Social Groups

7 Key excerpts on "Social Groups"

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  eBook - ePub

  Social Groups in Action and Interaction

  2nd Edition

  • Charles Stangor(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1 DEFINING THE SOCIAL GROUP

  Social Groups are the foundation of human existence. Groups provide us with friendship and emotional support, they help us make decisions, and they help us get work done. This book is about the benefits, but also the costs, of our social group memberships.

  CONTENTS AT A GLANCE

  Studying Groups Varieties of Social Group Common Themes Social Science and the Social Group Studying Groups Scientifically Levels of Analysis Group-Level Approaches The Group Dynamics Approach Kurt Lewin’s Contributions Social Perception and Interpretation Self-Categorization Theory The Flexibility of Social Categorization In-groups and Out-groups Properties of Groups Social Groups versus Social Aggregates Similarity Interaction and Interdependence Group Structure Defining the Group: Entitativity Being Part of a Group: Group Cohesion and Social Identity Group Cohesion Cohesion and Group Behavior Social Identity Group Processes Reconsidered Chapter Summary Review and Discussion Questions Recommended Reading

  The earliest human beings lived a nomadic life, moving regularly from place to place in search of food and hunting and eating together in small groups. Since then, as the number of people on the planet has increased, the life of human beings has also become more complex. People developed new abilities, new skills, and new traditions. We learned to farm and to build shelter. We developed art, culture, and technology, as well as complex systems of government. Nations and races evolved, and the scale of both trade and warfare increased. And these changes continue at an even greater rate today as we continue to develop our world through globalization in communication, trade, and technology. In fact, all of the most important human achievements, from the building of the Pyramids in Egypt to the development of the Internet have been achieved through the cooperation of groups.

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  Sociology

  The Essentials

  • Margaret L. Andersen; Howard F. Taylor, Margaret Andersen, Howard Taylor(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  126 CHAPTER 6 Types of Groups Each of us is a member of many groups simultaneously. We have relationships in groups with family, friends, team members, and professional colleagues. Within these groups are gradations in relationships: We are generally closer to our siblings (our sisters and broth-ers) than to our cousins; we are intimate with some friends, merely sociable with others. If we count all our group associations, ranging from the powerful associa-tions that define our daily lives to the thinnest connec-tions with little feeling (other pet lovers, other company employees), we will uncover connections to literally hundreds of groups. What is a group? Recall from Chapter 5, a group is two or more individuals who interact, share goals and norms, and have a subjective awareness as “we,” that is, as a distinct social unit. To be considered a group, a social unit must have all three characteristics, although some groups are more bound together than others. Consider two superficially similar examples: The indi-viduals in a line waiting to board a train are unlikely to have a sense of themselves as one group. A line of prisoners chained together and waiting to board a bus to the penitentiary is more likely to have a stronger sense of common feeling. As you remember from the previous chapter, cer-tain gatherings are not groups in the strict sense, but may be social categories (for example, teenagers, truck drivers) or audiences (everyone watching a movie). The importance of defining a group is not to perfectly decide if a social unit is a group—an unnecessary endeavor— but to help us understand the behavior of people in society. As we inspect groups, we can identify character-istics that reliably predict trends in the behavior of the group and even the behavior of individuals in the group.

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  Sociology

  The Essentials

  • Margaret Andersen, Margaret Andersen, Howard Taylor(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Whether a relatively small group—such as a jury or your friendship circle—or a large bureaucratic organization, such as the government or a work organization, people are influenced by the sociological forces of group behavior. Types of Groups Each of us is a member of many groups simultaneously. We have relationships in groups with family, friends, team members, and professional colleagues. Within these groups are gradations in relationships: We are generally closer to our siblings than to our cousins; we are intimate with some friends, merely sociable with others. If we count all our group associations, ranging from the powerful associations that define our daily lives to the thinnest connections with little feeling (other pet lovers, other company employees), we will uncover connections to literally hundreds of groups. What is a group? Recall from Chapter 5, a group is two or more individuals who interact, share goals and norms, and have a subjective awareness as “we.” To be considered a group, a social unit must have all three Eighteen men and twenty-one women committed mass suicide as part of the Heaven’s Gate cult in 1997, all of them dressed alike in dark clothes and Nike sneakers. This is an extreme example of group conformity. HO Old/Reuters Copyright 2020 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. CHAPTER 6 Groups and Organizations 128 characteristics, although some groups are more bound together than others. Con- sider two superficially similar examples: The individuals in a line waiting to board a train are unlikely to have a sense of themselves as one group.

