Soviet Psychology

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The New Status of Psychological Theory

Concerning Groups and Collectives

A. V. Petrovsky

To cite this article: A. V. Petrovsky (1983) The New Status of Psychological Theory Concerning
Groups and Collectives, Soviet Psychology, 21:4, 57-78

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A . V. Petrovsky

THE NEW STATUS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY

CONCERNING GROUPS AND COLLECTIVES

The following is the second translated paper by A. V.

Petrovsky (1977)on the "collective"; it is part of a brief
series designed to demonstrate the historical develop-
ment of a major theoretical concept and, ultimately, its
manifestation in empirical research.
In the previously published paper (Soviet Psychology,
1982-83, XXI [2], 3-21), one could discern the problems
encountered by those who attempted to apply Western
models from the literature on small groups to the So-
viet reality in the collective, a social organization ex-
perienced in the West with great rarity. The collec-
tive became construed as a group "at a higher level
of development" than those typically studied in West-
e r n psychology of small groups, and first hints at a
"stratometric" conception of the collective, one in
which interpersonal relations are shaped by the group's
activity, were offered.
In the present paper the points of departure from
Western notions are more clearly delineated, the strat-
ometric formulation is more completely developed, and

Russian text 0 1977 by "Nauka" Publishers.

Voprosy filosofii, 1977, No. 5, pp. 48-60.
A. V. Petrovsky is associated with the Moscow Pedagogical
Institute.

57
58 A . V. Petrovsky

results from research conductedduring the several years

following the first statement of the theoryare introduced.

Lloyd H. Strickland and

Eugenia Lockwood*

The present situation in Soviet social psychology cannot be

assessed in isolation from the processes taking place in West-
ern, primarily American, social psychology.
In the United States, where social psychology started devel-
oping earlier and where it has advanced further than anywhere
else, many psychologists today use the fatal word c r i s i s more
and more frequently. Five years ago, at the 20th Psychologi-
cal Congress, in Tokyo, an important American social psy-
chologist, McGuire, said that the period of the 18th International
Psychological Congress, when social psychology was flooded
with grey-haired colonels, enterprising young men, and enthu-
siastic young women, had been idyllic. He compared the con-
dition of modern social psychology with the peaceful sleep of
-
the butterfly on the church bell What will happen to the but-
terfly when the bell starts ringing? To McGuire, the future
does not look very bright.
In some respects he is certainly right. The methodological
c r i s i s eating away at American psychology is apparent. For
this critical phenomenon American psychologists find numerous
explanations, for example, the little validity of the social psy-
chological experiment (laboratory data do not correspond to the
real facts of social life), the professional incompetence of re-
searchers who do not have scientific data for solving practical
tasks, and many other factors. But the basic reason for the un-

*This paper has been translated by Eugenia Lockwood, a gradu-

ate student in Comparative Literature, and edited by Lloyd H.
Strickland, of the Department of Psychology andthe Institute of So-
viet and East European Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa,
Canada KlS5B6. Their work was supportedby a grant from the
Faculty of Graduate Studies of Carleton University.
The Psychological Theory of Groups and Collectives 59

