Affiliation is a craving, a need, a desire to be in the company of people, an individual’s need to create close, trusting, warm, emotionally charged relationships. This is the desire to get closer to other individuals through friendship, communication, and love. The nature of interaction with parents in childhood and in adolescence with peers underlies the formation of this type of need. The tendency towards the formation of this need is disrupted when various provoking factors arise, such as anxiety, lack of self-confidence. Closeness and communication with other people helps relieve anxious situations.
Definition of the concept
Affiliation is a person’s need to be accepted into a reference group, based on his desire to establish trusting, close relationships with other people. This is due to the fact that man is a social being. Affiliation in psychology is characterized by mutual disposition and unconditional acceptance that arises in the process of interaction between two or more individuals.
The presence of interpersonal psychological attachment helps a person to more easily endure difficult life situations and deal with stress. If for some reason a person fails to satisfy his need to make a good impression, he becomes alienated, suffers from loneliness, and becomes depressed.
Psychologists are confident that such a social phenomenon as affiliation grows out of the characteristics of child-parent relationships and the structure of the family system, since the child copies the model of interaction with parents within the family. In the future, it is implemented in the process of cooperation with peers. An adult, showing prudence, tries to satisfy the expectations of his sponsors and employers through the desire to be attractive.
Etymology of the word
The concept of affiliation is of English origin and translated means “to join.” We can highlight the following needs that this concept regulates:
- friendship;
- attachment;
- the joy of communication and interaction with other people;
- Love;
- activities within certain groups of society.
Based on the listed categories, the motive of belonging is much broader than just the motive of communication. Many scientists have noted that the need for communication is based on other needs that began to function earlier. The basis of communication needs is the need for new emotions and impressions. M.I. Lisina noted that the motives for affiliation are secondary, it is only a tool for satisfying the most important cognitive need. That is why the motive of belonging is a complex concept that includes many categories.
Kinds
Affiliation manifests itself in communication, in friendship, in love. In society, two types of this phenomenon can be observed: high and low affiliation.
People with high levels of desire to be liked tend to be extroverts. They strive to communicate and lead an active lifestyle.
The main characteristics of their psychological structure are vulnerability, sensitivity, sensitivity. They tend to consult with friends on any trifle and call for no reason. Such individuals love to visit and receive guests at home. Such individuals are captivated not by the content of events and the storyline, but by their emotional basis. Often such individuals are dependent on other people’s opinions and are sensitive to criticism addressed to them.
People with low affiliation tend to be lonely and philosophizing. This does not mean that communication is alien to them. Such people also have friends, but they are few. This is due to their introverted nature. Their personality construct is based on balance, self-sufficiency, calmness, rigidity, and stress resistance. People with a low desire to make a good impression prefer books to communicating with a real person. Instead of discussing problems with a friend, they write memoirs. Personal space is extremely important for them; in some cases, they react painfully to attempts by others to violate psychological boundaries in communication. In dialogues, they get tired of the emotional outbursts of their communication partners; facts and logic are more important to them, rather than emotions. Such individuals take criticism calmly and learn valuable experience for the future from mistakes.
Of course, the identification of these types of affiliation is quite conditional, because in everyday life a person’s behavior is determined not only by the characteristics of his psyche, but also by the specific situation.
Gender
Psychologists note that affiliative motivation is also influenced by gender. For example, girls prefer to sincerely and openly share their experiences, guys try to build communications based on business issues and discussions. It should be noted that in addition to gender, age also has an influence. Over the years, the content of communication can change dramatically.
The tendency to affiliate increases when a person is involved in a potentially critical and stressful situation. It is at such moments that people around us provide an opportunity to check whether the choice of behavior in a dangerous situation is correct. As practice shows, the proximity of other people during a stressful situation leads to a decrease in anxiety and excitement, which has a positive effect not only on the psychological, but also on the physiological state. A person's blocking of affiliation provokes feelings of loneliness, alienation and rejection.
Affiliation motivation
The affiliation motive underlies the initiation or cessation of interpersonal interaction. It is explained by the psychological rapprochement or separation of people in the process of mutual knowledge of each other, the desire of people for self-affirmation.
The motivation for communication is manifested in a person’s desire to build friendly relationships with others. Externally, this type of motivation is expressed in the ability to cooperate, psychological attachment, and intimate personal connection. The motives of communication are especially pronounced in love relationships.
The degree of expression of the affiliation motive depends on the style of parent-child relationships and on the social experience of the individual. With a democratic style of upbringing, children develop such qualities as social courage, openness, self-sufficiency, communication, social attractiveness, and emotional stability.
