1. Chapter 5: Separate and Together:
Life in Groups

2. What Is a Group?
A group is a collection of people who share some attribute, identify with one another, and interact with each other.
Social groups provide the values, norms, and rules that guide people’s lives.
These criteria are very important—as we will see, sometimes a bunch of people in proximity might look like a group, but if they aren’t meeting these criteria, they would not be considered a group by sociologists. [

3. What Is a Group? (cont’d.)
A crowd is different than a group because it is simply a temporary gathering of people in a public place, whose members may interact but do not identify with each other and will not remain in contact.
Although the terms group and crowd are often used interchangeably in society, you can see they are actually quite different from one another. For example, if you see a bunch of people in the cafeteria waiting in line for lunch, you would likely consider them a crowd rather than a group.

4. What Is a Group? (cont’d.)
A crowd is one example of an aggregate, a collection of people who share a physical location but do not have lasting social relations.
You would likely see an aggregate at an airport or in line for a ride at a theme park. You may also see an aggregate in front of a car accident or other event because people tend to gawk at an unusual sight.
Discussion question: Think of a time when you have been in an aggregate. Looking back on the experience, how do you know it was aggregate and not a crowd or a group? [

5. What Is a Group? (cont’d.)
Primary groups usually involve the greatest amount of face-to-face interaction and cooperation and the deepest feelings of belonging.
In these groups, we are closely associated with the other members, such as family and friends.
We tend to express a full range of emotions in our primary groups. We wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable expressing all of our emotions to just anyone, but our primary groups are intimate and we have a deeper bond than with other groups, which typically allows us to do be more open.

6. What Is a Group? (cont’d.)
Larger, less personal groups are known as secondary groups. Secondary groups are usually organized around a specific activity or the accomplishment of a task.
We usually don’t feel a strong emotional tie to our secondary groups. We may share an interest or common goal, but we rarely have deep feelings of belonging with these people. Classmates may sometimes be an example of a secondary group, and coworkers may also fit into this category.
Discussion question: Name a group that you belong to. How did you become affiliated with these people? What do you have in common?

7. Social Networks
A social network is the web of direct and indirect ties connecting an individual to other people.
You and your family, friends, peers, colleagues, teachers, and coworkers constitute your social network.
Research on social networks has shown that indirect ties can as important as direct ties—so it’s not just whom you know that matters, but whom they know as well. Sometimes you are able to make connections through others, which can lead you to friends, employment opportunities, or even a love relationship.

8. Social Network
A social network is a structure made up of individuals and groups tied together by different types of relationships (friendship, family, work, etc.). Ask the students to map some of their social networks and think about the value or social capital they get from them. [

9. Separate from Groups: Anomie
Since groups provide values, norms, and rules that guide people’s lives, is it possible that the modern world makes people disconnected from their groups and creates feelings of anomie, or normlessness?
Sociologists such as Émile Durkheim and Robert Putnam have worried that the modern world creates a lack of connection, while others argue that these worries are overstated and that new technologies like the internet allow us to connect with others in new ways.

10. For discussion:
Ask your students if we are more or less connected to other people nowadays. Does technology help us form relationships with others or does it impede our ability to make new friends?

11. Group Dynamics
Group dynamics are the patterns of interaction between groups and individuals.
This includes the ways groups:
Form and fall apart
Influence members
Adding or subtracting just one person from a group can completely change the group dynamics. You might be able to think of a class that you’ve had in which there was a student who had a really unique personality (which could be good or bad). What was the class like when that student was absent? Not having that student there would change the class dynamic.

12. Group Dynamics (cont’d.)
A dyad is the smallest possible social group (two members). It is unstable because of the small size—if one person leaves the group, it ceases to exist.
Dyads usually have very strong relationships, but the fact that they are so easy to break apart makes them unstable.

13. Group Dynamics (cont’d.)
A triad (a three-person group) is more stable than a dyad. Conflicts between two members can be mediated by the third.
As groups grow, they become more stable at the cost of intimacy.

14. As the group size increases, there are more possible relationships
As the group size increases, there are more possible relationships. This increases the likelihood of conflict or jealousy.

15. Group Dynamics (cont’d.)
An in-group is a group that a person identifies with and feels loyalty toward.
An out-group is a group that a person feels opposition, rivalry, or hostility toward.
In-groups can be thought of as “us” and out-groups can be thought of as “them.” Most of us are associated with a number of in-groups and out-groups based on our ethnic, religious, familial, professional, or educational backgrounds.

