essays on belonging

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On Belonging

• Publication
• January 19, 2022
• By john a. powell & Stephen Menendian

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Introduction

“Belonging” is both a powerful and ambiguous concept.  It reflects something essential to the human experience — a core need — but is not as tangible or easily comprehensible as shelter, nutrition, and rest. Appropriately, belonging rests in the middle of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. 1 This suggests that belonging is both tremendously important and central to the human condition. Yet exactly why that is so is less obvious. Defining belonging is no simple task.

This essay serves as a backdrop to the papers submitted for this volume. These papers cover topics ranging from  motherhood-driven civic engagement by migrant mothers in Sweden, to “togetherness” oriented childhood education in Denmark, to refugee-led Covid-19 responses in Berlin and their impact on the experience of integration. As these papers draw upon a conception of belonging presented or prompted by us, we wish to describe the contours of our understanding of the term so the papers make sense in context. Our presentation is not exhaustive, but should be sufficient to the goal of making the papers comprehensible in their own terms.

Defining Belonging in the Negative

Perhaps the best way to understand belonging is through the light of contrast, by defining what it is not. Let’s start with Equity and Inclusion. Equity and Inclusion refer to how social groups are stratified across society and critical institutions. Inclusion is a concept that demands institutions and communities open themselves to members of formerly excluded social groups. For example, in the 1960s Yale University finally admitted women onto its campus as undergraduate students, decades after most public universities had done so. 2 Inclusion is a powerful regulative ideal, as well as a strategy or mechanism for reducing social inequality.

Equity moves beyond simple or formalistic notions of equal treatment. When groups are situated differently in society with respect to status, resources, and opportunities, then equal treatment can perpetuate rather than ameliorate social, economic, legal, or political inequality. This is where ‘equity’ comes in. Equity is a recognition that sometimes fair treatment requires differential treatment. Most European constitutional systems recognize equity in this form, as captured by the Spanish expression: “ igual a los iguales y desigual a los desiguales ”, also known as equal treatment.

This is obvious in some cases, as when we prioritize vulnerable groups for vaccines or create special accommodations for people with disabilities or pregnant women. But it is denied in other contexts in which formal equal treatment can lead to significant disparities.

While important concepts, neither equity nor inclusion guarantee belonging. It is possible for institutions to become accessible to formerly excluded groups, and for social or economic disparities to be ameliorated or even eliminated, even as social stigmas or feelings of exclusion persist. Women, for example, were admitted into Yale, but excluded from the social life of the university, from its social clubs to its dining halls. Tangible resources and measurable disparities can be equalized even as certain social stigmas persist, such as caste or gender associations. In India, for example, affirmative action programs can guarantee employment opportunities for lower caste social groups, but that does not mean that cultural assumptions have been extirpated. 3

In this sense, belonging goes beyond Inclusion and Equity, yet includes them in meaningful ways. It would be difficult to imagine that belonging can fully manifest in a society where social groups are excluded from key institutions or large disparities exist between those groups. Yet, belonging calls for something more.

Manifesting Belonging

In our conception, Belonging is both objective and subjective.  It can be quantified and measured, but it is also perceptual, laying in the eye of the beholder. In this respect, Belonging, unlike both Equity and Inclusion, contains a psychological component — an affective component, which shapes the way social groups regard whatever it is they are regarding, an institution, a city, or even society writ large.

If members of a social group feel as if they belong, then belonging exists.  But if they do not, despite being included and having little tangible resource inequities or other disparities between groups, then belonging is lacking. Thus, in biographies of women such as Sonia Sotomayor and Michelle Obama, they report a feeling of “not belonging” on Princeton’s campus of the 1970s. 4 Both women came from vastly different social and economic milieus — the Bronx and the south side of Chicago, respectively — than that which they encountered on that Ivy League campus.

Belonging can be measured by campus climate, and climate surveys, but these surveys must reflect both objective and subjective experiences. 5 This also explains the development of so-called “mindset” interventions, messages designed to signal or express greater belonging, and hopefully engender it in the process. 6

This reveals a core element of belonging: the expressive or communicative message that a group belongs. It can be expressed explicitly, through representation or by signaling that members of a particular group are welcome in a particular space, institution, or community. It can also be expressed implicitly, as when accommodations are made, such as when special food or holidays are provided for. For example, the French Military created accommodations for Muslim cultural traditions by having halal foods served in the military, and providing space for prayer and worship. 7 The absence of accommodations or sensitivities is an equally simple way to signal that members of certain groups do not belong.

Illustration by Peter Wood

Realizing Belonging

As important as these components are to belonging, there is still a missing component to a full manifestation of belonging. Belonging is perceptual and tangible; it is a feeling and a practice. But belonging requires more than accommodation; it also demands agency.

A board or council may be diverse and inclusive, but if members of socially marginalized groups are included without the ability or agency to re-shape and redesign the institution, then inclusion is realized without full belonging. In this model, members of the socially marginalized group are brought in as guests rather than as members. Simply revisiting holiday schedules or respective food traditions can help members of social groups feel more welcome, but they do not create a sense of ownership or control over the mission, values, or core operation of the institution.

Belonging is realized fully when included groups have more than a voice — they are actually able to reshape the institution together with existing stakeholders. Thus, hospitals and other anchor institutions are not just responsive to elite sensibilities, but oriented to serve communities’ needs.  In the process, some institutions may need to be redesigned or their mission rethought. Efforts toward realizing this conception of belonging are already underway in examples like Germany’s requirement for employees to comprise a third of supervisory board seats in companies of at least 500 employees, and half in companies of 2000 or more. Research shows that this measure to provide a decision making role to employees broadens the issues and concerns companies give attention to while simultaneously increasing profits and productivity. In another instance of co-creative belonging, the organization Participatory City worked with the council of the Borough of Barking and Dagenham in the United Kingdom to address the area’s high levels of homelessness, violence, and unemployment. They worked with community members to create a welcoming committee for newcomers, plant community gardens together, and collaborate on community improvement projects. These activities have fostered a sense of togetherness and shared destiny among the residents of Barking and Dagenham, as people have overcome prejudices and isolation to strengthen bonds and deepen community. This kind of agency — co-creation — is the most radical and potentially transformative aspect of true belonging. 

How, then, can these ideas be brought into practice? This digital volume makes significant headway into answering this question. Because Europe and America, and indeed, much of the world, are struggling with many of the same issues, we seek to transport the frame of belonging into the European context to explore models and exciting case studies, as well as to deepen our collective understanding of the problems that impede a sense of belonging. This volume is one fruit of this emerging work.

Toward Belonging

The papers brought together for this online publication illuminate our understanding of the nuances of belonging and model how we can realize it in practice. Exploring topics and themes such as refugee integration, civic engagement and mutual aid, human development and well-being, motherhood and race, as well as much more, this volume is a major step toward deepening our understanding of inter-group dynamics and processes, interventions, and case studies that can promote or lead toward greater belonging. What follows is a brief introduction to a few of the papers included in this digital collection.

Jessica Joelle Alexander’s paper on “Obligated Togetherness” or “ Fællesskab ” is a fascinating exploration of holistic cultural values and practices that emphasize well-being and inclusion in Denmark. Drawing upon a major national survey conducted in 2016, the author demonstrates how certain cultural practices, namely, intentionally and specifically incorporating lessons on social connection and wellbeing into parenting and education, contribute to societal well-being and belonging. She explores, in local terms, how the focus on togetherness and connectedness may lead to a correlation with happiness — in a country that is consistently described as one of the happiest in the world. 

In his essay, Tom Crompton, the Director of the Common Cause Foundation, brings to the fore the role that values — and especially our perception of fellow-citizens’ and neighbors’ core values — plays in community cohesion, well-being, and a sense of belonging. Unsurprisingly, he finds that recognising our mutual core values and value commitments can bridge understanding and build community. Looking at programming his organization has conducted in Manchester, England, the author describes community based interventions work in the real world.

Jonelle Twum’s essay explores the grassroots activities of migrant mothers in the suburbs of Sweden.  Making use of  her fieldwork and interviews, she helps us understand processes of racialization, integration, and gender-informed interventions in Sweden’s exurban areas. In particular, she illuminates strategies employed by these women to thrive and to imagine spaces of greater belonging — even as official institutions and municipal leadership fail to provide the material resources needed to support their communities.

Daniel Stanley, the CEO and founder of the Narrative Futures Lab, deconstructs our understanding of polarization. Although conventionally understood in simplistic or categorical ways, such as racial or economic polarization, he suggests that polarization is best viewed as a byproduct of deeper forces and dynamics, and related to a number of other disturbing phenomena. This essay challenges assumptions about individual and group psychology and political conformity from the post-war period, while also arguing, more hopefully, that a better understanding of the problem can lead to belonging and social cohesion.

Evan Elise Easton provides a broader perspective on refugee experiences in Germany, as they relate to integration processes and activities that foster a sense of belonging. In particular, their essay describes and elevates the cutting edge work of refugee led organizations in Berlin during the Covid-19 Pandemic — allowing us the opportunity to see how integration relates to belonging and community building in a time of social turmoil.

Building Belonging

Belonging is a broad, encompassing concept, and there is no single prescription for how it can be manifested or realized, as the papers in this volume will amply illustrate. It is also a multi-faceted concept relating to agency, connection, place, identity, and security, among other elements. As a result, belonging can exist in many forms or be expressed or experienced in a myriad of different ways.

Belonging can exist in a superficial sense or a deeper sense. It can be experienced as a social dynamic between people or institutionalized in governance, organizations, and associations. It can become embodied in laws, codes, rules and regulations, or it can exist as norms and cultural values.  Intergroup dialogue projects in the United States and Europe that not only create spaces for exchanging stories, but also teach how to communicate across boundaries of difference or realize shared values, advance belonging.

The pressures and challenges within our societies make the work of building belonging more complicated, but also more necessary. Economic inequality, displacement and migration, social media and technology, ethnic conflict and religious violence, wars and political oppression, are tectonic forces that build pressure under our societies. The pressure is often relieved through social fault lines, such as those of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and religion. If we are to build stronger and more cohesive societies, less susceptible to the dangers of demagoguery and division, then we need to find ways to retrofit our social structures and institutions to survive these pressures.

Art description: “As I read through the introduction for this article, I wanted to understand inside myself what it means to feel a sense of belonging. After some processing, I was drawn to the feeling of sitting around a campfire with friends — an activity that creates, within a foreign space, a sense of home and shelter. In this image the four figures gather around the flame, cradled within a nurturing, open gestured hand.”

Artist bio:  Peter Wood is a British artist who was born in Bedford, England in 1991. He studied in London at Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design, and later at the University of Westminster, where he graduated with a degree in Illustration and Visual Communication in 2014. He has been living in Berlin since 2016 and works as an artist, selling prints at an outdoors art market, and through illustration commissions.  

• 1 Maslow, Abraham. “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychological Review 50, no. 4 (1943): 370–96.
• 2 Fetters, Ashley. “The First of the ‘Yale Women.’” The Atlantic , September 22, 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/09/first-undergraduate-women-yale/598216/.
• 3 "Why India Needs a New Debate on Caste Quotas.” BBC News , August 29, 2015. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34082770.
• 4 Lithwick, Dalia. “Sonia Sotomayor, Outsider.” Slate , September 4, 2015. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/09/sonia-sotomayor-conversation-at-notre-dame-first-latina-doesnt-feel-like-she-belongs-on-supreme-court.html .
• 5 “My Experience Survey 2019: Campus Findings and Recommendations.” UC Berkeley Office of the Chancellor, 2020. ttps://myexperience.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/myexperiencesurvey2019-final.pdf .
• 6 Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success . New York: Ballantine Books, 2006.
• 7 Onishi, Norimitsu, and Constant Méheut. “In France’s Military, Muslims Find a Tolerance That Is Elusive Elsewhere.” New York Times , June 26, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/world/europe/in-frances-military-muslims-find-a-tolerance-that-is-elusive-elsewhere.html .

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How to Increase Your Sense of Belonging

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Sean is a fact-checker and researcher with experience in sociology, field research, and data analytics.

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Sense of Belonging in Action

Effect of the sense of belonging, increase your sense of belonging.

The sense of belongingness, also known as the need to belong, refers to a human emotional need to affiliate with and be accepted by members of a group. Examples of this may include the need to belong to a peer group at school, to be accepted by co-workers, to be part of an athletic team, or to be part of a religious group.

What do we mean by the sense of belonging? A sense of belonging involves more than simply being acquainted with other people. It is centered on gaining acceptance, attention, and support from members of the group as well as providing the same attention to other members.

The need to belong to a group also can lead to changes in behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes as people strive to conform to the standards and norms of the group.

In social psychology , the need to belong is an intrinsic motivation to affiliate with others and be socially accepted. This need plays a role in a number of social phenomena such as self-presentation and social comparison .

