Researchers are interested in exploring informational and normative motivational influences to conform on majorities and minorities. Objective consensus theory suggests that majority influence of a group is informational, while conversion theory views it as normative. Normative influences may be the underlying motivations behind certain types of conformity; however, researchers believe that after time, informational influences such as confidence in the accuracy of one's intergroup norms is positively correlated with distinguished level of compromise. Outside the conscious mind, a type of conformity is behavioral mimicry, otherwise known as the chameleon effect.

Behavioral mimicry is when individuals mimic behaviors such as facial expressions , postures , and mannerisms between other individuals. Researchers found that individuals subconsciously conformed to the mannerisms of their partners and friends and liked these partners more who mirrored them. This is important in regard to rapport building and forming new social relationships-we mirror the behaviors we are supposed to, to get to where we want to belong in the group.

What Does Belonging Mean to You? (Part 1)

People are motivated to conform to gain social approval and enhance and protect their own self-esteems. However, people who wish to combat conformity and fight that need to belong with the majority group can do so by focusing on their own self-worth or by straying from the attitudes and norms of others. This can establish a sense of uniqueness within an individual.

Yet, most individuals keep positive assessments of themselves and still conform to valued groups. When our belongingness needs are not met, Wilkowski and colleagues suggest that self-regulation is used to fulfill one's need to belong. Self-regulation can occur in many different ways.

One of these ways uses other individual's gaze s as a reference to understand how attention should be divided. This effect is especially seen within individuals that have low levels of self-esteem. Interpersonal acceptance is not met in individuals with low self-esteem, which prompts them to self-regulate by looking to others for guidance with regards to where to focus attention.

Belongingness contributes to this level of self-esteem. Baumeister, Dewall, Ciarocco, and Twenge found that when people are socially excluded from a group, self-regulation is less likely to be than those who have a heightened sense of belonging. Later, those participants were offered a plate of cookies. The participants that were told that nobody in the group wanted to work with them took more cookies than those who were not told this information, which provides evidence that a lack of belongingness inhibits people's ability to self-regulate.

Self-regulation includes impulse control and allows one to manage short-term impulses and have a heightened sense of belongingness within an ingroup. An ingroup is a social group in which a person psychologically defines themselves as being a member of that specific group. By being a part of this group, one has a better ability to self-regulate. As the span of relationships expands from childhood into adolescence, a sense of peer group membership is likely to develop.

Adolescent girls have been found to value group membership more and are more identified with their peer groups than boys. Adolescent girls tend to have a higher number of friends than boys. They expect and desire more nurturing behavior from their friends. Girls experience more self-disclosure, more empathy, and less overt hostility compared to boys. A study found that girls use ruminative coping, which involves perseverating on the negative feelings and the unpleasant situations associated with problems. Boys on the other hand, tend to be less intimate and have more activity based friendships.

Boys do not benefit as much as girls from feelings of belonging that are a product of enduring and close friendships. They are less vulnerable to the emotional distress that is likely to accompany high levels of co-rumination and disclosure.

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Various peer groups approve of varying activities and when individuals engage in approved activities, the peer group positively reinforces this behavior. For example, allowing the individual to become part of the group or by paying more attention to the individual is a positive reinforcement.

This is a source of motivation for the individual to repeat the activity or engage in other approved activities. Adolescents have also been observed to choose friendships with individuals who engage in similar activities to those that they are involved in. This provides the individual with more opportunities to engage in the activity therefore the peer group may influence how often the individual engages in the activity.

To feel a sense of belonging and fit in, adolescents often conform to activities of a particular group by participating in the same activities as members of the peer group. To capture an adolescent's self-perception of group affiliation one may ask an adolescent to identify themselves as a member of a group or discuss whether they belong in a group. An affective aspect of group belongingness includes feelings of being proud of one's group and being a valued group member. The affective nature of a sense of group belonging has been found to be the most internally consistent. It is important to find out how important it is for an adolescent to be a member of a group because not all adolescents are equally concerned about being part of a group.


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Those who strongly desire to be in a peer group and do not experience a sense of group belonging are expected to have the greatest social distress and are likely to report the most behavior problems. A sense of belonging to a social peer group can enhance students academic achievement. At a college level, a better sense of belonging has been linked to perceived professor caring and greater involvement in campus organizations. In a study exploring associations between a sense of school belonging and academic and psychological adjustment, Pittman and Richmond found that college students who reported a greater sense of belonging at a college level, were doing better academically and felt more competent scholastically but also had a higher self-worth and lower levels of externalizing problems.

