To be honest, I’m not much of a joiner. I have a lot of great friends, but I don’t belong to many other social groups. I’m not on a sports team, nor do I attend a specific church or work for a particular charity. I guess my thought is that spreading myself thin that way might be bad for my well-being.
New research suggests otherwise. A longitudinal study in Britain has found that people who belong to more groups—and, specifically, more varied types of groups—may be happier and healthier than those who don’t.
The benefits of diverse group membership
In this study, Clifford Stevenson of Nottingham Trent University in England and his colleagues got data from almost 6,000 people participating in an ongoing study called the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), which looks at how different aspects of a person’s life experience affect their well-being over time.
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Participants self-reported on many things, including their health and well-being (e.g., how well they’d slept or how depressed or happy they’d been over the past week), how generally lonely they were, and how many different types of groups they belonged to. These could include churches or other religious organizations, political groups, community sports teams, tenants or neighborhood associations, parent-teacher associations, charities, or book clubs, to name a few.
After analyzing the results, Stevenson and his team found that people who belonged to more diverse groups at one point in time felt less lonely and had greater well-being four years later. This was true even after taking into account demographic factors like age and gender, as well as how lonely or troubled they were at the beginning of the study. This suggests that joining more varied groups can help people feel better above and beyond how many groups they belong to.
“We already know that groups are good for reducing loneliness,” says Stevenson. “Now, we know that multiple types of groups have a cumulative effect most of the time.”
Why would group diversity matter?
According to Stevenson, joining multiple, diverse groups could potentially satisfy different psychological needs that contribute to well-being. For example, past research has found that being part of a group outside of our families and friends increases our sense of belonging and reduces loneliness. It can also increase our “creative self-efficacy”—the feeling of being able to handle anything coming our way. By joining multiple types of groups, people likely increase their resources for handling adversity, says Stevenson.
Though the ELSA study didn’t include data on creative self-efficacy, per se, evidence for this possible explanation came via a pilot study within the same paper. Stevenson and his team surveyed 328 people living in a relatively low socioeconomic-status community in England and found that creative self-efficacy seemed to explain why people who joined different types of groups were less lonely and had greater well-being than those with less diverse group memberships.
“Belonging to multiple different types of groups means that you’ve got access to more ways of understanding things, more support from different types of people,” he says. “So, you’re more likely to be flexible and adaptable to the challenges you encounter.”
All group memberships are not equal
This doesn’t necessarily mean that we should all join multiple groups willy-nilly, though. We may need to consider other relevant factors around group membership for groups to benefit us, says Stevenson.
For example, the effects of group membership may depend on how healthy the group is in terms of its norms and the levels of support and resources it can offer its members, as well as how much someone identifies with the group. In short, personal fit matters.
“If you don’t have a meaningful connection to the group, even if it is a very healthy group, it won’t impact upon you,” he says.
It may also be important that the groups you join are compatible with one another, he adds. If one group’s views don’t jive with other groups you belong to, or if they fight a lot, demand too much of you, or are exclusive in some way, they won’t be as helpful to your psychological health, he says.
“If the groups that you belong to are incompatible, that can actually have a negative impact,” he says.
However, he adds, “If you look at the statistical relationships between increased level of diversity within group memberships and well-being, we find a basic, positive correlation.” This means diversifying your groups is still likely good for you, and you might want to expand your social network that way.
Joining multiple groups may help your community, too
This study adds to a growing scientific literature tying group membership to well-being, but also has practical implications. People in many communities around the world are suffering from higher levels of loneliness, and health care workers and others are looking for solutions, says Stevenson.
“Unpacking the particular role of diversity of group memberships upon loneliness is really important, because it provides another way in which groups can be harnessed to help reduce loneliness in the real world,” he says.
Stevenson sees another reason to diversify your group memberships, too. While there’s debate among scientists over whether social diversification within communities has a negative or positive impact on health and well-being, his research comes down on the side of showing how diversification can be good for you.
“I think [our research suggests] a mechanism through which increasing diversity in social networks, but also within communities more broadly, can impact upon community health,” he says.
With that in mind, there is reason to consider applying this finding more broadly. In Britain, for example, says Stevenson, there are great disparities in loneliness levels and health depending on where you live. For example, if your community is poorly resourced, you find more loneliness and poorer health. If we know that greater group diversity is useful at both a community and personal level, we can perhaps use that information to help improve conditions for people no matter where they live.
“We’ve got a sense of what can be done in different communities to improve social connectedness and offer some degree of resilience to adversity across different neighborhoods, promoting community well-being,” he says. “Simply adding a little nuance and considering the diversity of groups within neighborhood contexts may also help.”
