On the Edge of Society

People of a Feather: The

Sources and Consequences of
Groups
Power Structures
Power structures show us who is the most
influential and powerful in a society, they
are often represented in the shape of a
pyramid, with a few incredibly influential
individuals at the top and many weak and
marginalized people at the bottom, being
ruled by all those on top of them. Take
school as an example, the principle has
power over all the teachers, who have power over the
students.

Roles
Roles are our place in society, they come according to our
statuses, for example some of my statuses are a brother, a
student, a debater, an friend and many more. My roles are
the responsibilities that come with my statuses. For example:
as a student my role is to listen to the teacher and take
notes as well as arriving on time, if I respect this I will be
rewarded with higher grades.

Communication Structures
Communication structures are the ways we transmit our
feelings to the other members of society, language is a
communication structure, you use it to transmit feelings and
ideas to the other members of your country. But not all
communication structures are reserved to one group of
people, there are many international ways to communicate,
like smiling or crying.

Similarity
Many times all the people in a society are similar, this could
be of race, interests, income and more. Most countries are a
great example, since to get citizenship you need to be
somehow related to it, like being born in it or having a citizen
parent.

Interdependence
It is the opposite of independence, meaning that a society
depends on all its members to work and its members depend
on that society. Most groups need people to be in it to survive,
and many times its members need the group to. As an
example, a government needs farmers to
feed its people, so that these people can
pay higher taxes.

Injunctive And Proscriptive Norms

To first understand this, you first need to understand what a
norm is, a norm is like an unwritten rule of society. A
proscriptive norm is something that you are not supposed to
do, like leaving gum under your seat. An injunctive norm is
the exact opposite of that, it is something you are supposed
to do, like whispering while in a library.

Cultural Identity Groups

They are groups to which people can identify to and say “I am
from that culture”. This might be based on ethnicity, gender,
location, age, interests and more. You need to notice that not
all groups can be identified as cultural identity groups, but
most can.

Crowds vs. Mobs

Mobs are a type of crowd. The difference is that mobs are
angry about something, and are usually more violent. Mobs
are also more likely to become riots. A crowd is just a group
of people together with no leader or clear structure.

The Tuckman Model

The Tuckman Model is a four stage process to form a group,
Mr. Tuckman says all stages are necessary for the creation
of the group. Here are the four stages:
● The first is forming, now most people are confused
about their role and what to do.
● After there is storming, in which the individuals will start
to test the potential of the group
● Then there is norming, in which the group starts to
understand the way to work together and goes in the
same direction
● Performing is the last stage, now the group is stable and
understanding of each other, arriving at this point is
complicated for many, and only the groups that
successfully completed the last three stages are able to
arrive here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAnxA7OVU8c

Seceder Model
This model shows us how the desire to be above the average
leads to the formation of groups in society

Homans’ theory
George Homan, a sociology teacher at Harvard during the
20th century, his exchange theory tells us that people can
exchange a previous behavior for a reward. We can see this
in many societies, usually in the form of “the harder you
work, the best you will be treated”.

Social Exchange Theory

A large group of psychologues in the 1960’s created the social
exchange theory, this idea is based on three propositions:
1. If one is rewarded for an action, they will repeat it
2. The more likely you have been rewarded in the past for
a particular action, the more likely you will repeat it
3. The more times one receives a reward, the less valuable
that reward will become
All this statements are all connected to one theme: rewards
and actions, something many governments are implementing
to increase the country’s productivity

Swarm Behavior
It is when a group of entities all move together towards a
certain place together. It occurs mainly in wild animals, but
can be also found in humans. Scientists from the University
Of Leeds also found that in cities humans can behave exactly
like fish.

Herd Mentality
Herd mentality (Also known as mob mentality), is when you
join a group, only because everyone else is in it. This can
often lead to
riots. I believe
that this picture
can better make
you understand
this concept

Informational vs Normative vs Referential Conformity

Informational conformity is when we change our behavior
when we don’t know what is right, often following others
while normative conformity is when we change ourselves to
adapt to the rules, this, unlike the previous, is often
necessary to live a standard life.

Social Identity Theory

The social identity theory says that part of an individual’s
identity is derived from the groups that he is in, this could be
his friends, his family or his nationality. It was created by
John Turner.

Self Categorization
This is a theory in social psychology, it was developed by John
Turner as an extension of the Social Identity Theory. It shows
the circumstances under which people would categorize
themselves as a group.

Dominant Culture
The culture that is the most popular in a government and
usually the one that most people identify to. The dominant
culture is often also the ruling one. Some examples of
dominant cultures are: German in Germany, Mandarin in
China, Arab in the UAE…

Subculture (EXTRA)
A modification of a dominant culture

Counterculture
It is a subculture that is highly divided from the culture of the
place, and is often in disagreement with it. The largest
example of a subculture is the hippies from the 1960’s,
disagreeing with the standard American way of life.
Highbrow vs. Lowbrow
Something highbrow is
something for the really
high class and luxurious,
you might consider a
really elegant and pricey
restaurant highbrow. Anything lowbrow is the exact opposite,
it is usually rough, informal and not at all classy.

