Sense of belonging: what is it and how does it influence our behavior?

What is a sense of belonging and how does it affect the way we relate to others?

It is said that no one loves their homeland because it is the biggest, richest or most advanced, but simply because it is theirs. The same can be extrapolated to any other social group, be it a family, a town or even sports teams and their fans.

We create our identity based on how others perceive us socially and also on the way we identify with one person or another, feeling part of and integrated into a community.

This is known as sense of belongingThis is a phenomenon that social psychology and sociology have studied in depth to try to see how it is formed and its relationship with endogroup favoritism, which we will see below.

What is sense of belonging?

Sense of belonging is the feeling or awareness of awareness of being part of one or more groups or communities.. We take these human groups as reference models, which directly influence our characteristics and perception of ourselves. Depending on how many traits we share with the members of a given group, we are more likely to identify with it, seeing these characteristics as evidence of being part of something bigger.

The size of the group does not matter. A sense of belonging can be formed in any type of group and what really matters for us to develop it is, in addition to the number of traits we share with its members, the importance of that same group to us, the importance that this same group has for us. An example of this is the family with which, however small it may be, we share both physical and behavioral traits, as well as a common history and emotional and economic dependence.

While the family is the first group with which we establish contact, being key to our survival and cultural development and, therefore, the first community with which we develop our identity, the family is the first group with which we establish contact, being key to our survival and cultural development, the first community with which we develop a sense of belonging, it is not the only community with which we develop a sense of belonging.. As we grow up we establish contact with different groups, such as neighbors on the same street, classmates, other children with similar interests, and all sorts of different social groups that will shape our identity and awaken different senses of belonging.

Any social group can awaken in us a sense of belonging, as long as we identify with it and share some characteristic. This feeling is a phenomenon as complex as social groups and the identities that may arise from them.

Our sense of belonging is not limited to the family, town or country in which we were born, but also to other types of social groups associated with culture, socio-economic class, social teams, and other social groups.but also to other types of social groups associated with culture, socioeconomic class, sports teams, race, religion, profession, hobbies and many more.

Below is a brief list of very different social groups that may well arouse a sense of belonging to a greater or lesser degree:

• Cultural: Catalan, Basque, Scottish, Spanish, English....
• Sports team: Barça, Madrid, Lakers.
• Fan of singer/musical group: Belieber, directioner, smilers, swifties.
• Urban tribes: emos, metalheads, punks, skinheads, queers.
• Religion: Christians, Jews, Muslims...
• Political ideology: communist, socialist, liberal...

In many cases, the sense of belonging to a certain group does not depend on its prestige. does not depend on the prestige of the group. It doesn't matter if it is an economically very important group, culturally very widespread or socially very influential. What makes us feel identified with it is the simple fact of having been born or grown up in it, which is enough to justify why it is the best.

If the group is small, we will tend to say that we have been lucky to be part of a select and exclusive group, and if it is large, we will tend to say that we have been lucky to be part of it.If it is large, we tend to be thankful for being part of such an important community.

This is why when someone comments on a limitation of the group to which we belong we become defensive instead of letting them convince us. A classic example is when Catalan nationalists are criticized for feeling only Catalan and speaking Catalan, saying that this language is useless outside their linguistic domain because it has few speakers. The Catalanist, far from ceasing to be so, will defend even more the use of his language and will feel grateful for speaking a language with fewer speakers than Spanish, since it gives him a touch of distinction.

Its evolutionary and historical importance

The human species is a social animal, and the sense of belonging is living proof of this. From a very young age, we need to feel part of a larger group in order to receive its protection and help us protection and help us to develop as functional individuals..

As we progress through the history of mankind, this idea of belonging has moved from being limited to the family or tribe to larger projects, such as belonging to a country or a specific social group, being a member of it and receiving its protection in return.

When we are small, we need our family to nurture us because we are totally dependent on adults. As we grow up, even if we gain independence individually and can get by on our own, it will be very difficult to disengage from the family and even more difficult to disengage from society.

We need others in order to continue living and, for this reason, as a mechanism that guarantees our survival, we identify ourselves in various groups, making exchanges of favors that will allow us to be socially adjusted and adapted individuals.

In any case, the sense of belonging is not something static, i.e., we do not always have to feel loyal to our group, we do not always have to feel loyal to the same social group.especially if we see that something has changed in it and we no longer feel that it provides us with the initial security. The social changes that may occur influence the way in which we feel part of a community, a classic case being the irruption of industrialization and urbanization, which practically put an end to the idea of community in large cities.

Nor does group identity associated with a sense of belonging have to be inflexible and exclusive.. The limits that prevent us from being part of a group change and can become more permeable as that same social group is redefined, allowing more people to identify with it. The opposite process can also occur, i.e., the group becomes more selective or splits into other new identities, changing the sense of belonging to the original group.

A clear example of an identity that has become more permeable can be seen in Spain. The idea of being Spanish has been changing and has become more open to diversity. If in the past an authentic Spaniard was a white person, descendant of a long lineage of Spaniards, with a Castilian mother tongue and a Catholic religion, now, with the arrival of people from Africa and Latin America, this has changed, making Spanish to be seen as Spanish to those who feel as such and are culturally adapted, leaving aside their race, religion, mother tongue and origin.

When does it develop in our way of socializing?

As we said, since it is a phenomenon that can occur with any type of group, the sense of belonging to a community can occur at practically any age and in any context, motivated by any social phenomenon. Moreover, the degree to which the group has an impact on our identity does not depend directly on the social importance of the group. does not depend directly on the social importance or the size of the communityalthough it can be influenced.

What can be affirmed is that the first group with which we feel a sense of belonging is the family, as we mentioned earlier, and that this occurs very early on. Many investigations had pointed out that this can be seen in children older than 4 years, who, either by speaking or through their actions, have a marked endogroup favoritism. That is, children of these ages evaluate more positively the members of their family and, also, the children in their group of friends or in their class.

This can be checked very easily by going to a kindergarten where each class is divided into two groups (e.g., the sunflower class and the rose class). If we ask a child which of the two class groups he thinks does better, he will most likely say his own.

He will not give us rational arguments, he will simply say things like "because we are the best" or "because we are called that". Already has a certain sense of belonging and falls into endo-group favoritismand values the group to which it belongs more highly for the simple fact of belonging.

However, it appears that the sense of belonging may appear much earlier, as early as 17 months of age. Research by Renée Baillargeon and Kyong-Sun Jin found that infants at this age had a slight idea of ingroup and outgroup. Infants expected members of the same group to help each other, while members of two different groups, if they did not help each other, did not arouse surprise or expectation in the infants.

According to this research, it seems that humans already instinctively expect that two people from the same group, who share characteristics with each other, have already developed a feeling of being part of something greater than themselves and that they must therefore help each other in order to survive. Infants of these ages seem to show this behavior, which is truly amazing.

Bibliographical references:

• Jin, K.-S. and Baillargeon, R. (2017). Infants possess a sense of ingroup support. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences114 (31) 8199-8204; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1706286114.