Essay on "Social Grouping"

Essay 4 pages (1212 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Social Grouping

The Diminishing Effect of Labels to People social group is formed by a collection of interacting individuals who share interests and qualities. A social category, on the other hand, is formed by a collection of people who do not interact but who share the same characteristics. Among this group or category comes the capacity of people or individuals to label events or other people in describing them or in interacting with them.

According to Zadek, Lingayah & Forstater (1998), in their report for the European Commission on Social Labels Tools, Social Labels are "words and symbols associated with products or organizations which seek to influence the economic decisions of one set of stakeholders by describing the impact of a business process on another group of stakeholders."

In the above premise, a label is a tool used to influence individuals in patronizing a good or a product over another.

In Sociology, a label is an identification of a behavior from a norm: Carl Bankston, 2000 stated that labeling is a "process of naming deviance and deviants."

In both descriptions, however, a label is described as a mark to distinguish something from the rest of the population. Labeling in human behavior is done to categorize it while labeling in products is done to promote satisfaction.

Labeling effects are either promoting or weakening depending on how it is applied. For example, in economics, if a good label is used for a commodity, sales will increase and if not, lesser consumers will buy the product. In human behavior, if a positive label is used for an individual, his self-esteem will increase. But if it is negatively applied, he will be discouraged.

Bankston, 2000 explained this through the self-fulfilling prophecy theory which he described as a "situation that occurs when other people's expectations for a person leads him or her to act in ways that confirm those expectations."

To explain labels and its effects more, people and events were observed in a usual day of activities. During this observation, the times when people knowingly or unknowingly labeled other people were noted and categorized. To further specify focus, the discussion will be on the negative or diminishing effect of labels to other people.

Three events were observed and they were categorized as differentiating people based on their idea, identifying people based on their physical attractiveness and classifying an individual based on their group.

In the first, the observer watched a group of women sited at a nearby table in a restaurant. The women talked about the difference of staff views on a project they were working on and they labeled their officemates as either sharing their opinion or not. They discussed the flaws in their office mates' ideas and then inferred that they would be more careful in hearing views from them.

The women's labeling of themselves and their office mates' ideas can be called an ingroup/outgroup differentiation.

An ingroup is a set of individuals who perceive similarities among them while an outgroup is a collection of those who do not share in the similarities. (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1993).

In the above situation, the women in the restaurant are seeing themselves as the ingroup while the office mates are the outgroup.

According to Hogg and Tindale, 2001 "where there is a group goal, deviant opinions obstruct the process of reaching consensus - a state of affairs that would be particularly threatening when the group goal involves an important value." However, Hogg and Tindale further stated that "strong group goals may engender pressure toward compliance, and concomitant censure of deviants."

In looking at the conversation, the ingroup may have been right… READ MORE

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