Large groups are communities of people that exist on the scale of society and develop according to the socio-psychological laws of the manifestations of the mass psyche and, unlike small groups, do not require mandatory personal contacts. In large groups, as a rule, generally accepted norms of behavior, cultural values \u200b\u200band traditions, common opinion and mass movements are formed. Large groups include classes, social strata, ethnic groups (nations and nationalities), confessions, sometimes large parties and public organizations, age and professional groups, etc.
Traditionally, their needs and interests are considered as a leading feature of large social groups. In this case, needs and interests arise not as individual, but as group psychological and socio-psychological phenomena.
The degree of satisfaction of the needs of large social groups turns out to be the coefficient of their viability. This coefficient is determined taking into account such indicators: average life expectancy, infant mortality, the spread of genetic deformities, the quality of products, the concentration of heavy industry enterprises per unit of territory, the percentage of budgetary expenditures on social and economic programs, etc. The vitality coefficient of large social groups is determined on a six-point scale ...
Parties are created to represent the interests of classes and groups of society. They arise in a clearly structured society; they cannot be artificially created.
The reasons for the unification of people in the party are associated with the psychology of attraction to power. It is no coincidence that a party is understood as any political group that participates in elections and is capable of bringing its candidates to power through elections.
Mass movements also belong to large social groups. It should be noted that mass movements are an unification of people, as a rule, fragile and unstable, whose members are united only by their presence in one place at one time. The interaction between them is in the nature of mutual amplification of emotions. The socio-psychological signs of mass movements are as follows: a) lack of organization; b) weak interaction between members; c) anonymity.
People unite to protect the environment. 6 movements on civil, consumer and other rights. There are political, religious and racial movements.
Movements are divided into "reformist" and "revolutionary". Among them are distinguished:
National and cultural movements. their goal is the study and popularization of the traditions of the past, the revival, preservation and development of the relevant cultures and crafts, social and ethnic identity;
Professional movements such as the Anti-AIDS Association. They are created, as a rule, in order to unite the efforts of specialists in a particular industry, in particular for the dissemination and development of a specific area of \u200b\u200bactivity. For movements of this type, close associations of people, for some reason, found themselves in a difficult situation and united for mutual assistance;
Cultural and educational movements, in particular - "Peace through the family";
The so-called foundations. Sometimes they are created on a professional basis, sometimes on the basis of a charitable organization;
Support Committees that relate to communities of short-term, operational action.
The psychology of large social groups is formed and manifests itself in the process of social relations and mass communication. It is in the process of interaction that interests, group opinions, rumors, traditions and other mass social and psychological phenomena arise and are realized.
The interests of social groups are such a socio-psychological phenomenon that plays a decisive role in the institutionalization of society.
Each social institution meets the interests of a specific social group and serves to satisfy its needs. This is what determines the relationship between social groups. The interests of some social groups are not always consistent with the interests of others.
Group opinion (as a form of civic thought) performs the following functions: expressive, control, directive. As the experience of many countries shows, a referendum is an important form of taking into account public opinion, a democratic means of revealing the positions of the majority of the population on pressing problems of society. Other channels for displaying public opinion are: public opinion polls, mass media, gatherings, demonstrations, public discussion.
A group opinion is a publicly expressed and shared judgment containing an assessment and attitude towards a specific event that is of interest to the community.
Group opinion turns out to be in a number of functions:
Regulates and indicates norms of behavior;
Expresses an assessment of events and facts;
Encourages certain actions and actions.
Forms of manifestation of group thought: a) assessment, complaints; b) advice, wishes, approval; c) dissatisfaction, condemnation, disapproval, disagreement, protest. At the same time, there are reasonable and unfounded assessments, complaints, disagreements and the like.
Religious communities. There are four main types of religious organizations: church, sect, denomination of creed, and cult. The Church is a religious organization that has close contacts with wide sections of society and acts within it. A sect is an organization that rejects the values \u200b\u200bof another society, that is, a small group of church representatives separates and creates a new religion. Denomination is an intermediate link between church and sect. A cult is an extreme form of a sect.
