Previous research have found that people can utilize the two dimensions of the goal-directed action(i.e.,action goal and action means)to predict actions of others and such prediction was based on whether the action meets the principle of rationality(i.e.,adopting the most efficient action means to realize the goal)or not from the individual level.However,action prediction not only occurs in the individual level but also happens in group situation.Recent studies have found that people tend to automatically classify individuals into a certain social group and understand their actions within the social category to which the individual belongs,thereby expecting group members to exhibit the same or similar behavior.However,this kind of studies was mainly based on single-dimensional action perspectives,and the goal-directed action in the group situation contains two dimensions: action goal and action means.Therefore,it is necessary to clarify whether and how people can establish expectation for the behavioral consistency of group members from the perspective of this two-dimensional construct.This study simulated group interaction situations through animated depictions,and used perceptual cues(spatial proximity and synchronous movements)to manipulate social group information,in order to explore the cognitive mechanisms underlying observer's expectation for the behavioral consistency of group members by six experiments in two studies.Three experiments in Study 1 were included to examine whether the observer establishes expectation for the behavioral consistency of group members according to the action goal when group cues were presented and the behavior falled into the principle of rationality.In Experiment 1,under the condition that there were group cues and the behavior was in accordance with the principle of rationality,it was investigated whether the observers established expectation for the behavioral consistency of group members according to the action goal.Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 tested whether the rationality of behavior or the existence of group cues was necessary to induce the effect in Expereiment 1,respectively.Consistent with the logic of Study 1,the three experiments in Study 2 examined whether the observers were able to establish expectation for the behavioral consistency of group members based on the action means,when there were group cues but the behavior did not meet with the principle of rationality.In Experiment 4,under the condition that there are group cues and the behaviors are not in accordance with the principle of rationality,it was investigated whether the observers establishes expectation for the behavioral consistency of group members according to the action means.Experiment 5 and Experiment 6 tested whether the irrationality of behavior or the existence of group cues was necessary to explain the findings of Experiment 4.A series of experiments in the two studies found that in group interaction situations,when there are group cues and the behaviors conform to the principle of rationality,the observer tends to make the expectation of the predicted person's behavior consistent with other members of the group according to the action goal;when there are group cues and the behaviors do not conform to the principle of rationality,the observer tends to make expectation of the predicted person's behavior consistent with other members of the group based on the action means.This finding shows that in group situation,whether the goal-directed actions of group members meet the principle of rationality determines that people can establish expectation for the behavioral consistency of group members according to the action goal or the action means.The conclusions obtained do not only help people to understand the psychological mechanism of group interactions,but also have an enlightening significance for understanding the formation mechanisms of group customary behaviors.In addition,the new and effective experimental paradigm to test observer's expectation for group behavior provides a possible paradigm for further study of the cognitive neural mechanisms of group behavior.