Group Dynamics: Most valuable paper of 2021

I am pleased to announce that the winner of the Group Dynamics Most Valuable Paper for 2021 is Donelson Forsyth’s “Recent Advances in the Study of Group Dynamicsopens in new window,” published in the 25th anniversary issue of the journal in September 2021. The award was voted by the editorial board of the journal. Congratulations, Dr. Forsyth! Past winners of this award have gone on to become some of the most highly cited articles of the journal in the year of their publication. Forsyth (2021) revisits and reconceptualizes the notion of cohesion—a group process variable that has received a lot of attention in both group psychology and group psychotherapy research. It is perhaps the most studied concepts in groups an important facilitator of performance in teams, business, and of outcomes in group psychotherapy. However, cohesion is not so easy to define. Here lies the key contribution of Forsyth’s article—he proposes a unified definition of cohesion in which “Cohesion is... a group’s degree of unity. A cohesive group is... strongly bonded, tight knit, and unified. A group that is low in cohesion is one that is weakly bonded, lacking in unity...and divided.” Forsyth (2021) defines cohesion as the: (a) attraction to the group itself, (b) a commitment to group defined tasks, (c) social categorization (the group is important to the individual) and social identification with the group (the individual’s self-definition is in part consistent with the group’s values), (d) shared emotional experiences with the group (morale, esprit de corps), (e) a stable group structure, and (f) and perceived cohesion or entativity (individuals are seen to act in unison or to display common features). The paper also includes preliminary data supporting the psychometric properties of a measure of cohesion, and a copy of this new measure appears in the appendix of the paper.