However, students who were having problems with their relationships with friends, were found to experience more internalizing behaviors and feel less connected to the college. Schools are important developmental contexts for children and adolescents, and influence their socio-emotional and academic development. One approach used to study naturally occurring peer groups is the social cognitive mapping SCM. Therefore, determining patterns of observed social affiliations.

The sense of connection within a classroom has been defined as having a sense of classroom belonging.

Belongingness

Meaning, students feel they are being valued accepted, included and encouraged by others in the classroom setting. They perceive themselves to be an important part of the setting and activity of the class. The need to belong is especially evident in the workplace. Employees want to fit in at work as much as students want to fit in at school. They seek the approval and acceptance of leaders, bosses, and other employees.

Charismatic leaders are especially known to show off organizational citizenship behaviors such as helping and compliance if they feel a sense of belongingness with their work group. Researchers found that charisma and belongingness increased cooperative behavior among employees. Organizational citizenship behaviors are employee activities that benefit the collective group without the individual gaining any direct benefit. Helping is a huge component of organizational citizenship behaviors because helping involves voluntarily assisting others with problems that are work-related and preventing other issues from arising.

Task performance is enhanced and supported when the acts of helping in a work environment are established and evident. Charismatic leaders set a striking example for the way to organization should behave by reinforcing certain rules and values for the organization. These self-confident leaders inspire their followers to exceed expectations for the collective group instead of their own self-interest.

This in turn gives employees an identity with which to belong. A sense of belongingness increases a person's willingness to assist others in the group by the group rules. Belongingness and group membership encourages social groups with motivation to comply, cooperate, and help. Cohesive work groups show more consideration, report positive relationships within the group and elicits more organizational citizenship behaviors.

Also, an already cohesive and collective group makes people more inclined to comply with the rules of the workplace. People are more receptive to a leader who provides a clear sense of direction and inspiration with the promise of a better future. Workers who feel more isolated in the workplace feel the need to belong even more than those who are not isolated because they are missing that collective feeling of unity.

A workplace functions better as a collective whole. The need to belong is among the most fundamental of all personality processes.

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Given the negative consequences of social rejection , people developed traits that function to encourage acceptance and to prevent rejection. But if the need to belong evolved to provide people with a means of meeting their basic needs for survival and reproduction based on evolutionary experiences, thwarting the need to belong should affect a variety of outcomes. Because it strikes at the core of human functioning, people respond very strongly to social exclusion.

Both interpersonal rejection and acceptance are psychologically powerful events. Feeling disliked, excluded, unappreciated, or devalued can stir up negative emotions in an individual.

belonging - Dictionary Definition : theranchhands.com

Some of these negative emotions include a lower self-esteem, aggressive actions and antisocial behavior. However, believing you are liked, included, appreciated, or valued elicits feelings of higher self-esteem and confidence boosts. A different number of events can lead individuals to feel accepted versus rejected. We can simply see the power of interpersonal acceptance and rejection when accepted vs.

However, in all examples, people's feelings begin from perceived relational evaluation. Perceived relational evaluation is the degree to which you perceive others value having a relationship with you. You feel more accepted if another person or group regards your relationship with them as real and as important to them as it is to you. If they consider the relationship unimportant, you feel rejected and respond negatively. In a series of experiments, Buckley, Winkel, and Leary found that the effects of rejection are more potent than the effects of acceptance because negative feelings can cause more feelings of hurt and pain, which in turn can lead to aggression and negative behaviors.

They also found people's reactions to extreme and moderate rejection were similar, suggesting that once one has been rejected by an individual or group, the severity of the rejection is less important [24]. Procedural justice, in terms of belongingness, according to van Prooijen and colleagues , is the process by which people judge their level of belongingness in terms of their ability to contribute to a group. In other words, a person is more likely to believe and support fairness decisions made by members of an ingroup in which they feel like they are a part of, compared to an ingroup in which they do not feel as strongly connected.

De Cremer and Blader found that when people feel a heightened sense of belongingness, they process information about procedural justice in a more careful and systematic way. Fairness principles are applied when belongingness needs are met. Van Prooojen and colleagues found that fairness maintains an individual's sense of inclusion in social groups. Relationships are highly valued within groups, so members of those groups seek out fairness cues so they can understand these relationships.

