Sociology. Primary and Secondary Groups Differences

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As a matter of introduction, a group for purposes of this study means a company of more than one person who often interact with a view of sharing a common interest. A primary group according to Sutemeister (54-12), is defined as a face-to-face interaction by a small number of people. These members can be close relatives or members in a particular sports group. On the other hand, a secondary group consists of a large number of members who do not necessarily have to interact directly. A good example is that of an organization.

According to Newton (112-64), interacting with members of a community is a vital and an important aspect in a human life. It helps an individual to live a satisfactory life.

Leadership is of great importance in both the primary and secondary groups. Weber has expressed this concern (126), that a leader is helpful when it comes to leading other members in democratic decision making.

Differences occur between the two groups in that, In a primary group setting members tend to have close personal ties, and share most activities as a group. They see each other as unique and cannot do away with any of their members. On the other hand, we have weak ties in the secondary groups which can end in the short term. Members of a secondary group have very little knowledge about each other, but only end up being tied by the wish to achieve a common goal.

Primary groups differ from secondary groups in the way they are structured, the manner of leadership, their membership, and also in their size. Small groups consists of members who meet more oftenly, and who share a common interest and have a common identity. This concern has been expressed by Brown (21). Their structure can either be formal or informal, and this would depend on the needs of members of a particular group. In the secondary setting the size of the organization tends to be larger than in the primary level, and the structure appears to be formal.

In secondary groups, a user can belong to as many groups as they would wish. On the other hand, in a primary group setting a user can only belong to one group at a time, but can also belong to as many secondary groups as they wish.

When it comes to permission according to Thompson (125), users secondary groups join together in order to come up with the final decision. This means that one YES permission can overrule all other NO permissions. For example, a user belonging to a certain primary group (p group z), and also belonging to other two secondary groups (s group x, s group y), if he does posting of threads permission will be as follows;

p group z-NO
s group x-NO
s group y-YES

In such a scenario, the YES answer will prevail because one YES here overrules the Nos. Though the concept of secondary group can be confusing, this groups are really powerful.

Primary groups are used as a way of getting registration for secondary groups. This means that, it is necessary to first have a primary group which will be used as a ladder of getting to the secondary group registration. This also marks the difference between the two.

Primary groups are also a stage that qualify or enable a user to acquire promotion and rank. At this level, a member can be allowed to own certain powers, and not others. This separation of members to be of a certain type are not available in the secondary level.

In summary, therefore we can say that, primary groups provide an intimate, and direct connections between its members, whereas the secondary group environments atmosphere is large and distance the members connections. Primary groups also qualify a member to belong to a certain membership type, while on the other side the secondary groups help to grant permissions to this different types of membership.

Work Cited

Brown, Junius. Society Order Psychology: An Introduction to the Dynamic Study. New York: McGraw, 1974.

Thompson, Kenrick. An Introduction to Sciences: Social Policies in the Making. Gelles: McGraw-Hill, 1994.

Newton, Michael. The Journey of Soul: Proceedings of Associations. Texas: Llewellyn Worldwide, 1994.

Sutemeister, Robert. Productivity and People. Madison: Viking, 1992.

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Sociology. Primary and Secondary Groups Differences

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