Types of Groups
Learning Outcomes
- Describe the functions of a variety of groups (i.e. primary/secondary, in-groups/out-groups, and reference groups)
Most of us feel comfortable using the word “group” without giving it much thought. In everyday use, it can be a generic term, although it carries important clinical and scientific meanings. Moreover, the concept of a group is central to much of how we think about society and human interaction. Often, we might mean different things by using that word. We might say that a group of kids all saw the dog, and it could mean 250 students in a lecture hall or four siblings playing on a front lawn. In everyday conversation, there isn’t a clear distinguishing use. So how can we more precisely focus the meaning for sociological purposes?
Defining a Group
The term group is an amorphous one and can refer to a wide variety of gatherings, from just two people (think about a “group project” in school when you partnered with another student), a club, a regular gathering of friends, or people who work together or share a hobby. In short, the term refers to any collection of at least two people who interact with some frequency and who share a sense that their identity is somehow aligned with the group. Of course, every time people are gathered it is not necessarily a group. A rally is usually a one-time event, for instance, and belonging to a political party doesn’t imply interaction with others. People who exist in the same place at the same time but who do not interact or share a sense of identity—such as a bunch of people standing in line at Starbucks—are considered an aggregate, or a crowd. Another example of a nongroup is people who share similar characteristics but are not tied to one another in any way. These people are considered a category, and as an example all children born from approximately 1980–2000 are referred to as “Millennials.” Why are Millennials a category and not a group? Because while some of them may share a sense of identity, they do not, as a whole, interact frequently with each other.
Interestingly, people within an aggregate or category can become a group. During disasters, people in a neighborhood (an aggregate) who did not know each other might become friendly and depend on each other at the local shelter. After the disaster ends and the people go back to simply living near each other, the feeling of cohesiveness may last since they have all shared an experience. They might remain a group, practicing emergency readiness, coordinating supplies for next time, or taking turns caring for neighbors who need extra help. Similarly, there may be many groups within a single category. Consider teachers, for example. Within this category, groups may exist like teachers’ unions, teachers who coach, or staff members who are involved with the PTA.
Types of Groups
Sociologist Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929) suggested that groups can broadly be divided into two categories: primary groups and secondary groups (Cooley 1909). According to Cooley, primary groups play the most critical role in our lives. The primary group is usually fairly small and is made up of individuals who generally engage face-to-face in long-term, emotionally significant ways. These interactions occurring within the primary group and which serve emotional needs are called expressive functions, which differ from merely pragmatic ones. The primary group is usually made up of significant others, those individuals who have the most impact on our socialization. The best example of a primary group is the family.
Secondary groups are often larger and impersonal. They may also be task-focused and time-limited. These groups serve an instrumental function rather than an expressive one, meaning that their role is more goal- or task-oriented than emotional. One’s fellow students or coworkers can be examples of a secondary group. Neither primary nor secondary groups are bound by strict definitions or set limits. In fact, people can move from one group to another. A graduate seminar, for example, can start as a secondary group focused on the class at hand, but as the students work together throughout their program, they may find common interests and strong ties that transform them into a more durable primary group.
Best Friends She’s Never Met
Writer Allison Levy worked alone. While she liked the freedom and flexibility of working from home, she sometimes missed having a community of coworkers, both for the practical purpose of brainstorming and the more social “water cooler” aspect. Levy did what many do in the Internet age: she found a group of other writers online through a web forum. Over time, a group of approximately twenty writers, who all wrote for a similar audience, broke off from the larger forum and started a private invitation-only forum. While writers in general represent all genders, ages, and interests, it ended up being a collection of twenty- and thirty-something women who comprised the new forum; they all wrote fiction for children and young adults.
At first, the writers’ forum was clearly a secondary group united by the members’ professions and work situations. As Levy explained, “On the Internet, you can be present or absent as often as you want. No one is expecting you to show up.” It was a useful place to research information about different publishers and about who had recently sold what and to track industry trends. But as time passed, Levy found it served a different purpose. Since the group shared other characteristics beyond their writing (such as age and gender), the online conversation naturally turned to matters such as child-rearing, aging parents, health, and exercise. Levy found it was a sympathetic place to talk about any number of subjects, not just writing. Further, when people didn’t post for several days, others expressed concern, asking whether anyone had heard from the missing writers. It reached a point where most members would tell the group if they were traveling or needed to be offline for awhile.