fortunate consequences of the intensive development of social

psychology in the United States is its obvious methodological
weakness. This is probably most evident in studies of the psy-
chology of small groups.
The absence of a unified theoretical basis for understanding
various social psychological phenomena is typical of Western
social psychology. Social psychological reductionism rules :
the laws of human behavior in various groups are reduced to
essentially mechanical dependencies. The members of the
group submit, o r do not submit, to group pressure; some indi-
viduals attract the group, others repel it, o r the group pushes
some individuals out of its environment; as the number of con-
tacts inside the group increases, the group solidarity increases,
as does the number of its members. The group links become
thin and tear. There w a s time when behaviorism, one of the
most influential currents in American psychology, was ready
to characterize man predominantly as a mechanism reacting
to various stimuli. Today, the inheritors of behaviorism and
other theoretical schools in social psychology see in any social
group a mechanical apparatus of superficially o r externally con-
nected and interacting individuals.
But is it true that whatever takes place in any small group
takes place in the collective? Here lies the methodological,
o r rather, the ideological, difference between Soviet and bour-
geois psychological science.
The paramount importance of the problem of the collective
in Soviet social psychology is linked with the demands of the
time and with tasks posed by the 24th and 25th Congresses of
the Communist P a r t y of the Soviet Union: to seek and find ade-
quate, scientifically valid ways of formation of the active life
position p a s i c orientation - Eds.] of the person through edu-
cating him in the collective and through the collective. It ne-
cessitates an understanding of the social psychological laws of
the functioning of the collective, and personal growth in it. To
see and understand a person in the collective, and to see the
collective in a person (living in him and changing him) means
to findanswers to the most important questions social psychology
60 A. V. Petrovsky
faces in the epoch of developed socialism. There is no doubt
that, in order to solve this problem, it is necessary to break
with the tradition in the truly infinite number of studies of
group processes in capitalist countries and to demand respon-
sible work from the many authors of social psychological papers
and studies conducted in this country, in which this tradition has
been accepted rather uncritically.
The central idea of the approach that we offer is the following:
the social psychological laws of the collective and of the person
in the collective are principally and qualitatively different from
the laws of group dynamics, as represented b y the apparently
permanent tradition of social psychology in the West. To un-
derstand these differences and to interpret them theoretically,
to establish them operationally, to point out their empirical
referents, and to show their system character through the sys-
tem of methodological means of their discovery, to reveal their
importance for solving applied and, especially, pedagogical
problems: solution of all these tasks is attempted within the
framework of a special theoretical concept we call a strato-
metric concept.
When we formulated this concept in 1972-1973, we were think-
ing about developing a new approach to the analysis of inter-
personal relations that would enable u s to analyze the multi-
level structure of the group process and to c a r r y out the cor-
responding measurements in its "levels" (strata) with the pur-
pose of revealing the principal differences between highly de-
veloped groups (collectives) and diffuse groups, associations,
and unions.
The stratometric approach enabled us to resist both (a) at-
tempts to apply a quantitative approach to the phenomena of
group activity, ignoring the qualitative characteristics of vari-
ous groups, and (b) a tendency to ignore the quantitative charac-
teristics of groupprocesses, oriented toward speculative and
often purely verbal description of these characteristics.
The very first studies of social psychological phenomena,
such as collectivist self-determination (CSD)and values-ori-
ented unity (VOU),have already shown that consideration of
The Psychological Theory of Groups and Collectives 61

group values and the content of group activity radically changes

the notion of the essence of interpersonal relations in a group
and that the parameters of group activity under these conditions
assume quite different characteristics.
When we attempt to interpret experimental data and theoreti-
cal conclusions obtained on the basis of the stratometric con-
cept at the present stage of its development, we can see that,
on the one hand, this approach has proved to be fruitful and
heuristic for solving a number of concrete problems and, on
the other hand, has enabled us to start constructing a suffi-
ciently complete psychological theory of the collective, which
may enable us to counter every aspect of traditional psycho-
logical theory about small groups:

The fact that the stratometric concept exists today not

only as a system of hypothetical suppositions but as some-
thing based on solid experimental testing permits us to
regard it as one of the special theories in Marxist social
psychology, and hence to base our further theoretical re-
search on the model of the group it offers. (G. M. An-
dreeva, Voprosy Psikhologii, 1977, No. 2, p. 9)

The psychological theory of the collective based on the strato-

-
metric approach let us call it the theory of activity media-
-
tion in interpersonal relations presents a system of state-
ments and proofs and contains methods of explaining and pre-
dicting the appearance of various social psychological phenom-
ena and effects in intragroup activity. Thus, interpretation of
the active group emotional identification (AGEI) resulting from
the principles of the stratometric concept enables us to pre-
dict the appearance of its new manifestations, for example, the
active group emotional identification of a newcomer in the col-
lective, and its absence in the case of a newcomer in a diffuse
group. In other words, the cognized law that governs inter-
personal relationships presupposes, as is typical of a theory,
a transition from one statement to another without turning
directly to sensory experience. The latter statement certainly
62 A . V. Petrovsky

