Abstract

Groups differ from each other in many ways. In this study, an attempt is made to examine the extent of entitativity which the people perceive about various groups. The Group Entitativity Scale was constructed based on Campbell's concept of entitativity. The scale included seven criteria such as similarity, common goals, cohesiveness, outcome dependency, interaction between group members, group permeability, and group esteem. In study 1, 288 students rated a number of different groups on 7 criteria. The inter-relationship between criteria was investigated. The result shows that five criteria, excluding group permeablity and group esteem, were significantly correlated with each other showing high reliability among all various group types. On the basis of above, study 2 was conducted, designating high and low entitativity groups in order to examine how inference made about the two kinds of groups differed. A group of professors and politicians were designated as the high entitativity group, while the Keongsang-do and Chunla-do group were designated as the low entitativity group. 573 students rated members of each group on 40 traits used to describe members of each group in the previous study. Cluster analysis was conducted in order to investigate the effect of group entitativity on trait inference for members of each group. The result showed that 2 clusters were revealed in high entitativity groups, and 5 clusters in low entitativity groups. This result indicate that information processing for groups differs depending on the extent of entitativity of a person's perception for certain group types.