Groups: The Sociological Subject

Even when sociologists use individual humans as their units of analysis, their focus is not really on the person. Even if sociologists ask why Mary Johnson voted for a Pro-Life political candidate, they will not seek the answer within Mary’s head, but within her social situation: What church does she attend? What is her racial or ethnic group, her age group, her political affiliation? Where does she live? To understand Mary, sociologists want to know about the groups that may shape her opinions and encourage her behavior. In doing so, they reveal that the fundamental subject matter of sociology is the group.

As defined previously, a group consists of two or more persons who maintain a stable pattern of relations over a significant period of time. Some groups, such as married couple, are tiny. Others groups may be quite large. However, not just any gathering of people qualifies as a group in the sociological sense.

In everyday speech we often refer to ten people waiting for the walk light as a “group.” But sociologists would call them an aggregate of individuals: They have come together only briefly and accidentally. They are not acquainted with and may not even notice one another. For sociologists, people constitute a group only when they are united by social relations. If the ten people waiting for the walk light were all members of the same family or baseball team, then they would be a group in the sociological sense of the term.

Primary and Secondary Groups

Not all groups are of equal significance to their members. For example, we usually will be more willing to withdraw from a group of persons working in our office than one made up of family or close friends. The concepts of primary and secondary groups isolate this difference.

Primary groups are characterized by great intimacy among the members. People in these groups do not merely know one another and interact frequently; they also have strong emotional ties. As a result, people gain much of their self-esteem and sense of identity from primary groups.

Moreover, sociologists regard the relationships among primary group members as the essential glue holding social life together. When Morselli and Durkheim blamed high suicide rates on modernization, they were arguing that, compared with traditional societies, modern societies made it difficult to maintain primary groups. Hence, people were increasingly without the social support needed to sustain them during times of trouble and despair. By now there is an immense amount of evidence that people lacking primary group ties display many harmful symptoms, including poorer physical health. However, Morselli and Durkheim and other early sociologists greatly exaggerated the impact of modernization on primary groups: Even in the midst of large, seemingly impersonal cities, primary groups still thrive, as can be seen in Table 1-6. The data are from the 1994 General Social Survey and are based on a national sample of Americans, 18 and older. Respondents have been separated into three groups: those who live in cities, those who live in suburbs, and those who live in small towns or on farms. If modernization were as incompatible with primary groups as Morselli and Durkheim feared, people in cities should spend far less time socializing with relatives and neighbors. But reading across the table you can see that this is not a case. There simply are no sizable or consistent differences.

The family is the most common primary group, but many other groups can also gain this level of member commitment, sports teams and small work groups often being examples. Charles H. Cooley, who coined the term primary group, said a group is primary if its members routinely refer to themselves as “we.” Primary groups involve “the sort of sympathy and mutual identification for which ‘we’ is the natural expression.”

Secondary groups consist of less intimate groups within which people pursue various collective goals but without the same consuming sense of belonging. Business organizations, social clubs, political parties, even hobby clubs typically are secondary groups. People find it relatively easy to switch from one secondary group to another and refer to themselves and the group members as “we” only casually. However, primary groups often form within secondary groups – a fact that often accounts for considerable conflict within secondary groups when primary group members treat other members as outsiders, or several primary groups compete for control of the secondary group.

Dyads and Triads

The smallest sociological group is the dyad: two individuals who engage in social relations. As we shall see in Chapter 3, an analysis of the basic properties of two-person relationships gives sociology the tools for building a theory of human interaction – for explaining how we influence one another and thereby construct and enforce rules governing social life. Much of our behavior is governed by our need to exchange with others, whether we exchange apples or affection. Such exchanges are possible only if we can anticipate how the other person will respond and vice versa.

However, if the dyad is the fundamental building block of sociology, it is not its primary object of interest. Human social relations consist mainly not of isolated pairs but of multiple relations involving every individual with a number of others. And as soon as we shift our focus from dyads to social relations involving three or more individuals, some very interesting and complex patterns emerge. As a preview, let’s consider triads: social relations among three persons.

Let’s imagine a triad of three women: Ann, Betty, and Cindy. This triad, like all others, includes not one but three relationships. In other words, relationships exist between Ann and Betty, between Betty and Cindy, and between Ann and Cindy. Sociologists have discovered many rules about the behavior of triads. Let’s consider two of them.

