People live in groups {group, sociology} {social group} and have social relationships. Social groups have from two people to crowds.
social
People are social. They interact with others in groups and derive satisfaction from groups. They have social interactions and behavior patterns. They have social skills that develop through interactions with others. They belong to social categories and describe others by social category.
social: order
Groups maintain structure {social order}.
social: differentiation
Groups have different roles to cause social differentiation. Industrialization and urbanization increase social differentiation.
roles
Social positions have behavior patterns, roles associated with duties and privileges. Group-member interactions involve power, status, prestige, influence, decisions, and leadership. Roles can interact to make complementary roles. Roles can interfere with each other, causing role conflict. Roles encourage specialization, interdependence, social control, continuity, and learning.
purposes
Groups assemble for specific functions. Groups create shared worlds, which allow information and feeling exchanges. Groups create identifications. Groups share norms. Groups perform common tasks.
risk
Groups take bigger and earlier risks than individuals, because responsibility is diffuse and fear of failure is less.
communication
More group communication makes efficiency less and happiness more. Communication expresses beliefs, goals, intentions, or emotions to audiences that are to understand messages and recognize speaker intentions. Information is commands and requests and transmits through acceptable channels.
communication: non-verbal
Non-verbal communication includes eye contact, laughing, and touching. Speaking emotional tone, open or closed arm and leg positions, interpersonal distance, crossed arms or legs, and pupil size reflect feelings.
competition
Groups can compete to reach same objectives. Competing groups can conflict and try to destroy each other. Conflict tends to make groups tight-knit. Interacting groups can have rivalry and compete to reach same objectives, based on competition rules. Rivalry tends to polarize groups, such as political parties. Independent groups can resolve differences by accommodation.
cooperation
Groups can have joint activities. Cooperation typically benefits weak groups more. Groups can integrate to share communication, dependencies, responsibilities, and attitudes. Groups can assimilate.
As groups evolve, power concentrates in largest associations and governments {centralization}|. Centralization opposes social differentiation.
Environments {human ecology} can affect people's behavior. Just as in ecology, different human populations succeed each other, populations become segregated, and competition and cooperation patterns arise.
Communities, associations, and institutions typically have strongly established behavior patterns {practice, behavior}. Practices regulate and eliminate internal conflicts. They preserve social order and prevent destruction from outside forces. They promote behavior patterns that define the group.
Groups have informal personal interactions, which reflect friendships and indicate subgroups {sociogram}|.
People can do one work type {specialization}| {division of labor}. Groups tend to have more job specialization. Industrialization and urbanization increase labor division.
Communication between two people is responses to earlier messages {interactional approach}. Messages based on similar assumptions and expectations provide negative feedback about previous messages, and so keep relationship stable.
Messages based on different expectations provide positive feedback and cause instability, as messages increase differences {vicious circle, group}. Relationships that become unstable, or become stable in bad ways, can become better only by changing both people's behavior.
If people need something from each other, communication between parties {negotiation, communication}| can result in agreement. Parties want to reach agreement.
target and minimum
Parties have target settlement points and minimum sticking points. Parties try to find opponent targets and limits, while concealing own.
threats and concessions
Negotiation often involves coercive threats. Negotiations always involve concessions. Often extreme demands {blue sky bargaining} precede concessions.
reciprocity
Bargaining requires expecting trust and good faith {reciprocity norm} {norm of reciprocity}. Behaviors reciprocate. If reciprocity norm is true, agreement is satisfactory to both parties. Ability to imagine oneself in role of other and to act chosen part facilitates negotiation.
time
The longer negotiations go on, the more pressure builds for agreement. Final bargaining session {decision-making crisis} has trade-off of remaining issues.
tactics
In negotiations, what one side gains, other loses. Negotiating tactics minimize cost to one's side and maximize cost to opponent, while claiming opposite. Negotiating also involves explaining gains and losses to people represented by negotiators. Third parties aid negotiations by de-emphasizing losses and emphasizing gains.
formal negotiation
Formal negotiations involve two teams and are public. Having audiences makes teams want to appear dominant and causes aggressive behavior.
formal negotiation: team
Compared to one negotiator, negotiating teams overvalue conduct, devalue opposing team, polarize positions, distort and restrict communication between teams, and result in less divergent and creative solutions.
Issue judgments {opinion}|, based on social communications, depend on groups to which people belong and their influence. Opinions depend on issue interest level.
Voting and public opinion polls {poll}| do not show opinion strength, meaning, or relation to other opinions.
To coordinate behavior, people in groups can inform others of what they know and want to do {receiver-based communication}.
People can express one-sided opinions or values {propaganda, group}|, to reach immediate goals or influence public opinion. For example, people can raise anxiety about safety and security, such as suggesting hidden enemies or dangers. They can gain attention by emphasizing negative aspects.