16. Group Dynamics (cont’d.)
A reference group is a group that provides a standard of comparison against which people evaluate themselves.
Our reference group might be our friends or family. However, it could also be the mass media. Many people argue that the reason we see so much overdieting, anorexia and bulimia, and plastic surgery in young people is due to the media’s portrayal of images of men and women that are so “perfect” as to be basically unobtainable by regular people, yet often serve as a reference group to their audience.

17. Group Dynamics (cont’d.)
Group cohesion is the sense of solidarity or loyalty that individuals feel toward a group to which they belong.
A group is more cohesive when the individual members feel strongly tied to the group.
You can think of cohesion as the “social glue” that bonds us and holds our groups and society together.

18. Group Dynamics (cont’d.)
Too much cohesion can lead to the kind of poor decision making called groupthink, which is the tendency of very cohesive groups to enforce a high degree of conformity among members, creating a demand for unanimous agreement.
Asch’s Line Experiment
Groupthink sometimes develops in large companies, when individuals are pressured to agree with the group so they stop offering novel ideas, which can cause the company to falter. Some companies try to combat this with think tanks where individuals are encouraged to brainstorm and come up with new ideas.

19. Social Influence (Peer Pressure)
Social influence (peer pressure) is the influence of one’s fellow group members on individual attitudes and behaviors.
Generally we conform to group norms because we want to gain acceptance and approval (positive sanctions) and avoid rejection and disapproval (negative sanctions).
This is actually common in our society. People feel pressure to fit in, and they often follow popular trends or go along with the ideas of friends as a result. Adolescents in particular often feel tremendous pressure to fit in and sometimes make choices that aren’t in their best interest because they are influenced by others. It is fairly common to hear stories in the news about teens who get into trouble. How often is this attributed to peer pressure?

20. Types of Conformity
Compliance: the mildest form of conformity; actions to gain reward or avoid punishment
Identification: conformity to establish or maintain a relationship with a person or group
Internalization: the strongest type of conformity; an individual adopts the beliefs or actions of a group and makes them his or her own
Examples:
You’re in the car with friends, and they turn on the radio. The band that’s playing is awful, but all of your friends sing along. They ask if you like the song and you reply, “Yeah, this is great.” Even though you don’t like it, you show compliance to fit in.
Later, you and your friends go to the mall and you buy a t-shirt from the band that you heard in car. While you didn’t really like the music, the fact that you have the shirt means that you’re exhibiting identification to fit in and be even closer to your group of friends.
After several weeks, one day you turn on the radio and, much to your surprise, you find yourself singing along to that band that you didn’t like. You’ve used internalization to make the group norms your own.

21. Teamwork
A group almost always outperforms an individual but rarely performs as well as it could in theory. A group’s efficiency usually declines as its size increases because organizing takes time and social loafing increases with group size.
Social loafing means that as more individuals are added to a group responsible for a task, each successive addition contributes a little less (Karau and Williams 1993). Furthermore, the more people become involved, the harder it will be to discern individual effort. If it is impossible for any single person to receive credit or blame, motivation usually will suffer.

22. Teamwork (cont’d.)
Group leaders can increase efficiency by recognizing individual effort or by increasing members’ social identity (the degree to which they identify with the group). [ 22

23. Qualities of Leadership: Power, Authority, and Style
Power is the ability to control the actions of others. It includes:
Coercive power—backed by the threat of force
Influential power—supported by persuasion
Ask your students to think of some examples of coercive power and influential power. Which type of power do they think is more effective, and why?

24. Qualities of Leadership: Power, Authority, and Style (cont’d.)
Max Weber identified three types of authority found in social organizations.
Traditional authority is authority based in custom, birthright, or divine right and is usually associated with monarchies and dynasties.
An example of traditional authority is a king or other monarch, who is born into that role.

25. Qualities of Leadership: Power, Authority, and Style (cont’d.)
Legal-rational authority is authority based in laws, rules, and procedures.
Charismatic authority is authority based in the perception of remarkable personal qualities in a leader.
A police officer has legal-rational authority. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Mother Theresa could be considered charismatic leaders.

