Outline a Principle from the Scloa

The 2nd principle that I have studied from the socio-cultural level of analysis (SCLOA) is that 'we want connectedness with and a sense of belonging to others; groups', with the idea that everybody belongs to a group whether it is belonging to a group of people who play football, the group of people who are mothers or, like myself, the group of school students. We feel that belonging to a group it provides us with many things including a sense of security, the comfort of being around people with similar interest and a sense of normality - that there are other people like us out there. People belonging to certain groups often share similar traits & characteristics for example members of the group of footballers around the world are likely to be described as being 'athletic' or 'active'. Members belonging to a social group will view there group as the 'in group' and other groups as the 'out groups', members of the in-group will look negatively upon the out-group and see them as greatly inferior, while always having preference & favoritism towards their own group (known as in-group favoritism).

One study which supports this principle was a field experiment conducted by Muzafer Sherif in the 1960s. This study involved 22 white, middle class boys, who believed that they were going on a genuine summer camp in Robber's Cave state park. Once they arrived at the 'summer camp' the boys were split into 2 random groups of 11 members each. The 2 groups, who eventually labelled themselves as the 'Eagles' & 'Rattlers' were kept completely separated from each other for the first week, where they were assigned team-building tasks. After the first week each group became aware of the others existence, and were then assigned competitions between each other. During the competition staff noted that there were vibrant displays of hostility and even physical violence between the 2 groups and even after the Eagles had won the competition the Rattlers stole their prizes. This study proves the principle and all the points noted in my first paragraph as although these 2 groups had previously never met each other within a week they had developed a sense of belonging to the group while also acting in a hostile manner towards the out-group, even though they had never met before.

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