What inspires people to seek out specific groups? In many cases, the need to belong to certain social groups results from sharing some point of commonality. For example, teens who share the same taste in clothing, music, and other interests might seek each other out to form friendships. Other factors that can lead individuals to seek out groups include:

• Pop culture interests
• Religious beliefs
• Shared goals
• Socioeconomic status

People often present themselves in a particular way in order to belong to a specific social group. For example, a new member of a high school sports team might adopt the dress and mannerisms of the other members of the team in order to fit in with the rest of the group.

People also spend a great deal of time comparing themselves to other members of the group in order to determine how well they fit in. This social comparison might lead an individual to adopt some of the same behaviors and attitudes of the most prominent members of the group in order to conform and gain greater acceptance.

Our need to belong is what drives us to seek out stable, long-lasting relationships with other people. It also motivates us to participate in social activities such as clubs, sports teams, religious groups, and community organizations.

In Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs , the sense of belongingness is part of one of his major needs that motivate human behavior. The hierarchy is usually portrayed as a pyramid, with more basic needs at the base and more complex needs near the peak. The need for love and belonging lie at the center of the pyramid as part of social needs.

By belonging to a group, we feel as if we are a part of something bigger and more important than ourselves.

While Maslow suggested that these needs were less important than physiological and safety needs, he believed that the need for belonging helped people to experience companionship and acceptance through family, friends, and other relationships.

A 2020 study on college students found a positive link between a sense of belonging and greater happiness and overall well-being, as well as an overall reduction in mental health outcomes including:

• Hopelessness
• Social anxiety
• Suicidal thoughts

How do we create a sense of belonging? There are steps you (or a loved one who is struggling) can take to increase the sense of belonging.

• Make an effort : Creating a sense of belonging takes effort, to put yourself out there, seek out activities and groups of people with whom you have common interests, and engage with others.  
• Be patient : It might take time to gain acceptance, attention, and support from members of the group.
• Practice acceptance : Focus on the similarities, not the differences, that connects you to others, and remain open to new ways of thinking.

A Word From Verywell

A sense of belonging is a crucial for good physical and mental health. If you continue to struggle with loneliness or the sense of not fitting in, talk to your doctor or mental health professional. They can help you to identify the root of your feelings and provide strategies for achieving belongingness.

Schneider ML, Kwan BM. Psychological need satisfaction, intrinsic motivation and affective response to exercise in adolescents .  Psychol Sport Exerc . 2013;14(5):776–785. doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2013.04.005

Pillow DR, Malone GP, Hale WJ. The need to belong and its association with fully satisfying relationships: A tale of two measures . Pers Individ Dif . 2015;74:259-264. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2014.10.031

Kenrick DT, Griskevicius V, Neuberg SL, Schaller M. Renovating the pyramid of needs: Contemporary extensions built upon ancient foundations .  Perspect Psychol Sci . 2010;5(3):292–314. doi:10.1177/1745691610369469

Moeller RW, Seehuus M, Peisch V. Emotional intelligence, belongingness, and mental health in college students .  Front Psychol . 2020;11:93. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00093

Fisher LB, Overholser JC, Ridley J, Braden A, Rosoff C. From the outside looking in: sense of belonging, depression, and suicide risk .  Psychiatry . 2015;78(1):29-41. doi: 10.1080/00332747.2015.1015867

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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Belonging: A Review of Conceptual Issues, an Integrative Framework, and Directions for Future Research

Kelly-ann allen.

1 Educational Psychology and Inclusive Education, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Clayton Australia.

2 Centre for Positive Psychology, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia.

Margaret L. Kern

Christopher s. rozek.

3 Department of Education, Washington University in St. Louis, U.S.A.

Dennis McInereney

4 Department of Special Education and Counselling, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

George M. Slavich

5 Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology and Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, U.S.A.

A sense of belonging—the subjective feeling of deep connection with social groups, physical places, and individual and collective experiences—is a fundamental human need that predicts numerous mental, physical, social, economic, and behavioural outcomes. However, varying perspectives on how belonging should be conceptualised, assessed, and cultivated has hampered much-needed progress on this timely and important topic. To address these critical issues, we conducted a narrative review that summarizes existing perspectives on belonging, describes a new integrative framework for understanding and studying belonging, and identifies several key avenues for future research and practice.

We searched relevant databases, including Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, PsycInfo, and ClinicalTrials.gov, for articles describing belonging, instruments for assessing belonging, and interventions for increasing belonging.

By identifying the core components of belonging, we introduce a new integrative framework for understanding, assessing, and cultivating belonging that focuses on four interrelated components: competencies, opportunities, motivations, and perceptions.

Conclusion:

This integrative framework enhances our understanding of the basic nature and features of belonging, provides a foundation for future interdisciplinary research on belonging and belongingness, and highlights how a robust sense of belonging may be cultivated to improve human health and resilience for individuals and communities worldwide.

Although the importance of social relationships, cultural identity, and — especially for indigenous people — place have long been apparent in research across multiple disciplines (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995 ; Cacioppo, & Hawkley, 2003 ; Carter et al., 2017; Maslow, 1954 ; Rouchy, 2002 ; Vaillant, 2012), the year 2020 — with massive bushfires in Australia and elsewhere destroying ancient lands, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S., amongst other events — brought the importance of belonging to the forefront of public attention. Belonging can be defined as a subjective feeling that one is an integral part of their surrounding systems, including family, friends, school, work environments, communities, cultural groups, and physical places ( Hagerty et al., 1992 ). Most people have a deep need to feel a sense of belonging, characterized as a positive but often fluid and ephemeral connection with other people, places, or experiences ( Allen, 2020a ).

There is general agreement that belonging is a fundamental human need that all people seek to satisfy ( Baumeister & Leary, 1995 ; Deci & Ryan 2000 ; Leary & Kelly, 2009 ; Maslow 1954 ). However, there is less agreement about the belonging construct itself, how belonging should be measured, and what people can do to satisfy the need for belonging. These issues arise in part because the belonging literature is broad and theoretically diverse, with authors approaching the topic from many different perspectives, with little integration across these perspectives. Therefore, there is a clear need to bring together disparate perspectives to understand better belonging as a construct, how it can be assessed, and how it can be developed. This narrative review describes several central issues in belonging research, bringing together disparate perspectives on belonging and harnessing the strengths of the multitude of perspectives. We also present an integrative framework on belonging and consider implications of this framework for future research and practice.

A need to belong — to connect deeply with other people and secure places, to align with one’s cultural and subcultural identities, and to feel like one is a part of the systems around them — appears to be buried deep inside our biology, all the way down to the human genome ( Slavich & Cole, 2013 ). Physical safety and well-being are intimately linked with the quality of human relationships and the characteristics of the surrounding social world (Hahn, 2017), and connection with other people and places is crucial for survival ( Boyd & Richerson, 2009 ). Indeed, for Indigenous people, “others” and “place” are synonymous and are inextricably entwined, where country provides a deep sense of belonging and identity as Aboriginal people ( Harrison & McLean, 2017 ).

The so-called “need to belong” has been observed at both the neural and peripheral biological levels (e.g., Blackhart et al., 2007 ; Kross et al., 2007 ; Slavich et al., 2014 ; Slavich, Way et al., 2010 ), as well as behaviourally and socially (e.g., Brewer, 2007 ; Filstad et al., 2019 ). Disparate research lines suggest that the principal design of the human brain and immune system is to keep the body biologically and physically safe by motivating people to avoid social threats and seek out social safety, connection, and belonging ( Slavich, 2020 ). Indeed, a sense of belonging may be just as important as food, shelter, and physical safety for promoting health and survival in the long run ( Baumeister & Leary, 1995 ; Maslow, 1954 ).

A Dynamic, Emergent Construct

Although belonging occurs as a subjective feeling, it exists within a dynamic social milieu. Biological needs complement, accentuate, and interact with social structures, norms, contexts, and experiences ( Slavich, 2020 ). Social, cultural, environmental, and geographical structures, broadly defined, provide an orientation for the self to determine who and what is acceptable, the nature of right and wrong, and a sense of belonging or alienation ( Allen, 2020 ). The sense of self emerges from one’s predominant social and environmental contexts, reinforcing and challenging the subjective sense of belonging. Belonging is facilitated and hindered by people, things, and experiences of the social milieu, which dynamically interact with the individual’s character, experiences, culture, identity, and perceptions. That is, belonging exists “because of and in connection with the systems in which we reside” ( Kern et al., 2020 , p. 709).

Despite its importance, many people struggle to feel a sense of belonging. Socially, a significant portion of people suffer from social isolation, loneliness, and a lack of connection to others ( Anderson & Thayer, 2018 ). For example, in 2017, in Australia, half of the adults reported lacking companionship at least some of the time, and one in four adults could be classified as being lonely ( Australian Psychological Society, 2018 ). Similar findings have been reported in the United States, where 63% of men and 58% of women reported feeling lonely ( Cigna, 2018 ). Social disconnection has become a concerning trend across many developed cultures for several reasons, including social mobility, shifts in technology, broken family and community structures, and the pace of modern life ( Baumeister & Robson, 2021 ). The COVID-19 pandemic magnified and accelerated the struggles that already existed. Early studies pointed to increases in loneliness and mental illness, especially among vulnerable populations, that is caused at least in part from extended periods of isolation, social distancing, and rising distrust of others ( Ahmed et al., 2020 ; Allen, 2020b ; Dsouza et al., 2020 ; Gruber et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020 ).

Struggles to belong are particularly evident in minorities and other groups that have been historically excluded from mainstream culture. For instance, even as many Indigenous people experience a sense of well-being when they connect with and participate in their traditional culture (e.g., Colquhoun & Dockery, 2012 ; Dockery 2010 ; O’Leary, 2020 ), many Aboriginal people also experience ongoing grief from country dispossession ( Williamson et al., 2020 ). As bushfires ravaged Australian lands early in 2020, the grief of the fires was significantly worse than nonIndigenous people, as they not only watched the fires decimate their land, but also their memories, sacred places, and the hearts of who they are as a people ( Williamson et al., 2020 ). Several months later, the killing of George Floyd, a Black man in the U.S., initiated protests worldwide that provided a sense of meaning in connecting with others against racism ( Ramsden, 2020 ), bringing to light the systemic exclusions that Black people have long experienced in the U.S. and beyond ( Corbould, 2020 ; Yulianto, 2020 ).

A Narrative Review of Belonging Research

With this background in mind, we narratively review existing studies on belonging, considering different perspectives on how belonging has been defined and operationalised, along with correlates, predictors, and outcomes associated with belonging. Although belonging is not merely the opposite of loneliness, social isolation, or feelings of disconnection, across the literature, low and high belonging have been placed on a continuum conceptually ( Allen & Kern, 2017 , 2019 ; for a review of belonging and loneliness, see Lim et al., 2021 ). Furthermore, because of the shared similarities and close relationships between the constructs, we include studies that have considered the presence of belonging, low levels of belonging, and disconnection indicators.

Defining Belonging

The constructs of “belonginess” and “belonging” lack conceptual clarity and consistency across studies, hence limiting advances in this research field. Belonging has been defined and operationalised in several ways (e.g., Goodenow, 1993 ; Hagerty & Patusky, 1995 ; Malone et al., 2012 ; Nichols & Webster, 2013 ), which has enabled investigators to test whether interventions increase a sense of belonging over days, weeks, or months. However, definitions have often explicitly focused on social belonging, thus missing other essential aspects, such as connection to place and culture, and the dynamic interactions with the social milieu, as described above.

Because of the increased importance of belonging during adolescence, much of the research on belonging has involved students in school settings ( Abdollahi et al., 2020 ; Arslan et al., 2020 ; Yeager et al., 2018 ). Definitions have tended to include school-based experiences, relationships with peers and teachers, and students’ emotional connection with or feelings toward their school ( Allen et al., 2016 , 2018 ; Allen & Bowles, 2012 ; O’Brien & Bowles, 2013 ; Slaten et al., 2016 ). Goodenow and Grady’s (1993) definition remains the most common definition: “the extent to which students feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported by others in the school social environment” (p. 80).

A distinction can be made between trait (i.e., belonging as a core psychological need) and state (i.e., situation-specific senses of belonging) belongingness. Studies suggest that state belonging is influenced by various daily life events and stressors ( Ma, 2003 ; Sedgwick & Rougeau, 2010 ; Walton & Cohen, 2011 ). Depending on the variability of situations and experiences that one encounters, along with one’s perceptions of those situations and experiences, a person’s subjective sense of belonging can change as frequently as several times a day in much the same way that happiness and other emotions change over time ( Trampe et al., 2015 ). However, people can also have relatively stable experiences of belonging. For example, some individuals demonstrate generally high or low levels of belonging with relatively little variability across time and different situations. In contrast, for others, a sense of belonging is more variable, depending on one’s awareness of and perceptions of environmental context and social cues (Schall et al., 2013). For instance, whereas one individual might perceive a smile from a coworker as a sign that they are part of a community, another might suspect a contrived behaviour and see it as a sign of exclusion. Indeed, research suggests that the effects of belonging-related stressors can be more intense for those who identify with outgroups ( Walton & Brady, 2017 ). Such outgroups include those from racial minorities, those who identify as sexually or gender diverse, or individuals with behaviours, attributes, or abilities that depart from the social norm, such as those that stem from mental health issues ( Gardner et al., 2019 ; Harrist & Bradley, 2002 ; Rainey et al., 2018 ; Spencer et al., 2016 ; Steger & Kashdan, 2009 ).

