Objective: A sense of belonging - the subjective feeling of deep connection with social groups, physical places, and individual and collective experiences - is a fundamental human need that predicts ...numerous mental, physical, social, economic, and behavioural outcomes. However, varying perspectives on how belonging should be conceptualised, assessed, and cultivated has hampered much-needed progress on this timely and important topic. To address these critical issues, we conducted a narrative review that summarizes existing perspectives on belonging, describes a new integrative framework for understanding and studying belonging, and identifies several key avenues for future research and practice.
Method: We searched relevant databases, including Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, PsycInfo, and ClinicalTrials.gov, for articles describing belonging, instruments for assessing belonging, and interventions for increasing belonging.
Results: By identifying the core components of belonging, we introduce a new integrative framework for understanding, assessing, and cultivating belonging that focuses on four interrelated components: competencies, opportunities, motivations, and perceptions.
Conclusion: This integrative framework enhances our understanding of the basic nature and features of belonging, provides a foundation for future interdisciplinary research on belonging and belongingness, and highlights how a robust sense of belonging may be cultivated to improve human health and resilience for individuals and communities worldwide.
KEY POINTS
What is already known about this topic:
Belonging is a fundamental human need that all people are driven to satisfy.
However, there is disagreement in the literature regarding how a person should go about increasing their sense of belonging.
There is also little consensus regarding how belonging should be conceptualized and measured.
What this topic adds:
The review article draws together disparate perspectives on belonging and harnesses the strengths of this multitude of perspectives to help advance the field.
The paper provides a framework that can help inform researchers, practitioners, and individuals seeking to increase a sense of belonging in themselves and in the organizations and groups in which they work and live.
We posit that competencies, opportunities, motivations, and perceptions are central elements in strategies that can be used to increase our individual and collective sense of belonging for the betterment of society.
Self-report data collections, particularly through online measures, are ubiquitous in both experimental and non-experimental psychology. Invalid data can be present in such data collections for a ...number of reasons. One reason is careless or insufficient effort (C/IE) responding. The past decade has seen a rise in research on techniques to detect and remove these data before normal analysis (Huang, Curran, Keeney, Poposki, & DeShon, 2012; Johnson, 2005; Meade & Craig, 2012). The rigorous use of these techniques is valuable tool for the removal of error that can impact survey results (Huang, Liu, & Bowling, 2015). This research has encompassed a number of sub-fields of psychology, and this paper aims to integrate different perspectives into a review and assessment of current techniques, an introduction of new techniques, and a generation of recommendations for practical use. Concerns about C/IE responding are a factor any time self-report data are collected, and all such researchers should be well-versed on methods to detect this pattern of response.
Burnout is typically viewed as resulting from situational factors (e.g., workload). However, as burnout is partly a reaction to frustrated goal striving, dispositional goal orientation may also be ...important. We used Hobfoll's () conservation of resources model to develop hypotheses for relationships between goal orientation and 3 dimensions of burnout. Self‐report questionnaire measures of the 2 × 2 model of goal orientation (Elliot & McGregor, ) and burnout were administered to undergraduate students. Structural equation modeling revealed that all 4 dimensions of goal orientation were related to burnout. Avoidance‐related dimensions were positively associated and approach‐related dimensions were negatively associated with burnout. The findings suggest the importance of considering the role of motivational dispositions in development, prediction, and prevention of burnout.
Documenting Impossible Realitie s explores the limitations of conventional accounts through which belonging is documented, focusing on the experiences of adoptees, deportees, migrants, and other ...exilic populations. Susan Bibler Coutin and Barbara Yngvesson speak to the current historical moment in which the dichotomy between an above ground inhabited by dominant groups and an underground to which unauthorized immigrants, political exiles, and transnational adoptees are relegated cannot be sustained. This dichotomy was made possible by the illusion that some people do not belong, that some forms of kin are not real, or that certain ways of knowing do not count. To examine accounts that challenge such illusions, Coutin and Yngvesson focus on the spaces between groups, where difference is constituted and where the potential for new forms of relationship may be realized. By juxtaposing and moving between entangled realities and modes of expression, Documenting Impossible Realities conveys the emotional experience of oscillating between being here and gone, legitimate and treated as counterfeit.
The contributions gathered in this volume bear witness to the fact that belonging is a multi-faceted concept that necessitates different and shifting idioms of expression. It continually requires ...reconsideration and redefinition of our affiliations in response to the rapid social, cultural, and political changes of our world. The literary paradigms, linguistic practices, and cultural formations of belonging testify to the impossibility of confining it to conventional and established structures of knowledge. The different reflections on belonging introduced in this book are instrumental in reassessing and remodelling the general assumptions that have informed its definition and representation. The current global reality and the self-other encounter make inevitable the continuous search for new forms of belonging that are in tune with one's evolving and changing sense of self. Theoretically informed by and substantially grounded in lively and heated debates on cultural identity and belonging, this book proposes new critical directions in understanding national and transnational belonging.
