REFERENCE GROUP THEORY - ROBERT K MERTON

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UPSC SOCIOLOGY – Paper 1 – SOCIOLOGICAL THINKERS – Robert K. Merton- Latent and manifest functions, conformity and deviance, reference groups

  • Reference group is defined as a group with which one always makes a comparison inorder to evaluate once achievements, aspirations, role performance and ambition.
  • The act as normative standards for the individual.
  • Merton later distinguished between Reference group and Interaction group.
  • Interaction groups are a more general part of the individuals social environment but may neither set a normative standards for individual nor serve as a standard of comparison.
  • Reference group is the aspirational group and is defined in normative terms as a standard of comparison.
  • Mustafa Sherif defined reference groups as “those groups to which the individual relates himself as a part or to which he aspires to relate himself psychologically”.

REFERENCE GROUPS TYPOLOGIES

  • Positive reference groups are the ones that individual wishes to join and negative are those which individual wishes to avoid.
  • He also gives the concept of Anticipatory Socialization in which individuals starts to behave in a manner in which members of aspirational reference groups behave.
  • It leads to change in the value system of individual and it facilitates easy merger of individual in the aspirational group.
  • A dysfunctional aspect of anticipatory socialization in closed systems is that an individual becomes an outcast in his own social group and also fails to gain entry into reference group and is reduced to a marginal man.

INFLUENTIAL FACTORS IN CHOOSING A REFERENCE GROUP

  • Power and prestige
  • culture and values of the person and the reference group
  • Isolation in membership group
  • Open versus Close group
  • Reference individuals or role models in a group



CHARACTERISTICS OF REFERENCE GROUPS

  • The individual or group considers the behaviour of the other individual or group as ideal behaviour and imitates it.
  • The individual or group compares himself or itself with the other individual or group.
  • In Reference Group Behaviour the individual or group desires to rise higher in the social scale and as such the group or individual comes to feel it’s or his defects or weaknesses.
  • The feeling of relative weaknesses or defects leads to the feeling of relative deprivation in the individual or group.


SELF FULFILLING PROPHECY

  • A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that becomes true due to the very fact that it is a prophecy and because of a purported positive feedback mechanism between the behaviour of the actor and belief of the prophecy maker.
  • If a teacher in a class openly says that a student will top the class, there are chances that student may actually top the class.
  • This means that subjects often perform according to the social expectations attached to them.



REFERENCE GROUP THEORY - CRITICISM

  • This theory does not propound any new fact.
  • It only explains the behaviour but does not suggest any means to control it.
  • It only explains how an individual is influenced by a Reference Group, but it does not explain how the Reference Group is influenced by his entry into the group.