It appears that multiple processes must converge for a stable, trait-like sense of belonging to emerge and support well-being and other positive outcomes ( Cacioppo et al., 2015 ; Erzen & Çikrikci, 2018 ; Mellor et al., 2008 ; Rico-Uribe et al., 2018 ; Walton & Cohen, 2011 ). For instance, a successful singer is motivated to sing and has skills and capacity to sing well, confidence, opportunities to sing, and support by others. It would seem that trait belongingness is more crucial for mental health and well-being; that is, a more stable and lasting sense of belonging as opposed to a state of belonging (i.e., a temporary feeling of belonging based on thoughts, feelings, and behaviours ( Clark et al., 2003 ).

Assessing Belonging

Several different instruments have been used to assess belonging, but there is no consensus, gold-standard measure. The differentiation between state and trait belongingness has made defining and measuring belonging even more complicated. Most belonging measures are unidimensional, subjective, and static, representing a snapshot of a person’s perception at the administration time. Instruments such as Walton’s measures of belonging and belonging uncertainty have been used in many studies within education and social psychology ( Pyne, Rozek, & Borman, 2018 ; Walton & Cohen, 2007 ). These measures assess belonging from a more state-based sense of belonging, capturing transitory feelings of belonging or lack of situation-specific belonging ( Walton, 2014 ; Walton & Brady, 2017 ). Other measures, such as the UCLA Loneliness Scale, potentially assess a more stable, trait-like sense of belonging, pointing to belonging as a core psychological need ( Mahar et al., 2014 ). It could be argued that commonly used belonging measures are more accurate in assessing state-like experiences due to their propensity to assess belonging in a single snapshot of time ( Cruwys et al., 2014 ; Feser, 2020; Leary et al., 2013 ; Martin, 2007 ). This is also the case with more applied belonging studies, such as those focused on school belonging ( Allen et al., 2018 ; Arslan & Allen, 2020 ).

Given that no single measure of belonging exists, research has examined numerous belonging surveys to identify commonalities that can be applied across a variety of disciplines. Mahar et al. (2014) reviewed several instruments for assessing belongingness and found that belonging was often measured as related to the performance indicators of specific types of service organisations. For example, the sense of belonging to a church congregation may depend on the amount of support one receives from that congregation while belonging to a university is dependent not just on social connections but also on how well a student performs academically. Therefore, every social science discipline, unfortunately, has its own measure and scale of belonging.

However, there are some commonalities in all of the studies reviewed by Maher et al. (2014). First, a sense of belonging is based on an individual’s perception of their connection to a chosen group or place. Most instruments Maher and colleagues reviewed contained at least one question that referenced the feeling of belonging, whether to a large group such as a country or race or a small group such as a church or school. Second, the sense of belonging is dependent on opportunities for interaction with others. Each survey reviewed referenced this variable differently, using words such as “relationships,” “making friends,” “spending time,” and “bonding.” Whatever term is used, the instruments all appear to be measuring the same thing — namely, the opportunities a person has to belong to a desired group.

A few scales specifically ask respondents to evaluate their motivations to connect and build relationships with a desired group. Motivations appear to be an area of importance that is often ignored in previous survey tools. The importance of this element will be further explored below.

In addition, several measures consider the ability to belong. Specifically, does the individual have the social skills and abilities it takes to belong to a group? The reviewed instruments might include a question such as “I find it easy to make friends” ( Mahar et al., 2014 , p. 23); however, the questions do not specifically address whether an individual is unable to belong to the desired group because of their behaviours or attitudes.

Correlates, Predictors, and Outcomes Associated with Belonging

Regardless of how belonging has been defined and measured, the fundamental importance of belonging combined with elevated levels of social disconnection evident in modern society has led to several fruitful research and application areas. A sense of belonging has been used as a dependent, independent, and correlated variable in a wide range of studies demonstrating the salience of this construct across various contexts (e.g., Allen et al., 2018 ; Freeman et al., 2007 ). For instance, Mahar et al. (2014) reviewed how a sense of belonging was measured and actioned as a service outcome among persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities, concluding that belonging is an important outcome in this domain. Other studies have found a positive association between students’ belonging needs and psychological well-being ( Karaman & Tarim, 2018 ; Kitchen et al., 2015 ). Undergraduates’ involvement in courses that use technology was related to higher belonging levels ( Long, 2016 ). Additionally, a sense of belonging positively relates to persistence in course study ( Akiva et al., 2013 ; Hausmann et al., 2007 ; Moallem, 2013 ). Across these and other studies, greater belonging is consistently associated with more positive psychosocial outcomes.

Other studies have considered the implications for belonging interventions that target (a) characteristics of the individual including personality, social skills, and cognitions (e.g., Durlak et al., 2011 ; Frydenberg et al., 2004 ; Walton & Cohen, 2011 ); (b) their social relationships (e.g., Aron et al., 1997 ; Kanter et al., 2018 ); or (c) the environment that individuals inhabit, such as the physical attributes of the workplace, sense of space, and opportunities to connect (e.g., Gustafson, 2009 ; Jaitli & Hua, 2013 ; Trawalter et al., 2020 ). Most intervention studies have treated belonging as a secondary outcome rather than directly targeting belonging ( Allen et al., 2020 ), although there are some exceptions. For instance, in a brief social belonging intervention in a college setting for Black Americans, positive effects appeared to be long-lasting (i.e., from 7 to 11 years; Brady et al., 2020 ). A brief social belonging intervention among minority students had positive impacts on academic and health outcomes among minority students by encouraging students to understand that the feeling of not belonging is normal and temporary ( Walton & Cohen, 2011 ). Additionally, Borman et al. (2019) found that improvement in students’ sense of belonging partially mediated the effects of a similar intervention on academic achievement and disciplinary problems in secondary school.

Other studies have examined the benefits that arise from a sense of belonging. Studies have identified numerous positive effects of having a healthy sense of belonging, including more positive social relationships, academic achievement, occupational success, and better physical and mental health (e.g., Allen et al., 2018 , Goodenow & Grady, 1993 , Hagerty et al., 1992 ). A lack of belonging, in turn, has been linked to an increased risk for mental and physical health problems ( Cacioppo et al., 2015 ; Hari, 2019 ). Indeed, a meta-analysis of 70 studies concluded that the health risks of social isolation are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and is twice as harmful as obesity ( Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015 ). Likewise, studies have found that deficits in social relationships across the lifespan are associated with depression, poor sleep quality, rapid cognitive decline, cardiovascular difficulties, and reduced immunity ( Hawkley & Capitanio, 2015 ). More specifically, the adverse effects of not belonging or being rejected include increased risk for mental illness, antisocial behaviour, lowered immune functioning, physical illness, and early mortality (e.g., Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2003 ; Cacioppo et al., 2011 ; Choenarom et al., 2005 ; Cornwell & Waite, 2009 ; Holt-Lunstad, 2018 ; Leary, 1990 ; Slavich, O’Donovan, et al., 2010 ).

An Integrative Framework for Belonging

From this review, the take-home message is that belonging is a central construct in human health, behaviour, and experience. However, studies on this topic have used inconsistent terminology, definitions, and measures. At times, belonging has been treated as a predictor, outcome, correlate, and covariate. Therefore, it is unclear whether the lack of a sense of belonging is equivalent to negative constructs such as loneliness, disconnection, and isolation, or if these are separate dimensions. These inconsistencies arise, in part, from the multiple theoretical and empirical perspectives present in the belonging literature. Building on these different perspectives and insights, we propose an integrative framework to conceptualise belonging measures and inform interventions. In brief, we suggest that belonging is a dynamic feeling and experience that emerges from four interrelated components that arise from and are supported by the systems in which individuals reside. As illustrated in Figure 1 , the four components are:

• competencies for belonging (skills and abilities);
• opportunities to belong (enablers, removal/ reduction of barriers);
• motivations to belong (inner drive); and
• perceptions of belonging (cognitions, attributions, and feedback mechanisms — positive or negative experiences when connecting).

As a dynamic social system, these four components dynamically reinforce and influence one another over time, as a person moves through different social, environmental, and temporal contexts and experiences. Together they dynamically interact with, are supported or hindered by, and impact relevant social milieus. The narrative of how these components interconnect results in consistently high belonging levels, which support positive life outcomes.

An integrative framework for understanding, assessing, and fostering belonging. Four interrelated components (i.e., Competencies, Opportunities, Motivations, and Perceptions) dynamically interact and influence one another, shifting, evolving, and adapting as an individual traverses temporal, social, and environmental contexts and experiences.

Competencies for Belonging

The first component we suggest belonging emerges from is competencies : having a set of (both subjective and objective) skills and abilities needed to connect and experience belonging. Skills enable individuals to relate with others, identify with their cultural background, develop a sense of identity, and connect to place and country. Competencies enable people to ensure that their behaviour is consistent with group social norms, align with cultural values, and treat the place and land with respect. The development of social competencies is central to social and emotional learning approaches (e.g., CASEL, 2018 ), and plays a critical role in supporting positive youth development ( Durlak et al., 2011 ; Kern et al., 2017). In turn, social competencies deficits can limit relationship quality, social relations, and social positions ( Frostad & Pijl, 2007 ).

With some exceptions, most people can develop skills to improve their ability to connect with people, things, and places. Social skills include being aware of oneself and others, emotion and behaviour regulation, verbal and nonverbal communication, acknowledgement and alignment with social norms, and active listening ( Blackhart et al., 2011 ). Cultural skills include understanding one’s heritage, mindful acknowledgement of place, and alignment with relevant values. Social, emotional, and cultural competencies complement and reinforce one another, and contribute to and are reinforced by feeling a sense of belonging. The ability to regulate emotions, for example, may reduce the likelihood of social rejection or ostracisation from others ( Harrist & Bradley, 2002 ). Competencies can also help individuals cope effectively with feelings of not belonging when they arise ( Frydenberg et al., 2009 ). Pointing to the social nature of competencies, the display and use of skills may be socially reinforced through acceptance and inclusion, while feeling a sense of belonging may also assist in using socially appropriate skills ( Blackhart et al., 2011 ).

Opportunities to Belong

The second component we suggest belonging emerges from is opportunities : the availability of groups, people, places, times, and spaces that enable belonging to occur. The ability to connect with others is useless if opportunities to connect are lacking. For instance, studies with people from rural or isolated areas, first- and second-generation migrants, and refugees have found that these groups have more difficulty managing psychological well-being, physical health, and transitions ( Correa-Velez et al., 2010 ; Keyes & Kane, 2004 ). They might have social competencies, but their circumstances limit opportunities. For example, Correa-Velez et al. (2010) studied nearly 100 adolescent refugees who had been in Melbourne, Australia, for three years or less. Even with deliberate steps taken to help the students integrate into their new schools, including language development, they overwhelmingly reported feelings of discrimination and bullying. They subsequently reported a lower sense of well-being. Although these students had the skills to connect with their schoolmates, they were not given opportunities to connect. Similarly, legacies of racism, dispossession, and assimilation have continued to exclude Aboriginal people from connecting with and managing their homelands ( Williamson et al., 2020 ).

The need for opportunities became poignantly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, as social distancing was enforced in countries around the world, and many human interactions went virtual. Active membership of extracurricular groups, schools, universities, workplaces, church groups, families, friendship groups, and participation in hobbies provide opportunities for human connections. For instance, school attendance is a prerequisite for students to feel a sense of belonging with their school ( Akar-Vural et al., 2013 ; Bowles & Scull, 2018). In the absence of physical opportunities for belonging, technologies such as social media and online gaming may help meet this need, especially for youth ( Allen et al., 2014 ; Davis, 2012 ) and for those who are introverted, shy, or who suffer from social anxiety ( Amichai-Hamburger et al., 2002 ; Moore & McElroy, 2012 ; Ryan et al., 2017 ; Seabrook et al., 2016 ; Seidman, 2013 ). However, it remains uncertain the extent to which technologically mediated approaches can fully compensate for face-to-face relationships.

