George Simmel's Analysis

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George Simmel was a sociologist, who did experiments with group thinking in different group sizes. For my project, I and my family eat at two different places with two different group sizes. In the first experiment, I ate with my grandparents at Sweet Frog, a small yogurt place located in Danville, Virginia. This represents the small group of only three people. In the second experiment, I ate with my whole family, my parents, and grandparents. This represented a bigger group of five people. I asked them questions to see if they reacted according to Simmel’s experiments. I used four test to see whether they would react the same as Simmel’s experiments. The first test was to see if when you separated a dyad, or group of two people, would they …show more content…
The second test I did was asked a question that would cause both wives to argue and to see if their husbands would try to change the subject, comfort their wives, or take their wives sides. The question I asked did cause friction between the wives. To keep the peace and stop the argument my grandfather said: “He would teach the kids Christmas music for my mother.” This proves that husbands do tend to support their wives or try to change the subject. Simmel was proven correct in this test because he believed that when in a triad, a group of three, or more people in a group, the dyad would become nervous of how the third person would react and that the third person would support or try to change the subject of the conversation between the dyad. The third test was to see if trying to add another member to the group, which no one in the group knew would cause friction and nervousness. Simmel said that dyads resist change in a group size, but this can be true in bigger groups of people …show more content…
The fourth test was to see if when I talked to my grandparents and ignored my parents would this cause my parents to feel left out and would they try to start a conversation among themselves or whether they would try to join the conversation. According to Simmel theories, the group would feel nervous and try to join the group or start a conversation between the other left out people. I found that Simmel was corrected, because when I talked to my grandparents about what elderly people do, something that the younger generation my parents would not know much about, that my mother felt very left out and tried to join the conversation even though I made it clear that I was only talking to my grandparents. She then tried to make a conversation between her and my father, which was not very successful because my father is not really someone who talks a lot. My family was very reliable and smooth at answering questions even though the rest of the restaurant was very disorganized, rude and kept forgetting our order. We enjoyed having another opportunity to spend some family time and to help me on my
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