De Cremer and colleagues suggest that individuals with a high need to belong care more about procedural fairness information and therefore pay closer attention to incoming information. Furthermore, Cornelis, Van Hiel, De Cremer and Mayer propose that leaders of a group are likely to be more fair when they are aware that the followers of the group have a high need to belong versus a low need to belong. Leaders are also more fair in congruence with the amount of empathy they feel for followers.

Empathetic leaders are more likely to pay attention to differences among followers, and to consider a follower's belongingness needs when making decisions. Leaders that are attracted to their followers and to the group are motivated by the follower's need to belong to allow them a greater voice in the group. In all cultures, the need to belong is prevalent. Although there are individual differences in the intensity and strength of how people express and satisfy the need, it is almost impossible for culture to eradicate the need to belong.

Conformity is so important in collectivist societies that nonconformity can represent deviance in East Asian cultures, yet represent uniqueness in Western cultures. Individuals in other countries strive to belong so much that being exiled or shunned from their society is the biggest dishonor. Motivation to belong varies throughout different cultures, and can effect student achievement in distinct ways. In studies comparing fifteen year old students from 31 countries, the differences between Eastern and Western cultures were apparent.

It is important to note that the study is in the perspective of dividing these countries into two groups. The study argues that Asian eastern cultures are collectivist, while Western cultures are more individualistic. In Western cultures, peer influence is more predominant while in Eastern cultures, they are more heavily influenced by their families. In a classroom setting, children from Eastern cultures are more competitive, giving them less of a drive to belong among their peers.

These children have a great sense of motivation to excel and to do better than those around them which makes their needs for belongingness in a school setting less favorable. While in Western cultures, being so highly impacted by their peers, it gives them less of a drive to be competitive towards them.

Studies have shown that Eastern and Western cultures continue to have one of the largest achievement gaps between them, with Eastern cultures outscoring the Western. Furthermore, belongingness in Western cultures may have the potential to inhibit classroom success. However, it is very important to note that not all cultures respond to belongingness in the same way due to the many variations between cultures.

Furthermore, stigmas can create a global uncertainty about the quality of an individual's social bonds in academically and professional areas. Walton and Cohen conducted two experiments that tested how belonging uncertainty undermines the achievement and motivation of people whose racial group is negatively characterized in academic settings. The first experiment had students believe that they might have a few friends in a field of study.

White students were unaffected by this however, black students who were stigmatized academically displayed a drop in potential and sense of belonging. This response of minority students happens because they are aware that they are underrepresented and stigmatized therefore they perceive their worlds differently. Their second experiment was set up as an intervention that was designed to de-racialize the meaning of hardship in college by focusing hardships and doubts as a commonality among 1st year students rather than due to race.

What their findings suggest is that majority students may benefit from an assumed sense of social belonging. There is growing evidence that the interpersonal factor of belongingness is strongly associated with depressive symptoms. The impression of low relational value is consciously experienced as reduced self-esteem.

Reduced self-esteem is a fundamental element of depressive symptoms. According to these views, belongingness perceptions have a direct effect upon depressive symptoms due to innate neurological mechanisms. A number of studies have confirmed a strong link between belongingness and depressive symptoms using the Sense of Belonging Instrument-Psychological measurement. Group membership has been found to have both negative and positive associations with behavior problems. Gender differences have been consistently observed in terms of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems.

Girls reported more internalizing behaviors such as depression, and boys reporting more externalizing problems. However, by providing a sense of security and peer acceptance, group membership may reduce the tendency to develop internalizing problems such as depression or anxiety. A lack of group membership is associated with behavior problems and puts adolescents at a greater risk for both externalizing and internalizing problems [8] However, the need to belong may sometimes result in individuals conforming to delinquent peer groups and engaging in morally questionable activities, such as lying or cheating.

Humans have a profound need to connect with others and gain acceptance into social groups. When relationships deteriorate or when social bonds are broken, people have been found to suffer from depressive symptoms. Due to the importance of social experiences to people's well-being, and to etiology and maintenance of depression, it is vital to examine how depressed people's well-being is enhanced or eroded by positive and negative social interactions. When people experience positive social interactions, they should feel a sense of belonging.

However, depressed people's social information-processing biases make them less likely to recognize cues of acceptance and belonging in social interactions. For example, in a laboratory study using information-processing tasks assessing attention and memory for sad, physically threatening, socially threatening, and positive stimuli, clinically depressed people were found to show preferential attention to sad faces, emotion words, and adjectives. Depressed people displayed biases for stimuli concerned with sadness and loss. People who are depressed often fail to satisfy their need for belonging in relationships and therefore, report fewer intimate relationships.