The Black Lives Matter movement particularly points to opportunities for those that are often excluded by building social capital that strengthens connections, allows activists to share their messages, and illuminates the inequities existing within and across cultures. In Putnam’s (2000) work on social capital identified social networks as fundamental principles for creating opportunity. Putnam described the concepts of bridging and bonding social capital, in which the former was later referred to as inclusive belonging, whereas the latter pertains to exclusive belonging ( Putnam, 2000 ; Roffey, 2013 ). Bridging social capital is inclusive because it creates broader social networks and a higher degree of social reciprocity between members ( Putnam, 2000 ). Whereas bonding social capital highlights the connections found within a community of people sharing similar characteristics or backgrounds, including interests, attitudes, and demographics ( Claridge, 2018 ). This might be observed with close friends and family members ( Claridge, 2018 ) or other homogenous groups such as a church-based women’s reading group or an over-50s mens’ basketball team ( Putnam 2000 ). In contrast, bridging social capital may emerge from the connection people build to share their resources ( Murray et al., 2020 ). Most members are interconnected through this type of social capital, which transcends class, race, religion, and sociodemographic characteristics. Bridging social capital occurs when there is an opportunity for any person to interact with others (Putnam, 2010). This might look like a sporting event, a gathering of concerned about a common concern like climate change or racism, or even attendance at a public concert. In the same way, inclusive belonging represents mutual benefits for all parties involved. In contrast, exclusive belonging presents the idea that a selected group will benefit from membership, particularly those who are members of the group ( Roffey, 2013 ). Communities and organisations can employ inclusive belonging principles that may improve the experience of belonging for people, particularly vulnerable to rejection and prone to social isolation and loneliness ( Allen et al., 2019 ; Roffey, 2013 ; Roffey et al., 2019 ).

There are numerous ways for individuals, groups, and communities to create opportunities for belonging, and some of these opportunities can even be motivated by a sense of not belonging ( Leary & Allen, 2011 ; London et al., 2007 ). For example, those who have been disenfranchised, have suffered abuse or trauma, or have been ostracised or rejected may look for alternative sources for belonging ( Gerber & Wheeler, 2009 ; Hagerty et al., 2002 ). This search for belonging outside, or in opposition to, established norms provides one explanation for the rise of radicalisation and extremism ( Leary et al., 2006 ; Lyons-Padilla et al., 2015 ), participation in gangs and organised crime ( Voisin et al., 2014 ), and school violence ( Leary et al., 2003 ). It can also be an incentive for more socially acceptable pathways to belonging, such as through joining support groups, or bonding together with diverse others to fight against racism ( Ramsden, 2020 ). At individual, institutional, and societal levels, there is a need to create opportunities and reduce barriers to allow positive connection to occur so that people are less likely to seek out problematic contexts for belonging.

Motivations to Belong

The third component we suggest belonging emerges from is motivations : a need or desire to connect with others. Belonging motivation refers to the fundamental need for people to be accepted, belong, and seek social interactions and connections ( Leary & Kelly, 2009 ). Socially, a person who is motivated to belong is someone who enjoys positive interactions with others, seeks out interpersonal connections, has positive experiences of long-term relationships, dislikes negative social experiences, and resists the loss of attachments ( Baumeister & Leary, 1995 ). In social situations, people who are motivated to belong will actively seek similarities and things in common with others. This characteristic may not always be accounted for by personality type or attributes ( Leary & Kelly, 2009 ). Similarly, a person might be motivated to connect with a place, their culture or ethnic background, or other belonging contributors.

The degree to which people are motivated to belong varies ( Leary & Kelly, 2009 ). Weak motivation to belong can be associated with psychological dysfunction ( Baumeister & Leary, 1995 ), and weak motivation may, alongside other socially mediated criteria, become a predictor of psychological pathology ( Leary & Kelly, 2009 ). A lack of motivation may arise in part from repeated rejection and thwarting of one’s basic psychological needs of relatedness, competence, and autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 2001), resulting in a learned helplessness response ( Nelson et al., 2019 ) that manifests as a reduced motivation to belong. Nevertheless, Baumeister and Leary (1995) suggest that people can still be driven and motivated to connect with others, even under the most traumatic circumstances.

Hence, individual differences and context play central roles in our understanding of belonging motivation. The range of possible motivators for belonging are vast and will reflect diverse sociocultural and economic environments such as indigenous-non-indigenous, collectivist-individualist, urban-rural, developed-developing. It is essential that any examination of the nature and function of motivators of belonging acknowledges this diversity and includes it in any conceptualisation of this construct.

Perceptions of Belonging

The fourth component we suggest belonging emerges from is perceptions : a person’s subjective feelings and cognitions concerning their experiences. A person may have skills related to connecting, opportunities to belong, and be motivated, yet still report great dissatisfaction. Either consciously or subconsciously, most human beings evaluate whether they belong or fit in with those around them ( Baumeister & Leary, 1995 ; Walton & Brady, 2017 ).

Perceptions about one’s experiences, self-confidence, and desire for connection can be informed by past experiences ( Coie, 2004 ). For example, a person with a history of rejection or ostracization might question their belonging or seek to belong through other means ( London et al., 2007 ). This seeking could involve groups that are considered to be antisocial, such as cults, street or criminal gangs or group memberships characterised by radicalised social, political or religious ideas ( Hunter, 1998 ). This might involve returning to one’s home or place of origin or trying to find one’s place within a world that has systemically erased their value. A rejected student may engage in maladaptive behaviours in a classroom to seek approval from peers ( Flowerday & Shaughnessy, 2005 ). Indeed, in one study, indigenous children reported underperforming at school so that they would not be ostracised from their group ( McInerney, 1989 ). In other words, maintaining belonging with their indigenous peers was more salient than doing well at school; doing well at school was a white thing ( Herbert et al., 2014 ; McInerney, 1989 ). It was also apparent that perceptions of themselves as successful students (i.e., a feeling of belongingness at school) were weak for many Indigenous students but for “adaptive” reasons. Repeated social rejection experiences can create the perception (by both the individual and others who witness the repeated social rejection) that the person is not socially acceptable ( Walton & Cohen, 2007 ). Negative perceptions of the self or others, stereotypes, and attribution errors can also undermine motivation ( Mello et al., 2012 ; Walton & Wilson, 2018 ; Yeager & Walton, 2011 ). These subjective experiences and perceptions of those experiences thus act as feedback mechanisms that increase or decrease one’s desire to connect with others.

Just as the need to belong can shape emotions and cognitions ( Baumeister & Leary, 1995 ; Lambert et al., 2013 ), cognitions and emotions also impact a person’s capacities, opportunities, and motivations for belonging. To address these links and help enhance belonging, a variety of psychosocial interventions grounded in cognitive therapy aim to (a) reframe cognitions concerning negative social interactions and experiences, (b) normalise feelings of not belonging that everyone experiences from time to time, and (c) alter the extent to which the events that caused the feeling are internal vs. external to the individual (e.g., Walton & Cohen, 2007 ). These interventions have been shown to alter not just cognitions about other people and the world ( Borman et al., 2019 ; Butler et al., 2006 ) but also basic biological processes involved in the immune system that are known to affect human health and behaviour ( Shields et al., 2020 ).

Implications for Research and Practice

As we have alluded to, belonging research has been the subject of decades of development and broad multidisciplinary input and insights. As a result of this history, though, perspectives on this topic are highly diverse, as are methods for assessing this construct. Strategies for enhancing a sense of belonging exist, but identifying effective solutions depends on integrating multiple disciplinary approaches to theory, research, and practice, rather than relying on the silos of single disciplines. Arising from the framework described above, we point to six main challenges and issues related to understanding, measuring, and building belonging, highlighting areas that would benefit from additional attention and research.

First, belonging research has occurred within multiple disciplines but primarily siloed into separate domains. Understanding and support for belonging is a subject of concern in many fields, including psychology ( Baumeister & Leary, 1995 ), sociology ( May, 2011 ), education ( Morieson et al., 2013 ), urban education ( Riley, 2017 ), medicine ( Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2003 ), public health ( Stead et al., 2011 ), economics ( Bhalla & Lapeyre, 1997 ), design ( Schein, 2009 ; Trudeau, 2006 ; Weare, 2010 ), and political science ( Yuval-Davis, 2006 ). However, little work has integrated these different disciplines’ findings, with differing language, measures, and approaches used, yielding a fractured and inconsistent perspective on belonging. Thus, there is a need for authentic attempts to synthesise these findings fully and integrate, develop, and extend belonging research through genuinely interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches ( Choi & Pak, 2006 ). Our integrative framework provides an initial attempt at bringing these different perspectives together, but the extent to which it is sufficient and applicable within different disciplines remains to be seen.

Second, there is a need for belonging researchers to develop a more robust understanding of the existing literature. The theoretical, methodological, and conceptual gaps need to be bridged to make this literature much more widely accessible. Knowledge development in this area will lead to improved research measurement and practitioner tools, potentially based on multitheoretical, empirically driven perspectives that will, in turn, make the bridging of future theory, research, practice, and lived application easier for all stakeholders. Our framework provides an initial organising structure to map out the literature, identify gaps, and support further knowledge development in the future. Numerous theories across disciplines contribute to each of the components, and future work could identify how different theories map onto, intersect with, and inform understanding, assessment, and enhancement of belonging.

Third, there are significant gaps between research and practice in the context of belonging. One important factor contributing to this gap is the sheer breadth and complexity of belonging research. Thus, researchers in this field make conscious — and conscientious — efforts to collaborate and translate their work to and for other researchers and practitioners. We suggest that our framework provides an accessible entry point into the research for practitioners. The four components provide specific areas to focus interventions, identifying enablers and barriers of each of the components. Building belonging begins with a need to ensure that communities have a foundational understanding of the importance of belonging for psychological and physical health and that individuals can draw on and advance their competencies, opportunities, motivations, and perceptions to increase their sense of belonging. Still, there is a need to identify specific strategies within each component that can help people develop and harness their competencies, opportunities, motivations, and perceptions across different situations, experiences, and interactions.

Fourth, consideration needs to be given to how belonging is best measured. Existing instruments for assessing belonging primarily focus on social belonging, rather than on the broader, more inclusive construct of a sense of belonging as a whole. It is unclear whether positive and negative aspects of belonging are unidimensional or multidimensional. For instance, positive affect is not merely the absence of negative affect. Positive cognitive biases are different from low levels of negative cognitive bias, and disengagement is not necessarily the same as low engagement levels. Belonging and loneliness tend to be inversely correlated ( Mellor et al., 2008 ), but the extent to which this is true across different individuals and contexts, and depends upon the measures used, is unknown.

Existing measures also generally provide a state-like assessment of a person’s sense of belonging (i.e., at a given point in time). However, as a dynamic emergent construct, measuring and targeting singular (or even multiple) components in a fixed manner is insufficient. Studies will benefit by examining the best way to capture and track dynamic patterns and identifying (a) when and how a sense of belonging emerges from competencies, opportunities, motivations, and perceptions; (b) the contextual factors needed to enable this emergence to occur; (c) and the feedback mechanisms that reinforce or block the emergence of belonging in a person.

Fifth, although we suggested that four components are necessary for belonging to emerge, it is unknown how much of each component is needed, whether specific sequencing amongst the components matters (i.e., one needs to come before the other) and the extent to which that depends upon the person and the context. For example, culture can intensely affect an individual’s competencies for belonging, opportunities to belong, motivations to belong, and even perceptions of belonging ( Cortina et al., 2017 ). As a dynamic, emergent construct, each likely component impacts upon and interacts with the others. Still, for some individuals or across different contexts, there might be specific sequences that are more likely to support a sense of belonging. Aligned with other psychological and sociological studies, the existing belonging literature primarily has used variable-centred approaches. Person-centred research that exists points to belonging as being a nonlinear construct, with the ability for the sense of belonging to grow, stall, disappear, or flourish within an individual over the life course ( George & Selimons, 2019 ). Longitudinal, person-centred approaches might be a useful complement to traditional study designs because they allow the opportunity to track experiences of belonging in diverse populations, identify the combination of the four components described above, and when belonging emerges, with consideration of personal, social, and environmental moderators.

Finally, multilevel research is needed to elucidate social, neural, immunologic, and behavioural processes associated with belonging. This integrative research can help researchers understand how experiences of belonging “get under the skin” affect human behaviour and health. Equally important is the need to understand the biological processes that are affected by experiences of disconnection versus belonging, which can help researchers elucidate the regulatory logic of these systems to understand better what aspects of belonging are most critical or essential for health ( Slavich, 2020 ; Slavich & Irwin, 2014 ). Such knowledge can ultimately help investigators develop more effective interventions for increasing perceptions of belonging and lead to entirely new ways of conceptualising this fundamental construct.

In conclusion, a sense of belonging is a core part of what makes one a human being ( Baumeister & Leary, 1995 ; Deci & Ryan, 2000 ; Slavich, 2020 ; Vaillant, 2012). Just as harbouring a healthy sense of belonging can lead to many positive life outcomes, feeling as though one does not belong is robustly associated with a lack of meaning and purpose, increased risk for experiencing mental and physical health problems, and reduced longevity. As technology continues to develop, the pace of modern life has sped up, traditional social structures have broken down, and cultural and ethnic values have been threatened, increasing the importance of helping people establish and sustain a fundamental sense of belonging. Focusing on competencies, opportunities, motivations, and perceptions can be a useful framework for developing strategies aimed at increasing peoples’ sense of belonging at both the individual and collective level. To fully realize this framework’s potential to aid society, much work is needed.

