Anthony Costello

Robin Dunbar is an Oxford cultural anthropologist who classifies human groups. The  ‘sympathy group’ is the smallest social group outside the family. Fifteen or so people who share a common interest, solve challenges through facilitated conversation to put their own strategies into practice and assess their benefits.

What are the essential features of a sympathy group? This ancestral process for collective survival originated, we think, from the grooming cliques of primates. Grooming reduces the stress of individuals and families living in much larger populations. An individual in a large crowd of strangers is highly stressed, within a smaller group of friends much less so. The strength of ties between sympathy group members lies somewhere between the close ties of family and the weak ties of affinity band members. In essence, members are beneficiaries, enablers or neighbours. Group processes involve a focus for action, iteration, the development of trust and the fulfilment of strategies.

Beneficiaries within sympathy groups are people with a direct interest in a specific utility such as survival, income or recreation. Or they want a change in behaviour, better quality services or a successful trade. Famously, Adam Smith realised that individual self-interest, not altruism, governs trade: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.” The Adam Smith principle applies to sympathy groups, which act for the most pressing interests of their members. Direct beneficiaries lead or join sympathy groups. They don’t include those who have no personal interest in what happens locally, such as civil servants or outsiders from headquarters. The groups might invite them as an occasional guest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Music Duke Ellington and his Famous Orchestra. 1938. Courtesy: CSU Archives/Everett Collection

When sympathy groups work well they do so because people with facilitation skills – enablers – ensure they meet regularly and build trust to solve a problem. Rather than becoming pre-occupied with gossip or local conflicts, the group learns ways to collaborate. The members use games to solve immediate and underlying problems, in their own interest. Groups bring together older and younger generations. They allow neighbours to become allies. They energise a workplace. Members may focus on a special interest, like a choir or a sports team, or maybe a savings, environment or antenatal group. Outside advocates or politicians play no part unless consulted for a specific purpose, or if happenstance makes them a neighbour.

To be successful, groups concentrate on specific challenges. How to change a local organisation or improve an amenity, how to get through a liminal event like childbirth, a wedding or funeral, how to resolve a contest or a dispute, or how to make the most of opportunities in agriculture, business or communications. Facilitators hold repeated meetings to build consensus, conversation and problem-solving skills. They analyse, innovate, copy and assess solutions. They are not a passive ‘focused group’, as used by spin doctors, psephologists or advertisers. These people extract quick data about voter opinions, party political preferences or washing powder. Nor are they the groups used by social scientists and anthropologists to study community beliefs or sexual attitudes, or complex cultural identities. Focused groups provide valuable insights but aren’t catalysts for change. The group work takes time, has a structure, a facilitator and demands commitment.

A level of trust and confidentiality emerges within a successful group. An obvious proviso is that human nature means groups might absorb rivals, spies, opponents or perceived inferiors. All of us retain a modicum of suspicion of sibling and neighbour, but trust becomes a critical factor in group success. Strategies are key outputs. How the strategies are accomplished is critical for success. Farmers’ groups might decide to share labour and skills, sports groups to fundraise or commit to more rigorous fitness, church groups to start outreach action or retreats. Across the world, pregnancy groups share birth plans and relaxation techniques, and workplace groups organise quality circles or sabbatical cover. Musicians work in groups to build and exchange ideas, activists in groups to build their solidarity and advocacy campaigns.

The acronym BENEFITS is a useful aide memoire: beneficiaries, enablers, neighbours, focus, iteration and interaction, trust and strategies. As you can read in The Social Edge (published in July 2018), our own social experiments with sympathy women’s groups in poor villages in Bangladesh, India, Malawi and Nepal showed how women could co-operate to ensure the survival of their children. These BENEFITS, established as the groups became rooted and proliferated, led to astonishing health outcomes – way beyond anything we expected.

^[i] Dunbar, Robin. Human Evolution. London: Pelican, 2014.

^[ii] Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. Books 1-3, Seven Treasures Publications, 2009.

Look below to see other  kinds of ‘sympathy groups’ you know about or belong to.