Bases and principles of classification of social groups of youth. Social groups, their classification

Introduction

The concept of "social group"

Classification of social groups:

a) division of groups on the basis of the individual's belonging to them;

b) groups divided by the nature of the relationship between their members:

1) primary and secondary groups;

2) small and large groups

4. Conclusion

5. List of used literature

Introduction

Society is not just a collection of individuals. Among large social communities are classes, social strata, estates. Each person belongs to one of these social groups or may occupy some intermediate (transitional) position: breaking away from the usual social environment, he has not yet fully joined the new group, his way of life retains the features of the old and new social status.

The science that studies the formation of social groups, their place and role in society, the interaction between them, is called sociology. There are different sociological theories. Each of them gives its own explanation of the phenomena and processes taking place in the social sphere of society.

In my essay, I would like to highlight in more detail the question of what a social group is, to consider the classification of social groups.
The concept of "social group"

Despite the fact that the concept of a group is one of the most important in sociology, scientists do not fully agree on its definition. First, the difficulty arises from the fact that most of the concepts in sociology appear in the course of social practice: they begin to be applied in science after their long use in life, and at the same time they are given the most different meanings. Secondly, the difficulty is due to the fact that many types of community are formed, as a result of which, in order to accurately determine the social group, it is necessary to distinguish certain types from these communities.

There are several kinds of social communities to which the term “group” is applied in the ordinary sense, but in the scientific understanding they represent something else. In one case, the term "group" refers to some individuals, physically, spatially located in a certain place. At the same time, the division of communities is carried out only spatially, with the help of physically defined boundaries. An example of such communities can be individuals traveling in the same carriage, being at a certain moment on the same street, or living in the same city. In a strictly scientific sense, such a territorial community cannot be called a social group. It is defined as aggregation- a certain number of people gathered in a certain physical space and not carrying out conscious interactions.

The second case is the application of the concept of a group to a social community that unites individuals with one or more similar characteristics. So, men, school leavers, physicists, old people, smokers are presented to us as a group. Very often you can hear the words about the "age group of young people from 18 to 22 years old." This understanding is also not scientific. To define a community of people with one or more similar characteristics, the term "category" is more appropriate. For example, it is quite correct to talk about the category of blondes or brunettes, the age category of young people from 18 to 22 years old, etc.

Then what is a social group?

A social group is a collection of individuals interacting in a certain way based on the shared expectations of each member of the group regarding others.

In this definition, one can see two essential conditions necessary for a group to be considered a group:

1) the presence of interactions between its members;

2) the emergence of shared expectations of each member of the group regarding its other members.

According to this definition, two people waiting for a bus at a bus stop would not be a group, but could become one if they started a conversation, fight, or other interaction with mutual expectations. Airplane passengers cannot be a group. They will be considered an aggregation until groups of people interacting with each other are formed among them during the journey. It happens that the whole aggregation can become a group. Suppose a certain number of people are in a store where they form a queue without interacting with each other. The seller suddenly leaves and is absent for a long time. The queue begins to interact to achieve one goal - to return the seller to not his workplace. Aggregation turns into a group.

At the same time, the groups listed above appear inadvertently, by chance, they do not have a stable expectation, and interactions are usually one-way (for example, only a conversation and no other types of interactions). Such spontaneous, unstable groups are called quasigroups. They can turn into social groups if, in the course of constant interaction, the degree of social control between its members increases. To exercise this control, some degree of cooperation and solidarity is necessary. Indeed, social control in a group cannot be exercised as long as individuals act randomly and disunitedly. It is impossible to effectively control the disorderly crowd or the actions of people leaving the stadium after the end of the match, but it is possible to clearly control the activities of the enterprise team. It is this control over the activities of the collective that defines it as a social group, since the activities of people in this case are coordinated. Solidarity is necessary for the developing group to identify each member of the group with the collective. Only if the members of the group can say "we" is stable membership of the group and the boundaries of social control formed (Fig. 1).

From fig. 1 shows that there is no social control in social categories and social aggregations, so these are purely abstract allocations of communities according to one attribute. Of course, among the individuals included in the category, one can notice a certain identification with other members of the category (for example, by age), but, I repeat, social control is practically absent here. A very low level of control is observed in communities formed according to the principle of spatial proximity. Social control here comes simply from the awareness of the presence of other individuals. Then it intensifies as the quasi-groups turn into social groups.