G.M.S. was supported by a Society in Science—Branco Weiss Fellowship, NARSAD Young Investigator Grant #23958 from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, and National Institutes of Health grant K08 MH103443.

Conflicts of Interest : The authors declare no conflicts of interest with regard to this work.

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What Does It Take to Build a Culture of Belonging?

• Julia Taylor Kennedy
• Pooja Jain-Link

Four concrete actions leaders can take.

To impose the changes needed to achieve promises of racial justice, equity, and inclusion, organizations require all hands on deck — at levels of the company. But widespread support on any effort can be difficult to garner, especially when it comes to DE&I work. An essential part of this is to create a culture where every employee, regardless of their background, feels they belong.

Based on research by Coqual, it is said someone belongs at work when they are seen for their unique contributions, connected to their coworkers, supported in their daily work and career development, and proud of their organization’s values and purpose. While a lack of belonging is the challenge, especially for people of color, building it is a crucial strategy for healing — and for galvanizing support of all DE&I work. As organizations map ways to meet their commitments to racial equity and justice, closing these belonging gaps will help them join employees in a common mission — and to retain and engage employees of all backgrounds.

As we continue to adjust to Covid-19’s disruptions and see Black Americans killed by police , hate crimes against Asian Americans surge , and people in Georgia fight for equal voting rights , the question of what “belonging” means in American society is reaching into the workplace as it never has before. CEOs, corporate boards, investors, consumers, and employees continue to demand action against racial injustice and movement toward more-equitable workplaces — ones where all employees belong, regardless of their racial or ethnic identities. Against this backdrop, business leaders no longer require a “business case” for a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I); they are well aware. Now they need corporate leaders and advisers to help them keep the ambitious promises they made over the course of the past year.

• Julia Taylor Kennedy is executive vice president at Coqual , a global nonprofit think tank dedicated to workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion. She is the lead researcher of Coqual’s four-part study, The Power of Belonging . She also co-led research on Coqual’s Being Black in Corporate America and The Sponsor Dividend , along with several other studies. Taylor Kennedy works with Coqual’s advisory clients to design and implement leadership development programs related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• Pooja Jain-Link is executive vice president at Coqual and secondary lead researcher on Coqual’s four-part study, The Power of Belonging. She co-led, with Taylor Kennedy, research on Coqual’s Being Black in Corporate America and Wonder Women in STEM and the Companies that Champion Them , along with several other studies. Jain-Link also works with Coqual’s advisory clients on strategic action planning, culture audits, and other diagnostics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Partner Center

A Crisis of Belonging

• Posted March 3, 2023
• By Jill Anderson
• Disruption and Crises
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Families and Community
• K-12 School Leadership

Subscribe to the Harvard EdCast.

Social psychologist Geoff Cohen believes a crisis of belonging is destroying us. One in five Americans suffers from chronic loneliness. Young people are struggling with high levels of anxiety and mental health issues at times when they desperately need a sense of connection and belonging. 

“Belonging isn't just a touchy feely construct. It's actually something that touchy feely has hard consequences. It's associated with physical illness, early death, cardiovascular disease, also vulnerability,” says Cohen, a professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Education. 

Although most of us know what it feels like to be excluded or question our belonging, Cohen says we don't do the greatest job of recognizing that feeling when it happens to others. In fact, we often threaten other people's sense of belonging, he says. It's having a serious effect on our wellbeing. The good news is there are small ways we can change and even nurture belonging as educators, parents, and citizens. 

JILL ANDERSON: I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast. Social psychologist Geoff Cohen says a crisis of belonging is destroying us. Most of us know what it feels like to be excluded or question our belonging, but he says we don't do the greatest job of recognizing that feeling when it happens to others. 

In fact, we often threaten other people's sense of belonging. It's having a serious effect. One in five Americans suffers from chronic loneliness. Young people are struggling with high levels of anxiety and mental health issues at times when they desperately need a sense of connection and belonging. 

The good news is there are small ways we can change and even nurture belonging as educators, parents, and citizens. First, I asked Geoff to tell me more about what he means when he says there's a crisis of belonging destroying us. 

GEOFFREY COHEN: I co-opted the term from Pete Buttigieg, who used it to describe the state of America, where so many of our connections are frayed, so many people feel economically left behind. And I would add, as our surgeon general has pointed out, Vivek Murthy, that we have what some call an epidemic of loneliness wherein roughly 20% I think of Americans are so lonely that it poses a health risk, a severe health risk as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. 

So on top of that, indicators of division are at a high now, such as political polarization. I think hate crimes are roughly at a 10-year high. So the markers of divisiveness, the indicators of isolation, the feeling of being left behind economically, not being part of a community or a country, are great now. Also as workplaces have changed in their nature and they become less of a place where people get meaning and a sort of lifelong sense of belonging and community, frays to communities, religious associations have opened up because, of all that, I think it is an apt term for the era we're in. Very few groups feel confident in their sense of belonging. And groups that once did are now a bit unmoored and adrift. So I would say that. 

And then what the crisis of belonging implies is that it's a crisis, that this matters. Belonging isn't just a touchy feely construct. It's actually something that touchy feely has hard consequences. It's associated with physical illness, early death, cardiovascular disease, also vulnerability. 

There's some exciting research to hate groups, and extremists, and conspiratorial thinking. When we feel like we don't belong, we become vulnerable to dangerous and ridiculous beliefs with groups that provide us that sense of belonging. So I think, though there are many things contributing to the problems that [? belie ?] our country now, belonging could be one underlying symptom or underlying cause that, if we address it, could have manifold benefits for our society. 

JILL ANDERSON: When I hear that, it just sounds so scary, even though it makes a lot of sense. And you could probably add a whole bunch of more things like our young people seem to have so many mental health issues, and we're seeing so many young males, especially in America, acting out. 

GEOFFREY COHEN: Yes, yes. Half of college students have an anxiety disorder, I think it's the rough figure. And teen suicidality and self cutting among girls is rising. Lots of factors contribute, but it is partly a problem of belonging. 

When you feel like you don't belong or when you have that sense of I'm not part of a larger cause, it turns out there's biological research that suggests that's one of the worst things our central nervous system can say to the rest of our body is you are alone here. It puts us in a sort of fight-or-flight response. That's very good evolutionarily to deal with physical threat, preparing to be wounded, but when it's chronically activated, it can really wreak havoc on our health. 

JILL ANDERSON: How do we course correct for some of this feeling that you don't belong or this crisis of belonging that's happening? 

GEOFFREY COHEN: Well, of course, we need systemic and structural change. We're living through a kind of reckoning with systems of exclusion that have been with us since the founding of our country, so that is very, very important, dismantling these systems of exclusion. 

At the same time, there are little things that we can all do every day to nurture belonging in one another as teachers, as parents, as friends. And that's what the theme of a lot of our research is focused on is just the small things we can do every day to make things a little bit better, and if we all do them, we can make things a lot better. 

For instance, something as simple as being polite to other people, research suggests, saying please and thank you, that is a powerful indication that I see you as belonging in the circle of those to whom I should show respect. And I know that seems obvious, but it's actually a really powerful indicator. And there's research showing, for instance, that police officers are not as polite with Black individuals that they pull over in driver stops as they are with white individuals. We accord less respect to those we see as other, and that sends a message that you don't belong. 

A story that really stuck with me was told to me by Mary Rowe, an organizational behaviorist at MIT, who describes that she was a university ombudsman. And a Black employee came to her saying, I'm going to quit here. This feels like a place I don't belong. 

And she said, Mary said, to the Black employee, well, why don't you just keep a log of what happens to you? Let's look at this systematically. Keep a log of what happens here. I really want to understand why the environment is so toxic for you. 

So the employee kept a log, then came back to Mary a week later and shared the log. Mary opened it and saw nothing. What's going on? 

And that was the whole point. The employee said, yeah, the whole time I'm here no one asks me about how my day is going. No one expresses appreciation for the work I've done. I feel like I'm not even seen. And so the problem lay in what wasn't said a lack of basic collegiality. That's one example of politeness. 

A second example is research on what we call affirmations, values, affirmations, or self affirmations, and these are things that we can do in our day-to-day lives to create a channel or opening in a situation where people can express who they are and what they value and feel valued for it. And in a number of studies that my colleagues and I and others have done, we found that the simple act, for instance, of just asking students to reflect on, what is core to you? What are your most important values? What would you stand up for? What would you die for? What is really dear to your heart? Giving students the opportunity to write about their core values in the classroom has been found, under some circumstances, to have these wide-ranging benefits, closing achievement gaps in GPA, even after just a few sessions of doing these kinds of activities, improving health and well-being, leading to greater retention throughout high school and college. And this has been replicated in several studies. 

It doesn't happen all the time, but in schools and classrooms where there are resources and pathways to success, if I now feel like this is a place where my whole self is accepted. I'm more likely to seize those opportunities. So these are just examples of many of little things we can all do to make the situations a lot better. 

JILL ANDERSON: It seems like we know belonging is this condition for success. We know students do better if they feel like they belong. But why is it that, so often in education, we seem to just have students leave their full identity at the door? Our doors are open, but you're not really welcome to bring your full self into that. 

GEOFFREY COHEN: I have a friend who was teaching at a school, and she said one of the bits of advice she got was don't smile until winter break. You got to keep up a tough demeanor with these teenagers, in her case. I think that's really bad advice. I think a lot of schools would be much better off if they supported students' need to connect, especially with adults. 

I think elementary schools generally do a pretty good job of nurturing connection and belonging among students, but then it's as if, when students enter middle school, that transition to seventh grade, things just-- the policies and the ways we structure our schools are peculiarly mismatched. For instance, students at that age really, as she says, want to connect with adults, but now they're circling through different teachers throughout the day. 

They like to mingle and talk to other kids, but the cardinal value of middle schools and high schools is often punctuality. There's a bell that rings to get to class — it's actually a ritual borrowed from the factory-- as well as divisive zero-sum policies. We're getting better in some contexts, like honor roles and limited slots in sports and extracurricular activities. 

These are all policy decisions and resource issues that undermine students' need to connect. So there are kind of existing aspects of many middle schools and high schools that seem almost uncannily mismatched to students' needs to connect. And so we could start there. We could start there by changing the schools in ways that promote connection. 

I love some of this old research on cooperative learning, the jigsaw classroom by Elliot Aronson, [INAUDIBLE] honors workshops in college settings, the pure instructional model in physics, where, basically, you harness students need to belong by having them learn in groups. So that's one simple thing that can be done. But there are many, many other little things that we can do to create greater connection. 

Two other barriers beyond the contextual aspects of schools that get in the way of nurturing belonging that I just want to call out, one is stereotypes. So too many of us unconsciously and, sometimes consciously, stereotype individuals as being troublemakers if they're in certain groups. And research by Jason Okonofua and Jennifer Eberhardt shows that teachers are way too quick to judge a Black student who misbehaves in class as a troublemaker and apply punitive decisions, like detention and suspension, to them in reaction relative to the same behavior when it happens from a white student. 

Those [INAUDIBLE] reactions actually really undermine belonging. They aggravate the underlying problem. Often, students are acting out because they don't feel connected. They feel like they don't belong, and then when we punish them or send them to detention or especially suspend them — not a good idea at all — aggravate the underlying belonging uncertainty that contributes to the problem. 

So stereotyping, and then lastly, the other causal culprit here is what my colleague Lee Ross calls the fundamental attribution error. We think that what causes misbehavior amongst students is something internal, their character or their ability, when, oftentimes, it's their circumstances or how they're perceiving them. And if we can better understand those circumstances, we can better support them. 

But instead, we're too quick to judge. We think that troublesome behavior reflects a troublesome student, and we act in a punitive way that just worsens the problem. So the fundamental attribution error, this tendency to think — to downplay the importance of students circumstances and to overemphasize the importance of character and ability is another culprit here to the crisis of belonging, at least in our school settings but probably beyond. 

JILL ANDERSON: As you're talking, I'm thinking about belonging as just a social thing, where it feels maybe, in some ways, like it is disconnected from the actual practice of teaching. But in reality, that is not true. You tend to think of belonging, especially in the teen years, as just this social entity that kids must feel if they're left out, but it's so much bigger than that. 

GEOFFREY COHEN: The teacher has a lot of power to create it. One of my graduate students, Joseph Moore, has done some studies where he's just asked people to remember their most important teacher. Often, it's from their teenage years, and yeah, one thing they single out about 50% of time is that, wow, they were really good teachers, great at instruction. 

But just as often, they say this teacher really made me feel like I belonged. Often, they'll say something like, they saw more in me than what I saw in myself and helped me to become that person, to reach a higher standard. And so I think teachers have so much capacity to create that sense of connection. 

Of course, the teacher isn't going to solve all the problems, and there are so many factors that contribute to kids not belonging. But teachers, like all of us in every encounter, have a power to create situations right here right now that help people to feel included. And you can always do a little bit better. You can always create a little bit more inclusion than there is. 

