7 Definition of Social Group

Lets learn the 7 definition of Social Group 

Introduction:

According to Aristotle "Man is a social animal”, whose lives are inextricably bound up with one another. Our  social behaviour and personalities are shaped by the groups to which we belong, for the lifelong socialization process takes place almost entirely in group contexts. Throughout life, most of our daily activities are performed in the company of others. Whether our purpose is of working, raising a family, learning, worshipping, or simply relaxing, we usually persue, it in groups, even if the group is as small as two or three people. Our need for meaningful human contacts is not merely a practical one; it is a deep psychological need as well.

While group is one of the most important concept in sociology. Consequently, there are several, meanings of group in the sociological literature. In one usage the term denotes any physical collection of people. In this usage, "a group shares nothing except physical closeness.” many sociologists would call such a collection of people an aggregation or a collectivity.

A second meaning is that of “a number of people who share some common characteristics." This includes males, college graduates, physicians, old people, millionaires, commuters, and cigarette smokers would each be a group. Category would be a more satisfactory term, but sociologists often use "group" where as "category' would be more precise.

Another usages defines a group as a number of people who share some organized patterns of recurrent interaction. This would exclude all casual momentary meetings of people, such as the lineup at a ticket window. This definition would include the family, the friendship clique, organizations like club or church organization -any kind of collective contact between people who repeatedly interact according to some pattern of actions and relationships.

Another usage is “any number of people who share consciousness of membership together and of interaction". By this definition, two persons waiting for a bus would not be a group but would become a group if they started a conversation, a fight or any other interaction. A number of people waiting at a stop light would be an Aggregation or a Collectivity, not a group, unless some-thing-a street orator, an accident, a suicide-caught their attention and held their interest, converting them into an Audience, which is one kind of group.

The essence of the social group is not physical closeness but a consciousness of interaction. A stimulus incident may change an aggregation into a group.

In its strictest sense, “a group is a collection of people interacting together in an orderly way on the basis of shared expectations about each other's behaviour.”

As a result of this interaction, the members of a group feel a common sense of “belonging." They distinguish members from non-members and expect certain kinds of behaviour from one another that they would not necessarily expect from outsiders. A group differs from an Aggregate, a collection of people who happen to be in the same place at the same time, such as the passengers in a bus or a crowd in a street. The members of an aggregate do not interact together to any significant extent and do not feel any common sense of belonging. A group also differs from a category, a number of people who may never have met one another but who share similar characteristics, such as age, race or sex.

Definition Of social Group

According to Maclver : "By group, we mean any collection of human beings who are brought into social relationship with one another."

According to Bogardus : "A social group is a number of persons, two or more, who have common objects of attention, who are stimulating to each other, who have common loyalty and participate in similar activities.

According to Sheriff and Sheriff : “A group is a social unit which consists of number of individuals who stand in (more or less) definite status and role relationship to one another, and which possess a set of values and norms of its own regulating the behaviour of individual members at least in matters of consequences to the group”.

According to Bottomore : "A social group is an aggregate of individuals in which (i) dcfinitc relations exist between the individuals comprising it, and (ii) each individual is conscious of the group itself and its symbols”.

According to Williams : “A social group is a given aggregate of people playing inter-related roles and recognised by themselves or others as a unity of interaction.

According to Arnold Green : 'A group is an aggregate of individuals which persists in time, which has one or more interests and activities in common, and which is organised'.

According to Mckcc : 'A group is a plurality of people as actors involved in a pattern of social interaction conscious of sharing common understanding and of accepting some rights and obligations that accrue only to members.

To sum up, social group is an aggregate of individuals in which (a) definite relations exist among the individuals comprising it and (b) each individual is conscious of the group itself and its symbols. Social groups are different from social classes, status groups are crowds, which not only lack structure but whose members are less aware or even unaware of the existence of the group. These have been called quasi-groups or grouping.

Social groups are similar to social categories in that members are aware that they share something in common a consciousness of kind. They differ from social categories in one important respect-social relations between individuals. The members of a social group are in interaction with one another-that is, there is a mutual and reciprocal influencing by two or more people of each other's attitude and actions. Group has the characteristics of both community and Association.