Proper social groups also have varying degrees of social control. So, among all social groups, a special place is occupied by the so-called status groups - classes, layers and castes. These large groups, which have arisen on the basis of social inequality, have (with the exception of castes) low internal social control, which, nevertheless, can increase as individuals become aware of their belonging to a status group, as well as awareness of group interests and inclusion in the struggle to raise the status of their groups. On fig. Figure 1 shows that as the group decreases, social control increases and the strength of social ties increases. This is because as the size of the group decreases, the number of interpersonal interactions increases.

Classification of social groups

Separation of groups by feature

belonging to them of the individual

Each individual identifies a certain set of groups to which he belongs and defines them as "mine". It can be "my family", "my professional group", "my company", "my class". Such groups will be considered ingroups, i.e. those to which he feels himself to belong and in which he identifies with other members in such a way that he regards the members of the group as "we". Other groups to which the individual does not belong - other families, other groups of friends, other professional groups, other religious groups - will be for him outgroups, for which he selects symbolic meanings: "not us", "others".

In the least developed, primitive societies, people live in small groups, isolated from each other and representing clans of relatives. Kinship relationships in most cases determine the nature of ingroups and outgroups in these societies. When two strangers meet, the first thing they do is look for family ties, and if any relative connects them, then both of them are members of the ingroup. If kinship ties are not found, then in many societies of this type people feel hostile towards each other and act in accordance with their feelings.

In modern society, relations between its members are built on many types of ties besides kinship, but the feeling of an ingroup, the search for its members among other people, remains very important for every person. When an individual enters an environment of strangers, he first of all tries to find out if there are among them those who make up his social class or stratum, adhere to his political views and interests. Someone who goes in for sports, for example, is interested in people who understand sports events, and even better, those who support the same team as him. Inveterate philatelists involuntarily divide all people into those who simply collect stamps, and those who are interested in them, and are looking for like-minded people, communicating in different groups. It is obvious that the mark of people belonging to an ingroup should be that they share certain feelings and opinions, say, laugh at the same things and have some unanimity about the spheres of activity and goals of life. Outgroup members may have many traits and characteristics common to all groups in a given society, they may share many feelings and aspirations common to all, but they always have certain particular traits and characteristics, as well as feelings that are different from the feelings of members of the ingroup. And people unconsciously mark these traits, dividing previously unfamiliar people into “us” and “others”.

In modern society, an individual belongs to many groups at the same time, so a large number of in-group and out-group ties can intersect. An older student will consider a junior student as an outgroup individual, but a junior student and an older student may be members of the same sports team where they are in an ingroup.

Researchers note that ingroup identifications, intersecting in many directions, do not reduce the intensity of self-determination of differences, and the difficulty of including an individual in a group makes exclusion from ingroups more painful. So, a person who unexpectedly received a high status, has all the attributes to get into high society, but cannot do this, since he is considered an upstart; a teenager desperately hopes to participate in the youth team, but she does not accept him; a worker who comes to work in a brigade cannot take root in it and sometimes serves as a subject of ridicule. Thus, exclusion from groups can be a very brutal process. For example, most primitive societies consider strangers to be part of the animal world, many of them do not distinguish between the words "enemy" and "stranger", considering these concepts to be identical. Not too different from this point of view is the attitude of the Nazis, who excluded the Jews from human society. Rudolf Hoss, who ran the Auschwitz concentration camp where 700,000 Jews were exterminated, characterized the massacre as "the removal of alien racial-biological bodies." In this case, in-group and out-group identifications led to fantastic cruelty and cynicism.

Summing up what has been said, it should be noted that the concepts of ingroup and outgroup are important because the self-reference of each person to them has a significant impact on the behavior of individuals in groups, from members - associates in an ingroup, everyone has the right to expect recognition, loyalty, mutual assistance. The behavior expected from representatives of an outgroup at a meeting depends on the type of this outgroup. We expect hostility from some, more or less friendly attitude from others, indifference from others. Expectations for certain behaviors from members of outgroups undergo significant changes over time. So, a twelve-year-old boy avoids and does not like girls, but after a few years he becomes a romantic lover, and a few years later a spouse. During a sports match, representatives of different groups treat each other with hostility and may even hit each other, but as soon as the final whistle sounds: their relationship changes dramatically, becomes calm or even friendly.

We are not equally included in our ingroups. Someone may, for example, be the soul of a friendly company, but in the team at the place of work they do not enjoy respect and be poorly included in intra-group communications. There is no identical assessment by the individual of the outgroups surrounding him. A zealous follower of religious teaching will be more closed to contacts with representatives of the communist worldview than with representatives of social democracy. Everyone has their own outgroup rating scale.

