Same people, different group: Social structures are a central component of group concepts

Abstract

We explore the possibility that group concepts have two components: A collection of particular people and the roles and relations they occupy, which we call a ‘social structure.’ In particular, we pursue the possibility that social structure is central to group concepts. We presented participants with cases where two groups came to overlap completely in membership: When their social structures remained distinct, participants judged there were two groups (Studies 1-3); when their social structures merged along with their members, participants judged there was now only one group (Study 3). We show that participants represent groups as concrete entities: Particular people constitute a group by concretely realizing the abstract social structure (Study 4). We also show that social structures guide normative judgments including reward and punishment (Study 5) and betrayal (Study 6). Together, these results demonstrate that social structure is a central component of ordinary group concepts, suggesting that the best theories of groups ought to include social structures.