The group continued to share. One member on the site who was going through a difficult family illness wrote, “I don’t know where I’d be without you women. It is so great to have a place to vent that I know isn’t hurting anyone.” Others shared similar sentiments.
So is this a primary group? Most of these people have never met each other. They live in Hawaii, Australia, Minnesota, and across the world. They may never meet. Levy wrote recently to the group, saying, “Most of my ‘real-life’ friends and even my husband don’t really get the writing thing. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Despite the distance and the lack of physical contact, the group clearly provides an expressive function.
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In-Groups and Out-Groups
One of the ways that groups can be powerful is through inclusion, and its inverse, exclusion. The feeling that we belong in an elite or select group is a heady one, while the feeling of not being allowed in, or of being in competition with a group, can be motivating in a different way. Sociologist William Sumner (1840–1910) developed the concepts of in-group and out-group to explain this phenomenon (Sumner 1906). In short, an in-group is the group that an individual feels she belongs to, and which she believes to be an integral part of who she is. An out-group, conversely, is a group someone doesn’t belong to. Often we may feel disdain or competition in relationship to an out-group. Sports teams, unions, and sororities are examples of in-groups and out-groups. People may belong to, or be an outsider to, any of these. Primary groups consist of both in-groups and out-groups, as do secondary groups.
While group affiliations can be neutral or even positive, such as the case of a team-based sporting competition, the concept of in-groups and out-groups can also explain some negative human behavior, such as white supremacist movements like the Ku Klux Klan, or the bullying of gay or lesbian students. By defining others as “not like us” and/or inferior, in-groups can end up practicing ethnocentrism, racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism—manners of judging others negatively based on their culture, race, sex, age, or sexuality. Often, in-groups can form within a secondary group. For instance, a workplace can have cliques of people, from senior executives who play golf together, to engineers who write code together, to young singles who socialize after hours. While these in-groups might show favoritism and affinity for other in-group members, the overall organization may be unable or unwilling to acknowledge it. Therefore, it pays to be wary of the politics of in-groups, since members may exclude others as a means of gaining status within the group.
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CyberBullying
In January of 2018, 12-year-old Gabriella Green (“Gabby”) committed suicide by hanging in her home in Panama City, Florida. Two 12-year-old students were charged with cyberstalking once the investigation delved into her social media accounts and cell phone texts. Cyberbullying is the use of interactive media by one person to torment another, and it is on the rise. Cyberbullying can mean sending threatening texts, harassing someone in a public forum (such as Facebook), hacking someone’s account and pretending to be him or her, posting embarrassing images online, and so on. Cyberbullying might have contributed to Gabby’s suicide, and her case is among those that have led to nationwide conversations about the need for education, prevention, and effective responses to young people who are actively being cyberbullied.
A study by the Cyberbullying Research Center found that 20 percent of middle school students admitted to “seriously thinking about committing suicide” as a result of online bullying (Hinduja and Patchin 2010). Whereas bullying face-to-face requires willingness to directly interact with your victim, cyberbullying allows bullies to harass others from the privacy of their homes without witnessing the damage firsthand. This form of bullying is particularly dangerous because it’s widely accessible and therefore easier to accomplish.
According to a report released in 2013 by the National Center for Educational Statistics, close to 1 in every 3 (27.8 percent) students report being bullied by their school peers. Seventeen percent of students reported being the victims of cyberbullying.
Measuring cyberbullying and its targets is quite difficult. Researchers have shown the way the questions are asked can lead to gender-specific responses. For example, if a survey asks about “rumor spreading or hurtful commenting behaviors,” females are more likely to be involved, but if the survey asks about “mistreatment in videos or via online gaming,” males are more likely to be involved. [1] In a survey of 5,000 respondents, cyberbullying in the past 30 days occurred most to multiracial high school females, then middle school multiracial females, and white middle school females as number three (Patchin 2019). Groups least likely to be victims of cyberbullying were Asian middle school males, Black female high schoolers, and Asian female high schoolers.
Examining this issue is an area ripe for sociological research and has clear policy implications. When we consider demographic variables like race/ ethnicity, gender, and age, how does that help us understand this phenomenon? How does an understanding of groups reveal the behavior of the cyberbullies (who also report being more likely to commit suicide) and those who experience cyberbullying? Other than survey research, what other sociological research methods could be employed?
