Social grouping: formation, behavior, and dynamics

Social Grouping

The Diminishing Effect of Labels to People social group is formed by a collection of interacting individuals who share interests and qualities. A social category, on the other hand, is formed by a collection of people who do not interact but who share the same characteristics. Among this group or category comes the capacity of people or individuals to label events or other people in describing them or in interacting with them.

According to Zadek, Lingayah & Forstater (1998), in their report for the European Commission on Social Labels Tools, Social Labels are "words and symbols associated with products or organizations which seek to influence the economic decisions of one set of stakeholders by describing the impact of a business process on another group of stakeholders."

In the above premise, a label is a tool used to influence individuals in patronizing a good or a product over another.

In Sociology, a label is an identification of a behavior from a norm: Carl Bankston, 2000 stated that labeling is a "process of naming deviance and deviants."

In both descriptions, however, a label is described as a mark to distinguish something from the rest of the population. Labeling in human behavior is done to categorize it while labeling in products is done to promote satisfaction.

Labeling effects are either promoting or weakening depending on how it is applied. For example, in economics, if a good label is used for a commodity, sales will increase and if not, lesser consumers will buy the product. In human behavior, if a positive label is used for an individual, his self-esteem will increase. But if it is negatively applied, he will be discouraged.

Bankston, 2000 explained this through the self-fulfilling prophecy theory which he described as a "situation that occurs when other people's expectations for a person leads him or her to act in ways that confirm those expectations."

To explain labels and its effects more, people and events were observed in a usual day of activities. During this observation, the times when people knowingly or unknowingly labeled other people were noted and categorized. To further specify focus, the discussion will be on the negative or diminishing effect of labels to other people.

Three events were observed and they were categorized as differentiating people based on their idea, identifying people based on their physical attractiveness and classifying an individual based on their group.

In the first, the observer watched a group of women sited at a nearby table in a restaurant. The women talked about the difference of staff views on a project they were working on and they labeled their officemates as either sharing their opinion or not. They discussed the flaws in their office mates' ideas and then inferred that they would be more careful in hearing views from them.

The women's labeling of themselves and their office mates' ideas can be called an ingroup/outgroup differentiation.

An ingroup is a set of individuals who perceive similarities among them while an outgroup is a collection of those who do not share in the similarities. (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1993).

In the above situation, the women in the restaurant are seeing themselves as the ingroup while the office mates are the outgroup.

According to Hogg and Tindale, 2001 "where there is a group goal, deviant opinions obstruct the process of reaching consensus - a state of affairs that would be particularly threatening when the group goal involves an important value." However, Hogg and Tindale further stated that "strong group goals may engender pressure toward compliance, and concomitant censure of deviants."

In looking at the conversation, the ingroup may have been right in their assumption that the outgroup lacked information on the subject. They may have resorted to labeling or differentiating their workplace because of the need to see the strength of their opinion. However, their labeling prevents a healthy sharing of ideas. In a worse scenario, they may progress to disapproving views from the outgroup or ultimately to rejecting the outgroup themselves.

The second event took place in a grocery store. A woman, after having the items in her cart registered by the cashier, declined purchase because she cannot find her money. The woman's uneasiness and embarrassment was obvious but despite it another shopper in line said that the woman's story may not be true because of the way she looked. The shopper commented that since the woman was wearing faded clothes and had slightly unkempt hair, she must not have lost her money but actually cannot really pay for all of the items in her cart. No conversation took place between the two but the shopper formed an idea that the woman was not telling the truth.

The observation on the shopper can be explained by the physical attractiveness stereotype which Frank Magill, 1998 described as a category "where most people believe that physically attractive people are also good and valuable in other ways."

In this instance, since the woman was physically unattractive to the shopper, she was labeled dishonest. She may have been telling the truth but her physical undesirability at that moment led the shopper to think ill of her.

The label given to her, on the other hand, affected her through the reaction of those who heard the comment. These people looked at her more closely and made more comments and observations about her. Their reaction increased her discomfort and made the situation more humiliating.

The third event took place in a bus. The observer noticed three young people on a happy discussion. They were obviously new acquaintances and were keen on sharing about each other. As their conversation progressed, their local basketball teams were discussed. When the third teenager mentioned the name of his team, the other two were surprised and they commented that his team was poor because it was the least among the league. They even joked that this means the third teenager was a poor player.