R. Park and E. Burges (1924), as well as E. Bogardus (1933) developed the concept of social distance, which allows you to measure the feelings and attitudes shown by an individual or a social group towards various outgroups. Ultimately, the Bogardus scale was developed to measure the degree of acceptance or closeness towards other outgroups. Social distance is measured by separately considering the relationships that people enter into with members of other outgroups. There are special questionnaires, answering which members of one group evaluate the relationship, rejecting or, conversely, accepting representatives of other groups. Informed members of the group are asked, when filling out the questionnaires, to indicate which of the members of other groups they know they perceive as a neighbor, work comrade, as a marriage partner, and thus relationships are determined. Social distance questionnaires cannot accurately predict people's actions if a member of another group actually becomes a neighbor or workmate. The Bogardus scale is only an attempt to measure the feelings of each member of the group, the disinclination to communicate with other members of this group or other groups. What a person will do in any situation depends to a large extent on the totality of the conditions or circumstances of this situation.

Reference groups

The term "reference group", first introduced into circulation by the social psychologist Mustafa Sherif in 1948, means a real or conditional social community with which the individual relates himself as a standard and to the norms, opinions, values ​​and assessments of which he is guided in his behavior and self-esteem. The boy, playing the guitar or doing sports, focuses on the lifestyle and behavior of rock stars or sports idols. An employee of an organization, seeking to make a career, focuses on the behavior of top management. It can also be seen that ambitious people who have unexpectedly received a lot of money tend to imitate in dress and manners the representatives of the upper classes.

Sometimes the reference group and ingroup may coincide, for example, in the case when a teenager is guided by his company to a greater extent than by the opinion of teachers. At the same time, an outgroup can also be a reference group; the above examples demonstrate this.

There are normative and comparative referential functions of the group.

The normative function of the reference group is manifested in the fact that this group is the source of norms of behavior, social attitudes and value orientations of the individual. So, a little boy, wanting to become an adult as soon as possible, tries to follow the norms and value orientations adopted among adults, and an emigrant who comes to a foreign country tries to master the norms and attitudes of the indigenous people as soon as possible so as not to be a "black sheep".

The comparative function is manifested in the fact that the reference group acts as a standard by which an individual can evaluate himself and others. If the child perceives the reaction of loved ones and believes their assessments, then a more mature person selects individual reference groups, belonging or not belonging to which is especially desirable for him, and forms a self-image based on the assessments of these groups.

stereotypes

Outgroups are usually perceived by individuals as stereotypes. A social stereotype is a shared image of another group or category of people. When evaluating the actions of a group of people, we most often, in addition to our desire, attribute to each of the individuals in the group some features that, in our opinion, characterize the group as a whole. For example, there is an opinion that all blacks are more passionate and temperamental than people representing the Caucasoid race (although in fact this is not so), all the French are frivolous, the British are closed and silent, the inhabitants of the city of N are stupid, etc. The stereotype can be positive (kindness, courage, perseverance), negative (unscrupulousness, cowardice) and mixed (Germans are disciplined, but cruel).

Having arisen once, the stereotype extends to all members of the corresponding outgroup without taking into account any individual differences. Therefore, it is never completely true. Indeed, it is impossible, for example, to talk about the traits of negligence or cruelty towards an entire nation or even the population of a city. But stereotypes are never completely false, they must always correspond to some extent to the characteristics of the person from the stereotyped group, otherwise they would not be recognizable.

The mechanism of the emergence of social stereotypes has not been fully explored, it is still not clear why one of the features begins to attract the attention of representatives of other groups and why it becomes a general phenomenon. But one way or another, stereotypes become part of culture, part of moral norms and role-playing attitudes. Social stereotypes are supported by selective perception (only frequently repeated incidents or cases that are noticed and remembered are selected), selective interpretation (observations related to stereotypes are interpreted, for example, Jews are entrepreneurs, rich people are greedy, etc.), selective identification ( you look like a gypsy, you look like an aristocrat, etc.) and, finally, a selective exception (he does not look like a teacher at all, he does not act like an Englishman, etc.). Through these processes, the stereotype is filled, so that even exceptions and misinterpretations serve as a breeding ground for the formation of stereotypes.

Stereotypes are constantly changing. Poorly dressed, chalk-stained teacher as a private stereotype has actually died. The rather stable stereotype of a capitalist in a top hat and with a huge belly has also disappeared. There are many examples.

