Groups and Group Dynamics

Topic 6
What are groups? Or what is a group?
• Virtually everyone moves through life with a sense of belonging; this is the
experience of group life.
• A social group refers to two or more people who identify and interact with one
another. Human beings continually come together to form couples, families,
circles of friends, gangs, neighbourhoods, churches, businesses clubs,
communities, transnational corporations and numerous large organisations.
• A social group consists of a number of people who have a common identity,
some feeling of unity, and certain common goals and shared norms.
• Whatever the form, groups encompass people with shared experiences,
loyalties and interests. In short, while maintaining their individuality, the
members of social groups also think of themselves as a special ‘we’.
What are groups?
• In any social group, the individuals interact with one another
according to established statuses and roles.
• The members develop expectations of proper behaviour for persons
occupying different positions in the social group.
• The people have a sense of identity and realize they are different from
others who are not members.
• Social groups have a set of values and norms that might or might not
be similar to those of the larger society.
A Social Aggregate
• It is made up of people who temporarily happen to be in physical
proximity to each other but share little else. Consider passengers
riding together in one car of a train.
• They might share a purpose (that is traveling to some destination) but
do not interact or even consider their temporary association to have
any meaning.
A social group and A social Aggregate
• A social group, unlike an aggregate, does not cease to exist when its members are away
from one another.
• Members of social groups carry the fact of their membership with them and see the
group as a distinct entity with specific requirements for membership.
• A social group has a purpose and is therefore important to its members, who know how
to tell an insider from an outsider.
• It is a social entity that exists for its members apart from any other social relationships
that some of them might share.
• Members of a group interact according to established norms and traditional statuses
and roles.
• As new members are recruited to the group, they move into these traditional statuses
and adopt the expected role behaviour—if not gladly, then as a result of group pressure.
Categories of Social Groups
• Sociologists classify social groups by measuring them against two
ideal types based on members’ level of genuine personal concern.
This variation is the key to distinguishing primary from secondary
groups.
• According to Cooley, a primary group is a small social group whose
members share personal and enduring relationships.
• Bound together by primary relationships, individuals in primary
groups typically spend a great deal of time together, engage in a wide
range of common activities and feel that they know one another well.
Categories of social groups [primary social
groups]
• Although not without periodic conflict, members of primary groups
display sincere concern for each other’s welfare. This is the world of
family and friends.
• The strength of primary relationships gives people a comforting sense
of security. In the familiar social circles of family or friends, people
feel they can ‘be themselves’ without constantly worrying about the
impressions they are making.
• Members of primary groups generally provide one another with
economic and other forms of assistance as well.
Primary Social Groups
• But, as important as primary ties are, people generally think of a
primary group as an end in itself rather than as a means to other ends.
In other words, we prefer to think that kinship or friendship links people
who ‘belong together’, rather than people who expect to benefit from
each other.
• Moreover, this personal orientation means that members of a primary
group view each other as unique and irreplaceable. We typically do not
care who cashes our cheque at the bank or takes our money at the
supermarket checkout.
• Yet in the primary group – especially the family – we are bound to
specific others by emotion and loyalty.
Secondary Group
• The secondary group is a large and impersonal social group whose members
pursue a specific interest or activity. In most respects, secondary groups have
precisely the opposite characteristics of primary groups.
• A secondary group, in contrast, is characterized by much less intimacy among its
members. It usually has specific goals, is formally organized, and is impersonal.
• Secondary relationships usually involve weak emotional ties and little personal
knowledge of one another.
• Secondary groups vary in duration, but they are frequently short-term, beginning
and ending without particular significance.
• Students following a university course, for instance, who may not see one
another after the term ends, exemplify the secondary group.
Secondary Group
• Weaker social ties permit secondary groups to include many more
people than primary groups do.
• For example, dozens or even hundreds of people may work together
in the same office, yet most of them pay only passing attention to one
another.
• Sometimes the passing of time will transform a group from secondary
to primary, as with co-workers who share an office for many years.
• Generally, however, the boundary separating members of a secondary
group from non-members is far less clear than it is for primary groups.
Functions of groups
• To function properly, all groups, both primary and secondary,
• must (1) define their boundaries,
• (2) choose leaders,
• (3) make decisions,
• (4) set goals,
• (5) assign tasks, and
• (6) control members’ behaviour.
Functions of Groups
• Defining Boundaries: Group members must have ways of knowing who
belongs to their group and who does not.
• Sometimes devices for marking boundaries are obvious symbols, such as
the uniforms worn by athletic teams, lapel pins worn by Rotary Club
members, rings worn by Masons, and styles of dress.

• Choosing Leaders: All groups must grapple with the issue of leadership. A
leader is someone who occupies a central role or position of dominance and
influence in a group.
• In some groups, such as large corporations, leadership is assigned to
individuals by those in positions of authority.
Functions of Groups
• Making Decisions
• Closely related to the problem of leadership is the way groups make
decisions. In many early hunting and food gathering societies, important
group decisions were reached by consensus—talking about an issue until
everybody agreed on what to do (Fried, 1967).