Reference Groups
A reference group is a group that people compare themselves to—it provides a standard of measurement. In U.S. society, peer groups are common reference groups. Kids and adults pay attention to what their peers wear, what music they like, what they do with their free time—and they compare themselves to what they see. Most people have more than one reference group, so a middle school boy might look not just at his classmates but also at his older brother’s friends and see a different set of norms. And he might observe the antics of his favorite athletes for yet another set of behaviors.
Some other examples of reference groups can be one’s cultural center, workplace, family gathering, and even parents. Often, reference groups convey competing messages. For instance, on television and in movies, young adults often have wonderful apartments and cars and active social lives despite not holding a job. In music videos, young women might dance and sing in a sexually aggressive way that suggests experience beyond their years. At all ages, we use reference groups to help guide our behavior and show us social norms. So how important is it to surround yourself with positive reference groups? You may not recognize a reference group, but it still influences the way you act. Identifying your reference groups can help you understand the source of the social identities you aspire to or want to distance yourself from.
Types of Groups, Group Dynamics, and Leadership
Please watch this video to review the different types of groups and to preview what you will learn about on the next pages—group dynamics and leadership.
College: A World of In-Groups, Out-Groups, and Reference Groups
For a student entering college, the sociological study of groups takes on an immediate and practical meaning. After all, when we arrive someplace new, most of us glance around to see how well we fit in or stand out in the ways we want. This is a natural response to a reference group, and on a large campus, there can be many competing groups. Say you are a strong athlete who wants to play intramural sports, and your favorite musicians are a local punk band. You may find yourself engaged with two very different reference groups.
These reference groups can also become your in-groups or out-groups. For instance, different groups on campus might solicit you to join. Are there fraternities and sororities at your school? If so, chances are they will try to convince students—that is, students they deem worthy—to join them. And if you love playing soccer and want to play on a campus team, but you’re wearing shredded jeans, combat boots, and a local band T-shirt, you might have a hard time convincing the soccer team to give you a chance. While most campus groups refrain from insulting competing groups, there is a definite sense of an in-group versus an out-group. “Them?” a member might say. “They’re all right, but their parties are nowhere near as cool as ours.” Or, “Only serious engineering geeks join that group.” This immediate categorization into in-groups and out-groups means that students must choose carefully, since whatever group they associate with won’t just define their friends—it may also define their enemies.
Further Research
For more information about cyberbullying causes and statistics, check out cyberbullying.org.
Think It Over
- Make a list of all of the different groups in your social world. Then label each group making sure you have at least one example of a primary group, secondary group, in-group, out-group, and a reference group. Now write the instrumental and expressive functions of each group next to the group. Finally, after looking at this list and the functions of each group, which are most important to you? Why?
- How has technology changed your primary groups and secondary groups? Do you have more (and separate) primary groups due to online connectivity? Do you believe that someone, like Levy, can have a true primary group made up of people she has never met? Why, or why not?
- Groups can be formed based on exclusionary criteria and/or can transform into an in-group with clearly defined out-groups. Street gangs and motorcycle clubs are extreme examples, but what about fraternities and sororities or sports rivalries (i.e. Yankees/ Red Sox, Celtics/ Lakers, Real Madrid/ Barcelona, Duke/ North Carolina)? What are the instrumental and expressive functions of such in-group groups? What are the dysfunctions? How does this build upon Durkheim’s theory of society based on social solidarity?
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Glossary
- aggregate:
- a collection of people who exist in the same place at the same time, but who don’t interact or share a sense of identity
- category:
- people who share similar characteristics but who are not connected in any way
- expressive function:
- a group function that serves an emotional need
- group:
- any collection of at least two people who interact with some frequency and who share some sense of aligned identity
- in-group:
- a group a person belongs to and feels is an integral part of his identity
- instrumental function:
- being oriented toward a task or goal
- out-group:
- a group that an individual is not a member of, and may even compete with
- primary groups:
- small, informal groups of people who are closest to us
- reference groups:
- groups to which an individual compares herself
- secondary groups:
- larger and more impersonal groups that are task-focused and time limited
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- Patchin, J. 2019. "Cyberbullying victimization rates by race, sex, and age." Cyberbullying Research Center. https://cyberbullying.org/cyberbullying-victimization-rates-2016 ↵