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  Sociology in Our Times: The Essentials

  • Diana Kendall(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  This new mediated life has gotten us in trouble. Face-to-face conversation is the most human—and humanizing—thing we do. Fully present to one another, we learn to listen. It’s where we develop the capacity for empathy. It’s where we experience the joy of being heard, of being understood. Social Media in the Classroom and the Real World H Although books are still an integral part of higher education, computers and other digital technology are rapidly changing the social and learning environments of today’s colleges and universities. Ariel Skelley/DigitalVision/Getty Images Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Social Groups ■ 127 a group? In everyday usage, we use the word group to mean any collection of people. According to sociologists, however, the answer to these questions is no; individuals who happen to share a common feature or are in the same place at the same time do not constitute Social Groups. Groups, Aggregates, and Categories As you will recall from Chapter 4, a social group is a collection of two or more people who interact frequently with one another, share a sense of belonging, and have a feeling of interdependence. Several people waiting for a traffic light to change constitute an aggregate—a collection of people who happen to be in the same place at the same time but share little else in common. Shoppers in a department store and passengers on an airplane flight are also examples of aggregates.

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  Social Psychology

  • Jeffrey H Goldstein(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  A related issue is whether the behavior of a group can be predicted from a knowledge of the characteristics of its individual members. Many modern behaviorists support this notion, while other psychol-ogists, particularly those with a cognitive orientation, argue that this is impossible. As Shaw (1976) notes, both viewpoints have some merit: There is no group behavior apart from the behavior of individual members, but individuals in a group react to the other individuals who comprise the group. As he concludes, The group is not more than the sum of its parts, but rather it is different from the sum of its parts. An individual behaves differently in the group situation because he is experiencing a different set of stimuli (p. 336). THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF GROUPS 299 • DO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGISTS ACTUALLY STUDY GROUPS? Groups have been defined as two or more people who have something meaningful in common. We all have things in common with everyone else—a liver, a need for sleep, feelings—but these do not mean that we are all members of the same group. In order for a group to exist, there must be awareness that there is a common element and that this commonality pertains to the group's existence. A group is distinguished from an aggregate, a mere gathering of people who do not have common bonds except perhaps accidental or trivial ones. Aggregates do not take one another into consideration. Lines at a movie theater or football game, for example, constitute aggregates. Groups, on the other hand, are characterized by purpose and orga-nization: groups have goals and they almost invariably involve interaction among some or all of their members; they also have some discernible structure or organization, such as a leader. This is no less true of Social Groups, such as baseball teams or sororities, than it is of more highly structured groups, such as congressional subcommittees or student governments.

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  An Introduction to Sociology

  • Bryan S. R. Green, Edward A. Johns(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Pergamon

    (Publisher)

  1 Apart from the empirical generalizations and conceptual clarifications contained in the book, it is interesting as an attempt to establish the small group as the basic unit of social theory and observation rather than the social act. 1 G. Homans, The Human Group, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951. SOME SOCIOLOGICAL DEFINITIONS 55 The term primary group was originally coined by Charles Cooley, a pioneer American sociologist, to refer to groups charac-terized by intimate face-to-face association. They are primary chiefly in the sense of forming attitudes, opinions and values, i.e. as agents of the socialization process. There is considerable overlap with the concept of community as defined by Tönnies but it also includes play groups, informal work groups and the family. Empirical research on primary groups has been concerned with such problems as the conditions under which solidarity develops amongst members, the emergence of leaders as a function of group problem-solving, the formation of cliques within groups, the effective incorporation of new members and the processes by which the group adjusts to its environment. Apart from the im-pressive volume of studies undertaken under controlled laboratory conditions, 1 the main emphasis has been on the functioning of informal small groups within the context of formal organizations, such as industrial, administrative and military bureaucracies. An outstanding example of this kind of research is the series of in-vestigations carried out in the Hawthorne works of the Western Electric Company. 2 The investigators began in an orthodox way by studying the effects of lighting, hours of work, length of breaks and so on, upon output, but gradually turned their attention to the significance of informal groups for morale and efficiency. They found, for example, that work groups developed their own norms regarding output which were in conflict with the output targets defined by management.

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  Empowerment Series: Human Behavior in the Macro Social Environment

  • Karen Kirst-Ashman, Grafton Hull, Jr.(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  There are four main reasons why groups are relevant in social work. First, shar-ing interests and mutual activity provides a group of individuals with support, in-formation, and motivation. It is also likely that a group of people can exert greater influence on the social environment than a single individual. Second, groups enhance the ability to solve problems and develop creative so-lutions. Groups allow a venue where members can share their ideas, challenges, and experiences while also learning new ways of doing things. Exposure to perspec-tives different from one’s own can initiate ideas and enhance creativity. A third reason groups are important involves the dynamics of small groups in which members, working together, exert social pressure and influence on each other. A group member is accountable to other members for assuming responsibil-ity and getting things done. In this way, members can empower each other to make progress and achieve goals. The fourth reason groups are important to social work is the convenience factor. When numerous individuals are involved in decision making, planning, advocating, or intervening, groups often provide the most efficient way of commu-nicating, solving problems, and making decisions. HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN GROUPS: THEORIES AND DYNAMICS 71 Chapter 3 will describe the types of groups relevant to generalist social work practice. Several theoretical perspectives can conceptualize any group’s function-ing, regardless of type. Theory provides a framework for understanding how groups work. Additionally, some concepts characterize interpersonal group dynamics such that you can use them in conjunction with any theoretical perspective. The greater your comprehension of group functioning, the more effectively you will be as leader or member.

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