does not mean a rejection of experimental testing of the hypoth-

esis resulting from the obtained theoretical facts, but makes
valid the suppositions about the end results of these experiments.
The task of constructing the psychological theory of the col-
lective necessitates a comparison between the basic assump-
tions of the stratometric concept and the social psychological
theories popular in the West during the past fifty years, es-
pecially in American social psychology, which plays a dominant
role in the social psychological thought of Western countries.
It is the social psychology of the United States that has defined
the tradition of social psychological studies that has served as
orientation for almost all studies in this branch of psychologi-
cal science. We have already made an attempt (in a number of
papers) to compare the basic positions of the stratometric ap-
proach with interactionism, one of the most influential schools
in American social psychology. But is it only interactionism
that can be an object of comparison?
G. M. Andreeva and R. L. Krechevsky have discussed the
basic theoretical orientations in modern American social psy-
chology, such as neobehaviorist, neo-Freudian, cognitivist, and
interactional, and have outlined their theoretical approaches to
social psychological phenomena,
A careful analysis of the above social psychological systems,
or rather, of groups of empirical studies united by a common
approach, brings us to a curious conclusion. They differ es-
sentially in their ways of interpreting the empirical data ob-
tained, but not in the choice of their objects, tasks, and methods
of social psychological research and, most importantly, not in
their implicitly represented understanding of the essence of
intragroup interactions. Whether we compare the field theory
of Cartwright and Zander o r the reinforcement theory derived
from Skinnerian concepts of Thibaut and Kelley, we can see dif-
ferences in the interpretation of the forces coming into con-
flict in the sphere of group processes, but not in the choice of
the object of study. The object of study remains individual
interaction, defined in one case through the structure of the
field and in another case by the type and amount of reward. The
The Psychological Theory of Groups and Collectives 63

paths of study of small groups are always the same: they are
the psychological parameters of a group's dynamics depending
on its size, level of group demands, intensity of group pres-
sure, reciprocity in sociometric choices, and so on. One gets
the impression that, although obviously different in theoretical
reflection, separate schools of Western social psychology make
use of the same methodological assumptions and deal with the
same unchanging model of group processes in their empirical
studies. This is how they supply experimental data filling nu-
merous American textbooks and manuals on the social psy-
chology of small groups. The fact that the theoretical orienta-
tions of various social psychological schools do not reflect em-
pirical data creates a false impression of methodological neu-
trality in the experimental social psychological data, and this,
as we have frequently emphasized, sometimes misleads certain
Soviet psychologists, who are prepared to argue with the neo-
Freudian o r neobehaviorist theories, but who easily assimilate
variants of these theories and accept their general model of
group processes as an adequate one.
If our assumption corresponds to the actual state of affairs
in American psychology, we must compare our stratometric ap-
proach not with separate theoretical orientations in U. S. psy-
chology, but with the generally accepted tradition of American
social psychology.
In other words, the objects of comparison should be, on the
one hand, the traditional, taken for granted (as it were) model
of the group (that is, group processes, group dynamics, group
interaction) that is implicit in the foundation of empirical social
psychological works in the West, whatever the initial theoreti-
cal orientation of the experimenter, and, on the other hand, con-
sciously opposed to this model, one of group processes based
on the stratometric concept of intragroup activity.
In connection with the above, we shall t r y to consider basic
positions according to which the approach of the theory of medi-
ation of activity differs %om the traditional social psychology
of small groups.
Whereas the psychology of small groups, whatever its theoret-
64 A. V. Petrovsky

ical orientation, typically regards interpersonal relations in

terms of direct interaction, that is, pressure, attraction, sub-
mission, empathy, etc., the social psychological theory under
discussion regards interpersonal relations as mediated through
the content of common group activity. This proposition, re-
placing the assumption of direct connection within the frame-
work of social psychological study, is ouf primary and defini-
tive starting point. The importance of mediation of activity is
present in all phenomena of interpersonal relations described
in our studies. Contrasting degrees of conformity-nonconform-
ity with collectivist self-determination (A. V. Petrovsky, I. A.
Oboturova, L. A. Tuvovskaya, L. A. Glazova) a r e possible be-
cause resistance to group pressure is defined through the fac-
tor mediating group pressure, that is, the aims and values of
the common activity. Value-orientation unity as a form of group
solidarity is revealed in the aims and values of common activ-
-
ity (V. V. Shpalinsky). Object values unity a parameter de-
-
veloping the idea of studying value-orientation unity is re-
vealed in the acts of mediation of individual activities through
the unitary values-content of the object of common activity
(A. I. Dontsov). Recorded as a social psychological phenomenon
(R. S. Vaisman, L. E. Komarova), social apperception attracts
the attention of the group to evaluation of the personal qualities
of group members, which a r e determined by the content of the
group activity. Active group emotional identification (AGEI)
presupposes taking into account moral values, which mediate
acts of interpersonal identification (V. A. Petrovsky, A. I.
Papkin, M. A. Turevsky). Turning our attention to the motives
of choice focuses it not on the fact of the choice in the system
of interpersonal relations, but on motives as a link mediating
the choice and group differentiation (V. A. Petrovsky, N. M.
Shvaleva). We could give even more examples.
The idea of activity mediation is heuristic for creating new
concepts. Thus, G. M. Andreeva, in outlining a theoretical
scheme for studying social perception, gives a methodological
analysis of the existence of a certain separation of differentia-
tion in Western social psychology, of, on the one hand, studying
The Psychological Theory of Groups and Collectives 65

groups (group structures, solidarity, norms, pressure, etc.)