People with high communication motivation are liked and have a high socio-psychological status in the team. For most members of a small social group, when resolving controversial issues, their opinion is authoritative.
The complete opposite of the affiliation motive is the rejection motive. It is expressed in the individual’s fears of being unsuccessful in the process of interpersonal communication, of becoming an outcast in the team. If a person has a dominant motive of rejection, in the process of communication this will manifest itself in the form of stiffness, anxiety, psychological stress, low self-esteem and self-doubt.
Positive values
A person's motivation is determined by his expectations, which are based on past experiences. If we take the category of expected value, then affiliation is a positive value. You can give the following example: a person is about to have a dialogue with a complete stranger. And the result of this communication depends on the expectations of success. The stronger this expectation, the higher its positive attractiveness, and, accordingly, vice versa. Here one can observe a certain connection when the expectation of success influences a person’s behavior and the course of action, while the course of events influences the result of communication. To build a successful dialogue, the expectation of success must be higher than the expectation of failure; this contributes to the fact that positive attraction will prevail over negative one. But such a connection is inherent only in motives of affiliation. For example, in the achievement motive everything works the other way around. The higher the expectation of success, the lower the attractiveness of the task facing a person.
Need and goals of affiliation
The need for affiliation has different purposes:
- make a positive impression on the interlocutor during social perception;
- a statement of intention to maintain long-term communication;
- expressing sympathy for a communication partner;
- search for love, psychological support;
- take a leading position in the team;
- self-acceptance;
- dominate in love relationships;
- get help from a specific person;
- fear of being rejected;
- It is advantageous to imagine yourself in the process of managing institutions, enterprises and other social objects.
The central motivational moment of communication
This category includes the choice of a temporary or permanent communications partner. The choice of a permanent partner is carried out not only by business, moral and intellectual qualities, but also by appearance. You can determine the motives for affiliation of a particular individual using various techniques, of which there are a huge number. The most used technique today was developed by Mehrabian. It is based on the diagnosis of two general motivators, which are stable and are part of affiliation motives. These motivators are the tendency to affiliation or love of communication and sensitivity to rejection, fear of rejection. These two categories are the basis for diagnosing affiliation motives according to A. Mehrabian.
Examples of affiliation from my life
Clear examples of affiliation include:
- Coquetry. Wanting to please a young man, the girl flirts: she shows her wrists during communication, straightens her hair.
- Active listening. Wanting to express sympathy for the interlocutor and strengthen the psychological connection, during a conversation a person uses the technique of active listening: asks clarifying questions, paraphrases the words of the interlocutor, nods. By facial expressions and gestures a person shows his attentiveness and willingness to continue communication.
- Children playing together. Children, expressing sympathy for their play partner, willingly share toys and offer to play together. With these actions they try to impress another child and win his favor.
General information
If we open the psychological dictionary, we will see that affiliation refers to an emotional connection with other people, as well as the desire to establish it, to have mutual trusting relationships. Thus, the concepts of “affiliation”, “need for affiliation” and “motive for affiliation” are often confused and replaced with one another. One way or another, affiliation (less commonly, affiliation) implies the relationship of a person with society, because the word itself is derived from the English affiliation, which means “connection”, “connection”.
Since our school days we remember that man is a biosocial being.
Let us pay attention to the second root of this complex word: the need to exist in society, in the circle of other people, is inherent in each of us from birth
We are not designed to live alone. And if we do have to, then it makes us suffer—scientifically speaking, it causes frustration—a mental state in a situation of discrepancy between desires and possibilities, which is expressed in depression, anxiety, and despair. Let's remember Robinson and his passionate desire to find at least some kindred soul on a desert island!
We can talk about affiliation in relation not only to one person, but also to a group. Everything is similar: group affiliation implies that a small group seeks to become part of a larger one and, therefore, act according to its laws and rules
In the same way, a person strives to feel like he belongs to some social community, to understand what is an element of a large and important whole (most often, the role of such communities is a family or ethnic group (people)
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As a rule, affiliation increases when we experience stress and/or find ourselves in an extreme situation. This is due to two reasons. Firstly, finding himself in an unfamiliar, or even potentially dangerous, environment, a person looks for some kind of reference point, a role model, tries to understand how he should behave, and uses the example of those around him to check whether his reactions are adequate. And secondly, being close to others has been proven to calm you down, reduce anxiety and reduce the effects of stress.
Moreover, a certain interdependence between affiliation and health has been revealed. American researchers conducted surveys for several years, the results of which showed: people who communicate closely with relatives or are members of certain communities live longer and have fewer health problems. It turns out that affiliation not only helps to gain peace of mind, but also plays a more important role: it contributes to the preservation of the very existence of an individual or group.
