- Published: November 14, 2021
- Updated: November 14, 2021
- University / College: The University of Edinburgh
- Language: English
- Downloads: 41
The institutional affiliation
Every person in the course of his/her life interacts with society or various kinds of social groups. According to the sociological dictionary, a social group consists of two or more people who communicate and recognize themselves as a distinct social unit. A group is often characterized by a sense of common identity, shared interests and goals among its members (Bitbucket. icaap. org, 2015). Thus, our family, sports team, church group, college class, workplace, village and political party are all social groups.
It is natural that a person as a social unit is a part of different social groups at a time and, consequently, plays different roles and comes under the influence of their members or influences him/herself.
The first social group of every newborn person is a family. The family teaches us such values as love, companionship, gives us self-confidence or the lack of it, and gives the first examples of relationships and socialization. Usually the family gives a person a kind of an acting program in the society and after a number of mistakes and acquiring the experience a person works out his/her own strategy of communication. Depending on the relation in the family a person can show different traces of characters, perform different roles in terms of a situation: wife/husband in their own family, but a child for parents, older/younger siblings, etc.
With this baggage of experience, a person steps into the second social group that is formed at school or workplace. It can be a role of “ a good student” or the one who “ doesn’t care about the studies”. After graduation a person is assigned another role of being an adult. Ambitions and goal setting help one to be a “ big boss” or “ responsible employee”. In any event, in spite of the number of roles the trick of all these is to be successful in switching them at the right time.
References
Bitbucket. icaap. org. (2015). Online Dictionary of the Social Sciences. Retrieved 19 July 2015, from http://bitbucket. icaap. org/dict. pl