Asch Paradigm
Also known as the Asch Conformity Experiments, was a
series of experiments
conducted by Solomon Asch
that investigated how people
changed to fit the standards if
pushed by a majority group.
His most famous experiment
was the one in which he had
five actors sit with a random
student, they than all had to
answer some obvious
questions (like which line is
the most similar”) out loud, with the student answering last, it
was found that when the actors put peer pressure on the
student on average he had a 33% chance of following the
group. This theory did have a lot of criticism because of the
many actors required and its lengthy preparing times.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html

Crutchfield Situation
The Crutchfield Situation was the response to the criticism
that the Asch Paradigm received. All the participants were
divided, but the questions’ simplicity was the same, but when
answering, the participants (all students now) where asked to
flip a switch that would light a light in all the others cubicles,
indicating the others your answer. The thing that made the
experiment work was that the switches were not at all
connected to the lights, and it was Crutchfield controlling the
answers, making each participant believe that he was the
last to answer, and by so creating peer pressure. The results
showed that less people followed the majority than in the
Asch Conformity Experiments, possibly because the
responses were anonymous.

Ingroup vs. Outgroup

You are part of an ingroup when you socially identify with
that group, everyone else outside the ingroup is part of an
outgroup.

Outgroup Homogeneity
It is a belief that many get that all the members of your
ingroup are diverse while all the ones in the outgroup are
similar to each other. This thoughts are usually the ones that
lead the most to stereotypes about marginalized groups, like:
“Asians all look the same” and “All Jews have long noses”.

Trait Ascription
Trait ascription (Or trait ascription bias), is quite similar to
outgroup mentality, only that it focuses on one self instead of
a group. It happens when one thinks that they are variable
and unexpected while others are viewed as predictable and
pretty much always the same. Scientists believe that this
might be because it is way easier to understand your own
mind than it is to do so to others.

Intergroup Interactions
They are the interactions that occur in between groups, the
most known theory regarding this is from the Ottoman
philosopher Muzafer Sherif: “Whenever individuals belonging
to one group interact, collectively or individually, with another
group or its members in terms of their group identification,
we have an instance of intergroup behavior”. All this means is
that we see intergroup relations when some people from a
group interact with some people from another.
Social Comparison
It was first proposed by Leon Festinger (An American
psychologist), it states that people compare themselves to
others to make an evaluation to themselves. This can be good
in many cases, many times helping you improve, but at times
it takes you self esteem away, making you believe that you
will never reach the standards. Unfortunately the negative
sides show up more often nowadays, due to people only
showing the perfect sides of their lives on the internet.

Social Invisibility
A marginalized group with social invisibility is one that is
highly ignored by society, many times this group’s opinions
are the last that the government considers just because they
“forget” about them. It is important to understand that nearly
any marginalized person has social invisibility to a certain
extent.

Amity-Enmity Complex
It was first thought of by Sir Arthur Keith, a Scottish
anatomist, in is book “A new theory to human evolution”. In
this book he agrees with the scientific debate that whites are
possibly a different human species (A more advances one)
than anyone else. The Amity-Enmity Complex is one of the
points that states that the white ingroup is generous.
Internalized Oppression
It is a fascinating phenomenon in which a marginalized group
starts to agree with the dominant culture’s opinion about
them. Many cases also lead to people being racist to the
people of their own marginalized group, and at times also
themselves

Black Sheep Effect

The term “black sheep” is used
to describe something odd in a
crowd. Its effect is when you
judge a member of your ingroup
more positively than a similar
member of an outgroup. The
weirdest part is that when we
need to judge negatively ingroup member, we are more likely
to judge it as more negative than a similar outgroup member
(I know, it is really confusing).

Robbers Cave
Muzafer Sharif’s Robbers Cave experiment was done to show
how easily a group adopts an identity and how fast they make
prejudice to anyone that is in the outgroup. 20 random 12
year old children were chosen, none knew each other, they
were all protestants and all came from middle class families
in Oklahoma City, they all thought they were just camping.
They were divided in two groups, each with its name, and
made play competitive sports for just two days, after that, it
became war, the children shouted and sweared at each
other, they burnt the other’s flags and started throwing
rocks. On day three the groups already had stereotypes of
each other and also themselves.

The second phase consisted in making the groups reunite

again, making them do things together, like watching movies,
failed miserably, so they made a plan, they cut off the water
(Creating an external enemy), and made the two teams work
together to a common goal, if not, they would die of
dehydration. It was a massive success and the two teams
ended the camp happily and together. But to say the truth, it
didn’t always go like this, in the two previous experiments,
the analysers got in severe trouble, with both groups turning
against them.

Stanford Prison Experiment

It was a simulation done by Philip
Zimbardo that investigated the meaning of
roles. He made students apply for this
experiment and be randomly given the
role of a guard or prisoner. An accurate
prison was organized on the Stanford basement, after a lot
of remodeling it ended up like this. On a Sunday morning the
prisoner students were picked up from their houses by police
cars and brought to a police station. They were then brought
into the prison blindfolded and they started to humiliate them
by cutting all their hair off and invading their privacy by
searching through their clothes. They were forced to only
wear a robe and a chain to their foot.

Here the unexperienced guards enter, they have no rules

except wearing their uniforms, although no one told them,
they expected that a guard’s role was to be as brutal as
possible, so they implemented many punishments and rules.
Already on the second day the prisoners rebelled and put
their beds against the door to stop the guards from opening
them, they were all sprayed at with a fire extinguisher and
were stripped naked again, the leaders were put in solitary
confinement.

Than the guards implemented 3 bigger privilege cells, in

which the prisoners got their clothes back and ate higher
quality food. They later used various tactics to put the
prisoner’s hate towards each other. Rumors about a prison
break made the guards put bags over each prisoner’s head.
The experiment had to finish of the 6th day, and it was found
that some prisoners were so into their role that they forgot
their real name, and didn’t even remember that this was like
a giant child roleplay game.