Those who are depressed appear to induce negative affect in other individuals, which consequently elicits rejection and the loss of socially rewarding opportunities. Depressed people are less likely to feel a sense of belonging and are more likely to pay attention to negative social interactions. Research has found that depressive symptoms may sensitize people to everyday experiences of both social rejection and social acceptance. Numerous studies have indicated that low belonging, acquired ability to self-injure, and burdensomeness are associated with suicidal behaviors.

A recent theoretical development: Thomas Joiner , who recently proposed an interpersonal theory of suicide , suggests that two elements must be present for suicidal behavior to occur. The first element is the desire for suicide and the second is the acquired capability for suicide. In turn, the desire for suicide, is broken into two components: Together these two components create a motivational force for suicidal behavior.

Increased acquired ability refers to a lack of pain response during self-injury, which has been found to be linked to the number of suicide attempts in a lifetime. Displacement from parents includes events such as abandonment of the adolescent, divorce, or death of a parent. Parental relationships are a representation of belonging for adolescents because parents may be particularly important for providing the stable and caring relationships that are a fundamental component of belonging.

Relationships between parents and adolescents that are positive have been found to be a protective factor that reduces the risk of suicidal behavior in adolescents. Connectedness with parents such as closeness between parent and child and the perceived caring of parents, has been associated with lower levels of past suicide attempts and ideation.

Another protective factor found against adolescent suicide attempts was higher levels of parental involvement. According to Baumeister and Leary, belongingness theory proposes that the desire for death is caused by failed interpersonal processes. Similar to Joiner, one is a thwarted sense of belonging due to an unmet need to belong and the other process being a sense that one is a burden on others. They argue that all individuals have a fundamental need to belong. This need to belong is only met if an individual has frequent, positive interactions with others and feels cared about by significant others.

It was found that adolescents who averaged at about the age of 16, who experienced both low levels of belonging and displacement had the highest risk for suicide. A study conducted on suicide notes, examined the frequency in themes of thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness in samples of suicide notes.

The study of suicide notes has been a useful method for examining the motivations of suicides. It is important to note that this research is limited due to the small proportion of completed suicides that actually leave notes. This specific study explored the extent to which the content in the suicide notes reflected thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness. They also examined the extent to which these two themes were found in the same note.

This study found that suicide notes did not significantly support the hypothesis that perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness, combine with acquired capability to cause suicidal behavior. There was no strong support for the relevance of perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness as motivations of suicide.

They did, however, find that the suicide notes of women more frequently contained the theme of perceived burdensomeness and suicide notes of younger people more frequently contained thwarted belongingness. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 3 , Attachment as an organizational framework for research on close relationships. Psychological Inquiry, 5 , Why does social exclusion hurt?

The relationship between social and physical pain. Psychological Bulletin, , A core motives approach to social psychology. United States of America: Belongingness as a Core Personality Trait: Journal of Personality, 79 6 , Uncertainty, belongingness, and four needs for meaning. Psychological Inquiry, 20 4 , Peer group membership and a sense of belonging: Their relationship to adolescent behavior problems. Adolescence, 42 , The self-concept, social Identity, and interpersonal relations.

Social anxiety and self-presentation: A conceptualization and model. Psychological Bulletin, 92 3 , Attraction and close relationships. The power of social connections. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3 , A question of belonging: Race, social fit, and achievement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92 1 , Annual Review of Psychology, 55 1 , Gaze-triggered orienting as a tool of the belongingness self-regulation system.

Psychological Science, 20 4 , Social exclusion impairs self-regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88 4 , Peer influence on adolescent drug use. American Psychologist, 94 , Students' sense of belonging in school. Motivating students, improving schools - The legacy of Carol Midgley pp. Friendships, peer acceptance, and group membership. Test Your Knowledge - and learn some interesting things along the way.

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Our Word of the Year justice , plus 10 more. Yeggs, jackrollers, footpads, and more. How we chose 'justice'. And is one way more correct than the others? How to use a word that literally drives some people nuts. The awkward case of 'his or her'. Identify the word pairs with a common ancestor. Test your visual vocabulary with our question challenge! Other Words from belonging belongingness noun. Examples of belonging in a Sentence her adoptive family gave the young girl a sense of belonging that she had never felt before packed up all their belongings and moved across the country.

First Known Use of belonging , in the meaning defined at sense 1. Learn More about belonging. Resources for belonging Time Traveler! Explore the year a word first appeared. Dictionary Entries near belonging belon Belone belong belonging belong to belonite belonoid.