One of our topics this week was social psychology, the study of human behavior in groups.
As you’ll recall from your reading, individuals occupy social roles within the groups they belong to, and these roles affect how they behave toward other members of the group. One of the more common problems with group membership is role conflict. Humans generally belong to more than one group, and sometimes this leads to a difficult situation. If your role in school is to be a student, and your family role is to be a parent, what do you do when your child has chicken pox during your final exams?
Other important aspects of group membership include group structure and group cohesiveness. As you examine your own social groups, please consider how the groups are structured and how cohesive they are, compared to each other. For example, a marching band is a group that most likely has a well-defined structure and a great deal of cohesiveness. But friends who get together for a game of pick-up basketball on Sundays will be loosely structured, and members may come and go.
Groups often share accepted standards of behavior, known as norms. The marching band’s norm for dress would be a uniform that matches everyone else’s, while the pick-up basketball players can express their own taste in workout gear.
Instructions:
Think about the social groups in your own life and how you interact with the other members of those groups. Analyze your own role in at least two social groups you belong to.
Your paper should describe each social group, explain how they’re structured and how cohesive they are, and it should also describe your personal experience with each specific social role you play. Describe your role within each group, and discuss whether you’ve experienced any role conflicts.
Finally, make sure to identify several norms for behavior in each group.