Trustworthiness and influence in task groups focused on a single group member

Task groups focused on helping a single group member perform well on a task, or the advice-seeking situation, is a familiar occurrence in everyday life: patients and physicians work together to help the patient manage his or her quality of life, students and teachers work together to ensure that the student achieves academic success, and lawyers meet with clients to organize evidence in favor of the client. Rare, however, is the formal application of group process theories to understand these situations. The omission is particularly unfortunate given the preponderance of research documenting inequities in the outcomes for the focal team member, such as the provision of health care to patients. Group process theories are rich with formal statements that explain the processes by which such inequities occur and sustain themselves, which can then be used to develop interventions. The goal of this dissertation is to present such an application in a variety of populations and settings. At the same time, the advice-seeking situation presents itself as an opportunity to extend what we know about groups. Crucial for these groups are patterns of influence and trustworthiness. The advice-seeker is transferring a part of his or her agency over to the other group member(s). In return, there is an expectation that the group holds knowledge that will be effective in making decisions about the advice-seeker’s situation. Whether the advice-seeker accepts this knowledge and it sways his or her decisionmaking is contingent on the perceived trustworthiness of the group. Our current claims about influence and trustworthiness will be tested to assess how well they apply to the advice-seeking situation. Moreover, as I detail in the chapters of this dissertation, the application reveals two interrelated insights on trustworthiness that have received little empirical or theoretical attention in previous research: 1) that it is shaped by the relational context, and 2) that advice-seekers may overor undertrust the group. These two insights, I suggest, describe key mechanisms by which inequities occur.