ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on four types of groups, all of which are being heavily studied: flight crews, military groups, hospital teams, and sports teams. It suggests that a hierarchy can cause problems within a flight crew when a captain refuses to listen to advice from the copilot or engineer. When it comes to sports teams, one can readily see that many of the topics discussed in the book have great applicability—such issues as group performance and decisionmaking, social motivation losses and gains. The chapter focuses on two interrelated issues: the "home field advantage" and the "home field disadvantage." Studying sports teams within this context is interesting because not only are the teams themselves groups but the audiences are, too. The chapter concludes that research on the group is important in theoretical and applied sense and is of interest to people from a wide variety of disciplines.