Despite their specificity, religious groups have common features. These general characteristics include group interests, needs, norms, values, thoughts, goals
In religious groups, believers are inculcated with a certain system of value orientations that stem from faith.
In the religious faith, imagination plays an important role, which manifests itself in vivid religious images, ideas that arise on the basis of religious myths, cult artistic images. On the basis of this religious and artistic material, religious ideas are formed.
Consider some of the features of the crowd. A disorganized crowd and an organized demonstration may consist of the same people, but their behavior will be different, since the essence of these communities is not the same.
From a socio-psychological point of view, a crowd is a contact, unorganized community, which is characterized by a high degree of conformism of individuals who act emotionally and relatively unanimously. The crowd exerts strong psychological pressure on individuals. In the crowd, in conditions of anonymity, the individual responsibility of its members dissolves.
The following social and psychological characteristics of the CROWD are distinguished:
Increasing group suggestibility and decreasing the effectiveness of counter-naviuvannya mechanisms;
Increasing the emotional perception of reality;
Suppression of a sense of responsibility for their actions;
The emergence of a sense of power and awareness of anonymity.
Mass communication, having the property of a psychological impact, influences the behavior and activities of crowd participants. The main means of psychological influence that the crowd members have is the word, and mostly expressive, emotional vocabulary: shouting, whistling, calls, and the like. Suggestion is one of the main methods of psychological influence of a person or a group on other participants through the transmission of messages of different content (agreements, threats, rumors, blackmail). Suggestion is always verbal. It is a conscious activity on the part of the subjects of influence.
A social group (community) is a really existing, empirically fixed set of people, which is characterized by integrity and acts as an independent subject of social and historical action.
The emergence of various social groups is primarily associated with such phenomena as the social division of labor and specialization of activity, and secondly, with the historically established living conditions, and
So, one or another set of people can be considered a social group if its participants have:
1. The similarity of the living conditions.
2. The presence of joint activities.
3. Common needs.
4. Own culture.
5. Self-assignment of oneself to a given community.
Social groups and their types and forms are distinguished by an extraordinary diversity. So, they can vary in terms of their quantitative composition (small and numerous), and in terms of the duration of their existence (short-term - from a few minutes, and stable, existing for millennia), and in the degree of connection between participants (stable and random, amorphous formations).
Types of social groups depending on the number
1. Small. They are characterized by a small number of participants (from 2 to 30 people) who are well acquainted with each other and are busy with some common cause. The relationship in such a group is direct. This includes such types of elementary units of society as a family, a group of friends, a school class, an aircraft crew, etc.
2. Large. They represent numerous groups of people who occupy the same position in the social structure and have common interests in this regard. Types of large social groups: stratum, class, nation, etc. At the same time, connections in such aggregates are increasingly indirect, since their number is huge.
Types of social groups depending on the nature of the interaction
1. Primary, in which the interaction of the participants with each other is interpersonal, direct, involving the support of a group of peers, friends, neighbors at the entrance.
2. Secondary, interaction in which is due to the achievement of a common goal and is formal. Examples: trade unions, production parties.
Types of social groups depending on the fact of existence
1. Nominal, representing an artificially constructed population of people who are specially allocated for Examples: commuter train passengers, buyers of a certain brand of washing powder.
2. Real groups, the criterion of existence of which are real characteristics (income, gender, age, profession, nationality, place of residence). Examples: women, men, children, Russians, townspeople, teachers, doctors.
Types of social groups depending on the way of organization
1. Formal groups that are created and exist only within the framework of officially recognized organizations. Examples: class at school, football club Dynamo.
2. Informal, usually arising and existing on the basis of personal interests of the participants, which either coincide or diverge from the goals of formal groups. Examples: a circle of poetry lovers, a club of fans of bard songs.
