The Development of Group Processes during Childhood and Early Adolescence.

Within social psychology, little attention is given to group processes occurring outside of adult populations. The development of these group processes is rarely discussed or otherwise is assumed to be identical to that of the adult processes observed in the literature. Developmental literature in psychology on children’s group processes is also sparse and the systematic testing of children’s intragroup processes is rare. This thesis aims to address these issues, firstly arguing for the benefit of research that brings together developmental and social literature. A review of intragroup process research with children is given, citing major publications in this area to date, along with important considerations from intergroup, peer relation and identity research. The thesis then moves on to discuss distributive justice and resource allocation in children to introduce the experimental paradigms that will be used. Two studies examine at how intra- and intergroup processes impact on children’s decision making on resource allocation, with a third study focussing on intragroup processes in a cumulative estimation paradigm. The second part of the thesis considers productivity in children’s groups across two studies using a brainstorming paradigm. Findings from all of these studies have shown a divergence in children’s intragroup behaviour from that typically found with adults. The continued research of children’s intragroup processes is advocated as a necessary and exciting new direction for both social and developmental literature to take.