Affiliation
Affiliation is the desire to be in the company of other people, the need to create trusting, warm, emotionally significant relationships. This concept includes such categories as communication, friendship, love and many others. The nature of relationships with parents and peers in early childhood determines the formation of this need. Affiliation reduces anxiety and alleviates the effects of both psychological and physiological stress.
Negative experience, reinforced by the frequent repetition of situations involving self-doubt and distrust of another person or group of people, blocks affiliation and causes alienation, loneliness and frustration.
High and low affiliation
In psychology, affiliation is understood as the level of a person's social needs. Each of us needs communication to varying degrees. Some people want to always be in society, to see friends and colleagues at various events or parties. For others, it is enough to use the Internet for communication - it is not for nothing that social networks and various communication programs have become so widespread, which provide not only text communication, but also allow you to see and hear the interlocutor. Still others, on the contrary, prefer privacy to noisy companies, do not like to attract attention to themselves, and even choose remote work in order to limit contact with others. Of course, how many people - so many options. Affiliation is the concept that determines how much a person is inspired by the prospect of communicating with others.
High and low affiliation are two extremes that rarely occur in their purest form. In the first case, these are unconditional extroverts. They are open to communication, they can easily start a conversation with strangers, they are often the soul of the company. Can't stand loneliness and achieve better results only when surrounded by people. It is important for them to exchange ideas and opinions "live".
Low levels of affiliation are more common for introverts. Such people, as a rule, are independent and self-sufficient, personal space is important for them. Long communication with those around them is exhausting, and peace of mind is restored only in solitude. It's not a lack of social skills, but a desire to establish and maintain close relationships with a small circle of friends, without constantly meeting new people.
Affiliation motivation
The content of the motivation of affiliation is to maintain a relationship of such a degree of intimacy that suits the person and does not cause discomfort. In this case, the goals can vary significantly - from trying to impress another person to wanting to exert a powerful influence.
Affiliation presupposes partnership, and the asymmetric distribution of roles destroys it, leading in severe cases to social phobias. If a person realizes that they tried to humiliate him or use to satisfy someone's needs, then this can damage his need for affiliation. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the value of communication in the eyes of a partner, establish a trusting relationship and ensure that sympathy and friendly support are mutual. Many verbal and non-verbal means contribute to achieving and maintaining relationships of this kind - these are the number and positive content of statements, a friendly facial expression, the duration of eye contact, posture, gestures and other ways of behavior.
Affiliation motivation correlates, on the one hand, with the need to assert oneself and get approval, and, on the other, with the fear of rejection. Based on past experience, appropriate expectations are formed. For example, if the need to communicate with strangers is associated with the expectation of success, then the attractiveness of this situation will be high, and vice versa. Accordingly, a person either strives for other people, looks for companions in them and trusts them, or treats them with suspicion and avoids them. If both types of expectations are low, then in interpersonal interactions disinterested and indifferent appear.
Affiliation significantly affects the process and the result of communication - after all, making a new acquaintance will be friendly and easy or, on the contrary, timid, awkward and hostile. Since positive experience increases affiliation, and negative experience decreases, each time there will be a consolidation or gradual destruction of the previously formed stereotype.
In psychology, affiliation and its motives are measurable - for example, using the Mehrabian method. The projective technique is more reliable, but due to its complexity, the test is mainly used. Its scale is divided into 2 parts, one of which is designed to assess the strength of the desire to communicate, and the other - the fear of being rejected.
As a result of the scoring, 4 typical combinations of these two motives are possible with the following interpretation:
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What is the risk of a low level of affiliation? Strong urge to be accepted by others (SR) with a pronounced fear of rejection (SR). This combination of motives is characteristic of internal conflict in people who simultaneously want to be in society and avoid dating;
- High SP and low CO. These people actively establish contacts and receive only joy from communication;
- Small level of SP and large CO. This is the result of those seeking loneliness and avoiding interpersonal interaction;
- Low value of both affiliation motives. It is characteristic of everyone who lives among people, communicates with them, but from this does not experience either positive or negative emotions and feels normal both in the company and without it.
If the test showed average scores of motivation, then nothing definite can be said about the person's supposed social behavior and his experiences.
Based on the calculation of the level of affiliation, you can, for example, choose your occupation. For educators, teachers, doctors, lawyers and representatives of other professions related to communication, affiliation should be one of the main needs.
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