Personal Needs and the Acceptance of a New Group as a Reference Group Technical Report 6 on The Acceptance of New Reference Groups

摘要

This paper reports an investigation of the relationship between the perceived ability of a group to satisfy the needs of its members- and the acceptance of that group as a reference group. Subjects were l46 male freshmen at a municipal college, and data was obtained by means of questionnaires. While all hypotheses were supported by the data, the latter seemed to indicate that the absolute level of the ability of a given group to fulfill the needs of its members is more significant than its comparative standing in this respect in relation to other member— ship groups. The data were also interpreted to suggest the operation of a general personality tendency, evidenced by the comparative impor¬tance assigned to one's needs, in association with a tendency to the ready acceptance of a new group as a reference group.