Social Group Analysis on the Bradshaw Family The group I have chosen to study is my family. Several of my family members live in the same house, these members are who I will be focusing on. The group consist of thirteen people, between the ages of 13 months and eighty-five years old. I’ve chosen five concepts to apply to this group. Once you start trying to analyze your own family it is a bit hard to stop. Because it was my own family, I was familiar with their flaws and strengths.
Trying to figure out why they engage in certain behaviors became very interesting. I was not always right, and my discoveries weren’t always shocking, but in some way different then what I expected. Some of the values this group has is spending time with each other, building each other up with encouragement, and always being there when others need help. Classical Conditioning Classical conditioning can be found in the group I have studied. They we’re expected to behave in certain ways because they were conditioned to do so.
From a young age, every child is disciplined to first time obedience. Classical conditioning is this; it’s a learning process in which a neutral stimulus (or prompt) becomes an association with a meaningful stimulus and develops the ability to cause a similar response. A stimulus is a prompt or thing that rouses activity or energy in someone or something; a spur or incentive (stimulus). The way the parents disciplined and expected first time obedience is this; every time the child disobeyed the first time they got disciplined for not obeying the first time.
Every time Bridget does not clean her room the first she is told she will be disciplined by a toy be taken away. Every time Phillip does not take out the trash or feeds the dogs the first he is told he will not be able to do the fun activity he was planning on. Another example of classical conditioning is; Sage is 13 months old. Every time she is put into the highchair she knows she is going to eat. She then starts jumping up and down in her seat with her excitement. She will open her mouth when a spoon or fork gets near her mouth.
Sage knows that when she is put into a highchair she is going to eat. Negative and Positive Reinforcement Negative and positive reinforcement is constantly being used in the group I have studied. Negative reinforcement is when something or someone is constantly having a negative effect on you, you chose to change your behavior so that you no longer see or hear that thing or person negatively effecting you. For an example; one of the brothers in my group was constantly being gotten onto from not feeding the dog. And if he continued too not feed the dog he would continually be getting in trouble.
Not having enough tolerance anymore, he decided to get and feed the dogs before his breakfast and before anyone else was up. Positive reinforcement is the presentation of a stimulus following a given behavior in order to increase the frequency of that behavior. Even though Elizabeth is not a huge fan of baking, but she knows everyone loves her cheesecake. Everyone loves the extra topping she puts on the top, and says so every time. So, whenever she makes the cheesecake she puts the topping on it because she knows everyone loves it. Social Contagion
The effects of others on our behavior can take the form of social contagion, imitative behavior involving the spread of actions, emotions, and ideas (King). Siblings in the Bradshaw family show effects of social contagion. As soon as one or two siblings starts to talk about how their homework is going, everyone else starts to talk about how their progress is going. Also, during the celebration of birthdays when one person starts singing everyone else will start singing. Social contagion is when one person or a group starts an action everyone else will start doing that action. Altruism
Altruism means giving to another person with the ultimate goal of benefiting that person, even if it incurs a cost to oneself. Basically, acts of kindness that are spontaneous. Altruism has been given to the Bradshaw family multiple times within the last few months. When the mom just got home for surgery multiple families brought food to them. Since the Bradshaw family consist of mainly teenagers and adults there were perfectly capable of making meals for the rest of the family, and are helping make the meals even before the mom got sick, it was a nice gesture for outside people to remove one thing to worry about.
An example of altruism displayed in the Bradshaw family is when Jessica gave up her time to teach Quintan how to write an essay when she had homework due the next morning. She gave up her time and sleep so that Quintan could know how to write a good essay and not fail. Stress Stress is an individual’s response to environmental stressors, the circumstances and events that threaten the person and tax his or her coping abilities. Stress is something that everyone has, but they are at different levels. This family have had a great deal of stress in the last few months. Dawn, the mom of the family, found out that she had ovarian cancer.
Having to go to the doctors back and forth, her having a huge amount of pain before and after they surgery, one of the daughters taking over the bills, the older children taking over the grocery shopping and driving the younger ones to school and helping the youngest in her homework. It was a very stressful time for the family. Each child responded with a taking up different tasks to help on top of their own tasks they had. In the process leading up to and during the surgery some people were emotional, some would cry others would act out of their normal behaviors patterns.
