To belong is to matter: How belonging to a community makes you happier than you think
Humans have been torn between the longing for exploration and the safety of home for millenia. Think about Ulysses, whose life is centered on the topic of “nostoi” - returns. For as much as he longs for knowing the unknown, he is desperate for coming back home.
A modern example of “nostoi” is the digital nomads movement. Digital nomads give up most of their security for the freedom of moving from country to country, getting to know different people, and developing themselves.
The irony behind this choice is that, after all, many digital nomads end up feeling lonely with their freedom as their only companion. Therefore, they have started to gather in tribes to recreate the communities they left in the first place.
It is no wonder that both Ulysses and the digital nomads struggle with balancing their wanderlust with their need for belonging. Although research acknowledges many factors as contributing to happiness (e.g. having a job, being married, having a religion) (Leung et al., 2010), social capital has been recently pointed out as crucial.
Social capital includes the material and emotional resources that come from close relationships and from belonging to a community (Leung, 2002). It is intuitive to think that the more social capital one has available (e.g. trust in others, supportive relationships, civic engagement…) the better their quality of life. Such intuition has been already confirmed by a good amount of research (see Leung et al., 2010 for a review).
We need to belong
What is perhaps more surprising is that our sense of belonging alone - regardless of the other components of social capital - seems to have a great effect on our quality of life.
Baumeister and Leary (1955) speak about the “need to belong”, arguing that it is innate and universal in human kind. They conceptualize it as the need to form strong, stable interpersonal connections.
As an example of how deeply the need to belong is rooted in us consider Tajfel research (Tajfel,1970; Billig and Tajfel, 1973) on in-group favoritism: it was sufficient to have participants believe they had been assigned to different groups on an arbitrary criterium for them to show a preference for their own group compared to other groups.
In reality, all participants had been randomly assigned to the different groups. Therefore, their ingroup preference was explained by their need to belong to the group and not by real individual differences around which the group was formed.
In line with these results, another study (Lambert et al., 2013) found that our sense of belonging even affects how we perceive our life as meaningful. Researchers found that participants who were primed with a sense of belonging reported their life as being more meaningful compared to those who were primed with different constructs (e.g. social support, social value). These results suggest that feeling as belonging causes us to perceive our life as more meaningful.
In general, having close supportive relationships has been found to be strongly related to happiness, whereas a lack of social bonds seems to be related with depression and unhappiness (Baumeister and Leary, 1955). To be part of a community is considered necessary for happiness. Moreover, to belong to a community seems to be beneficial even when the single relationships within the community do not provide explicit emotional or practical support (Baumeister and Leary, 1955).
Exclusion equals social death
If belonging to a community is so necessary for our quality of life, what happens when we suddenly feel excluded from our group?
As above stated, the need to belong is so deeply rooted in us that it is thought to be innate. That means that, when this need is not met, we tend to perceive that situation as very threatening on a psychological level (Maumeister and Leary, 1955).
Social researchers have developed different methods to prime participants with a type of social exclusion called “ostracism”, which includes being ignored or excluded by one or more others (Stillman et al., 2009).
One of the most used experimental conditions that primes ostracism is known as the “Cyberball tossing game”. In this situation, participants sit alone in a room playing a ball-tossing game on a computer. Participants are told that they are playing together with two other colleagues, whereas in reality they are playing alone with the computer. The algorithm is made so that, as time passes by, the real participant starts to get excluded from the game (Stillman et al., 2009).
Research has shown that playing such a game for 2-3 minutes is sufficient for people to experience strong sadness and anger and to threaten their need for meaning, control, belonging and self-esteem (Williams and Nida, 2011). In line with these results, ostracism has been found to be literally painful, despite the absence of physical or verbal aggression. This has been demonstrated by Eisenberg and colleagues (2003), who found that playing the Cyberball tossing game activated the same cerebral areas as physical pain.
Moreover, if sense of belonging was found to increase meaning in life, ostracism has been linked with a decrease of sense of meaning (Stillman et al., 2009), cognitive deconstruction, avoidance of emotions and increased self-awareness (Twenge et al., 2003).
How exactly social exclusion affects people’s emotions and their psychological needs has been theorized by Williams (2009). It seems that individuals have different experiences following ostracism, depending on how long the situation perpetuates itself.
Immediately after the exclusion, ostracism is perceived as painful and threatening, no matter who we are excluded by and why. Secondly, individuals generally try to cope with being excluded by finding the internal resources needed to meet their threatened needs (self-esteem, belonging, meaning, control).
If ostracism continues, one’s internal resources will be depleted and individuals start to think that there is no way they can reaffirm their place in the group. At this stage, social exclusion leads to alienation, depression, helplessness and unworthiness. Some people can even respond with aggression or violence, in the attempt of being noticed by the group, regardless whether they are liked or not (Williams, 2009). For instance, many of the kids responsible for shootings in schools in the US reported being victims of ostracism (Williams and Nida, 2011).
In other words, if social exclusion is prolonged in time, it feels like a sort of “social death” for those who experience it.
Happiness lays in our relationships
According to recent research, our sense of belonging and our close relationships are strongly predictive of our happiness. Although there are many factors contributing to one’s life satisfaction, it seems that the lack of meaningful connections and of a supportive network is incompatible with happiness. In support of this idea, social exclusion is linked with a number of psychological struggles, especially if it is prolonged during time. As a conclusion, it seems that nurturing our communities and our relationships is decisive for our quality of life.
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Article requested by Alreal Consulting and written by Valentina Bianchini from Connecting with Empathy.
Connecting with Empathy supports individuals, teams, and organizations in improving their relationships by shifting their communication style. They facilitate group processes that foster connection, empathy, and the emotional well-being of individuals and groups. In their Facebook page you can find out more about their work.
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References
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological bulletin, 117(3), 497.
Billig, M., & Tajfel, H. (1973). Social categorization and similarity in intergroup behaviour. European journal of social psychology, 3(1), 27-52.
Lambert, N. M., Stillman, T. F., Hicks, J. A., Kamble, S., Baumeister, R. F., & Fincham, F. D. (2013). To belong is to matter: Sense of belonging enhances meaning in life. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39(11), 1418-1427.
Leung, A. (2002). Delinquency, social institutions, and capital accumulation. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 158, 420–440
Leung, A., Kier, C., Fung, T., Fung, L., & Sproule, R. (2013). Searching for happiness: The importance of social capital. In The exploration of happiness (pp. 247-267). Springer, Dordrecht.
Stillman, T. F., Baumeister, R. F., Lambert, N. M., Crescioni, A. W., DeWall, C. N., & Fincham, F. D. (2009). Alone and without purpose: Life loses meaning following social exclusion. Journal of experimental social psychology, 45(4), 686-694.
Tajfel, H. (Ed.). (1978). Differentiation between social groups. London, England: Academic Press.
Twenge, J. M., Catanese, K. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2003). Social exclusion and the deconstructed state: time perception, meaninglessness, lethargy, lack of emotion, and self-awareness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 409–423
Williams, K. D. (2009). Ostracism: A temporal need‐threat model. Advances in experimental social psychology, 41, 275-314.
Williams, K. D., & Nida, S. A. (2011). Ostracism: Consequences and coping. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(2), 71-75.