I love that old study by Rosenthal and Jacobson. I know it's controversial in educational circles, but I think it still stood the test of time and been replicated several times. All they do is to inform teachers that some of the students in their classrooms will be intellectual bloomers, but unbeknownst to the teachers, those students who are singled out as intellectual bloomers were just randomly chosen. Then they found, at the end of the year, that those earmarked students ended up getting higher IQ scores, gaining more in their IQ than the nonearmarked students, the students who had not been singled out as bloomers, which just says, wow, teachers can create classrooms that are more likely to draw out students' potential if they believe in them.   JILL ANDERSON: Wow. You've mentioned value affirmation exercises, and I want to dig a little bit more into that because I think it's really interesting stuff, and how those can combat stereotype threat, and be helpful for students before they take tests, when they're applying to college. What do value affirmation exercises look like in practice? 

GEOFFREY COHEN: Values affirmations often take the form of a worksheet or a packet of writing prompts, and the first page is a menu of values that present students with various different values, such as compassion, relationships, kindness, creativity. And students are asked to indicate which of the values on the list are most important to them. 

And then, on a second page of the activity, they write about why those values are important to them, why do they matter, and maybe some times in their lives in which they mattered. And we've done these studies. It comes out of research by Claude Steele on self-affirmation theory, and we've done these studies. I've read probably hundreds, maybe thousands of these essays, and they're almost always heartfelt. 

And oftentimes, the kids who have a history of poor performance or who feel less belonging in school, like as measured by our surveys, often have the most to say. It's actually really interesting. I just remember one kid who wrote about how taking care of his mother, who was sick, represented his values of family and connection. And he wasn't doing so well in school, but this activity brought to the fore something really powerful for him. 

So even though the activity seems really small, it's bringing out into the situation something really deep and powerful for the kids. And the writing activity is just one way to do this. I'm sure there's other ways to do this, like through conversations with kids, getting to know them, activities where kids get to talk about what's important to them or present it. 

But this is just one, and what it does is it helps students to feel whole in the classroom, to feel like their whole self is seen. And that's one of the key messages of belonging is you are seen here. This is a place where your whole self is recognized. 

And that's what we found is that little kind of activity, these values affirmations, can be very beneficial for students' motivation, sense of belonging, their persistence in school, their GPA. In one study, we found that just doing this activity three to five times throughout the year in their seventh grade increased the percentage of students who went on to a four-year college years later by 20 percentage points, which seemed to set in motion like, oh, my whole self is recognized here, I can feel at ease, perform better, and put them on a positive trajectory. 

That happens under certain circumstances as we talked about. So that's values affirmations, and in that case, it was especially effective for African Americans. They often work best for those students who are seen as outsiders, the ones who feel like their whole self isn't fully accepted here. These activities have the biggest impact for those groups. 

JILL ANDERSON: How do educators critique students work in a way that reinforces belonging? 

GEOFFREY COHEN: The second message of belonging-- so there's that message of you are seen. A second message is you have potential. You have the potential to succeed. I believe in you. There is more here that you're capable of than what you are currently manifesting. 

So that message, you have potential to succeed, maybe to contribute to a larger mission, is also key. And one of the ways that we can send that message is through the criticism that we give to students. In some research with Claude Steele and David Jager, Valerie Purdie-Greenaway, and others, we worked with college students and middle school students, and we just looked at that situation, where they get critical feedback. 

Now, that moment is a key moment because, when you get criticism, you can do one or two things. You can dismiss it, or respond defensively, or attribute it to bias on the part of the teacher. Or you can take it seriously and learn from it. 

And we're forever given the gift of criticism, and what we do with it is really key. So we looked at that moment. We had teachers in this one study — these were seventh grade teachers — give students critical feedback, serious critical feedback, on an essay that they had written. And we told the teachers just write whatever criticism or encouragement you would usually write on these essays that you give to students. 

Then for one-half of the students, we had the teacher append a note that said, I'm giving you this critical feedback because I have high standards and because I believe in your potential to reach them. And that was it. The other half of the students received a control note that said, I'm giving you this feedback so you have comments on your essay. 

And teachers were blind to condition. I'm going to spare you the methodological details, but they didn't know which students got which notes because they penned the notes in advance. And we, the researchers, tagged them to the essays. And then we looked at the impact. 

This little note had a big impact, especially for students who were from negatively stereotyped groups so, in this case, African-American or Black students. Among Black students who received the control note, only 17% revised their essay when given the opportunity. But for African-American students who got that note, that I believe in your potential, 71% revised their essay. 

JILL ANDERSON: Wow. 

GEOFFREY COHEN: More than quadrupling the percentage. It's so interesting to me because I think if you were a teacher and saw that 17% revision rate, you'd say, oh, what is going on with my students? Are they just under motivated? 

We would commit the fundamental attribution error. We think there's something lacking in them. But what we would miss is our power to create a situation where what's inside them is more likely to come out into the situation, and here, just took a little note, saying, I believe in your potential. 

Not only that, these little things can have big domino effects under some circumstances. Years later, we found that the students who got that wise feedback note about five or six years later, they got in less trouble in the next academic year. Getting in less trouble, they were on a better academic trajectory, and they were more likely to make it into college compared with those students who... Black students who got the control note. 

So as teachers, we have power that we often don't even see because we don't know how our words set in motion these virtuous, sometimes vicious, cycles, leading students to destinations that we often never hear about. But in this study, we quantified that impact, conveying that message at a key formative moment in student's development, the seventh grade, the transition to middle school, had these ripple effects. You have potential led them to show grit, become more gritty, and become more successful over the long term. 

JILL ANDERSON: That's so unbelievable, huge. 

GEOFFREY COHEN: I just find it incredibly inspirational. We all have this power to make things a little bit better. And I don't want to be pollyannaish. I'm not saying that this is the whole solution. 

And these kinds of activities, these practices, they have effects only under certain circumstances. It's key that, first and foremost, there are resources for learning. Students are getting critical feedback. They're in a pretty good school. We're looking at a relatively decent functioning school. 

And under those circumstances, when there are real opportunities to learn, yeah, just make me feel a little better, a little more believed in, and it's like a chain reaction that starts building on itself over time. I do want to make it really clear, though, that, yeah, if those resources are lacking, like if a student really doesn't know how to spell, for instance, or if there's no resources for learning how to spell, then there's no message that's going to change that reality. 

JILL ANDERSON: One area that's always challenging is the teenage years. We've already talked about the growing issue of mental health with teens and young people. How can we better support teens through these transitions in their life to make sure that they feel connected and feel like they belong? 

GEOFFREY COHEN: One of the things I do with my own kids is just to convey that message I refer to as a third message of belonging, you are not alone here. We have your back. So there's three messages of belonging we discuss here. 

One is you are seen. The second is you have potential. And the third and final one is you're not alone. You're not alone. We're here for you, and that message is just so important, especially when people are going through challenges. 

I don't know if you felt this, but there's been times in my life, where, wow, man, I don't know if I can get through this. And then I'll go talk to a friend or even someone I don't even know that well and have a pretty good conversation. I suddenly feel energized and revitalized, at least a little bit. Even though they don't solve the problem, just feel like having someone at my back gives me a higher perch from which to view the challenge. I feel lifted. 

So one of the things I did with my kids is to just make it clear I'm here. If there's a problem, I want to know about it. And I think too often with teenagers we're talking at them rather than with them, and so I just try to be available. That's the first and foremost, and if they know you're available, the key impact of that is then they come to you later when the problems get more significant. 

You are there. You're available without judgment. Just listening and being available is really, really key. I do think that the focus on disciplining teenagers gets in the way of this. We hear about some troublesome behavior they've engaged in. 

I remember my kid once did something regrettable, and we were talking about it. I was like, well, why did you do that? And the urge to discipline him it was so great. I just wanted to chastise him.  But we had a discussion, and it became clear it was about needing to fit in. the reason he did this. And he said something that stuck with me. He's like, yeah, sometimes I care more about my ego than about myself. 

And I was like, yeah, that's wisdom. And so I think having those kinds of conversations are really key. There's some nice research showing that, when you put teenagers in the MRI and you have them listen to audio files of their mother lecturing at them, their brains basically shut down. [LAUGHS] Not totally shut down, but the regions associated with perspective taking and empathy are less activated, as if they're distancing themselves. 

I, instead, talk with them, and there's a lot of research suggesting that this is possible. Judy Harackiewicz and her lab has some wonderful research applying this in the domain of academic achievement in STEM, where they simply train parents to have conversations with their teenagers about science and their daily lives, how it relates to technology, and cell phones, and social media. 

They have conversations. So rather than just kind of telling them, telling their kids how science is important, they have conversations that help kids to reach that conclusion for themselves. And they find that increases kids performance and interest in science and even, I think, years later, increases their likelihood, as I recall, majoring in STEM in college. As I recall, there was a bit of evidence of that. 

So talking with kids, doing what Nick Epley calls — and Juliana Schroeder call perspective getting. Getting people's perspective. I want to know what your situation is. Tell me about it. 

JILL ANDERSON: What does it mean to truly belong? 

GEOFFREY COHEN: What it means to truly belong is to be accepted for who you are. I think that is true, and that's something we're always searching for. We feel it at that place called home, which is a psychological experience more than a brick-and-mortar place. It is that feeling of we are accepted, fully accepted, for who we are. 

And of course, you can never attain that perfectly, but you can get a little bit closer. And I feel as though those places, such as middle schools, and high schools, and colleges, would-- a lot of the problems, they wouldn't disappear, but they would subside a bit if people felt more at home. 

I remember that debacle at Yale University a number of students were upset about. There's was a suggestion that students not wear any costumes that were racially or culturally offensive. I don't want to get into too many details, but there was a big brouhaha, a big conflict, confrontation between faculty and students. 

At the end of a big yelling match, one student just cried out, this isn't about freedom of speech. Of course, freedom of speech is important. Absolutely. She said, it's about creating a home. It's about creating a home. 

And I think once people feel at home, then they're far more venturesome, far more able to sit at the table, and have free speech, and talk, and embrace different perspectives. But if that's not there, then it leads to all kinds of sensitivities and vulnerabilities that get in the way of creating a truly inclusive place, institution, community, even society. 

JILL ANDERSON: Right. Well, thank you so much, Geoff, this is really amazing and insightful. 

GEOFFREY COHEN: Thank you so much, Jill. It was delightful to talk with you. 

JILL ANDERSON: Geoff Cohen is a social psychologist and professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. He's the author of Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides . I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast, produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening. 

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By Dr. Kelly-Ann Allen and Associate Professor Peggy Kern

Humans are social creatures. Most people have a deep desire to connect with others—not just as peers, co-workers, acquaintances, or Facebook “friends,” but deeply and intimately. We long to feel valued and supported. We long to share our thoughts, emotions, and life with others. And we long to feel needed by others. These desires reflect a fundamental human need to not only be in the physical or digital presence of others but also to belong with them.

Studies find that a sense of belonging is associated with numerous beneficial outcomes, whereas a broken sense of belonging increases the risk for psychological and physical dysfunction. Where does belonging come from, how does it unfold over life, and what impact does it have at different stages of our lives?

Early Roots of Belonging

From an evolutionary perspective, there are clear advantages to connecting with others. Tribal bonding increased the probability of finding food, provided protection from predators, and enabled reproduction.

The innate motivation for connection is deeply embedded in our biological makeup. Belonging begins before birth, through the psychophysiological connection that occurs between the mother and growing embryo. Parents who have experienced the loss of a baby or the inability to conceive can testify to the connection between parent and child and the sometimes unimaginable pain that comes with the absence of this bond.

After birth, infants could not survive without the care of parents or caregivers. Evidence for social cognition can be found as early as two weeks. From six to eight weeks, parents generally observe social behavior in their new infants—smiling, reciprocal verbal exchanges, and joint attention . These early social signs suggest a desire to connect with others and form social relationships. In cases where these early social milestones do not occur, it increases the risk of poor social relationships in childhood .

Sadly, the starkest evidence for our need to connect in infancy comes from studies on trauma and disorganized attachment . Poor attachments during early childhood increase the risk for long-term negative outcomes, including poor social skills, lack of emotional regulation and coping skills, and increased risk of mental health issues.

Belonging in Childhood

In early childhood, children begin to develop prosocial behaviors and an understanding of the self in relation to others. From 14 to 18 months, children begin to engage in helping behavior . Pre-schoolers begin to follow social norms and model their behaviors after caretakers, peers, and others they observe, signally a need to belong and feel included.

During this age, developmental disruptions can impact the extent to which social bonds are successfully created. The social difficulties experienced by individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), for example, do not necessarily indicate an unwillingness to connect, but rather a lack of understanding and ability to use the complex and often nuanced social rules that are often taken for granted.

The early years are important for developing social skills that help buffer losses throughout life. Focusing on belonging during the early years and at school provides a proactive approach towards fostering positive transitions into adulthood and beyond.

Typical developing children begin to develop an understanding of the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of others around age 5. This builds a foundation for empathy, acceptance, and tolerance of others. Children are often quick to understand peer approval and inclusion once they start school.