Stereotypes are constantly born, changed and disappear because they are necessary for members of a social group. With their help, we get concise and concise information about the outgroups around us. Such information determines our attitude towards other groups, allows us to navigate among the many surrounding groups and, ultimately, determine the line of behavior in communication with representatives of outgroups. People always perceive the stereotype faster than the true personality traits, since the stereotype is the result of many, sometimes well-aimed and subtle judgments, despite the fact that only some individuals in the outgroup fully correspond to it.

Groups divided by nature

relationships between their members

Primary and secondary groups

The difference in relationships between individuals is most clearly seen in primary and secondary groups. Under primary groups are understood as such groups in which each member sees other members of the group as personalities and individuals. The achievement of such a vision occurs through social contacts that give an intimate, personal and universal character to intragroup interactions, which include many elements of personal experience. In groups such as a family or a group of friends, its members tend to make social relationships informal and relaxed. They are interested in each other primarily as individuals, have common hopes and feelings, and fully satisfy their needs for communication. In secondary groups social contacts are impersonal, one-sided and utilitarian. Friendly personal contacts with other members are not required here, but all contacts are functional, as required by social roles. For example, the relationship between the site foreman and subordinate workers is impersonal and does not depend on friendly relations between them. The secondary group may be a labor union or some association, club, team. But two individuals trading in the bazaar can also be considered a secondary group. In some cases, such a group exists to achieve specific goals, including certain needs of members of this group as individuals.

The terms "primary" and "secondary" groups characterize the types of group relationships better than indicators of the relative importance of this group in the system of other groups. The primary group can serve the achievement of objective goals, for example, in production, but it differs more in the quality of human relationships, the emotional satisfaction of its members, than in the efficiency of the production of products or clothing. So, a group of friends meet in the evening for a chess game. They can play chess rather indifferently, but nevertheless please each other with their conversation, the main thing here is that everyone is a good partner, not a good player. The secondary group can function in conditions of friendly relations, but its main principle is the performance of specific functions. From this point of view, a team of professional chess players assembled to play in a team tournament certainly belongs to the secondary groups. It is important here to select strong players who can take a worthy place in the tournament, and only then it is desirable that they be on friendly terms with each other. Thus, the primary group is oriented towards the relationships between its members, while the secondary is goal oriented.

Primary groups usually form a personality, in which it is socialized. Everyone finds in it an intimate environment, sympathy and opportunities for the realization of personal interests. Each member of the secondary group can find in it an effective mechanism for achieving certain goals, but often at the cost of losing intimacy and warmth in relationships. For example, a saleswoman, as a member of a team of store employees, must be attentive and polite, even when she does not like the client, or a member of a sports team, when moving to another team, knows that his relationships with colleagues will be difficult, but more opportunities will open up before him. to achieve a higher position in this sport.

Secondary groups almost always contain some number of primary groups. A sports team, production team, school class or student group is always internally divided into primary groups of individuals who sympathize with each other, into those who have interpersonal contacts more or less frequent. When managing a secondary group, as a rule, primary social formations are taken into account, especially when performing single tasks related to the interaction of a small number of group members.

Small and large groups

An analysis of the social structure of society requires that the unit under study be an elementary particle of society, concentrating in itself all types of social ties. As such a unit of analysis, the so-called small group was chosen, which has become a permanent necessary attribute of all types of sociological research.

As a real set of individuals connected by social relations, a small group began to be considered by sociologists relatively recently. So, back in 1954, F. Allport interpreted a small group as "a set of ideals, ideas and habits that are repeated in each individual consciousness and exist only in this consciousness." In reality, in his opinion, there are only separate individuals. It was only in the 1960s that the view of small groups as real elementary particles of the social structure arose and began to develop.

The modern view of the essence of small groups is best expressed in the definition of G.M. Andreeva: "A small group is a group in which social relations act in the form of direct personal contacts." In other words, only those groups in which individuals have personal contacts each with each are called small groups. Imagine a production team where everyone knows each other and communicates with each other in the course of work - this is a small group. On the other hand, the workshop team, where workers do not have constant personal contact, is a large group. About students in the same class who have personal contact with each other, we can say that this is a small group, and about all students of the school - a large group.

A small group can be either primary or secondary, depending on what type of relationship exists between its members. As for the large group, it can only be secondary. Numerous studies of small groups conducted by R. Baise and J. Homans in 1950 and K. Hollander and R. Mills in 1967 showed, in particular, that small groups differ from large ones not only in size, but also in qualitatively different social groups. - psychological characteristics. The differences in some of these characteristics are given below as an example.

