Sense Of Belonging: What It Is And How It Influences Our Behavior
It is said that no one loves their country because it is the largest, the richest or the most advanced, but because it is, simply, theirs. This same thing can be extrapolated to any other social group, be it a family, a town or even sports teams and their fans.
People create our identity based on how others perceive us socially and, also, on the way we identify with some people or others, feeling part of and integrated into a community.
We know this as a sense of belonging a phenomenon that social psychology and sociology have studied in depth to try to see how it is formed and its relationship with ingroup favoritism, which we will see below.
The sense of belonging is the feeling or awareness of being part of one or more groups or communities We take these human groups as reference models, which directly influence our characteristics and perception of ourselves. Depending on how many traits we share with the members of a certain group, the more likely we are to identify with it, seeing these characteristics as evidence of being part of something bigger.
The size of the group does not matter. The sense of belonging can be formed in any type of group and what really matters for us to develop it is, in addition to the number of traits that we share with its members, the importance that that same group has for us We have an example of this in the family with which, no matter how small it may be, we share both physical and behavioral traits, in addition to a common history and emotional and economic dependence.
Although the family is the first group with which we establish contact, being key to our survival and cultural development and, therefore, The first community with which we develop a sense of belonging is not the only one As we grow we establish contact with different groups, such as neighbors on the same street, classmates, other children with similar interests and all kinds of different social groups that will shape our identity and awaken different senses of belonging.
Any social group can awaken in us a sense of belonging, as long as we identify with it and share some characteristics. This feeling is a phenomenon as complex as the social groups and the identities that can arise from them.
Our sense of belonging It is not limited to the family, town or country in which we were born but also to other types of social groups associated with culture, socioeconomic class, sports teams, race, religion, profession, hobbies and many more.
Below we are going to see a brief list of very different social groups that can perfectly awaken a sense of belonging to a greater or lesser degree:
On many occasions, the sense of belonging to a certain group It does not depend on its prestige It doesn’t matter if it is an economically very important group, culturally very widespread or socially very influential. What makes us feel identified with it is the simple fact of having been born or raised within it, which helps us justify why it is the best.
If the group is small, we will tend to say that we have been lucky to be part of a select and exclusive group and if it is large we will tend to give thanks for being within such an important community.
This is why when someone comments on a limitation of the group to which we belong, we get defensive instead of letting them convince us. A classic example is when Catalan nationalists are criticized for feeling only Catalan and speaking Catalan, saying that this language is of no use outside their linguistic domain because it has few speakers. The Catalanist, far from ceasing to be one, will defend even more the use of his language and will feel grateful for speaking a language with fewer speakers than Spanish since it gives it a touch of distinction.
Its evolutionary and historical importance
The human species is a social animal, the sense of belonging being living proof of this. From a very young age we need to feel part of a larger group to to be able to receive their protection and help us develop as functional individuals
As we advance in the history of humanity, this idea of belonging has stopped being limited to the family or the tribe to move on to larger projects, such as being from a country or a specific social group, military in it and receiving its protection in exchange.
When we are little we need our family to feed us since we are totally dependent on adults. As we grow, even if we gain independence individually and can move forward on our own, it will be very difficult to separate ourselves from the family and, even more complicated, to separate ourselves from society.
We need others to continue living and, for this reason, as a mechanism that guarantees our survival, we identify ourselves in various groups, carrying out exchanges of favors that will allow us to be socially adjusted and adapted individuals.
In any case, the sense of belonging is not something static, that is, We do not have to always feel loyal to the same social group, especially if we see that something has changed in it and we no longer feel that it provides us with the initial security. The social changes that may occur influence the way we feel part of a community, a classic case being the emergence of industrialization and urbanization, which practically ended the idea of community in large cities.
The group identity associated with the sense of belonging does not have to be inflexible and exclusive either The limits that prevent us from being part of a group change and can become more permeable as that same social group is redefined, allowing more people to identify with it. The opposite process can also happen, that is, the group becomes more selective or splits into other new identities, changing the sense of belonging to the original group.
We see a clear example of identity that has become more permeable in Spain. The idea of being Spanish has been changing and has become more open to diversity. If before, an authentic Spanish person was a white person, descended from a long lineage of Spaniards, with Spanish as their mother tongue and Catholic religion, now, with the arrival of people from Africa and Latin America, this has changed, making Spanish look like Spanish. to those who feel as such and are culturally adapted, leaving aside their race, religion, mother tongue and origin.
When does it develop into our way of socializing?
As we said, being a phenomenon that can occur with any type of group, the sense of belonging to a community can occur at practically any age and in any context, motivated by any social phenomenon. Furthermore, the degree to which the group impacts our identity does not depend directly on the social importance or size of the community although it may be influenced.
What can be stated is that the first group with which we feel a sense of belonging is the family, as we have mentioned before, and that this occurs very early. Many research had pointed out that this can be seen in children over 4 years old, who, whether speaking or through their actions, have marked ingroup favoritism. That is, children of these ages evaluate their family members and also the children in their group of friends or class more positively.
This can be verified very easily by going to a kindergarten where each class is divided into two groups (e.g., the sunflower class and the rose class). If we ask a child which of the two class groups he thinks he does better, he will most likely tell us his own.
He will not give us rational arguments, he will simply tell us things like “because we are the best” or “because we are called that.” You already have a certain sense of belonging and falls into ingroup favoritism valuing better the group to which it belongs for the simple fact of belonging.
However, it seems that the sense of belonging could appear much earlier, at only 17 months of age. Research carried out by Renée Baillargeon and Kyong-Sun Jin observed that children of these ages had a slight idea of ingroup and outgroup. The babies expected that members of the same group would help each other, while if members of two different groups did not help each other, there was no surprise or expectation in the infants.
According to this research, it seems that human beings, instinctively, expect that two people from the same group, who share characteristics between them, have already developed a feeling of being part of something greater than themselves and that, therefore Therefore, they must help each other in order to survive. Babies of these ages seem to exhibit this behavior, which is truly surprising.
