In the African Traditional Society, our ancestors lived harmoniously in small social groups, which included extended families, tribes, and/or clans. They passed on knowledge, told inspiring stories, or settled issues that affected a social setting that sat deep in the minds of those told. On a more enlightened stage today, people still spend a great deal of time in groups, work together on production lines, working groups, co-curricular and extra co-curricular activities or hang/hideouts, and in the Savings and credit Cooperative Societies (SACCOs)/investment clubs and in some cultures, they have drinking clubs, which others call them bars apparently. These groups are beneficial in either way but dangerous when they are operated on exclusion lines, which is common today even in the groups that I typically associate with.
Some folks will hate someone because he or she is a friend to someone hated in a group or by some individual or because that person has exhibited a degree of positive returns among other issues, essential to create a line basing on social (mostly tribal), economic, political and/or religious.
Let me try to narrow my submission basing on social facilitation and satisfaction. Social facilitation gives a piece of an individual’s behaviour, which is affected by the real, imagined, or implied presence of others. I can further explain this by the first social psychology laboratory experiment that was undertaken by Norman Triplett in 1898.
In his research on the speed records of cyclists, he noticed that racing against each other rather than against the clock alone increased the cyclists’ speeds. He attempted to duplicate this under laboratory conditions using children and fishing reels. He arranged 40 children and involved to play, turning a small fishing reel as quickly as possible. He found that those who played the game in pairs turned the reel faster than those who were alone.
There were two conditions; the child alone and children in pairs, but working alone, their task was to wind in a given amount of fishing line and Triplett reports that many children worked faster in the presence of a partner doing the same task.
Social facilitation occurs not only in the presence of a co-actor but also in the presence of a passive audience, known as the audience effect.
Well, the feeling of belonging has several degrees of intensity, and at the most extreme it can legitimize hostility towards those from different folkloric settings. Take for instance; if some people in a particular social circle pledged to contribute towards a friend’s wedding expenses or burial arrangement for that matter, and cannot deliver on time, folks tend to isolate one particular individual branding him or her with all sorts of slur and insults than those they share the same ethnic group. Others have a tendency of over blaming those who support others because they are not from the same tribal group.
If all persons worked together to bring a just cause, I believe there can never be isolation or dejection of any nature. The social group is hypothetically good but if not well maintained, they can be a huge thorn in the heels of a person.
The ability of a social group to perform well is determined by the characteristics of the group members as well as by the group processes basing on the tasks. When the outcome of group performance is better than expected, the outcome a group process gains, and when the group outcome is worse than expected given the individuals who form the group, the outcome of as a group process a loss.
Wako Joel 