Yes, group formation is complicated, but that is sidestepping the question.
The issue is: What happenings are people responding to when they believe
themselves to be members of a group, and what happenings are the members of the
group responding to when they believe someone else to now be a member.
Certainly there will be variation, but despite that variability there will also
be a high rate of predictability. There is a whole science (that I am not
immersed in) on group membership and group formation.
It is a simple problem that is difficult to solve because of the complexity. It
would be interesting to start brainstorming a simulation. A simple netlogo
program could be constructed, group membership could be a trait of the
individual. Group membership could be changed by a combination of self-traits
("desire", etc.) and circumstance ("acceptance by those around you", etc.).
There could even be room for an individual to "feel" they are part of a group
when many members of the group feel otherwise. The goal would be to determine
how environmental variables (especially variables we might have a shot of
manipulating in real life) effect the groups individuals feel they are a part
of.
Of course, as with any agent based modeling situation, one big challenge would
be constructing a simulation has flexibility to surprise us with its results
(i.e., one that doesn't just do exactly what we intentionally programmed it to
do).
Eric
On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 12:02 AM, Carl Tollander <[email protected]> wrote:
>
Group membership is not necessarily self-selecting. Perceiving
group identity, deciding to be part of the group, working to be
accepted into the group, and having the group 'accept' a member are
different activities, and of course there are multiple groups with
competing, occasionally dynamic membership criteria and membership
itself is fuzzy.
>
>
On 10/27/11 8:32 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES wrote:
>
>Gillian,
>
Hmmmm.... trying to put my
evolutionary psychology hat on, and
feeling like I am not doing
it quite as well as I should....
>
>
Humans ARE "programed" to do things
for the good of their groups. The question then is: How do
we get people to
feel as if they are part of a group? and How do we get
people to expand the
size of the group they feel they are part of? One
subsection of those
questions, a small, but not insignificant part, is
wondering: How do we get
advantaged people to include the disadvantaged as part of
'their'
group?
>
>
Ultimately, if we had the right knowledge, this would be a
perfect problem to tackle with agent based modeling. If we
knew what types of
experiences people needed to feel as if they were part of
a group, and we knew
what types of experiences were needed to expand felt-group
size, then we start
designing various worlds along various principles to see
which produce the best
outcome. The complexity will be too high to solve the
problem any other way.
>
>
Alas... what are the factors?
>
>
Eric
>
>
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