But not everything is so rosy. A situation is quite possible (and probably familiar to everyone) when, on the contrary, society, including the closest people (family or friends), becomes a cause of stress and irritation. The fact is that the number of contacts everyone needs is strictly individual and depends on two general factors: the desire to be accepted and the fear of being rejected.
IN SEARCH OF UNITY
How does the desire to be together manifest itself in other animals that are not like primates? Elephants in a “friendly relationship” often touch each other. As a greeting and expression of peaceful intentions, they may intertwine their trunks while standing face to face. The desire for warm relationships among elephants is also expressed in the greeting, in which one elephant puts its trunk into the mouth of another elephant. Affiliative behaviors in elephants sometimes appear in the form of games, such as pretend fights or chases.
Dolphins have their own “equivalent” of primate grooming - this is the so-called petting, or friction, when dolphins touch, stroke another with the help of their pectoral fins. Other forms of dolphin affiliative behavior are often observed in dolphinariums. They are the ones that trainers use to perform tricks. One of the most spectacular and common types of such behavior among dolphins is jumping out of the water together. Scientists believe that the degree of synchrony of swimming, jumping and flips under water performed by males “in an alliance” indicates their cohesion more accurately than all other indicators. Synchronized jumping to the surface is a common component of the amazingly varied displays performed by males around a female. In this case, the synchrony of males’ actions in a potentially competitive situation may reduce tension between them.
SIGNALS OF PEACEFUL INTENTIONS
What about our pets? It is very important for dogs to be in a group, and therefore they need to be able to show their friendly intentions. Touching, pushing with the muzzle, leaning sideways, maintaining a close distance, resting, clinging closely to the owner, if you are not being chased and stroked, tell the animal: “You belong” - and this calms you down. Dogs shorten their distance from their owners and cling to them in situations that they consider threatening or uncertain.
It's more difficult with cats. However, even a cat “living on its own” has forms of affiliative behavior that allow it to declare its peaceful intentions and, if possible, reassure a potential aggressor.
The approach of a cat with its tail raised almost vertically, the tip of which is bent towards the one to whom it is heading, I think is known to everyone. Scientists have shown that the tail-up approach is most often demonstrated by a lower-ranking individual in relation to higher-ranking cats (or owners). An animal, by raising its tail up, conveys specific information: it recognizes the higher rank of the signal recipient or doubts his intentions, but just in case, informs him of his desire to interact peacefully. The recipient of the signal may not respond, and the interaction ends. If the other animal also raises its “tail up,” then, most likely, the interaction will continue, and it will be followed by “nose sniffing” and “mutual friction” (the cat rubs its body, head, neck along the body of another cat or on a part of the body of its beloved owner ). All of this adds up to greeting behavior. By the way, more often it is cats who take the initiative in affiliative interactions, not cats. Moreover, “tail up” and “rubbing” are more often demonstrated by females in relation to males, and “nose sniffing” is more often shown by males in relation to females.
Scientists believe that the “tail up” signal of peaceful intentions in cats evolved from the behavior of kittens greeting their mother (or other adult cats). When the kittens see their mother, they approach her with their tails raised, rubbing their foreheads and then the top of their heads against her chin. This sequence is usually associated with a food requirement. During domestication, due to increased interactions with other individuals, this infantile behavior may have been retained in adult cats to deter the aggressive intentions of others.
The only other feline that uses a raised tail and “rubbing” for greetings, besides cats, is the lion. And this is not surprising, since it is lions that are capable of living in groups consisting, like domesticated cats, of genetically related females, their offspring and some males.
Health effects
Affiliation affects the physical and mental health of an individual. In order for the subject to continue to develop normally, without violations or delays, he must be understood and accepted by those around him. If society rejects an individual, frustration and a feeling of uselessness arise. Because of this, stress, depression, and apathy can develop.
Health benefits from satisfying the need for communication and acceptance by society:
- In any controversial or conflict situation, an individual seeks support from other people. You can get help by communicating with a loved one.
- When communicating, the level of anxiety decreases, nerves calm, and it becomes easier to solve problems. The mood improves, which has a positive effect on the functioning of the whole body.
Scientists have been able to prove that individuals who have long-term, warm relationships with another person and have loyal friends live longer. Loners have an unstable psycho-emotional background; they rush between numerous interests.
The need for communication is inherent in every person from birth. It begins to form from an early age. Depending on the characteristics of upbringing, communication with loved ones and peers, motivations and needs appear. At the same time, the type of motivation is formed.
