Have you ever stopped to consider the number of groups that you are a part of? Or, how about the role groups play in your life? Broadly speaking, a group is made up of people who identify and interact with one another. Sometimes, this interaction is quite intimate, other times it is removed with no sense of true connection. Throughout your life, you will be a member of countless groups. Let’s take a few minutes to explore some of them.
A person’s first group of significance is generally their family. Regardless of its makeup, families fall under the rubric of a primary group because they involve small-scale, intimate, face-to-face, long-lasting associations. At a young age, family is the group that knows you most intimately. Family members have seen you both happy and sad. They have seen you healthy and sick. They have seen you with zit cream all over your face. They know you so well they can tell how your day was just by the way you say “Hello.”
Over time, you move beyond only having family interactions to other types of in-group associations made up of social units to which an individual belongs and feels a sense of “we.” In junior high or high school, this might include being a member of Boy or Girl Scouts, Math Club, choir, or a sports team. In college, this could mean participating in Student Government, Greek life, or the Sociology Society. With in-groups, individuals identify with the group and feel a strong sense of connection.
In-groups often use some type of symbol to identify their members. The letters used by Greek organizations provide a perfect example. Others include the badges worn by police officers, the uniforms worn by sports team members, and the rings worn by members of the Freemason society. All these instances are examples of social cliques that involve a small, close-knit, and exclusive group of individuals. The police have the “thin blue line,” sports teams have a rigorous tryout process, and Freemasons have an initiation process. It is worth mentioning that even a person’s last name qualifies as an in-group identifier. You probably don’t know everyone who has your last name, but meeting someone with the same last name will likely give you pause.
These examples of in-groups are also a part of secondary groups, large-scale, impersonal, task-focused, and time-limited associations. Unlike a primary group, a secondary group is generally made up of so many people that you can never get to know all of them on an intimate basis. College students are part of a larger college or university system made up of hundreds if not thousands of other students. That is coupled with the fact that the role of college in a student’s life is finite. Whether it takes two, four, six, or more years, being a college student is not a lifetime appointment. Once students complete their coursework, they graduate and move on to another phase of life.
For most people, the next secondary group involves an employer. Just as you can’t know everyone at your college, you probably can’t know everyone at your job. While some may work at a small start-up, others work for corporations like Apple, which has over 161,000,00 employees. Groups of this type are known as formal organizations. They consist of structured and bureaucratic systems regulated by clearly stated norms and rules. These norms make up the corporate culture, which is unique to each organization. Learning these norms may require some resocialization, an identity transformation in which social norms and roles are altered or replaced. This can include something as basic as adjusting to where the work is done. Some formal organizations require employees to work from an onsite office. Others allow their workers to telecommute such that they can work from someplace other than the office on a full- or part-time basis. In both instances, the supervisor will measure the efforts of the employee by using other workers as a reference group, a collection of people used for comparison and identification. While the employees may hope that their success and promotion at work are based on a system that fosters and rewards personal effort, ability, and talent, such meritocracy is not always the case. Unfortunately, the practice of favoritism directed toward family members or nepotism may hamper success in their field.
While all of this is taking place in the secondary group space, many people decide to start their own families. A couple or two-person dyad may choose to adhere to the red tape of regulations and conformity so they can legally marry. Others may decide not to take that route or be unable to do so. In both instances, if they choose to have a child, they become a three-person triad. In doing so they have become the primary group for their kids, and as a result, start the whole process over again.
Thompson is a co-owner of UITAC Publishing. UITAC’s mission is to provide high-quality, affordable, and socially responsible online course materials.
Images in this blog:
- Family, Nature, Beach image by Charles McArthur Free to use under the Pixabay Content License. The image is unaltered.
- Masonic ring by Arielinson, 2015. This file is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 4.0 International The image is unaltered.
- Apple Inc. headquarters sign by Elwood_j_blues, 2006. This file is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic The image is unaltered.
