Professional Documents
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Social Organization
Social Organization
Instructions:
1.In your class, form three groups with approximately equal members.
2.Select a representative for your group. This representative will choose the scenario you will be depicting in a tableau.
3.There are 3 possible scenarios—a family at home, a group of friends in school, and a group of co-workers in a
company.
4.Once you picked a scenario, you will be given 3-5 minutes to talk about your tableau. After the group’s discussion,
each group will present their work to the class.
5.Following the activity, students must answer and reflect on the following questions:
What are the actors showing in the scenario?
What is the function of these groups in a person’s life?
Are the groups in the scenarios important? Why or why not?
ORGANIZATION IN
SOCIETY
THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN GROUP
• A group is composed of two or more persons interacting with each other, guided by a set of norms.
• A group is a specified number of individuals where each recognizes members a distinct from non-members; each has a sense of
what others do and think as well as what the purpose of the association or grouping is.
• Territorial Proximity
People comprising a group must be limited to a physical territory.
• Individuals in the presence of others become aroused or motivated to perform some kind of physical
and social skills at higher levels of excellence than they would if they were alone.
• The presence of others may inhibit the learning of new subject matter; individuals can assimilate
information more rapidly by themselves.
• Group discussion also pays an important role in shaping one’s attitude and behavior.
WHY DO SOME PEOPLE CONFORM? WHAT ARE THEIR REASONS FOR
NOT VIOLATING THE NORMS?
• Norms develop and conformity occurs because individuals seek others with similar
characteristics.
• Based on Aristotle’s notion of distributive justice, it can be said that rewards in society are
passed out according to what one does.
• Structure
• Nature of Goals
• Identifiability of Members
• Cohesiveness
• Leadership Styles
REFERENCE GROUP
• A term coined by Herbert Hyman, is any group to which an individual compares himself. It
serves as a point of reference in evaluating one’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.
• Examples:
• One student who considers the opinion of his friends about his academic decisions, uses
his friends as a reference group.
• A young professional, who evaluates his behavior in reference to the behavior of his co-
workers, uses them as a reference group
TYPES OF REFERENCE GROUP
Negative reference groups
Are groups which people do not want to
Positive Reference Group identify with. As a result, norms of the
Are those groups of which one aspires to be part. negative reference groups are usually
Example: avoided.
A student who aspires to be part of the student
council views the organization itself as a positive
reference group.