Today it is customary to strive to become a leader. But if there are leaders in society, there must be outsiders - this is the law of a social group. Who is in this role most often and for what reasons is quite easy to understand. It is more difficult to figure out what to do in order not to become an outsider.
An outsider is usually called someone who is not able to achieve success, a person who always turns out to be worse than others. But it is not so. An outsider is rather a social role that, under a certain set of circumstances, can be taken by almost anyone, regardless of their personality traits.
The outsider as a social role
The study of the psychology of small social groups, to which both the school class and the work collective can be attributed, made it possible to identify patterns in the distribution of roles within each such social group. In order for the group to maintain a social balance, all social niches must be filled. If any of the niches is vacated, the collective seeks to fill it, "nominating" one of the group members to the vacant social role.
Moreover, sometimes, regardless of the number of team members, some social niches can be filled by only one person, for example, the role of an informal leader or a regular jester. Other niches can accommodate several people. When conducting sociometric studies, psychologists found that the niche of an outsider, or an outcast, can be occupied in a team by no more than two or three members of the group.
But there will definitely be at least one outsider in any social group. This role is necessary in order for the rest of the group to feel "at their best." By comparing themselves to an outsider, they maintain their own self-esteem at the proper level. This happens regardless of how good or bad the outsider or the rest of the group is - these are social laws.
Who is "chosen" as an outsider
It is easy to understand that the person who has the most pronounced negative traits that are not welcomed in a particular team is usually chosen for the role of an outsider in a team. In the school class, the role of outsiders is most often taken by children with pronounced physical disabilities, lagging behind in their studies, etc. In an adult team, this may be an employee with the smallest set of business qualities required for work, but this is not always the case. It may well turn out that the personality traits that allowed a person to "occupy a niche" as an outsider in one team will be quite acceptable in another.
It is believed that it is easier to become an outsider for a new member of the team, but this is not the case. A newcomer must have the same negative qualities as the “regular” outsider already in the group, but expressed to a much greater degree.
How to stop being an outsider
Having occupied this social niche, it is extremely difficult to leave it. It is practically useless to appeal to the morality and philanthropy of the team members: an outsider is necessary for a social group, and the team can consciously "let go" of a person from this role only under the condition of purposeful psychological work aimed at reorienting socially prosperous members of the group to other, more acceptable mechanisms of self-affirmation. Such work can and should be carried out in such a small social group as a family. It is extremely difficult to do this in a work collective or in a school class.
In order not to become an outsider, a person must, from the very first days of joining a new team, show those qualities that can be positively assessed by its members. The better he does it, the less likely the person will be “chosen” to be an outsider.
If this happens, the person has to either wait for a new member of the team to appear who is able to occupy this social niche instead of him (which is extremely rare), or leave this group and try to take a more prosperous social role in the new team.