Small groups have:

1. actions not focused on group goals;
2. group opinion as a permanent factor of social control;
3. conformity to group norms.

Large groups have:

1. rational goal-oriented actions;
2. group opinion is rarely used, control is exercised from top to bottom;
3. conformity to the policy pursued by the active part of the group.

Thus, most often small groups in their constant activities are not oriented towards the ultimate group goal, while the activities of large groups are rationalized to such an extent that the loss of a goal most often leads to their disintegration. In addition, in a small group, such a means of control and implementation of joint activities as a group opinion is of particular importance. Personal contacts allow all members of the group to participate in the development of a group opinion and control over the conformity of group members in relation to this opinion. Large groups, due to the lack of personal contacts between all their members, with rare exceptions, do not have the opportunity to develop a common group opinion.

The study of small groups is now widespread. In addition to the convenience of working with them due to their small size, such groups are of interest as elementary particles of the social structure in which social processes are born, mechanisms of cohesion, the emergence of leadership, and role relationships can be traced.

Conclusion

So, I considered the topic in my essay: “The concept of a social group. Classification of groups”.

Thus,

A social group is a collection of individuals interacting in a certain way based on the shared expectations of each member of the group regarding others.

Social groups are classified according to various criteria:

On the basis of an individual's belonging to them;

By the nature of the interaction between their members:

1) large groups;

2) small groups.

References

1. Frolov S.S. Fundamentals of sociology. M., 1997

2. Sociology. Ed. Elsukova A.N. Minsk, 1998

3. Kravchenko A.I. Sociology. Yekaterinburg, 1998

The most complete is the classification proposed by G.M. Andreeva (2001). In this classification, all social groups, first of all, are divided into conditional and real. Social psychology focuses its research on real groups. But among these real ones there are also those that mainly appear in general psychological research - real laboratory groups. In contrast to them, there are real natural groups. Socio-psychological analysis is possible with respect to both varieties of real groups, but the real natural groups identified in sociological analysis are of the greatest importance. In turn, these natural groups are subdivided into the so-called "large" and "small". Small groups are a traditional object of social psychology. As for large groups, the question of their study is much more complicated and requires special consideration. It is important to emphasize that these large groups are also unequally represented in social psychology: some of them have a solid tradition of research (they are mainly large, unorganized, spontaneously arisen groups, the term “group” itself is very arbitrary in relation to which), while others are organized , long-term groups - like classes, nations, are much less represented in social psychology as an object of study. In the same way, small groups can be divided into two varieties: emerging groups, already set by external social requirements, but not yet united by joint activity in the full sense of the word, and groups of a higher level of development, already established. This classification can be visualized in the following diagram (Fig. 2). Everything from the heading "real natural groups" is the object of study of social psychology.

Rice. 2. Classification of groups studied in social psychology

4.2. Small group, its characteristics and types

The closest attention in social psychology was paid to the small group, since it is the main social microsphere of human life.

E.V. Andrienko (2000) writes that a small group is one whose members personally know each other. All any significant social groups in human life are small groups. One of the leading factors that unites the group is joint activities and a common goal.

E.V. Rudensky (2000) writes that G. Homans considered the frequency of interaction, its duration and order to be the main characteristics of a small group.

Revealing the general problems of a small group in social psychology, G.M. Andreeva (2001) gives the following definition: a small group is a small group whose members are united by common social activities and are in direct personal communication, which is the basis for the emergence of emotional relationships, group norms and group processes.

The size of a small group can be from 2–3 to 35–40 people. The choice of the definition of a small group is related to the question of its size, traditionally discussed by many authors. It is customary to talk about the lower and upper quantitative limits of the group. According to most researchers, a small group "begins" with a dyad. It competes with another point of view regarding the lower limit of a small group, which suggests that the smallest number of members of a small group is not two, but three people. Therefore, it cannot be said that the issue has been finally resolved.

As for the upper quantitative limit of a small group, i.e., its maximum possible volume, the opinions of experts on this matter differ significantly.

The ideas formed on the basis of the discovery by J. Miller of the “magic number” 7 ± 2 in the study of the amount of RAM (it means the number of objects simultaneously held in memory) turned out to be quite stable. For social psychology, the certainty introduced by the introduction of a “magic number” proved to be tempting, and for a long time researchers accepted the number 7 ± 2 as the upper limit of a small group. If we turn to the practice of research, then there are the most arbitrary numbers that determine this upper limit: 10, 15, 20 people. In some studies by Moreno, the author of a sociometric technique designed specifically for use in small groups, groups of 30–40 people are mentioned when talking about school classes.