Sadly, social patterns of rejection can become entrenched early. Schools are an important sphere of belonging for children at this stage. Among the most important relationships to emerge outside of the home during childhood include those with peers and those with teachers.

Adolescence

From late childhood through adolescence, peer groups increasingly become a dominant part of life, providing opportunities for belonging and social identity , but also the risk of rejection and ostracism. Teachers play a critical role in supporting a sense of belonging and connection to learning. Although conflict with parents tends to increase, parents provide an important foundation and source of support.

The adolescent brain undergoes significant changes, which intersect with the developing sense of one’s identity. Social isolation and exclusion experienced in childhood and adolescence can affect psychosocial adjustment and transitions into adulthood.

Belonging in Adulthood

Across adulthood, relationships play an important role in physical and mental health, although the sources of belonging often become disrupted, shift, and evolve. Societal changes; shifting social roles, networks, and expectations; and increased responsibilities influence the way we form bonds and friendships.

The desire for intimacy increases and romantic relationships are common. For many, roles shift from being part of one’s family of origin to starting and raising one’s own family. For parents, a tug of war can occur between work pressures and family life. Friend and social groups evolve from connecting around common social interests to connecting around common familial interests.

Disruptions in social patterns (e.g., trauma, insecure attachment, victimization, ostracism) that occurred through childhood and adolescence can re-emerge, straining relationships and increasing the risk for poor mental health.

For many, work becomes an important source of belonging with others, through shared interests with colleagues, a sense of purpose found in one’s work, and providing social interactions with others. Transition through unemployment, retirement , or relocation can create a loss of relationships and shift perceptions of the self in relation to others. People may experience a changing social identity in adulthood and question where they belong and with whom they belong.

A sense of belonging remains important in older age. Social relationships support healthy aging, helping to buffer feelings of loneliness, isolation, and related negative outcomes; providing emotional and instrumental social support; and offering a source of meaning and purpose.

Elderly individuals often have developed a greater appreciation of social connections. Friends and family remain very important, and social groups can provide a source of connection. But when these bonds erode, it can be difficult for this age group to develop new social connections.

Loneliness and social isolation can be common themes at this life stage. The risk of disease, disability, and death of oneself and others can disrupt prior connections. Physical and cognitive limitations can prevent and limit social connections. Many older adults are relegated to residential care, with little effort to help them connect with their facility. A natural loss of friendships at this age be compound feelings of isolation.

Feeling a sense of belonging during older age provides a sense of purpose, and positively relates to longer, healthier lives. Creating a public understanding of the importance of human connection at all ages and supporting strategies that foster connection helps support healthy aging across life.

Human connections are important across the lifespan. They begin early, constantly evolving, and extend through old age. They are impacted internally through human development, externally through changing social landscapes, and are dynamically impacted by interactions with and responses from others.

About the co-author, Dr. Peggy Kern

Dr. Peggy (Margaret) Kern is an associate professor at the Centre for Positive Psychology at the University of Melbourne’s Graduate School of Education . Originally trained in social, personality , and developmental psychology, Dr. Kern received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Arizona State University, a Master's and Ph.D. in social/personality psychology from the University of California, Riverside, and postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research is collaborative in nature and draws on a variety of methodologies, including big data, integrative data analysis, and mixed methods to examine questions around who thrives in life and why, including: (a) understanding and measuring healthy functioning, (b) identifying individual and social factors impacting life trajectories, and (c) systems informed approaches to well-being. You can find out more about Dr. Kern’s work at www.peggykern.org .

Kelly-Ann Allen, Ph.D., FAPS, is a senior lecturer at Monash University, and a Fellow of the College of Educational and Developmental Psychologists.

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Home > STUDENT > THESIS > 1427

Master's Theses and Capstones

Belonging: essays.

Wesley Hood , University of New Hampshire, Durham

Date of Award

Winter 2020

Project Type

Program or major, degree name.

Master of Fine Arts

First Advisor

Susan Hertz

Second Advisor

Jaed Coffin

Third Advisor

Melinda White

This thesis is a collection of essays that tackle, at their heart, what it means to “belong.” They are raw, honest, relatable to those who too, like the narrator, question what it means to “Belong.” Each essay progressively brings to light and questions what “belonging” truly is, and “what it means to belong.” Through the viewpoint of our narrator, each essay takes on a different topic of life and contemplates what belonging means in relation to those things – in particular: masculinity, abuse, place, boxing, voice, queerness, and so on.

This collection, the culmination of nearly two years work, hopes to answer, and help others through their personal struggles of sense of belonging, through contemplation on the page.

Recommended Citation

Hood, Wesley, "Belonging: Essays" (2020). Master's Theses and Capstones . 1427. https://scholars.unh.edu/thesis/1427

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Do You Feel Like You Belong?

People have a natural need to connect and belong. Belonging makes a person feel good and accepted. A sense of belonging, particularly in schools, is important for young people. However, many students do not feel that they belong at their schools. This feeling may only be temporary and can change at any time. Parents, teachers, and other students have vital roles in improving young people’s sense of belonging. Other factors that also influence a young person’s sense of belonging in school are personal characteristics, mental health, and academic motivation.

We All Want to Belong

Imagine for just 1 minute that you have found yourself in a room, on your own. There are no windows, there is no furniture, and there are certainly no people. The room is stripped down to nothing. The floor is exposed, the walls are bare. There is nothing in the room but you and the clothes you are wearing. You stop whatever you are doing and try to clear your mind. What is the first thing you think about?

Chances are you think about someone you know—another person. That is because, when we are seemingly at rest, our brains work in the same way they do when we are engaged in interacting with other people. This occurrence is explained by something called the default mode network [ 1 ]. The default mode network is a large brain network that becomes active when our brains are not focused on anything in particular. Researchers now understand that the default mode network can still be active even when we are engaged in other tasks. It enables us to think about others, our self, and our past or future. The default mode network reflects our need to belong and interact with others.

Even though we sometimes want to be alone, most of us strive to connect with other people—to fit in and to belong. Have you ever eaten something you did not like, to avoid offending someone? Perhaps it was your Nana’s home-cooked tuna mornay? Have you ever stopped yourself from doing something because you knew that it would be met with judgment or disapproval? Like singing a favorite song out loud when it came through the speakers at your local supermarket? Have you ever been unsure about a particular situation and looked around the room to see what other people were doing? Perhaps it was an activity at school or in a new country you traveled to? The reason why you might have decided to “go with the flow” and hide your real feelings or wants is because of the natural urge to belong and fit in.

What Is Belonging?

A sense of belonging has been described as one of our most important needs [ 2 ]. In fact, belonging means that you feel accepted, included, or a part of something else. People can feel like they belong to a school, a friendship, a sporting group, or even a classroom [ 3 ]. And we know two things: belonging feels good, but we tend not to realize this until we miss it. But what does belonging feel like, exactly? It is hard to say, but we know that the feeling of not belonging can feel like physical pain for some people, like jamming your thumb in a car door or burning your finger on a hot stove [ 4 ]. Not belonging can be linked to feelings of worthlessness, self-doubt, isolation, and sadness. It can affect your relationships with others and even your grades. Belonging is important and can be experienced differently by different people. Because many young people around the world attend school, schools are a primary place for most young people to feel a sense of belonging [ 5 ].

Many Students Do Not Feel Like They Belong at Their Schools

If you feel like you do not belong, you are not alone. In fact, if you look around the average classroom, at least one in every three students would not feel a sense of belonging [ 6 ]. When some researchers asked students if they recently felt like they belonged at their schools, 29% of them said they did not feel that way, and this percentage has been steadily increasing since 2003 ( Figure 1 ). Feelings of not belonging and loneliness are a part of the spectrum of human emotions. There is nothing wrong with feeling these things. We all move through different waves of belonging, especially at school. Some days we may feel more connected than others. Some days we may feel lonelier than others. Your feelings of belonging may sometimes be high, and sometimes be low, and sometimes they may fall somewhere in between. Belonging is a unique experience and my own research has found that there are a lot of things that can influence it [ 7 ]. The main point here, however, is that feelings of not belonging can be temporary. They can be changed.

• Figure 1 - Percentages of students who do not feel a sense of school belonging for the years 2003, 2012, 2015, and 2018.
• More and more students are not feeling like they belong in school, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [ 6 ].

The Importance of Belonging

When students feel that they belong, they are more likely to get good grades and otherwise perform well in school. A feeling of belonging also positively affects students’ psychosocial functioning , meaning their ability to perform daily activities and interact with people around them. Research has found that a sense of belonging is an important factor in students’ motivation, and how they cope and learn in school. A feeling of belonging fosters positive attitudes toward learning, improves well-being , and improves your confidence in your ability to do well in school. Additionally, a high sense of belonging is related to less misconduct in school and more positive social relationships [ 7 ].

Everyone Has a Role in Helping Other People to Belong

There are lots of reasons why other people may not feel like they belong to your group of friends, to your school, or to another group you may be involved in. It is important to remember that “belongingness can be almost as compelling as the need for food” [ 2 ]. That means that nearly everyone you know will want to be included and feel a sense of belonging—even your teachers, parents, and caregivers.

What Can You Do to Help Others Belong?

Research has found that there are many things that can influence a sense of belonging for young people at school and these things can be found within school and outside of school ( Figure 2 ). Some of the most important factors stem from the relationships young people have with parents, teachers, and other students. Building strong and healthy relationships with the core people in your life will help create a sense of belonging. Young people who feel close to and supported by their friends, in terms of both schoolwork and personal issues, are more likely to feel like they belong at school. One of the most powerful predictors of school belonging is teachers. When young people feel liked and cared for by teachers, and think their teachers are likable and fair, they are more likely to report feelings of school belonging. Young people with parents who support them at school, who have positive conversations with their kids about school, and who take an interest in their kids’ education have also been found to feel high levels of school belonging. Parents also have a role to play in helping their kids maintain regular school attendance and participate in school-sanctioned events, which also helps kids have good feelings about school.

• Figure 2 - Rainbow model of school belonging.
• There are many factors that can influence a young person’s sense of belonging, including their personality, social groups and family, school, local community, natural environment, culture, and even the broader issues surrounding the planet, such as climate change. This figure shows that these influential factors can blend together, much like the colors of a rainbow. This figure also shows that a young person’s sense of belonging can waiver between high and low. Adapted from Allen and Kern [ 8 ].

Interestingly though, it is not just other people who help with belonging. You can help with your own sense of belonging as well! Young people who are resilient (able to bounce back from problems), who can cope well with challenges and stress, and who are flexible and adaptable are in a good position to feel a sense of belonging. Young people who are happy and have good mental health are more likely to feel like they belong. And there is one more thing that might surprise you. Those students who are motivated at school, who see a purpose and value in learning, and who have good study habits also feel like they belong at school. To summarize, peers, teachers, parents, mental health, personal characteristics , and academic motivation are some of the building blocks of strong school belonging that can be found in the scientific literature. As I am sure you will agree, we can see from these findings that there are many things that can be done to help improve the sense of belonging for young people.

What Can Schools Do to Increase a Sense of School Belonging in Students?

We know from our own research that most schools want their students to feel a sense of belonging [ 7 ]. Some schools have even made great strides to create an improved sense of belonging in young people. However, there is little research evidence available that has examined which programs and interventions are available to schools and whether they work. We do know that teachers who take an interest in getting to know their students, who find similarities with their students, and who are available to support students personally and academically are doing a number of things to support a sense of belonging in their classrooms ( Figure 3 ). Interestingly, a teacher’s sense of belonging in school has also been found to predict a student’s sense of belonging in school. School leaders who take an interest in the staff’s feelings of belonging are also helping students to belong. Creating a culture of belonging is therefore something that everybody has a role in.

• Figure 3 - Cookies! Even the adult students in my classes need a reminder that they belong.
• This cookie was made using a famous quote by Brené Brown.

Sense of Belonging : ↑ Feeling of being accepted, included, and part of something.

Psychosocial Functioning : ↑ Ability to perform daily activities and interact with other people.

Well-being : ↑ Refers to the experience of being healthy, happy, and comfortable.

School Belonging : ↑ A sense of affiliation to school that may also involve teachers and peers.

Mental Health : ↑ A state of mental well-being that relates to how a person can cope with stress and be productive.

Personal Characteristics : ↑ Reflects a person’s individual traits, characteristics, and skills.

Academic Motivation : ↑ Desire to perform well in school.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Kathryn Kallady for her illustration of the Rainbow Model of School Belonging.

[1] ↑ Li, W., Mai, X., and Liu, C. 2014. The default mode network and social understanding of others: what do brain connectivity studies tell us. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8:74. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00074

[2] ↑ Baumeister, R. F., and Leary, M. R. 1995. The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychol. Bull. 117:497–529.

[3] ↑ Allen, K.-A. 2020. Psychology of Belonging . Abingdon: Routledge.

