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We need to belong
Belonging, as psychology studies it, is defined as “the feeling of being accepted and approved by a group or by society as a whole (VandenBos, 2015, p. 119).” The word is interchangeable in the research literature with “belongingness.” The word “belong” literally means “to go with,” to journey through life with each other. It’s by working together that we survive and thrive (Cohen, 2023, p. 5). Evolutionary psychologists believe that it is a hard-wired requirement, that we will die without it–like air, or water (Cohen, 2023). In fact, there’s an entire theory that posits that we evolved to function in groups, that people who could be team players (honest, reliable, etc.) were more likely to survive long enough to reproduce, so that there is actually a genetic component to it. Belonging is that important.
What we belong to is communities.
When I think of communities, I think of groups of organisms–plant communities, animal communities, and, of course, communities of people, all interdependent. Some of my communities include my neighborhood, my friend group, half a dozen subs on Reddit. I am part of my local ecosystem and of a religious tradition. And certainly being part of the human community and the planetary community as a whole matters. Community provides relationships, recognition, belonging. Family is one of the first communities we belong to in this world.
Belongingness is measured by how active you are in these communities, plus the strength of the emotional and cognitive ties you have to them plus, in the case of human communities, by how accepting they are of you. My former university employer is a human community that I was active in for nearly three decades, for example, but as a lowly adjunct I never had the emotional/cognitive ties I developed in r/Professors in a matter of months.
And organisms isolated from their communities sicken and die.
We form groups to cope not only with our fear of death but to defend against the risk of actual death. When belonging uncertainty is triggered we are at risk mentally and physically, and belonging uncertainty is getting triggered left, right, and Sundays too these days. That sense of not belonging starts a negative feedback loop that leaves us vulnerable to becoming ill and even dying. We’ll talk more about the process next week!
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References
Cohen, G. L. (2023). Belonging: The science of creating connection and bridging divides. W.W. Norton. Click here to purchase.
Grison, S., & Gazzaniga, M. S. (2022). Psychology in your life (4th ed.). W.W. Norton.
VandenBos, G. R. (Ed.). (2015). APA dictionary of psychology (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association.
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