26. Qualities of Leadership: Power, Authority, and Style (cont’d.)
Instrumental leadership is leadership that is task- or goal-oriented. An instrumental leader is less concerned with people’s feelings than with getting the job done.
We often view leadership styles through the lens of gender, expecting women to be more expressive and men to be more instrumental. People are sometimes surprised or even upset when those expectations aren’t met.

27. Qualities of Leadership: Power, Authority, and Style (cont’d.)
An expressive leader is concerned with maintaining emotional and relational harmony within the group because this will lead to a positive work environment and improved productivity.
An expressive leader demonstrates interest in group members’ emotions as well as their achievements.

28. Bureaucracy
A bureaucracy is a type of secondary group designed to perform tasks efficiently.
Max Weber identified six characteristics of bureaucracies: specialization, technical competence, hierarchy, rules and regulations, impersonality, and formal written communication.

29. Bureaucracy (cont’d.)
Bureaucracies are impersonal but efficient, and they provide many basic necessities.
George Ritzer coined the term McDonaldization to describe the spread of bureaucratic rationalization and the resulting increase in both efficiency and dehumanization.
Ritzer stated that many institutions in our society now operate much like a fast food restaurant, focusing on efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control.

30. HIGH STATUS ADMINISTRATIVE PROFESSIONAL OFFICE WORKER
THE STRENGTH OF WEAK TIES
HIGH STATUS
In the upper class there is a stress on the importance of strong ties and forming elite clubs.
ADMINISTRATIVE
Administrators are most likely to be cosmopolitans and involved in an organization to branch out and form new ties.
PROFESSIONAL
Professionals, technical, and managerial workers will most likely hear about new jobs through weak ties.
OFFICE WORKER
The office worker may have mixed connections in both higher and lower classes.
EXAMPLE:
PART TIME TEACHER
4 Strong Ties
6 Weak Ties
Through both types of ties he knows people in the class above and below his own.
SEMI-PROFESSIONAL
Semi-professional frequently use weak ties to land or hear about a new job.
1. What is the difference between “strong ties” and “weak ties”?
2. Look at the low-status group in the infographic and consider the distribution of their strong ties. Why are these strong ties not likely to be very useful in helping them find desirable jobs?
3. In the infographic, are there more strong ties that jump two or more levels, or more weak ties that jump two or more levels? Why do you think this is?
4. What is a local bridge?
5. How do professionals differ from blue-collar workers in terms of what type of tie they will probably use to find a job?
6. Are the jobs that most people have before coming to college more likely to be attained through relying on weak or strong ties? After college, which kind of ties are more likely to help a graduate attain a job?
BLUE COLLAR
The majority of people of a lower status will find a job though a relative or close friends.
LOCAL BRIDGE
A person who can connect two people who don’t know each other. Bridges can connect people outside their circle and help them reach different jobs.
LOW STATUS
For those of a lower status, weak ties of a similar status are not especially useful or far reaching.
TIGHT CIRCLES
When everyone in a circle primarily have strong ties with each other, it becomes difficult to reach beyond that circle. 30

31. Do you use Facebook to keep up with friends and family? yes no
Chapter 5: Participation Questions
Do you use Facebook to keep up with friends and family?
yes no
These questions can be used with “clickers,” cell phones, or other audience response systems to increase participation in your classes. They can also be used to encourage discussion without technological input.

32. Do you have any Facebook friends that you’ve never met in person?
Chapter 5: Participation Questions
Do you have any Facebook friends that you’ve never met in person?
yes no
These questions can be used with “clickers,” cell phones, or other audience response systems to increase participation in your classes. They can also be used to encourage discussion without technological input.

33. Chapter 5: Participation Questions
Do you regularly participate in any massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft or Second Life?
yes no
These questions can be used with “clickers,” cell phones, or other audience response systems to increase participation in your classes. They can also be used to encourage discussion without technological input.

34. Chapter 5: Participation Questions
Do you participate in any extracurricular groups on campus whose members meet regularly in person?
yes no
These questions can be used with “clickers,” cell phones, or other audience response systems to increase participation in your classes. They can also be used to encourage discussion without technological input.

35. Class Discussion
1. Has there been a time in your life in which you gave into group pressure knowing that you were wrong in doing so?
2. Where do you recognize power in your life?
3. Think of examples where instrumental and expressive leadership are useful in social situations?

36. This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for Chapter 5