We are social animals, and one of our most basic needs is to be with people who are like-minded or with whom we have common interests. Our survival in the jungle of millennia ago depended on it. Being part of a tribe — be it religious, political, familial, for fun or for work — gives us the security of belonging, of being familiar and comfortable with people we see on a regular basis. The support we feel when part of such a group — like when I joined a widows group after my husband died — makes us psychologically stronger. So one of the worst things that can happen to us is to be ostracized from our group. Children, in particular, suffer when not asked to someone’s birthday party or not picked for sports teams. Prolonged isolation in prisons can contribute to mental illness, and new regulations prohibit this form of punishment for teenagers because it can be so damaging. There are religious groups that use shunning as punishment for serious infractions to the norms of their society, since it is such an effective motivator.
Because fitting in and being accepted is a primary need, those who don’t fit the expected attributes of the group they want to join can be miserable. I am thinking of the tallest girl or the shortest boy in elementary school, the fattest child or the one with an accent, who are made fun of and can really suffer from the exclusion.
People who are seen as “other” are often invisible and disregarded. It is an ingrained prejudice in many people to believe that anyone very different from themselves will be not just incompatible but also deficient in the attributes, skills and competencies valued by the group — whether that is intelligence, athletic prowess, physical beauty, knowledge or social awareness — and therefore unacceptable.
Prejudice, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is “[a] hostile opinion about some person or class of persons. Prejudice is socially learned and is usually grounded in misconception, misunderstanding and inflexible generalizations.” This unfavorable opinion can result in people not being included into the social fabric—not invited, not supported, not protected, not spoken to, not hired.
All my life, I had to deal with not fitting in since I was always from somewhere else. I was born in Paris, but my mother tongue is Russian, and I was seen as the Russian girl on the Parisian playground and in the school I attended. When I came to America as a war refugee, I was seen as the French girl. When I moved to Switzerland with my husband and two children, I was seen as the American woman. When I moved to New Hampshire to become a professor of management, I was seen as the Swiss woman. When I joined the faculty of the San Diego State School of Business, I was seen as being from back East. When inducted into the Rotary Club, I was the first woman (now I’m the oldest member).
And so my whole life was about being the outsider trying to fit in, to learn quickly the cultural cues of my environment in order to adapt to it. I was able to do that in many cases, but I wasn’t accepted everywhere, and the pain was just like when I was a little girl.
Along the way, I discovered another method of achieving the acceptance we all wish for: Instead of fitting in, I learned to stand out. When faced with a group I could not hope to be assimilated by, I emphasized my differences instead. This led to my being welcomed by the members of the group for the unique input I could make, and my contributions to the welfare of the group gave me the social currency to be accepted as a member. It is a roundabout method of “fitting in,” but in the end I managed to get my human needs met, which is so much of what we all desire. So if you cannot be like them, celebrate your differences. If you stand out anyway, then speak up for yourself and for others.