Group Involvement Humans Tend to Be Social

Group Involvement

Humans tend to be social and group animals. Some anthropologists even believe that it is cohesive nature of being group animals that contributed to the eventual civilization of humanity. Because we are group animals by nature, it is typical for us to compare ourselves with others. Social motives are the interaction or the glue that helps the group stick together and describes the people in the group are either satisfied or dissatisfied. One way to account for this is called Equity Theory; theory that helps us understand satisfaction in terms of fair or unfair distribution of resources within groups or interpersonal relationships. These resources may be monetary, emotional, intellectual, but center on the issue of how an individual perceives themselves as either under-rewarded or over-rewarded, and the stress this causes that person. Equity theory holds that the actual perception of unfairness is a significant and powerful motivating force within the workplace, and a significant barrier to intimacy in personal relationships. (Montana and Chanrov, 2008).

In social psychology, we look at the way the individual's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the group -- colleagues, family, or even society. Core cultural motives -- those that define the society, explain the way behaviors are adapted to the situation -- naturally called attribution or situalitionalism. These are the explanations we make for individual behavior based on internal or external factors (situations). Internally, we see different reactions to different sets of stimuli through personality, character, ability, or even disposition and mood. Externally, situations change based on things like weather, geography, social setting (formal, informal), comfort (friends vs. colleagues or new situations), events, places, and anything that causes behaviors to change based on both controllable and uncontrollable factors (Aronson, E., et.al., 2010). Situationalism is especially powerful when we look at the social psychology of persuasion -- the place, the message, the audience and the even all act together to change the individual's viewpoint and/or perception.

The way humans tend to learn is through the acculturation process -- what is acceptable in society is rewarded, what is not, is punished. This also includes social norms like religion, political views, economic actions, etc. We tend to learn how to behave based on the environment we live in and the people with whom we interact. One theory involved in constructivism, in fact, believes that the environment shapes the way we think about ourselves and others, how we act, and how we use that reality to form perceptions of others. This starts in childhood and is accentuated as we age, and forms our belief system and our biases (Myers, 2005).