The number of people in the group affects its psychological characteristics and behavior of people.

The size of the group is inversely proportional to the personal contribution of each individual member to the common cause. This phenomenon is called the Ringelmann effect or social loafing.

The success of a person's social adaptation in a group will depend on its size - it is easier to adapt in a larger group where there is no rigid role structure.

Group cohesion is higher in a group with fewer people.

Several principles for the classification of small groups are put forward on different grounds:

primary and secondary groups. For the first time, the division of small groups into primary and secondary was introduced by the American sociologist C. Cooley. He introduced into the classification of small groups such a sign as immediacy of contacts. The primary group consists of a small number of people between whom direct relationships are established, in which an essential role belongs to their individual characteristics. The secondary is formed from people between whom direct emotionally colored ties are relatively rare, and interaction is due to the desire to achieve common goals. In the secondary group, the roles are clearly defined, but its members often know little about each other, and emotional relationships are rarely established between them, which are characteristic of small primary groups. So, in an educational institution, common primary groups are study groups of students and teams of departments, and the general secondary group is the entire team of an educational institution. This classification has no practical value at present;

organized (formal) and spontaneous (informal) groups. The division of small groups into formal and informal was first proposed by the American researcher E. Mayo after his famous Hawthorne experiments. According to Mayo, a formal group is distinguished by the fact that all the positions of its members are clearly defined in it, they are prescribed by group norms. In accordance with this, the roles of all members of the group and the system of subordination to the leadership are also strictly distributed in the formal group. An example of a formal group is any group created in the context of a specific activity: a work team, a school class, a sports team, etc. An informal group can be created within a formal group when, for example, groups consisting of close friends appear in a school class , united by some common interest, thus, two structures of relations are intertwined within the formal group. But an informal group can also arise on its own, not within a formal group, but outside of it: people who accidentally come together to play volleyball somewhere on the beach, or a closer group of friends belonging to different formal groups, are examples of such informal groups. . Sometimes, within the framework of such a group (say, in a group of tourists who went on a hike for one day), despite its informal nature, joint activities arise, and then the group acquires some features of a formal group: certain, albeit short-term, positions are distinguished in it and roles. In practice, it was found that in reality it is very difficult to isolate strictly formal and strictly informal groups, especially in cases where informal groups arose within the framework of formal ones;

laboratory and natural groups. The former include groups specially created to perform experimental tasks in the laboratory; to the second - groups functioning in real life situations. The fundamental difference between groups of both types is that in the first case we are talking about groups staffed by random persons (invited volunteers, subjects) for the duration of the experiment and with its end ceasing to exist - the so-called "fifty-minute", in the words of M. Shaw , groups. In the second case, we have in mind predominantly established groups with a certain history, often characterized by a fairly high level of socio-psychological development;

open and closed groups (according to the degree of openness). This classification is based on the degree of openness, accessibility of the group to the influence of its surrounding social environment, society. In today's world, almost any small group is open. Nevertheless, from time to time, the existence of groups is discovered that, to one degree or another, can be classified as closed due to their “exclusion” from the world of people, loss, sometimes for a long time;

membership and reference groups (according to the degree of significance of the group for the individual). It was introduced by G. Hyman, who owns the discovery of the very phenomenon of the "reference group". In Hyman's experiments, it was shown that some members of certain small groups (in this case, these were student groups) share the norms of behavior adopted by no means in this group, but in some other one, to which they are guided. Such groups, in which individuals are not really included, but whose norms they accept, Hyman called reference groups. The difference between these groups and real membership groups was noted even more clearly in the works of M. Sherif, where the concept of a reference group was associated with the "reference system" that an individual uses to compare his status with the status of other persons. Later, G. Kelly, developing the concept of reference groups, identified two of their functions: comparative and normative. The comparative function is manifested in the fact that the individual compares behavior with the norms of the reference group as with a standard, and the normative function evaluates it from the standpoint of the norms accepted in the group. In domestic social psychology A.V. Petrovsky defined the reference group as a "significant social circle", that is, as a circle of persons selected from the entire composition of the real group and especially significant for the individual. In this case, a situation may arise when the norms adopted by the group become personally acceptable to the individual only when they are accepted by a “significant circle of communication”, i.e., there appears, as it were, an intermediate landmark that the individual intends to follow. And such an interpretation has a certain meaning, but, apparently, in this case we should not talk about “reference groups”, but about “reference” as a special property of relations in a group, when one of its members chooses as a starting point for their behavior and activities a certain circle of persons (Shchedrina E.V., 1979).