and, on the other hand, studying processes (communication, in-
teraction, social perception, and so on):

W i t h such relatively independent coexistence of two

types of studies, the most important category of social
psychological analysis, interpersonal relations, is forced,
as it were, into a separate sphere of study, whereas it
could be a link in studying groups and processes. Inter-
personal relations are naturally thought of ;ts relations
within certain groups and as the processes of communica-
tion or interaction; but a problem is that the question of
the connection between interpersonal relations in the
group and its activity remains open, as does the question
of how interpersonal relations a r e realized in communi-
c a t G s and interactions when individual members per-
form some common activity, The factor of interpersonal
relations can link the understanding of groups and the un-
derstanding of processes taking place in the group only
when the relations themselves a r e interpreted as being
mediated through common activities. (G. M. Andreeva.
- p. 4)
Ibid.,

We cannot but agree with her position.

Mediation of activity as an explanatory principle for under-
standing the essence of interpersonal relations in groups gives
rise to all the other principal differences among models of the
group and of group processes accepted b y us, which contra-
dicts the traditional approach to the analysis of social psy-
chological phenomena in Western psychology. First of all, it
is manifest in the fact that Western psychology interprets a
group as the sum of communicative acts and emotional attrac-
tions, which gives it the nature of an emotional-psychological
community. In this respect we find no differences among the
adherents of field theory, group dynamics, interactionism, so-
ciometric concepts, etc. In contrast to this, in stratometric
theory a group is considered to be part of society, with mean-
66 A. V. Petrovsky

ingful characteristics related to its activity and values, and

thus is interpreted as a social psychological community. Such
an approach to the group is obvious in the difference between
solidarity as values-orientation unity and solidarity as a result
of the frequency of communicative acts and emotional contacts,
or as dependent on the increase in the number of acts of collec-
tivist self-determination and reduction in the number of con-
formity reactions, owing to the intensity of the activity directed
at the achievement of socially important goals. The same can
be observed in many other aspects.
Traditional (Western) social psychology regards the small
group as representative of the most important characteristics
of the interrelations and interactions of people in society. So-
viet sociological and social psychological literature (B. D.
Parygin, A. S. Kuzmin, and others) have frequently emphasized
the ideological aspects of this unfounded interpretation of small-
group characteristics and have rightly pointed to the incorrect-
ness of substituting psychological relations for socioeconomic
ones. Another side of this mistaken position has not been dealt
with, however: the place occupied by the traditionally studied
and described small group among other communities consti-
tuting a complex social system. From the point of view of the
stratometric concept, a small group is not a representative
model of a typical human community, but a particular example
of a lower level of group development. The following parallel
might seem too daring: to judge group psychology solely on
the basis of classic study of small groups has about the same
validity as judging human psychology on the basis of ape be-
havior.
It should be emphasized that traditional social psychology,
although it distinguishes various groups according to their size,
duration of their existence, type of leadership, degree of soli-
darity, composition, etc., does not differentiate them according
to their level of development. It does not distinguish higher-
level groups, which, in terms of their parameters, are quali-
tatively different from traditionally studied small groups. In
this connection, all Western social psychological theories con-
The Psychological Theory of Groups and Collectives 67

tain the implicit notion that the laws of interpersonal relations

revealed in a small group can be extrapolated to any other
groups of the same size, the same duration of existence, the
same composition, etc. If, for example, a social psychological
experiment reveals that the perception of a group leader by in-
dividual members depends on the size of the group, and that
with increasing size of the group its members lower the evalua-
tion of the Yhuman features" of the leader (Medalia, 1954), then
traditionally there is not even a doubt that this law can be made
universal and extrapolated to any other group. Similarly, if
Flanders & Havermark (1960) demonstrate that praise b y the
leader of several selected members of the group acts as a prin-
ciple of ''divide and conquer" and generates differences in the
sociometric stat,us of the group members, then, again, this find-
ing functions as a general social psychological law, equally ap-
plicable to a chance group o r to a group with a high degree of
solidarity, united b y common goals and values. Without even
a mention of the limited sphere of their action, these "univer-
sal lawst' appear on the pages of the textbooks and manuals of
social psychology.
The stratometric concept, unlike traditional social psychology,
distinguishes among groups at various levels of development
with the help of only two criteria. First, the absence o r pres-
ence of the mediation of interpersonal relations through the con-
tent of group activity (thus, diffuse groups are separated from
-
other, more highly developed groups) and, second, by the social
importance of group activity (which makes it possible to dis-
tinguish a collective from other highly developed groups).
Clearly, it is possible to build a theoretical model of groups
and, with its help, better understand the opposition of the basic
social psychological parameters of groups at different levels
of development. This model enables u s to define geometrically
the space where any type of group could be located. The vec-
t o r s forming this space are, on the one hand, the degree of
mediation in interpersonal relations (vector C) and, on the other
hand, the content side of the mediation, developing in two op-
- in the direction consistent (in its most
posite directions: (a)
68 A . V. Petrovsky