Race plays an important role in how people think, develop, and behave. In the current article, we queried more than 26,000 empirical articles published between 1974 and 2018 in top-tier cognitive, ...developmental, and social psychology journals to document how often psychological research acknowledges this reality and to examine whether people who edit, write, and participate in the research are systematically connected. We note several findings. First, across the past five decades, psychological publications that highlight race have been rare, and although they have increased in developmental and social psychology, they have remained virtually nonexistent in cognitive psychology. Second, most publications have been edited by White editors, under which there have been significantly fewer publications that highlight race. Third, many of the publications that highlight race have been written by White authors who employed significantly fewer participants of color. In many cases, we document variation as a function of area and decade. We argue that systemic inequality exists within psychological research and that systemic changes are needed to ensure that psychological research benefits from diversity in editing, writing, and participation. To this end, and in the spirit of the field’s recent emphasis on metascience, we offer recommendations for journals and authors.
The present paper tries to overcome the dualism of group-level vs. individualistic analysis of small group processes, by presenting a model of social identity formation that incorporates factors at ...both levels of analysis as well as their interaction. On the basis of prior theorising in the social identity tradition and a programme of research spanning several interactive group research paradigms, we suggest that within small groups a social identity can operate as a contextual given, which shapes the behaviour of individuals within the group, as much as the behaviour of individuals within the group can shape social identity. This proposal is supported by a programme of research into social influence within small interactive groups. This research explores deductive (top-down) processes through which existing identities influence group processes, but also shows a reciprocal influence through which intragroup discussion creates a sense of group identity in the apparent absence of any direct intergroup comparison (an inductive, or bottom-up, path). It is the interaction between these two forces that we believe is characteristic of the way in which small groups achieve a sense of social identity. Supporting this view, we describe research that suggests that processes of identity formation play a key role in decision making, productive collaboration, consensualisation, integrative negotiations, and the development of shared cognition.
An Underexamined Inequality Croft, Alyssa; Schmader, Toni; Block, Katharina
Personality and social psychology review,
11/2015, Volume:
19, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Social psychological research has sought to understand and mitigate the psychological barriers that block women’s interest, performance, and advancement in male-dominated, agentic roles (e.g., ...science, technology, engineering, and math). Research has not, however, correspondingly examined men’s underrepresentation in communal roles, traditionally occupied by women (e.g., careers in health care, early childhood education, and domestic roles including child care). In this article, we seek to provide a roadmap for research on this underexamined inequality by (a) outlining the benefits of increasing men’s representation in communal roles; (b) reviewing cultural, evolutionary, and historical perspectives on the asymmetry in status assigned to men’s and women’s roles; and (c) articulating the role of gender stereotypes in creating social and psychological barriers to men’s interest and inclusion in communal roles. We argue that promoting equal opportunities for both women and men requires a better understanding of the psychological barriers to men’s involvement in communal roles.
Investigating Human Interaction through Mathematical Analysis offers a new and unique approach to social intragroup interaction by using mathematics and psychophysics to create a mathematical model ...based on social psychological theories. It draws on the work of Dr. Stanley Milgram, Dr. Bibb Latane, and Dr. Bernd Schmitt to develop an algebraic expression and applies it to quantitatively model and explain various independent social psychology experiments taken from refereed journals involving basic social systems with underlying queue-like structures. It is then argued that the social queue as a resource system, containing common-pool resources, meets the eight design principles necessary to support stability within the queue. Making this link provides a means to advance to more complex social systems. It is envisioned that if basic social systems as presented can be modeled, then, with further development, more complex social systems may eventually be modeled for the purpose of identifying and validating social structures that might eventually support stable governments in our common environment called Earth. This is a fascinating reading for academics and advanced students interested in political theory, detection theory, social psychology, organizational behavior, psychophysics, and applied mathematics in the social and information sciences.
There is considerable current debate about the need for replication in the science of social psychology. Most of the current discussion and approbation is centered on direct or exact replications, ...the attempt to conduct a study in a manner as close to the original as possible. We focus on the value of conceptual replications, the attempt to test the same theoretical process as an existing study, but that uses methods that vary in some way from the previous study. The tension between the two kinds of replication is a tension of values—exact replications value confidence in operationalizations; their requirement tends to favor the status quo. Conceptual replications value confidence in theory; their use tends to favor rapid progress over ferreting out error. We describe the many ways in which conceptual replications can be superior to direct replications. We further argue that the social system of science is quite robust to these threats and is self-correcting.
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