The division into membership groups and reference groups opens up an interesting perspective for applied research, in particular, in the field of studying the illegal behavior of adolescents: to find out why a person included in such membership groups as a school class, a sports team, suddenly begins to focus on the wrong norms , which are accepted in them, but on the norms of completely different groups, in which he was initially not included at all (some dubious elements "from the street"). The mechanism of influence of the reference group allows us to give a primary interpretation of this fact: the membership group has lost its attractiveness for the individual, he compares his behavior with another group.

Social groups and communities. Classification of social groups.

A social group is a collection of people who interact with each other in a certain way, are aware of their belonging to this group and are considered members of it from the point of view of other people.

The first classification is based on such a criterion (feature) as the number, i.e. the number of people who are members of the group. Accordingly, there are three types of groups:

1) small group - a small community of people who are in direct personal contact and interaction with each other;

2) the middle group is a relatively large community of ideas that are in indirect functional interaction.

3) a large group - a large community of people who are in social and structural dependence on each other.

The second classification is associated with such a criterion as the time of existence of the group. There are short-term and long-term groups. Small, medium and large groups can be both short-term and long-term. For example: an ethnic community is always a long-term group, and political parties can exist for centuries, or they can very quickly leave the historical stage. Such a small group, such as, for example, a team of workers, can be either short-term: people unite to perform one production task and, having completed it, part, or long-term - people work all their working lives at the same enterprise in the same team.

The third classification is based on such a criterion as the structural integrity of the group. On this basis, primary and secondary groups are distinguished. The primary group is a structural subdivision of an official organization that cannot be further decomposed into its constituent parts, for example: a brigade, department, laboratory, department, etc. The primary group is always a small formal group. The secondary group is a set of primary small groups. An enterprise with several thousand employees, for example, Izhora Plants, is called secondary (or primary because it consists of smaller structural subdivisions of shops, departments. The secondary group is almost always the middle group.

During the formation of social groups, norms and roles are developed, on the basis of which a certain order of interaction is established. The size of the group can be very diverse, starting from 2 people.

Social communities include mass social groups that are characterized by the following features: statistical nature, probabilistic nature, situational nature of communication, heterogeneity, amorphousness (eg, demographic, racial, gender, ethnic, and other communities).

social group- this is a set of people who have a common social attribute and perform a socially necessary function in the general structure of the social division of labor and activity. Such signs may be gender, age, nationality, race, profession, place of residence, income, power, education, etc. All human life takes place in various social groups: family, school class, production team, friendly company, etc. A social group is characterized by a certain integrity and stability, which is determined by its goals and objectives. The presence of common goals and objectives becomes a factor in the formation and development of the structure of the group.

By size or number:

large group is a community of people distinguished on the basis of certain social characteristics: class, religious, ethnic, demographic, professional.

small group represents a relatively small number of directly interacting individuals united by common goals and objectives.

Depending on the nature of the relationships and connections of individuals:

primary groups. Consists of a small number of people between whom relationships are established based on their individual characteristics.

secondary group. It is formed from people between whom there are almost no emotional relationships, their interaction is due to the desire to achieve certain goals.

Depending on the structure and internal organization:

formal group(official) is a group that has a certain legal status. A formal group is created to solve a certain range of tasks, to achieve special goals, which, as a rule, are prescribed to the group from the outside.

informal group is based on voluntary association and arises on the basis of common interests, friendship or mutual sympathy. In an informal group, each of its members does not have a strictly fixed role, social position, with its inherent rights and obligations.

12. Basic concepts of the theory of stratification The term "stratification" characterizes the ways in which inequality is transmitted from one generation to another and classes and social strata (strata) are formed.

Power- the most important channel of access to social benefits;

Property Relations- this is the relationship of participants in the production process, where people are divided into owners of the means of production and people who do not have them;

Income name the money received in the form of wages, pensions, benefits, alimony, fees, profits;

Wealth- this is the accumulated income, that is, the amount of cash or embodied money;

Prestige- this is the respect that this or that profession, position enjoys in public opinion.

In modern conditions, society is divided into groups according to needs, interests, prestige, lifestyle, mentality. However, three basic types of stratification are predominant in sociology: political (according to the possession of power); economic (by income); professional (by prestige).

13. Stratification system of modern developed countries

In the second half of the XX century. in the West, interest in studying the problems of social stratification has increased. As a rule, when analyzing the social structure of countries with a developed market economy, sociologists singled out three layers or strata: the highest, middle and lowest, within which there was also its own hierarchy.