In addition to such a concept as a social group, there are also so-called "quasigroups". They are unstable informal groups of people with, as a rule, indefinite structure, norms and values. Examples: audience (concert hall, theater performance), fan clubs, crowd (rally, flash mob).
Thus, we can say that the true subjects of relations in society are not real people, individual individuals, but a set of various social groups that interact with each other and whose goals and interests, one way or another, intersect.
To answer the question concerning what a social group is, one must go back to ancient times and remember that humanity has always survived in society. In a primitive society, groups were created that united into society. Therefore, the association of people who have a common goal, which is the connection between an individual person and society, is called a social group.
What are the groups
The main aspects of social life are laid down precisely in social groups. They have their own rules and regulations, ceremonies and rituals. As a result of the activities of groups, self-discipline, morality, abstract thinking appear.
Social groups are divided into small and large. If you unite two people with one task and goal, it will already be a small social group. A small group can have anywhere from two to ten people. These people have their own activities, communication, purpose. An example of a small social group can be a family, a group of friends, relatives.
Large social groups are formed a little differently. These people may not directly contact each other. But they are united by the awareness that they belong to a group, they have a common psychology and customs, a way of life. An example of large social groups can be an ethnic community, a nation.
The size of groups depends on the individuality of its members, and cohesion also depends on the size of the group: the smaller it is, the more united it becomes. If the group expands, it means that respect, tolerance, consciousness must develop in it.
Social groups, their types
Consider the types of social groups. They are primary and secondary. The first type means a group of people who are of great importance to the individual, people who occupy a significant place in his life. Secondary groups are groups where the individual has some kind of practical purpose by joining it. An individual can move from a primary to a secondary group and vice versa.
The next type of social group is internal and external groups. If we belong to a group, then it will be internal for us, and if we do not belong, then it will be external. Here, an individual can also move from group to group, respectively, while its status will change.
Reference groups are groups in which people have the opportunity to compare themselves with other people; these are objects that we pay attention to when forming our views. Such a group can become a benchmark for assessing their views. We ourselves may belong to the reference group, or we may not.
And the last type of group is formal and informal. They are based on the group structure. In a formal group, its members interact with each other according to the prescribed rules and regulations. In informal groups, these rules are not followed.
Characteristics and signs of groups
The signs of a social group are always clearly expressed. If you analyze them, then you can highlight several main ones:
- having a single goal that is important for the members of the entire group;
- the presence of norms and rules that operate within the group itself;
- there is a solidarity system between the members of the group.
If all these rules apply in groups, then, accordingly, the group is highly integrated. Depending on the characteristics and type, the structure of the social group is formed.
Characteristics of social groups. This includes the structure and size of the groups, methods of group leadership. Based on the size of the group, one can say about the relationship between its members. The closest and strongest relationships arise between two members of the group, it can be husband and wife, friends. Emotions play a big role here. If more people are added, then new relationships are restored in the group, not always good ones.
Often one person is separated from the group, who will become its leader or leader. If the group is small, then it can do without a leader, and if it is large, then his absence will lodge chaos in the group. If a person falls into a group, then he has the ability to make a sacrifice, the control over his body and thoughts weakens. This is an indicator that social groups play a significant role in the life of humanity.
Like any social subject, large social groups are classified according to various criteria. By the nature of the connection, two types of large communities of people are distinguished:
1) social classes, ethnic groups, etc. The basis of objective social ties. People's belonging to these groups is not caused by their will, consciousness, but is a consequence of the action of objective factors;
2) parties, public, professional associations, etc. A person enters them as a result of a conscious desire to unite on the basis of certain goals and values.
Longer (classes, nations) and shorter (rallies, crowd, etc.) large social groups are distinguished according to the duration of their existence.
By the nature of their organization, large social groups are divided into those that arose spontaneously (crowd, public, etc.), and those that were consciously organized (associations, parties, etc.).