general form) with social progress (for a developed socialist

society %ocial progresstf means, in the long run, the building
of communism); (b) in a direction inconsistent with social prog-
ress, We shall label vector A social development of the medi-
ating factors, and vector B, their antisocial development.

Figure 1. Vectors defining the space in which groups at dif-

ferent levels of development may be located.

Now, using three vectors, A, B, and C , we shall construct

Figure 1 and analyze its components. Box I in Figure 1 has
all the necessary signs of the collective consistent with the de-
mands of social progress: high (in this case maximal) social
importance of the factors, defining and mediating interpersonal
relations to the maximum degree. This is a collective with a
high degree of solidarity. Box I1 represents a community in
which a high degree of development of social values is only in-
significantly mediating group processes. It is possible that
this group has been recently established and its common ac-
tivities have not yet been properly established. Here, for ex-
ample, we can expect a relatively high values orientation unity,
in terms of general moral values, but relatively low values ori-
entation unity with regard to the goals of group activity (if they
are already present) and to the participants in the work process.
Here the success of one member does not ensure the success of
the activity of others, and the failure of one does not influence
The Psychological Theory of Groups and Collectives 69

the results of another. Moral values function in such a group,

but they are not a result of a long process of communication
and common work, but rather are brought in from the wide so-
cial environment, and their further destiny depends on whether
the collective activity will continue and reinforce them daily.
Box III represents a group with a high level of mediation in
interpersonal relations, but the factors through which they are
mediated are highly antisocial, reactionary, and hostile to-
ward social progress. The Mafia, an organized and actively
functioning gang, o r any other antisocial association could as-
sume the position corresponding to the location of this figure.
Box IV represents a community in which human relations are
not actually mediated through the common factors of their com-
mon activity; even if such mediation can be recorded, the anti-
social nature of these mediating factors deprives this activity
of any social value and channels it in the direction of realizing
the private, narrow interests of each individual member.
Finally, Box V represents a typical diffuse group, in which
both the social value of the mediating factors and the degree
of their expression in the system of interpersonal interaction
is found to be at the zero point. An excellent example of this
would be an experimental group made up of various people who
are given a task of no social importance (as is done in the
studies of conformity, for example).
Any social group can be placed in the above space. Every
type of activity possesses its own scale of mediation of inter-
personal relations, its social value, and its collective-forming
force.
Specification of the collective as a group in which the group
processes are mediated through the content of the common, so-
cially valuable activity introduces a new object of study previ-
ously unknown in traditional Western psychology. Activity
mediation functions as a system-forming characteristic of the
collective.
It would certainly be an exaggeration to say that the strato-
metric concept revealed the collective as a subject of social
psychological study. The study of the collective has always oc-
70 A . V. Petrovsky

cupied a significant place in the works of Soviet psychologists

(K. K. Platonov, L. I. Ymanski, E. S. Kuzmin, E. V. Shorokhova,
etc.), who have emphasized the socially directed activity of the
collective as a group of the highest level of development and
studied the ways of its formation. These works, however, did
not identify the qualitative psychological characteristics of in-
terpersonal relations in a collective compared with other groups.
Neither did they demonstrate the peculiarities of the structure
of group activities in the collective, o r emphasize the impos-
sibility of transferring the regularities true for a group of a
low level of development to the collective (nor, in the opposite
direction, from the collective to the diffuse group). There were
no suggested methods of study relating to comprehension of the
essence of group processes in the collective, nor were there
selected quantitative indices reflecting social psychological
phenomena in the collective. A l l this has become possible, as
will be clear from the positions of the stratometric approach.
A first position in this connection consists in the fact that
traditional psychology held the mistaken notion that social psy-
chological regularities in any group could, in principle, be re-
duced to the general regularities o r laws of group dynamics.
The social psychological phenomena of the collective cannot be
discovered in groups at a lower level of development. For ex-
ample, the first phenomenon discovered by us, collectivist self-
determination, could not be discovered in a diffuse group, in
which there is no common link mediating individual behavior
and the single, inevitable alternative to conformity is there-
fore nonconformity. This also holds for the phenomenon of ac-
tive group emotional identification and for all other phenomena
in the sphere of interpersonal relations in the collective.
A second position is the following: Contrary to accepted opin-
ion, according to which social psychological laws considered
true for any group in general are identical for the collective
o r , even if different, vary insignificantly with respect to the
phenomena of interpersonal relations and the laws to which they
are subjected, these laws are not just different from those of
diffuse groups, but qualitatively different, sometimes as if
The Psychological Theory of Groups and Collectives 71