• Setting Goals
• As we pointed out before, all groups must have a purpose, a goal, or a set
of goals. The goal can be very general, such as spreading peace throughout
the world, or it can be very specific, such as playing cards on a train. Group
goals can change.
Group Functions
• Assigning Tasks
• Establishing boundaries, defining leadership, making decisions, and setting
goals are not enough to keep a group going. To endure, a group must do
something, if nothing more than ensure that its members continue to make
contact with one another.
• Therefore, it is important for group members to know what needs to be done
and who is going to do it. This assigning of tasks, in itself, can be an important
group activity (think of your family discussions about sharing household
chores).
• By taking on group tasks, members not only help the group reach its goals
but also show their commitment to one another and to the group as a whole.
Functions of Groups

• Controlling Members’ Behaviour

• If a group cannot control its members’ behaviour, it will cease to exist.
For this reason, failure to conform to group norms is seen as
dangerous or threatening, whereas conforming to group norms is
rewarded, if only by others’ friendly attitudes.
• Groups not only encourage but often depend for survival on
conformity of behaviour.
• A member’s failure to conform is met with responses ranging from
coolness to criticism or even ejection from the group.
Small Groups and Group Dynamics
• A group's size can also determine how its members behave and
relate. A small group is small enough to allow all of its members to
directly interact.
• The term small group refers to many kinds of social groups, such as
families, peer groups, and work groups, that actually meet together
and contain few enough members so that all members know one
another.
• The smallest group possible is a dyad, which contains only two
members.
• An engaged couple is a dyad as are the pilot and copilot of an aircraft.
Small Groups
• George Simmel (1950) was the first sociologist to emphasize the importance
of the size of a group on the interaction process. He suggested that small
groups have distinctive qualities and patterns of interaction that disappear
when the group grows larger.

• For example, dyads resist change in their group size. On the one hand, the
loss of one member destroys the group, leaving the other member alone; on
the other hand, a triad, or the addition of a third member, creates
uncertainty because it introduces the possibility of two-against-one alliances.
• Often one member in a triad can help resolve quarrels between the other
two.
Group Dynamics
• The formation of shifting pair-off s within triads also can help stabilize the
group. When it appears that one group member is weakening, one of the two
paired members will often break the alliance and form a new one with the
individual who had been isolated.
• As a group grows larger, the number of relationships within it increases, which
often leads to the formation of subgroups, splinter groups within the larger
group.
• Once a group has more than five to seven members, spontaneous
conversation becomes difficult for the group as a whole. Then two solutions
are available.
• The group can split into subgroups (as happens informally at parties), or it can
adopt a formal means of controlling communication.
Small Groups
• Two types of leaders normally emerge from small groups. Expressive
leaders are affiliation motivated. That is, they maintain warm, friendly
relationships. They show concern for members' feelings and group
cohesion and harmony, and they work to ensure that everyone stays
satisfied and happy. Expressive leaders tend to prefer a cooperative
style of management.
• Instrumental leaders, on the other hand, are achievement motivated.
That is, they are interested in achieving goals. These leaders tend to
prefer a directive style of management. Hence, they often make good
managers because they “get the job done.” However, they can annoy
and irritate those under their supervision.
Reference Groups
• Although groups must fulfil certain functions to continue to exist, they serve primarily
as a point of reference for their members.
• Groups are more than just bridges between the individual and society as a whole. We
spend much of our time in one group or another, and the effect these groups have on
us continues even when we are not actually in contact with the other members.
• The norms and values of groups we belong to or identify with serve as the basis for
evaluating our own and others’ behaviour.
• A reference group is a group or social category that an individual uses to help define
beliefs, attitudes, and values and to guide behaviour. It provides a comparison point
against which people measure themselves and others.
• A reference group is often a category we identify with rather than a specific group we
belong to.
Reference Groups
• We can also distinguish between positive and negative reference
groups. Positive reference groups are composed of people we want to
emulate.
• Negative reference groups provide a model we do not wish to follow.
Therefore, a writer might identify positively with those writers who
produce serious fiction but might think of journalists who write for
tabloids as a negative reference group.
• Even though groups are composed of individuals, individuals are also
created to a large degree by the groups they belong to through the
process of socialization.
Large Groups
• Much of the activity of a modern society is carried out through large
and formally organized groups.
• Sociologists refer to these groups as associations, which are
purposefully created special-interest groups that have clearly defined
goals and official ways of doing things.
• Associations include such organizations as government departments
and agencies, businesses and factories, labour unions, schools and
colleges, fraternal and service groups, hospitals and clinics, and clubs
for various hobbies from gardening to collecting antiques.
Large Groups
• Their goals can be very broad and general—such as helping the poor,
healing the sick, or making a profit—or quite specific and limited,
such as manufacturing automobile tires or teaching people to speak
Chinese.
• Although an enormous variety of associations exist, they all are
characterized by some degree of formal structure with an underlying
informal structure.
• For associations to function, the necessary work is assessed and
broken down into manageable tasks that are assigned to specific
individuals.
Large Groups
• In other words, associations are run according to a formal
organizational structure that consists of planned, highly
institutionalized, and clearly defined statuses and role relationships.
• The formal organizational structure of large associations in
contemporary society is exemplified best by the organizational
structure called bureaucracy.
Hints on bureaucracy
• For example, when we consider a college or university, fulfilling its main purpose of
educating students requires far more than simply bringing together students and
professors.
• Funds must be raised, buildings constructed, qualified students and professors
recruited, programs and classes organized, materials ordered and distributed,
grounds kept up, and buildings maintained.
• Every member of the school has clearly spelled-out tasks that are organized in
relation to one another: Students are taught and evaluated by faculty, faculty
members are responsible to department heads or deans, deans to the president,
and so on.
• Underlying these clearly defined assignments are procedures that are never written
down but are worked out and understood by those who have to get the job done.