The American sociologist Lloyd Warner identified six classes in the 1940s:

1. Top top class. It included rich people, but the main thing was "noble origin" in the so-called "old families".

2. Lower upper class. He united people of high income, but they did not come from aristocratic families.

4. Lower middle class. Represented mainly by clerical and other "white-collar" (bank tellers, clerks), as well as highly skilled workers.

5. The upper layer of the lower class. They were "blue collars" - low-skilled workers and other workers of simple, but rather specialized physical labor.

6. The lower stratum of the lower class. Included unskilled workers, laborers engaged in primitive labor, and the unemployed.

A seven-class vertical stratification is also used:

1. The highest class of professionals, administrators;

2.Mid-level technicians;

3.Commercial grade;

4. Petty bourgeoisie;

5. Techniques and workers performing managerial functions;

6.Skilled workers;

7. Unskilled workers.

The main part of the modern developed society is the so-called middle class, or the middle stratum. It appeared only in the 20th century. and includes representatives of small and medium-sized businesses, engineering and technical workers (ITR), employees, administrative staff, service workers, highly skilled workers, farmers. The middle layer in developed countries covers 60-80% of the population. The lower and upper, elite groups, even taken together, are significantly inferior to the middle class in terms of numbers.

A social group is two or more individuals who interact with each other for more than a few moments and perceive themselves as "We".

It must be said that there are many criteria for classifying social groups.

1) By the nature of the relationships in the group, primary and secondary groups are distinguished.

Primary groups are two or more people between whom a direct, close, emotional relationship is established that reflects many aspects of their personalities.

Secondary groups consist of two or more individuals who are involved in an impersonal relationship. Instrumental connections, when one person is a means for another, dominate in secondary groups. In these groups, the main importance is given not to the personal qualities of people, but to their ability to perform certain functions.

2) According to the number of members of the group, the groups are divided into small and large, as well as dyads, triads, fours, fives, etc. The size of the group is very important, as it affects the nature of our interaction.

Small groups are, for example, a family, a circle of friends, neighbors, a group of children playing together, a youth group, a work crew, a sports team, etc. In small groups, people usually know each other personally, sometimes only by appearance, and sometimes by name, they are in spatial proximity to each other.

A large group is, for example, a nation, an ethnic group, a people, followers of one world religion, a political party, an army, a parliament, etc. In such groups, people can no longer accurately recognize each other, they become anonymous in relation to each other.

Larger groups are more productive than dyads and triads. In such groups, mutual agreement is established to a greater extent, but at the same time there is almost no tension in them. Although there may be inequalities between members. Groups with an even number of members are less stable than those with an odd number, since they can break up into fractions with an equal number of members. This is not possible in groups with an odd number of members - in them one of the parties always has a numerical advantage.

Of particular note are the five. Fives do not suffer from the fragility and tension of relationships inherent in dyads and triads. In such groups, each member is deeply satisfied with his role, in case of disagreement, such groups, as a rule, do not break up. In addition, in fives, dissidents receive support from some members, they are not threatened with a complete break with the group.

3) According to the method of recruitment, exclusive (elite) groups are distinguished, belonging to which is due to strict requirements, special conditions and procedures, for example, a major league sports team, and inclusive (public), in which everyone can immediately join, for example, a tourist group.

4) According to the intensity of participation, one- and multifunctional groups are distinguished. Single-functional groups are such groups in which we carry out one type of activity aimed at solving one problem. Multifunctional groups - such groups, whose members are guided by different intentions, aspirations, ways of action. Such groups include, for example, the family.

5) In terms of severity and degree of control, some groups can be totalitarian. In such groups, certain rules and norms are strictly regulated as obligatory, there is a system of domination-subordination.

6) According to the level of organization, groups can be formal and informal. In formal groups we exist as a conglomeration of interrelated social statuses, our personal qualities, unless they are directly related to the roles performed, do not matter to the group. A variety of formal groups - public organizations.

We participate in informal groups as individuals with our inherent qualities and hobbies.

7) According to the types of interactions, groups are divided into professional (team of builders), political (parties, political movements), educational (student groups), cultural (creative unions), etc.

8) According to the belonging of the individual, social groups are differentiated into ingroups and outgroups.

Ingroups are social groups that an individual identifies as "mine", "ours" and to which he feels he belongs.

Outgroups are groups to which members of the ingroup treat as others, not their own, sometimes even as hostile.