turned upside down o r bearing the "opposite sign."

This statement may be illustrated by the following example,
in which we use a purely hypothetical model, not yet verified
in experiment, but which is, however, quite probable (from the
point of view of the theory in question) and also very easily
demonstrable visually.
Interpersonal (interindividual) relations could be represented
by two lines of connection: activity lines (according to Makar-
enko, "responsible dependence") and purely personal lines. In this
case, the mutual influence of these two lines of interpersonal re-
lations, in the collective and in a chance community, will be
characterized by obvious asymmetry.
W e believe that in a diffuse group the connections necessarily
emerging during group activity (that is, if it starts forming) are
not yet capable of significantly influencing the interpersonal re-
lations among individual members, and their personal relations,
such as liking and disliking, greater o r lesser submissiveness,
and so on, easily break up the connections established during
the common activity. W e expect an opposite relationship in the
collective: the newly forming relations of responsible depen-
dence will exercise an important influence on personal connec-
tions, but the latter cannot destroy the system of group activity
and its work-based interrelations. There is some reason to be-
lieve that experimental testing will prove the existence of such
asymmetry.
The above thesis about the "reversal" of phenomena in groups
of different levels of development becomes the point of depar-
ture for discovering new, and reinterpreting already known, so-
cial psychological phenomena. Indeed, all the facts obtained on
the basis of the stratometric concept confirm this. W e shall
mention only a few. In introducing the definition of active group
emotional identification we immediately discover major dif-
ferences in its functioning in groups of different levels of de-
velopment. It is manifest not only in that active group emotional
identification prevails in the collective and is very weak in a
diffuse group; in the final analysis, this dependence could be
regarded as purely quantitative. But a qualitative difference
72 A. V. Petrovsky

is found in the fact that, in the collective, there will be no clear

dependence between the intensity of the active group emotional
identification and the number of group members, whereas in the
diffuse group, there should be an inversely proportional depen-
dence between the intensity of the active group emotional iden-
tification and the number of the individual members,
A s another example, the Ringelman effect, known since the
19208, which emphasizes the dependence of individual members'
efficiency on their number in the group, should not occur in a
collective, according to our original theoretical premise, be-
cause of a certain abundance, o r superabundance, of collective
activity, its suprasituational characteristics, o r , more pre-
cisely, its ffsupernormativity.ft Here we mean the basic ori-
enation of the person, encouraging him, under conditions of com-
munist labor, to "break" the norms (set by industrial superiors)
and surpass the limits of the planned assignment, to volunteer
for higher norms and duties (without which Stakhanovism and
similar phenomena are impossible to imagine),
An, important circumstance in this respect is an opportunity
to reinterpret group phenomena in a way that eliminates contra-
dictions in various data obtained b y different researchers in
group dynamics. An important study of the correlation between
the intensity of emotional communication in the group and its
efficiency was conducted (by R. S. Vaisman) in our laboratory,
"Personality psychology in the collective." A review of the lit -
erature on this problem yields contradictory findings. Some
researchers find a positive correlation, while others discover
a negative one, between the above variables. The cause of this
contradiction lies in their attempts to apply their conclusions
to groups "in general." The differentiation of groups according
to the factor of mediation through the content of their common
activity eliminates this seeming contradiction. As the experi-
ment showed, the relationship between work efficiency and the
beneficial nature of emotional-psychological interrelations in
the collective was positive, whereas in less-developed groups
it was negative. The contradictory nature of the conclusions
reached by researchers working within the framework of the
The Psychological Theory of Groups and Collectives 73

