The Impact of Collective Directional Movement and Similarity on Perception of Entitativity in Groups

Abstract

The aim of our research was to investigate the role of collective directional movement and similarity and how these could impact perception of entitativity in groups. We argue that people perceive groups to be more entitative when they are travelling in a directional movement. We also argue that the perception of entitativity will be higher when the group is similar, compared to dissimilar groups. As this was a within subject’s design, each participant rated five different levels of entitativity within four scenarios. The scenarios depicted groups participating in an activity involving directional movement or a static activity, and the groups included either similar or different groups of people. Our results showed that perception levels were higher when groups where similar in appearance, and this was not impacted by whether the group was depicted in a travelling group or a static activity. Results generally showed no level of significance for collective directional movement scenarios, and no significant results for the interaction between CDM and similarity. Thus, the results show that similarity has a more significant role in group perception. The results discuss why these results may have occurred, and further research is suggested.