The September issue of Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice commemorates the 25th anniversary of the journal by featuring articles on key topics in group dynamics research, including a road map for the next 25 years. The current editor of the journal, Giorgio A. Tasca, discusses key takeaways from the special issue.
What is the special issue about?
The special issue commemorates the 25th anniversary of Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice.
What is the significance of the issue?
For this issue, I invited each of the previous editors of the journal to write about a key topic related to group dynamics, review some of the literature, and speculate about what the next 25 years may bring for that topic. All of my predecessors, who are major figures of group psychology and group psychotherapy and are experts in their domains, contributed to this special issue.
Tell us about a few key takeaways.
- The concept of cohesion, which is often researched in group psychology and in group psychotherapy, is difficult to define and measure. Donelson R. Forsyth proposes that cohesion may be defined as a group’s degree of unity. He also presents preliminary data on a unified cohesion scale.
- Studying group functioning is complex because of the many layers of interactions that can occur. Dennis M. Kivlighan, Jr., outlines the use of actor-partner interdependence modeling and response surface analysis as recent data analytic developments that can capture the complexities of group functioning and move the field forward.
- Cooperation in groups is important for group and social functioning. However, cooperation is defined differently by experts and by laypeople. Craig D. Parks reviews these differing approaches to conceptualizing cooperation.
- Groups can provide round-robin data—that is, data from participants’ ratings of themselves and each other in groups. This approach to research may provide rich data reflecting the real-world complexities of group interactions. David K. Marcus reviews the research using the social relations model and suggests that researchers studying groups use this methodology.
- Group psychology and group psychotherapy research and theory exist in separate silos, despite their common history. Concepts like team cognition (from social and organizational research) and reflective functioning (from clinical research) have advanced their respective fields. I review these two concepts and point out significant overlaps and potential synergies that could move research on groups forward.
What are some practical implications of the articles featured in the issue?
The articles suggest that the field of research on groups is alive and well but complex. The constructs of cohesion and cooperation are good examples of how group concepts have real-world implications. Cohesion influences the success of various types of groups and teams. Forsyth argues that having a clear definition of cohesion (i.e., a group’s degree of unity) will help practitioners use its properties to enhance the performance of their groups (e.g., teams, organizations, therapy groups). And whereas cohesion refers to how a group can help an individual, cooperation refers to how an individual can help a group achieve collective goals. However, experts and laypeople see cooperation differently. Parks argues that for the public good, experts have to consider lay views of cooperation when trying to influence the public’s behaviors (e.g., when encouraging the lay public to accept public health mandates). This may require that experts find ways to translate research on cooperation to accommodate the lay public’s conceptualization of cooperation and thereby increase the effectiveness of public policy. The practical implications of Kivlighan’s research reviews on actor–partner interdependence models and of Marcus’s social relations model are less immediate but no less important. With these new data analytic methods, researchers will be able to study concepts that clinicians have long claimed are important, like mutual influence in groups and the impact of group composition on individual outcomes. Finally, the potential synergies between the concepts of team cognition and reflective functioning that I identify in my review suggest a number of practical implications. For example, when managers in organizations are composing teams for optimum performance, they might consider individual team members’ capacity to understand the mental state of others. Similarly, clinicians might consider enhancing the capacity of the group as a whole to hold in mind common procedures so that the group may achieve desired outcomes for its individual members.
Note: This article is in the Clinical Psychology topic area. View more articles in the Clinical Psychology topic area.