Belonging to groups

Psychologists rarely talk about the importance of "belonging" to a group, or that there is apparently a critical period in us primates that strongly motivates us to start finding a group to belong to.  We all know  this period because we have been through it and so has every adolescent in the world.  As  parents we recognize its occurrence when suddenly our children find what others think of them as hugely more important that our opinion or acceptance. We remember the dangers  of  humiliation even while recognizing the triviality of the issues that lead to acceptance or rejection. We are aware that adolescents will make totally irrational and even dangerous choices in the process of learning to belong.

This age appears to begin in early adolescence and continues through the early adult years, although the most important for later healthy development occurs between 11 and 18.  Adolescents form groups and struggle to  learn and comply with the rules that govern membership.  They watch intently for the signal behaviors, attire, mannerisms, attitudes and values that  characterize their group.  They know that wearing the "wrong" color or type of clothing can result in humiliation. They find that even talking or spending time with someone in another group can result in  ostracism.

Initially the group seems to  be fairly large, perhaps all the children they know, but as time passes the size of the key groups, i.e. the group or groups they most want to join, becomes smaller and the boundaries become more specific and clear.  Later still the importance of belonging to a small  and specific group decreases.  The "critical period for belonging" in which skills for belonging must be  learned is largely over by the time we are  in the middle 20s.

Adolescents will accept  a physical beating to join a group.  Some will commit suicide if they are not accepted. They will frequently try to join a variety of groups, some  of which are potentially or actively harmful, in order to be a member somewhere.  It's  as if they feel they do not have an identity without belonging to something, and they identify to each other with  their various memberships.  In early adolescence they have fairly simple groups, such as the geeks, the "soshes", the athletes, the dopers, the brains, etc.  Later they develop more complex groups, such as  fraternities, military groups, groups oriented around educational goals, church or religious groups. Even later are various "adult" groups, such as Rotary or political groups.

Those who are not successful in being accepted during this phase of their life seem frequently to be permanently marked by their failure.  They tend to think of themselves as "loners" and live more isolated lives. They are rarely (if ever) comfortable with belonging and are always prepared to be rejected. Some accept their alienation and become comfortable with it.  Others seem to carry a burden of resentment and bitterness which can result at striking out at other groups.

There seems to be an ancient part of our brain that demands we learn how to belong to our tribe.  It tells us that exclusion or rejection from the group can result in death.  The fear of humiliation (i.e. rejection by your identified  group) is one of the most powerful motivations for humans.

Recently on television I watched an episode of"Blue Bloods".  In this particular show the adolescent daughter is driving her friends (her  social  group) when the police stop them and find a package of cocaine in the car, in an amount that would result in a felony conviction with permanent life changes for all of them.  No one admits to the ownership of the drugs, so they are all charged.  None of them will expose the one of their group who actually owned the cocaine, because that would be "snitching", which is cause for ejection from the  group and humiliation.

They are actually prepared to accept a felony conviction rather than "snitching", even though they know whose drugs they were.  The person who owned the drugs will allow all of them  to go to  jail rather than take the blame, but they don't really consider that.  He is in their group.  That is where their loyalty lies. The adolescent daughter will have to give up her plans to have professional career or be accepted in a prestigious college; her life goals will be destroyed.

In the episode she never came to terms with the importance of putting her own life ahead of the momentary membership in a temporary (but important to her) group.  Instead this issue is bypassed cleverly.  The daughter then goes to her mother and says "I don't ever want to disappoint you", and thus re-establishes her primary loyalty to the family group.

It's hard to find any literature, movie or play of  any kind that does not have a central concern about group membership and the conflicts between how people belong or move in and out of groups. It's surprising to me how little awareness we bring to this central issue.  It has also occurred to me that the reason I notice it so keenly is due to my own failure to become an accepted group member during my adolescence.  I can look from the outside at how all these groups function more readily because I do not  experience myself as actually in them.