traditional approach to phenomena of group dynamics is gen-

erally not an exception, but the rule. This is not surprising.
Regardless of the fact that the research paradigm of the psy-
chologist who is following the traditional scheme does not take
into account differences among various groups based on their
level of development in work relations, groups themselves ob-
jectively possess these differences, in greater o r lesser de-
gree, and display them in the experiments, which produces the
contradiction in the results. This certainly happens when the
experimenter works not in a laboratory, but with a real group.
Thus, Sherif, in his experiments on ways of eliminating group
conflict, hits on the idea of the organization of common activity
as a means of solving a conflict and eliminating the tension in
group relationships. Naturally, the characteristics of the
group before and after group activity will be different, and their
correlation with other variables will produce opposite results.
Hence, traditional social psychology is in trouble, not because
it does not reflect in its paradigm of experimental research the
activity parameters of group processes, but because, even if it
does take these parameters into account, it does not orient it-
self toward them as the basis for a differential approach to
groups of various levels of development. A l l this gives the the-
ory of activity mediation the right and the methodological basis
to carry out a cardinal revision of the immense fund of experi-
mental facts accumulated b y traditional social psychology, with
the aim of reinterpretation of the obtained experimental data,
paying special attention to the contradictory nature of the con-
clusions reached by various researchers.
The third position of the stratometric concept is fixed in its
very name. Whereas in traditional social psychology group pro-
cesses a r e not hierarchical with respect to the group activity,
its aims and principles, they are in the hierarchical collective,
forming a multilayer structure. In this multilayer structure
we can discover several strata, possessing various psychologi-
cal characteristics, that illustrate various social psychological
regularities. W e shall describe these strata as they appear to us
at this stage in the development of the theoryof activity mediation.
74 A . V. Petrovsky

Figure 2. Levels of the stratometric concept of the collective.

The central link of group structure A (see Figure 2) is formed

b y the group activity itself, its object, socioeconomic and socio-
political characteristics. In its essence this is a nucleus rela-
tive to all other social psychological strata, yet it is a nonpsy-
chological formation. It is the content characteristics of a group
as a collective that is part of the social system. In our labora-
tory, A. S. Morozov, in "The psychology of the person in a col-
lective," made a first attempt to devise empirical indices that
could be reduced to more general indicators of areas of assess-
ment of objective collective activity, that is, to establish the gen-
eral characteristics of this nonpsychological nucleus of group
processes in the collective. Thus, three criteria for assess-
ment of the groupas a collective were articulated: first, assess -
ment of the fulfillment of the main social function by the collec-
tive (the success in participation in the social division of labor);
second, evaluation of the group's adherence to the social norms
(for collectives in our society, adherence to the socialist way of
life); three, assessment of the group's ability to ensure that all
its members have opportunities for personal development of
their personalities. A l l psychological characteristics of the col-
lective happen to be dependent on these nuclear, nonpsychologi-
cal formations. The social-historical determines the psycho-
logical; this Marxist thesis is the foundation of the theory of
mediation of activity. Disclosing the above areas of assess-
ment of the collective's objective activity renders valid social
psychological parameters of the group on a different level of
The Psychological Theory of Groups and Collectives 75

development, classifying a group as a collective (when the three

criteria are sufficiently high).
Following the nonpsychological stratum is the nuclear layer B.
It is the first layer that is essentially psychological, in which
the relations of each individual member to the group activity
-
are fixed its tasks, aims, the principles on which it is based,
the motivation of the activity, its social meaning for each in-
dividual member"
Work is now under way on designing research programs that
would take into account the dominant role of the attitude of the
members of the collective toward the group activity in the de-
velopment of the system of interpersonal relations in the col-
lective.
The second psychological stratum, C, localizes the charac-
teristics of interpersonal relations mediated through the con-
tent of the common activity (its aims, tasks, and progress) and
the principles and value orientations accepted in the group,
which are, in the final analysis, the projections of the ideologi-
cal constructs operative in the society. It is here, as was men-
tioned above, that all the described phenomena of group activ-
ity should belong. Mediation of activity is the principle of the
existence and of the understanding of the phenomena of the sec-
ond psychological layer.
Recently, R. S. Vaisman discussed the possibility of dividing
layer C into two parts, C1 and C2, suggesting that C1 would

- -
represent the mediation of interpersonal relations directly
through the content of activity (an individual aims and tasks
of the activity, its social meaning, etc. an individual), and

