“If all your friends jumped off a bridge,
would you jump too?" It’s the lament of many an exasperated parent,
but it’s also a kind of profound sociological question. Because, when you're talking to your parents,
the answer's always no. But, with the right group of friends, you might
be quite happy to take a dive in the water. The thing is, you're a different person when
you're a part of a group, and you're a different
person in different groups. A family, a group of friends out for a swim,
a business meeting, and a choir are different
kinds of groups. And the same person can be a member of all
of them. So if we want to understand how these groups
are different, and even how they're similar, we need to talk about what social groups are,
and why they matter, both to the people who are
a part of them, and to the people who aren't. [Theme Music] The choir, the meeting, the friends, and the
family are all examples of social groups. A social group is simply a collection of people
who have something in common and who believe
that what they have in common is significant. In other words, a group is partly defined
by the fact that its members feel like they're
part of a group. This is obviously a pretty broad definition. But it does have its limits, and you can see
these limits if you compare social groups
to aggregates and categories. An aggregate is a set of individuals who happen
to be in the same place at the same time. All the people passing through Grand Central Station
at 1:00 on a Friday afternoon are an aggregate, but they aren't a group, because they don't
share a sense of belonging. Categories, meanwhile, consist of one particular
kind of person across time and space. They’re sets of people who share similar
characteristics. Racial categories are a simple example. So the sense of feeling like you belong to
a group is a defining feature of a group. But it also helps you differentiate kinds
of groups, specifically between primary and
secondary groups. Primary groups are small and tightly knit,
bound by a very strong sense of belonging. Family and friendship groups are primary groups. They’re mutually supportive places where
members can turn for emotional, social, and
financial help. And as far as group members are concerned,
the group is an end-in-itself. It exists to be a group, not for any other
purpose. Secondary groups, however, are the reverse. These are large and impersonal groups, whose
members are bound primarily by a shared goal
or activity, rather than by strong emotional ties. A company is a good example of a secondary group: Employees are often loosely or formally
connected to one another through their jobs,
and they tend to know little about each other. So there’s a sense of belonging there, but
it's much more limited. That's not to say that coworkers never have
emotional relationships. In fact, secondary groups can become primary
groups over time, as a set of coworkers spends time
together and becomes a primary group of friends. And while a gang of friends and a company
clearly have a lot of differences, they also have
at least one major similarity: They're both voluntary – if you belong to
that group, it’s because you choose to join. But there are also plenty of involuntary groups,
in which membership is assigned. Prisoners in a prison are members of an involuntary
group, as are conscripted soldiers. Now that we understand a little bit about
what groups are, we can start to study how
they work – beginning with group dynamics,
or the way that individuals affect groups,
and groups affect individuals. If we want to think about how individuals
affect groups, a good place to start is with
leadership. Not all groups have formally assigned leaders,
but even groups that don't, often have de facto
leaders, like parents in a family. A leader is just someone who influences other
people in the group. And there are generally two types of leadership: an instrumental leader is focused on a
group's goals, giving orders and making
plans in order to achieve those goals. An expressive leader, by contrast, is looking
to increase harmony and minimize conflict
within the group. They aren't focused on any particular goal,
they’re just trying to promote the wellbeing
of the group’s members. And just as leaders may differ in what they’re
trying to do, so too can they go about doing
it in different ways. I’m talking here about leadership styles,
of which we have three. Authoritarian leaders lead by giving orders
and setting down rules which they expect the
group to follow. Such a leader earns respect, and can be
effective in a crisis, but at the expense of affection
from group members. Democratic leaders on the other hand, lead
by trying to reach a consensus. Instead of issuing orders, they consider all
viewpoints to try and reach a decision. Such leaders are less effective during a crisis,
but, because of the variety of different viewpoints
they consider, they often find more creative
solutions to problems. And they’re more likely to receive affection
from their group’s members. Finally, laissez-faire leaders do the least
leading. They’re extremely permissive, and mostly
leave the group to function on its own. This means lots of freedom, but it’s the
least effective style at promoting group solidarity
and least effective in times of crisis. So, leadership is one way that individuals
affect groups, but groups also affect individuals. You can see this especially clearly in group
conformity, where members of a group hew to
the group’s norms and standards. Basically, group conformity is the reason that
you do jump off the bridge with your friends. And this has been demonstrated in some fascinating
experimental results. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble to learn
about perhaps the most famous – or infamous
– experiment on conformity. The Milgram Experiment was run by American
psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1974, and it was presented as an experiment in
punishment and learning, with two participants. One participant was the teacher, who read aloud a series of word pairs and then asked the other participant, the student, seated in another room, to recall them. The student was strapped to a chair and wired
up with electrodes. For each wrong answer, the experimenter, who was standing beside the teacher, instructed the teacher to deliver a painful electric shock to the student. With each wrong answer, the intensity increased,
from an unpleasant few volts up to 450 volts,
a potentially deadly shock. But the experiment was not about punishment
or learning. The student was actually an actor, a confederate
of the experimenter, and the shocks were not real. The experiment was designed to test how far
the teacher would go in conforming to authority. At some point in the experiment, the confederate
would feign extreme pain and beg the teacher to stop. Then he fell silent. If at any point the teacher refused to issue
the shock, the experimenter would insist that
he continue. In the end, 65% of participants went all the
way, administering the presumably deadly
450 volt shock. And this is usually given as proof that
people tend to follow orders, but there’s a lot
more to it than that. If the experimenter gave direct orders to the teacher,
like “You must continue, you have no other choice,”
that resulted in non-compliance. That’s when the teacher was
more likely to refuse. The prods that did produce compliance were
the ones that appealed, instead, to the value
of the experiment – the ones that said administering the
shocks was necessary for the experiment to be
successful and worthwhile. So in this instance, the value of the experiment,
of science, was a strongly held group value, and it helped convince the subjects to continue,
even though they might not have wanted to. Thanks, Thought Bubble. This idea of group values points us to another
important concept in understanding conformity:
the idea of groupthink. Groupthink is the narrowing of thought in
a group, by which its members come to believe
that there is only one possible correct answer. Moreover, in a groupthink mentality, to even suggest
alternatives is a sign of disloyalty to the group. Another way of understanding group conformity
is to think about reference groups. Reference groups are groups we use as standards
to judge ourselves and others. What’s "normal" for you is determined partly
by your reference groups. In-groups are reference groups that you feel
loyalty to, and that you identify with. But you can compare yourself to out-groups,
too, which are groups that you feel antagonism
toward, and which you don't identify with. And another aspect of a social group that can
affect its impacts and dynamics is its size. And here, the general rule is: the larger the
group, the more stable, but less intimate, it is. A group of two people is obviously the
smallest and most intimate kind of group,
but it’s also the least stable. Because, if one person leaves, there’s no
group anymore. Larger groups are more stable, and if there
are disagreements among members, other members
are around who can mediate between them. But big groups also are prone to coalitions
forming within them, which can result with
one faction aligning against another. The size of a group matters in other ways,
too, for instance in terms of social diversity. Larger homogenous groups tend to turn inward,
concentrating relationships within the group
instead of relying on intergroup contacts. By contrast, heterogenous groups, or groups that
have more diversity within them, turn outward, with
its members more likely to interact with outsiders. Finally, it’s worth pointing out that social
groups aren’t just separate clumps of people. There's another way to understand groups,
in terms of social networks. This perspective sees people as nodes that
are all socially interconnected. You can imagine a "circle of friends" who are
all connected to each other in different ways, some with strong connections in a clique or
subgroup, while some are connected by much
weaker ties. And you can follow the ties between all of the nodes
outward, to friends-of-friends and acquaintances
who exist on the periphery of the network. Networks are important, because even their
weak ties can be useful. Think of the last time you were networking,
following every connection you had to, say,
land a job interview. Regardless of whether you think about groups
as networks and ties, or as bounded sets, it's clear that they have important impacts
on people, both inside and outside. If you just looked at society as a bunch of
individuals, you’d miss all the ways that groups
impact our lives – by acting as reference groups,
by influencing our decisions through
group conformity, and much more. And groups are important for how society itself
is organized. So next time, we're gonna talk about one big
part of that: formal organizations and bureaucracy. For now, we’ve learned about social groups. We talked about what social groups are and
the different kinds of groups. Then we discussed group dynamics: how individuals
affect groups and how groups affect individuals. We learned about leadership, group conformity,
reference groups, and the impacts of group size. And finally, we talked about groups as networks
and why networks matter. Crash Course Sociology is filmed in the Dr. Cheryl
C. Kinney Studio in Missoula, MT, and it’s made with
the help of all of these nice people. Our animation team is Thought Cafe and Crash
Course is made with Adobe Creative Cloud. If you'd like to keep Crash Course free for everyone,
forever, you can support the series at Patreon, a crowdfunding platform that allows
you to support the content you love. Thank you to all of our patrons for making
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support.