Stage public demonstrations or cite poll numbers to claim wide support {bandwagon}|.
Connect one-sided opinions with positive emotional values, such as similar accepted opinions {card stacking}|.
Make unfounded accusations about people {character assassination}.
Use someone or something else {front, propaganda}| to state true goal, to conceal actual group.
Connect one-sided opinions with positive emotional values, such as accepted generalities {glittering generality}|.
Connect one-sided opinions with positive emotional values, such as popular beliefs {just plain folks}|.
Have prestigious people state one-sided opinions or state that the opinions are good {testimonial}|.
Connect one-sided opinions with positive emotional values {value transfer}| {transfer of value}, such as glittering generality, card stacking, or just plain folks.
Groups have psychology {group psychology}.
attraction
Attractiveness can depend on group power, influence, likeability, status, prestige, authority, leader personality, prestige, or goals.
basic personality
Most group members have similar personality traits {basic personality} {modal personality} {social character} {representative personality}.
biological need
Humans have biological needs, which individuals try to satisfy using as few resources as possible. Sociocultural systems help people satisfy needs and cause new needs.
People can lack rules for social conduct and group beliefs, can have no available groups, can feel isolation, cannot be happy, or cannot meet their needs {anomie}|.
People tend to think and behave as their peers do {conformism}|. Conformism can differentiate groups and can cause people to work for the group, rather than themselves.
People need other people to survive and be happy {dependency}|. Dependency is basic to cooperation and social control.
People feel and understand others' emotions {identification with others}.
Belief in goals, confidence in leaders, and willingness to work together {morale}| contribute to group influence.
Groups can have strong rewards and punishments {sanction}|.
Groups can be bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states {group types}.
Bands have 15 to 80 people, have kinship relations, are nomads, act by consensus, have no laws, and own land communally.
Tribes have hundreds of people, are kinship clans, live in villages, act by consensus, have few leaders, have no laws, and own land communally.
Chiefdoms have thousands of people, have different social classes, live in one or more villages, have top-down hereditary offices, have no laws, can pay tribute to others, hold land feudally, and have luxuries.
States have more than 50,000 people, live in villages and cities, have top-down bureaucracies, have laws, collect taxes, have private land, and have luxuries.
Groups {community, group} can depend on geographic area. Individuals typically feel that they belong, share interests, and define themselves in terms of community. Important events for people typically happen in communities.
Groups can be about family and marriage relationships {kinship}|.
Groups can be public {public} or private. Public groups affect all society members.
Groups {formal group} can try to attain official written goals at minimal cost, through rationality and discipline. Formal groups have subgroups to perform functions. People have one work type. Administration coordinates and makes policy. Bureaucracies have power and authority hierarchies and delegate functions from higher levels to lower levels. Rules and regulations govern roles, work, and pay.
Formal groups {institution} can be structural community parts. Formal group is institution if it is highly formal, is stable, is long term, includes cultural values, and has social composition {base group}. Social groupings make institutions such as family, club, library, museum, town hall, and market. They make classes, cultures, unions, parties, communities, and nations. They can depend on race, gender, or language. They can be about activity or shared feeling.
Groups can depend on satisfaction and security gained from interactions and relations {primary relation} between two people {primary group}|. For people in primary groups, nothing is more important. Primary groups feature non-verbal communication between members. Primary groups are family and cliques.
Children know people of same age and status {peer group}|. After family, next socialization influence is child's playgroup. Peer groups teach obedience to abstract rules, test adult limits, and transmit adult values. For peer-group socialization, people {other-directed person} have social skills, are sensitive to others, control others through anxiety, have pragmatic politics, and have consumption economies.
After peer group, next socialization influence is adolescent group {clique}|. Cliques teach getting along with others, cooperating, being sociable, and conforming.
Secondary groups {secondary group} are geographical communities, cultural communities, associations, movements, and mobs.
Ideological, unified, active, and idealistic groups {social movement} work for goals or ideas, which originate from injustice or inequality.
Unstructured social situations {collective behavior}| involve crowds, riots, protests, revolutions, revivals, fads, rumors, public opinion, social movements, panics, bank runs, crazes, esprit de corps, parties, and ceremonies. People share common mood or emotional state, such as cause, hostility, self-sacrifice, or danger. Collective behavior is emotional, is personal, has shifting loyalties, is power-oriented, and relates to broader-society conflicts and changes. Unstructured social situations feature high stimulation, high suggestibility, low discipline, and anonymity, which encourage unconventional behavior. Collective behavior allows individual decisions that old values do not control.
Groups can emphasize personal growth and communication {encounter group}, as in Carl Rogers's client-centered therapy.
Groups {sensitivity group} can organize to produce change by promoting interpersonal awareness.
Devotional or charitable societies {sodality} are for lay people.
Groups {training group} (T-group) can address issues of organization leadership, authority, and change dynamics.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225