Social psychology also distinguishes conditional(gender and age, professional) and real big groups... An important feature of the classification is contact and interaction.
So, to the real large groups with close contacts are primarily meetings and meetings. Large groups can be closed and open... The most common is the division of large groups into social groups that were formed in the process of the historical development of society, play a certain role in the system of social relations and are noted for duration, stability (ethnic, professional, gender and age groups, etc.).
And spontaneously formed communities that are unstable, short-lived (crowd, audience, audience). Common signs of large social groups
Large social groups are in the sphere of influence of specific regulators of social behavior - customs, traditions, morality. These regulators are formed by the social practice with which the group is associated. Language is an important characteristic of large social groups. Ethnic groups cannot exist without it. A sign of other groups (professional, age, etc.) is jargon as a kind of language. The peculiarities of the life position of large social groups, together with the regulators of behavior, shape their way of life.
Lifestyle of a large social group - a set of stable typical forms of community life. Typical forms of life of peoples, classes, other social groups, individual individuals are manifested in material and spiritual production, in the socio-political and family and household spheres. Based on the way of life, it is possible to determine how people live, they are guided by their interests, what is their thinking. In this case, the subject of analysis can also be special forms of communication, the type of contacts and relationships, interests, values \u200b\u200band needs. The way of life of a community testifies to its attitude towards society, work, other communities and individuals. Since each type of large social groups is endowed only with its inherent properties, significantly differs from others (an ethnic group differs from a professional one), then their general characteristics should have a specific content. Ethnography and ethnopsychology, comparative studies, sociology, statistical analysis, psycholinguistics, etc. are involved in the study of large social groups.
The structure of the psychology of large social groupsThe structure of the psychology of large groups is formed by various mental properties, mental processes and mental states. More precisely, the allocation of the most important elements of the psychology of large groups covers the mental warehouse as a stable formation (national character, traditions, customs, tastes) and the emotional sphere as a dynamic education (needs, interests). The mental make-up of the group and the mental make-up of the personality, which refer to it, are not the same, since the formation of the group's psychology is influenced by collective experience, the degree of assimilation of which is determined by individual psychological characteristics. So, the psychological characteristics of a group are not a simple sum of the traits inherent in each personality, but express the typical, characteristic of all individuals.
The second answer to this question
Large groups - these are communities of people that exist on the scale of society and develop according to the socio-psychological patterns of manifestations of the mass psyche and, unlike small groups, do not require mandatory personal contacts. In large groups, as a rule, generally accepted norms of behavior, cultural values \u200b\u200band traditions, common opinion and mass movements are formed. Large groups include classes, social strata, ethnic groups (nations and nationalities), confessions, sometimes large parties and public organizations, age and professional groups, etc. Traditionally, their needs and interests are considered as a leading feature of large social groups. In this case, needs and interests appear not as individual, but as group psychological and socio-psychological phenomena. The degree of satisfaction of the needs of large social groups is manifested in the coefficient of their viability. This coefficient is determined taking into account the following indicators: average life expectancy, infant mortality, the spread of genetic deformities, the quality of products, the concentration of heavy industry enterprises per unit of territory, the percentage of budgetary expenditures on social and economic programs, etc. scale. Parties are created to represent the interests of classes and groups of society. They arise in a clearly structured society; they cannot be artificially created. The reasons for the unification of people in the party are associated with the psychology of attraction to power. It is no coincidence that a party understands any political group that participates in elections and is capable of bringing its candidates to power through elections. Mass movements also belong to large social groups. It should be noted that mass movements are an unification of people, as a rule, fragile and unstable, whose members are united only by the presence in one place at one time. The interaction between them has the character of mutual amplification of emotions.
The socio-psychological signs of mass movements are as follows:
a) lack of organization;
b) weak interaction between members;
c) anonymity.
