The Influence Of Group Size On Group Willingness To Join And Psychological Mechanism Research

In life,people often encounter a variety of groups,which are often classified as intimate groups,social groups,task groups,loosely connected groups,and so on.In addition,there is an extremely important difference between groups—group size,which can cause different perceptions and evaluations of groups simply by their size.However,since social cognition varies among individuals and is contextualized,this study attempts to systematically explore the mechanisms and moderators of group size on individuals’ social cognition and intergroup interaction.Overall,four experiments were conducted to investigate the factors that affect people’s consideration of joining a group by introducing affective attitude,instrumental attitude,and corresponding external situations to enrich the research on social perceptions of group size.Study 1 presented groups using a picture version(Study 1a,sample size109)and a text version(Study 1b,sample size 120)together to examine the effect of group size on the willingness to join a group.The results found that people were more willing to join smaller groups,and the word cloud collation and visualization results were able to show that people valued the warmth as pect and the physical advantage aspect of the group more when joining the group.Study 2 explored the psychological mechanisms between group size to group willingness to join(sample size 122).It was found that when the scenario was not clear,the larger the group size,the more people would think about the group’s intentions(making warmth ratings lower),and finally making subjects less willing to approach the group,and the chain mediating effect of group size-physical advantage-warmth/goodwill-willingness to join was significant.Study 3 used affective and instrumental attitudes as moderating variables to construct a model with moderated chain mediation(sample size 162).It was found that affective attitudes moderated the group size-physical advantage,group size-warmth/goodwill,and group size-willingness to join pathways of the chain mediation model.Study 4 added an affective need scenario(outing,sample size 166)and an instrumental need scenario(tackling the task,sample size 108)to explore.It was found that the chain mediator of group size-physical advantage-warmth/goodwill-willingness to join was significant in the affective need scenario,and the chain mediator of group size-physical advantage-willingness to join was significant in the instrumental need scenario.Based on the above study,the chain mediators of physical advantage and warmth/goodwill between group size and willingness to join were found,and further found that affective attitudes played a moderating role,while affective and instrumental demand scenarios also played a moderating role in opposite directions.The inclusion of physical advantage,affective attitude,and instrumental attitude variables in this study is an extension and innovation to the field of group size research,which has certain theoretical and practical implications.The findings provide greater clarity on what factors people consider when joining a group when group size is the only cue,and what choices they make in different scenarios.