-
layer C2, the mediation of interpersonal relations through gen-
erally important social values (an individual generally im-
portant value orientations, moral principles accepted in the
group. an individual), W e could assume, then, that the phenom-
enon of collectivist self-determination recorded by L. A. Turov-
skaya was on level C l , whereas the phenomenon of collectivist
Self-determination recorded in the work of I. A. Oboturova was
on level C2. Even if we bear in mind the conventional nature
of the stratification of layer C (the aims of the collective activ-
76 A . V. Petrovsky

ity are, in practice, very difficult to separate from its values

and principles), the proposed stratification is justified if we
take into consideration the process of collective formation, in
which, we believe, layer C2 is formed first (for example, the
values-oriented unity with respect to the moral value of the ac-
tivity, which is explained b y the presence of ideological unity in
all of socialist society, and which is accepted during the pro-
cess of education of Soviet man); then layer C1 is formed as a
result of every member's acceptance of the aims of the con-
crete collective activity (for example, the values-oriented unity
with respect to the aims, tasks of the activity, its members,
etc .).
Finally, the last and surface layer of the interpersonal re-
lations, D, presupposes the presence of connections where
neither the collective aims of the activity nor the generally im-
portant values orientations of the collective function as a major
factor mediating personal contacts of the group members, A s
we have already emphasized, this does not mean that the con-
nections here a r e direct, in the full meaning of the word. W e
can hardly assume that the relations between any two people
would not have a mediating link in the form of some interests,
tastes, empathetic attractions, suggestive influences, habitual
expectations, and so on. But these connections are not actually
influenced by the content of group activity, o r a r e influenced
only very slightly (consistent with our hypothesis of a certain
"warming" effect of the deep-seated strata on more external
ones). Graphically, all the above strata a r e represented in
Figure 2.
Just as it is inadmissible to transfer the laws of the diffuse
group to the collective, it also is unjustified to attribute a uni-
versal meaning to the conclusions drawn from studies of phen-
omena of the superficial layer, of interpersonal relations in the
collective, and to consider these sufficient for characterization
of the essence of interpersonal relations in the collective. But
the connections in the second strata, C (Cland C2),a r e indis-
pensable for defining a collective, although they a r e insufficient
without taking into account the data from the first layer, that is,
The Psychological Theory of Groups and Collectives 77

without disclosing the social meaning of their activity for its

members, the nature of their motivation, etc.
Unfortunately, in numerous social psychological studies (in-
dustrial, academic, sport, etc.), especially ones of a n applied
nature, we see this unjustified use of the superficial layer's
indices for characterization of the collective in general, In
them a dominant role is attributed to the sociometric choices,
a scale of acceptance, communicability, and other factors un-
connected with the object activity of the group. It is obvious
that the psychological evaluations offered as a result of these
studies to the interested persons and organizations are not ade-
quate, and could sometimes be confusing. From our point of
view, the speediest dissemination in the sphere of applied re-
search of the theoretical principles of the social psychological
concept discussed in this paper is necessary in order to place
this important area of psychological practice within the frame-
work of the demands of scientific reliability and objectivity.
Finally, we should like to say a few words about the most re-
cent disagreement of the above theorywith traditional socialpsy-
chology. In all theoretical concepts accepted by Western social
psychology, whether of the sociometric school (Moreno),the for-
mal model approach (Heider, French), an hteractionist concept
(Bales, Homans), systems theory (Newcomb, Moscowitz), and
so on, the leading determinants of group processes are believed
to be the group's size, structure, status hierarchy, the nature
and frequency of communications, etc., and all psychological
phenomena of group integration and differentiation are con-
sidered to be intermediate variables. The stratometric concept
stipulates another system of determinants of group processes
in highly developed groups. The leading determinant of group
processes in the collective is the attitude toward the content of
collective activity, its motivation, social meaning, the norms
and values accepted by the group, which are displayed in the
acts of interpersonal relations serving as "intervening vari-
ables.If The latter are the acts of collectivist self-determina-
tion, values-oriented unity, the active group emotional identifi-
cation, the nature of assigning and accepting responsibility for
78 A. V. Petrovsky

successes and failures in the common activity, the motivation

of interpersonal choice, the presence or absence of reference
value, etc. A s for the size of the group and the intensity of com-
munication, these classic characteristics of a small group, em-
phasized by all researchers on social psychology, we assign a
modest role, dependent on the above. To confirm and to prove
this thesis, we a r e conducting a number of experiments.
The social psychological theory based on the principles of
mediation of activity is still at the stage of developing its basic
positions. The search for methodologically adequate ways of
solving the problems of the psychology of groups and collec-
tives discussed in this paper is a prerequisite for further prog-
ress in this important area of psychological science.