Latent social groups as a phenomenon

Abstract

Background. The study considers the specifics of the latent social groups manifestation (implicit, hidden, not declared, not supported by social structures and institutions) as a special socio-psychological phenomenon. The description and analysis of latent groups is relevant, since it helps to identify the “fine” mechanisms of people’s self-organization into social communities. 

Objective. The purpose of the study: to investigate the features of the social micro- and meso-environment as potential conditions for the formation, functioning and evolution of the latent social groups. Hypotheses: 1. Different conditions of the social environment are not equivalent for people of different sex, age, working in different fields of activity, having different social experience, etc.). 2. Conditions of the social environment have different subjective significance for people and in their totality represent relatively closed social spaces. 

Methods. Research methods: historical and theoretical analysis, empirical research (questionnaires), multivariate methods of parametric statistics. According to the author’s methodology (questionnaire “Dynamics of professional life style” — DPLS), respondents assessed the role of social environment conditions as “professionalism factors”, the dynamics of their professionalism from 20 to 65 years of their lives (retrospectively to the current age and prospectively — predicting the dynamics of subsequent evolution). The study also took into account the respondents’ socio-demographic and job characteristics. 

Sample. 482 people were interviewed, men and women aged 30–50 (132 civil servants, 129 engineers and heads of departments of industrial enterprises, 221 managers). 

Results. The study results support the working hypotheses. Different social spaces, conditionally named “Relatives”, “Interpersonal Relations”, “Family Environment”, “Working Environment”, “Meso-environment”, act as dominant or subdominant spheres of people’s life, predetermining many differences between them. In the processes of socialization, people form peculiar stable and universal mechanisms for actualization and transmission of social experience; the lack of such mechanisms and experience often leads to a person’s lower openness and susceptibility to other conditions of the social micro- and meso-environment. 

Conclusion. Latent social groups originate and evolve outside of explicit social norms, rules, traditions, institutions as a form of self-organization of people that remain stable in different spaces of human life. 

Funding. The work was carried out in accordance with State Assignment No. 0138-2021-0010 “Regulation of professional interaction in the context of organizational and technological challenges”.

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