Sense of belonging: what it is and how it influences our behavior

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

People create our identity based on how others perceive us socially and, also, in the way in which we identify with some people or others, feeling part of and integrated into a community.

We know this as a sense of belonging., a phenomenon that social psychology and sociology have studied in depth to try to see how it is formed and its relationship with ingroup favoritism, which we will see below.

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What is the sense of belonging?

The sense of belonging is the feeling or 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 certain group, the more likely it is that we identify with it, seeing these characteristics as evidence of being part of something else big.

The size of the group does not matter. The 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 that we share with its members, the importance that same group has for us. We have an example of this in the family with which, however small it may be, we share both physical and behavioral traits, as well as a common history and emotional dependency and economic.

Although 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 a sense of belonging, is not the only one. As we grow up, we establish contact with different groups, such as neighbors on the same street, classmates, other kids with similar interests and all sorts of different social groups that will shape our identity and spark 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 the social groups and the identities that can arise from them.

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

Next we are going to see a brief list with very different social groups that can perfectly awaken a sense of belonging to a greater or lesser degree:

• Cultural: Catalan, Basque, Scottish, Spanish, English...
• Sports team: from Barça, from Madrid, from the Lakers.
• Singer/music band fan: Belieber, directioner, smilers, swifties.
• Urban tribes: emos, metalheads, punks, skinheads, queers.
• Religion: Christians, Jews, Muslims...
• Political ideology: communist, socialist, liberal...

On many occasions, the sense of belonging to a certain group does not depend on its prestige. It does not matter if it is an economically very important group, culturally very extended or socially very influential. What makes us feel identified with it is the simple fact of having been born or raised within 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 give thanks for being in such an important community.

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

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Its evolutionary and historical importance

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

As we advance in the history of humanity, this idea of ​​belonging has ceased to be limited to the family or the tribe. to move on to larger projects, such as being from a country or a specific social group, military in it and receiving its protection through change.

When we are small we need our family to feed us since we are totally dependent on adults. As we grow older, even though we individually gain independence and can get by on our own own account, it will be very difficult to break away from the family and, even more complicated, to do it from the society.

We need others 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 individuals and adapted.

In any case, the sense of belonging is not something static, that is, we do not have to always feel faithful 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 initial security. The social changes that may occur influence the way we feel part of a community, being a classic case the irruption of industrialization and urbanization, which practically ended the idea of ​​community in large cities.

The group identity associated with the sense of belonging does not have to be inflexible and exclusive either.. The boundaries that prevent us from being part of a group change and can become more permeable as we that same social group is redefined, making more people feel identified with it. The opposite process can also happen, that is, the group becomes more selective or splits into other new identities, changing the sense of belonging to the original group.

We see a clear example of identity that has become more permeable in Spain. The idea of ​​being Spanish has been changing and has become more open to diversity. If before that white person was authentically Spanish, a descendant of a long lineage of Spaniards, whose mother tongue was Castilian and Catholic religion, now, with the arrival of people from Africa and Latin America, this has changed, making Spanish see as Spanish 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, being 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 phenomenon social. In addition, the degree to which the group affects our identity does not directly depend on social importance or community size, although it can be influenced.

What can be affirmed is that the first group with which we feel the sense of belonging is the family, as we have commented before, and that this occurs very early. 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 in-group favoritism. That is, children of these ages evaluate their family members more positively and also the children of their group of friends or their class.

This can be verified very easily by going to a kindergarten in which each grade is divided into two groups (eg. g., the class of sunflowers and the class of roses). If we ask a child which of the two class groups he thinks he does better, he will most likely tell us his.

It will not give us rational arguments, it will simply tell us things like "because we are the best" or "because we are called that". You already have a certain sense of belonging and falls into ingroup favoritism, valuing better the group to which it belongs for the simple fact of belonging.

However, it seems that the sense of belonging could appear much sooner, with only 17 months of age. An investigation carried out by Renée Baillargeon and Kyong-Sun Jin observed that children of these ages had a slight idea of ​​ingroup and outgroup. Babies expected members of the same group to help each other, while members of two different groups, if they did not help each other, it did not desert surprise or expectation in the infants.

According to this research, it seems that human beings, already instinctively, expect two people from the same group, who share characteristics between them, they have already developed a feeling of being part of something greater than themselves and that, therefore, they must help each other to be able to survive. Babies of these ages seem to display this behavior, which is truly surprising.

Bibliographic 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