People unite to protect the environment in civil, consumer and other rights movements. There are political, religious and racial movements. Movements are divided into "reformist" and "revolutionary". Among them there are: national-cultural movements. their goal is to study and pop the polarization of the traditions of the past, the revival, preservation and development of the corresponding cultures, crafts, socio-ethnic identity; professional movements such as the Anti-AIDS Association. They are created, as a rule, in order to unite the efforts of specialists in a particular industry, in particular for the dissemination and development of a specific area of \u200b\u200bactivity. For movements of this type, close associations of people, for whatever reason, found themselves in a difficult situation and united for mutual assistance; cultural and educational movements, in particular - "Peace through the family"; so-called foundations. Sometimes they are created on a professional basis, sometimes on the basis of a charitable organization; support committees belonging to short-term, operational communities. The psychology of large social groups is formed and manifests itself in the process of social relations and mass communication. It is in the process of interaction that interests, group opinions, rumors, traditions and other mass social and psychological phenomena arise and are realized. The interests of social groups are such a socio-psychological phenomenon that plays a decisive role in the institutionalization of society. Each social institution meets the interests of a specific social group and serves to satisfy its needs. This is what determines the relationship between social groups. The interests of some social groups are by no means always consistent with the interests of others.
Group opinion (as a form of civic thought) performs the following functions:
Expressive
Control
Directive.
As the experience of many countries shows, a referendum is an important form of taking into account public opinion, a democratic means of revealing the positions of the majority of the population on pressing problems of society. Other channels for displaying public opinion are as follows: public opinion polls, mass media, gatherings, manifestations, public discussion.
Group opinion is a publicly expressed and widespread judgment containing an assessment and attitude towards a particular event that is of interest to the community.
Group opinion manifests itself in a number of functions:
Regulates and indicates norms of behavior;
Expresses an assessment of events and facts;
Encourages certain actions and actions.
Forms of manifestation of group opinion:
a) assessment, complaints;
b) advice, accusation, approval;
c) dissatisfaction, condemnation, disapproval, disagreement, protest.
At the same time, a distinction is made between justified and unfounded assessments, complaints, disagreements, etc.
Religious communities... There are four main types of religious organizations: church, sect, denomination creed, and cult. The Church is a religious organization that has close contacts with wide sections of society and acts within it. A sect is an organization that rejects the values \u200b\u200bof another society, that is, a small group of church representatives separates and creates a new religion. Denomination is an intermediate link between church and sect. A cult is an extreme form of a sect. Despite their specificity, religious groups have common features. These general characteristics include group interests, needs, norms, values, opinions, goals. In religious groups, believers are instilled in a certain system of value orientations that stem from faith. In religious belief, imagination plays an important role, which manifests itself in vivid religious images, ideas that arise on the basis of religious myths, cult artistic images. On the basis of this religious and artistic material, religious ideas are formed. Consider some of the features of the crowd. A disorganized crowd and an organized demonstration may consist of the same people, but their behavior will be different, since the essence of these communities is not the same. From a socio-psychological point of view, a crowd is a contact, disorganized community characterized by a high degree of conformism of individuals who act emotionally and relatively unanimously. The crowd exerts strong psychological pressure on individuals. In the crowd, in conditions of anonymity, the individual responsibility of its members dissolves.
The following social and psychological characteristics of the CROWD are distinguished:
Increasing group suggestibility and decreasing the effectiveness of counter-naviuvannya mechanisms;
Increasing the emotional perception of reality;
Suppression of a sense of responsibility for their actions;
The emergence of a sense of strength and awareness of anonymity.
Mass communication, having the property of psychological impact, affects the behavior and activities of crowd participants. The main means of psychological influence that crowd participants have is the word, and mainly expressive, emotional vocabulary: shouting, whistling, calls, etc. Suggestion is one of the main ways of psychological influence of a person or group on other participants through the transmission on the content of messages (agreements, threats, rumors, blackmail). Suggestion is always verbal. It is a conscious activity on the part of the subjects of influence.