Psychology: institutional cliques

Self-tutoring about people, their interactions, and who propagates them: the tutor wades into the wonderful world of institutional cliques.

I don’t think I’ve ever been a member of a clique – that is, an exclusive group. I’ve been part of numerous groups willing to accept new people, but have only watched cliques from afar.

I’d say that, from what I’ve observed, cliques are a natural fixture of the human landscape. The people who are in them, like to be in them. The people not in them who want to be just accept that human society is stratified. Social savvy is powerful, and you’ll never level that playing field.

An institutional clique, by my definition, is one that originates at an institution such as high school or in the military. The people join not knowing each other, but discover each other therein and form said clique. This can happen quickly – in just two weeks one can have a clique welded together from people who never knew each other before.

We all know this…what’s the next point? Well, what I’ve noticed is that in many cases, the instructor/conductor of the class, or larger group the contains the clique, will often support said clique. For group activities, they won’t only let the clique self-select, but actually put them together in their own group.

It intrigues me that this happens, since I would posit that any larger group is more united when it’s more than just a sum of cliques. Yet, from the supervisor’s point of view, apparently not.

Being reinforced by the institution itself, said clique becomes stronger and more impenetrable. One wonders if this is valuable to the clique itself and/or to the larger institution. I’m of two minds about this.

On one hand, the clique itself will be able to easily learn something any of its members knows. Then, the others can observe the clique, and learn that way. The clique may not be the fastest learners, but they are a focal point for knowledge transfer.

On another hand, the clique’s reality may become removed enough from the “others” that it may become difficult for some ideas to transfer between the clique and the larger group. This might be rare, but likely can happen as the clique continues looking inward rather than outward.

I’ve watched this happen in a few scenarios, but enough to know it’s a thing. Interesting, eh?