TRANSITIVITY. Triads demonstrate the transitivity rule governing human relations. The rule is simple: Relations among members of a group will tend to be balanced or consistent. This idea is captured by everyday sayings such as “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine,” “Your enemies are my enemies,” and “If you like her, you’re no friend of mine.” Relationships in a triad are transitive when there is no strain on relations between any pair caused by contrary relationships with the third person. To illustrate this, let’s look at what happens to people in a transitive triad when it becomes intransitive. Imagine three close friends: Andy, Bubba, and Cal. One day Andy and Bubba get raging mad at each other and never speak again, but both remain buddies of Cal. This is an intransitive triad. Now whenever Andy goes bowling with Cal, Bubba is resentful. Or whenever Bubba and Cal go fishing, Andy grumbles about friends who let him down.

Intransitive triads are unstable and usually break up. Sooner or later Cal is going to have to stop seeing either Andy or Bubba, or both. Trying to be friends with two people who hate each other causes too much tension.

COALITION FORMATION. Suppose Cal decide to go along with one of his buddies and gang up on the other. Maybe he joins Andy as an enemy of Bubba. Now we can say that Andy and Cal have formed a coalition: They have combined to oppose someone else.

Now let’s introduce power into this intransitive triadic relationship. Sociologists define power as the ability to get one’s way over the opposition of others (see Chapter 9). Many things can cause some people to be more powerful than others, but for now let’s limit our attention to physical strength. If all three guys are of equal physical strength, we cannot predict whether Cal will choose to line up with Andy or with Bubba if there is going to be a fight. Either choice is equally likely, and sociological principles are no more informative than the flip of a coin.

Suppose, however, that Bubba is huge and could easily beat up either Andy or Cal, while Andy and Cal are equally matched. Suppose, too, that Bubba couldn’t beat up both Andy and Cal at the same time. Now we can predict that Andy and Cal will gang up on Bubba – that they will form a coalition. Why? Because if Cal chose to join Bubba he would still be at Bubba’s mercy after Andy was beaten. The same goes if Andy joins Bubba against Cal. But if Andy and Cal gang up on Bubba they are safe – safe from Bubba and safe from one another, because they are too evenly matched to want to risk a showdown.

Transitivity and coalition formation are but two of a multitude of principles governing social relations in small groups. I have discussed them here to offer a sample of what micro sociologists study. However, principles such as these are not limited to the behavior of triads. The intimate connections between micro and macro sociology can be seen if we realize that such rules apply equally well to large groups. To illustrate, let’s see how intransitivity and coalition formation shape the internal structure of larger groups.

Networks

All groups consist of social relations among members, whether the group contains 3 or 3,000 members. The patterns of relations among members of a group are often called social networks. Ideally, even a large group is transitive, with all members liking one another. However, the ideal is rarely realized. Some members do not like others, and thus relations inside a group can become intransitive. And just as intransitivity can lead either to the breakup of a triad or to coalition formation, so can it cause people in large groups to readjust their relations. Intransitivity leads to the formation of internal clusters within the network of the group – clusters composed of persons who like one another and have few friends outside their own cluster. These clusters are often called internal factions or cliques. When a pattern of cliques has developed, transitivity is restored: People no longer attempt to remain friends with individuals who are also friendly with their enemies.

To study the structure of group networks, sociologists often use sociograms to chart relationships within a group. For example, a sociologist may ask members of a fourth-grade class, a sorority, or a business office to list the individuals whom they like or admire most in the group (or whom they dislike most). The lines of friendship can then be drawn on a chart. Usually, several individuals stand out as “sociometric stars” because they are often chosen as the most liked. If these stars also like one another, then an integrated network exists. People who admire one star will also tend to like another star as well as group members who like other stars.

For example, suppose Donna and Kaelin are the two most popular members of a sorority and also like each other. Then those who like Donna will also tend to like Kaelin and the other members who regard Kaelin as the star. Many bonds of friendship exist between members, and no clear lines of separation exist within the group.

Intransitivity arises, however, when two stars become enemies – when, in our example, Kaelin and Donna suddenly decide they can’t stand each other. For then they impose strains between their respective followers just like the strains created in the triad when Andy and Bubba got mad at each other. And just as the intransitive triad led to a coalition, so does intransitivity in larger networks produce a choosing up of sides. Such networks display clearly separated patterns of social relations – distinct cliques or factions. When more than two such internal factions exist, coalition formation is likely: Several factions will cooperate against other factions. Here, too, the coalition rule outlined on pages 12-13 applies. But whether or not coalitions form, internal factions always threaten to produce internal conflict, and in some cases they can break up the group.