[4] ↑ Kawamoto, T. 2017. What happens in your mind and brain when you are excluded from a social activity? Front. Young Minds 5:46. doi: 10.3389/frym.2017.00046

[5] ↑ Allen, K., Kern, M. L., Vella-Brodrick, D., Hattie, J., and Waters, L. 2018. What schools need to know about fostering school belonging: a meta-analysis. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 30:1–34. doi: 10.1007/s10648-016-9389-8

[6] ↑ Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2019. PISA 2018 Results (Volume III): What School Life Means for Students’ Lives . Paris: OECD. Available online at: https://www.oecd.org/publications/pisa-2018-results-volume-iii-acd78851-en.htm

[7] ↑ Allen, K.-A., Kern, M. L., Vella-Brodrick, D., 2018. Understanding the priorities of Australian secondary schools through an analysis of their mission and vision statements. Educ. Admin. Q. 54:249–74. doi: 10.1177/0013161X18758655

[8] ↑ Allen, K.-A., and Kern, P. 2019. Boosting School Belonging in Adolescents: Interventions for Teachers and Mental Health Professionals . Abingdon: Routledge.

The Need to Belong Essay

Introduction.

The need to belong to a given social or religious grouping is an innate desire of humanity since creation for it was not good for Adam to live alone, and thus it is not good for anyone to live alone.

Human beings need to identify with certain social groupings and become active members for the satisfaction of the overwhelming need of belongingness. Since human needs according to Abraham Maslow follow hierarchy in satisfaction, the need to belong falls under third category and if not satisfied, no one can satisfy the subsequent needs of self-esteem and self-actualization

Human being is a social being with a strong sense of belongingness. The need to belong is a strong human desire that compels someone to identify with certain social groups and become primary members, and thus satisfaction of their needs. Abraham Maslow in his theory of human needs suggested that, human beings have hierarchy of needs and the need to belong falls under the third group of needs. The need to belong to a given social group and desire to experience love is a source of motivation, which encourages one to attain satisfaction in life.

According to Elkin (2008), “all human beings need a certain minimum quantity of regular, satisfying, social interactions … inability to meet this need results into loneliness, mental distress, and a strong desire to form new relationships” (p.4). Therefore, the need to belong is a basic social need that human beings are constantly striving to achieve in order to attain good mental, emotional, spiritual, and social health. Nevertheless, how does the need to belong relate to the biblical principles?

The need to belong is an inherent human desire to identify and associate with a given social group that shares common values and beliefs, and can satisfy the desired needs of the members. People can express their desire to belong by “attending sports events together, visiting one another, sharing a meal together, or going out as a group to watch a movie … joining with others in groups remains a universally observed characteristics of the humans across societies” (Forsyth, 2009, p. 59).

Human beings have inherent social characteristics in that even the biblical creation story states that, after God had created Adam in the Garden of Eden, He realized that something was amiss and created Eve for it was not good for Adam to live alone without a partner or a helper. Even today, it is not good for anyone to live in isolation and that is why there is the need of belonging burning in people’s hearts continually.

Associating or being part of a certain group that satisfy social needs have profound benefits to the well being of humanity. People belong to certain groups of their choice to experience love, to pour their hearts out, to receive advice, and enjoy the warmth of unity. In the bible, King David marveled at human belongingness saying that, “behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity” (Psalms 133: 1, King James Version).

The unity of humanity is an expression of their sense of belongingness. The need to belong has great social, psychological, and spiritual benefits to humanity. Since it is not good for any person to live alone, the strong desire that is inherent in human beings always compels people to strive and belong to certain groups and that is why Christians meet often to pray together and encourage one another.

The primary reason of joining social or religious groups is to satisfy the need to belong. Since the need to belong is one of the basic human needs as classified by Abraham Maslow, it becomes difficult for someone to attain any significant level of self-esteem and self-actualization without first satisfying the need of belongingness.

Elkin argues that all people long to belong to certain groups that seem to have common values and beliefs with their desired needs, but “we do not satisfy the need to belong when we feel rejected by the groups we want to join, and we can suffer deep depression, and even decide life is not worth living” (2008, p. 12). This proves that the need to belong is an innate desire and indispensable in our daily living.

Elkin, D. (2008). The Need to Belong . The Journal of Psychology , 2(6), 1-22.

Forsyth, D. (2009). Group Dynamics (5 th Ed.). New York: Cengage Learning. King James Version. The Bible

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Between Worlds: Essays on Culture and Belonging Kindle Edition

• Print length 240 pages
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About the author

Marilyn gardner.

Marilyn Gardner was raised in Pakistan and went on to raise her own five children in Pakistan and Egypt before moving to the Boston area. She is the author of Between Worlds, (2014 Doorlight Publications) and Worlds Apart: A Third Culture Kid's Journey (2018 Doorlight Publications.) Both books resonate with those both inside and outside their passport countries who know the joys and challenges of living between two or more, often conflicting worlds.

In Worlds Apart, Marilyn traces a journey of growing faith and emerging identity in a small missionary community. From the close quarters of boarding school, to the strangeness of furloughs in her parents' native Massachusetts, this honest portrayal of a young girl's struggles with faith, friendship, and belonging will resonate deeply with a wide range of readers.

Between Worlds is a set of essays that explore the rootlessness and grief as well as the unexpected moments of humor and joy that are a part of living between two worlds. Between Worlds charts a journey between the cultures of East and West, the comfort of being surrounded by loved ones and familiar places, and the loneliness of not belonging. "Every one of us has been at some point between two worlds, be they faith and loss of faith, joy and sorrow, birth and death. Between Worlds is a luminous guide for connecting---and healing---worlds." - Cathy Romeo, co-author, Ended Beginnings: Healing Childbearing Losses

Marilyn's work also appears in What a Woman is Worth (Civitas Press, April 1,2014) Plough Quarterly, Fathom Magazine, and Among Worlds magazine. Marilyn has lived as an adult in Pakistan, Egypt, the United States, and most recently the Kurdish region of Iraq. She is the creator of the popular blog Communicating Across Boundaries and a contributor and administrator for A Life Overseas Blog.

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Essay on Belonging to a Community

Students are often asked to write an essay on Belonging to a Community in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Belonging to a Community

Understanding community.

A community is a group of people sharing common interests, values, or goals. It can be as small as a family or as large as a nation.

The Importance of Community

Being part of a community gives us a sense of belonging. It provides support, helps us learn from each other, and makes us feel valued.

Our Role in the Community

Each member plays a unique role in the community. We contribute to its growth, share responsibilities, and work together to solve problems.

Benefits of Community

Communities encourage cooperation and friendship. They offer safety, help us develop essential skills, and promote positive values.

In conclusion, being part of a community is enriching and rewarding. It fosters unity, growth, and a sense of belonging.

250 Words Essay on Belonging to a Community

Introduction.

Belonging to a community is an integral part of human existence. It shapes our identity, influences our behavior, and provides a sense of belonging.

The Essence of Community

A community is not merely a group of individuals living in proximity. It is a complex network of relationships, shared values, and common goals. It provides a sense of identity, security, and shared purpose.

Communities and Identity

Identity is deeply intertwined with the community. The community shapes our beliefs, norms, and behaviors. It influences our worldview and our sense of self. Through our community, we define who we are and how we relate to the world.

Communities as Support Systems

Communities act as vital support systems. They provide emotional, social, and sometimes financial support. They act as a safety net, helping individuals during times of crisis and need.

The Power of Belonging

Belonging to a community provides a sense of connectedness and belonging. This sense of belonging is vital for our mental and emotional well-being. It gives us a sense of purpose and meaning, fostering a sense of happiness and fulfillment.

In conclusion, belonging to a community is fundamental to our existence. It shapes our identity, provides support, and fosters a sense of belonging. It is a powerful force that shapes our lives in profound ways.

500 Words Essay on Belonging to a Community

Belonging to a community is an inherent part of human existence. It is through communities that individuals find their identity, learn values, and gain a sense of purpose. The concept of community extends beyond geographical boundaries, encompassing shared interests, beliefs, and values. This essay explores the importance of belonging to a community, its impact on individual and collective growth, and the challenges faced in this digital age.

Communities are social constructs that provide a sense of belonging, security, and identity. They are a source of shared values, traditions, and norms that shape our worldview and influence our actions. The feeling of belonging to a community instills a sense of security and assurance, fostering emotional well-being and resilience. It is this sense of belonging that drives social cohesion, encouraging cooperation and collaboration towards common goals.

Community and Individual Growth

Belonging to a community fuels individual growth in myriad ways. It provides a platform for learning, sharing experiences, and developing social skills. It fosters empathy, understanding, and respect for diversity, essential for personal development and social harmony. Moreover, communities offer a sense of purpose and meaning, promoting mental health and overall well-being. They provide opportunities for leadership, initiative, and creativity, fostering personal growth and self-fulfillment.

Community and Collective Growth

On a larger scale, communities play a pivotal role in societal development and progress. They facilitate collective action, enabling the pooling of resources and efforts to address common challenges. Communities serve as a catalyst for social change, fostering innovation and progress. They are the bedrock of democracy, promoting civic participation and ensuring that diverse voices are heard and respected.

Challenges in the Digital Age

While the digital age has facilitated the formation of global communities, it also poses unique challenges. The proliferation of online communities can lead to echo chambers, reinforcing existing biases and limiting exposure to diverse perspectives. Furthermore, the digital divide threatens to exclude those without access to technology, exacerbating social inequalities. Despite these challenges, the digital age also presents opportunities for fostering inclusive, diverse, and vibrant communities.

In conclusion, belonging to a community is integral to our identity, growth, and well-being. While the nature of communities is evolving in the digital age, their essence remains the same: they provide a sense of belonging, a platform for collective action, and a source of shared values and norms. Amidst the challenges of the digital age, it is crucial to foster inclusive and diverse communities that promote individual and collective growth, social cohesion, and social justice.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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• Essay on Beggars Can’t be Choosers
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Analysis: How a Culture Shift in the Israeli Military Helps Explain Gaza’s Death Toll

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How a Culture Shift in the Israeli Military Helps Explain Gaza’s Death Toll

An execution, a prosecution, and then a backlash..

The Israeli attack on a humanitarian convoy in Gaza in early April that killed seven aid workers with the U.S.-based aid group World Central Kitchen has ignited a fierce global backlash against Israel’s policies of engagement in the territory. The attack involved the successive firing of three missiles at three vehicles, driven by suspicions of a Hamas combatant’s presence within the convoy, according to reports .

In Israel, the event is being portrayed as an accident, “a grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification, errors in decision-making, and an attack contrary to the Standard Operating Procedures,” as the Israeli military’s investigation team concluded . In humanitarian circles, it is seen as evidence of a culture that “treats Gaza as a free-fire zone with total impunity for gross attacks on civilians,” as Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International who served in both the Obama and Biden administrations, has suggested .

But for the discussion to be useful, it should progress beyond these immediate interpretations to examine the deeper cultural patterns underlying such incidents. Most crucially, it must scrutinize the shift in military policy and ethos that can be traced back to the Elor Azaria affair of 2016-17. Azaria was an Israeli conscript who was captured on video executing a wounded and immobilized Palestinian assailant in Hebron. The Israeli military prosecuted Azaria for manslaughter and sentenced him to 18 months in prison.

While the case demonstrated the military’s commitment to its own ethical codes, it also sparked widespread protests from right-wing factions and a general backlash against military procedures. The army was accused of failing to support Azaria and creating a culture in which soldiers would hesitate to use force against Palestinian militants. To counter this claim, and from that point forward, the military began to announce the number of Palestinian fighters killed in its operations, demonstrating that its forces did not hesitate to engage.

Under the leadership of the military’s chief of staff, Aviv Kochavi, from 2019 to 2023, the killing-based criteria were reinforced. Kochavi’s goal was to remake the army into a “ lethal, efficient, and innovative ” fighting force—in other words, a death-generating army. He promoted this vision by enhancing the precision of weapon systems, improving the coordination between forces and intelligence, and increasing the rate of fire.

Kochavi’s directive for field commanders to assess, at the end of each combat phase, the number of enemy forces killed and objectives destroyed—rather than solely focusing on territorial conquest—signified a shift toward necrotactics , where the primary goal of military engagement is killing the enemy. Killing becomes not just an outcome of warfare but its principal aim.

The approach of using body counts as a metric of success has notably intensified during the current war. Soon after the Oct. 7 attack, the Israeli military began consistently reporting the number of Hamas fighters killed, echoing the way U.S. generals announced enemy fatalities during the Vietnam War—a scenario where traditional metrics for evaluating combat success are elusive, thus making the body count, rather than the strategic objectives achieved, the primary indicator of success. This was particularly evident as the Israeli death toll ticked up and the stated objective of dismantling Hamas appeared increasingly unattainable.

In fact, the military appears to have established a quantitative goal from the outset. According to the journalist Yuval Abraham in +972 Magazine , the Israeli army developed an artificial intelligence-based program named Lavender, designed to identify targets for assassination. This system tagged approximately 37,000 Palestinians in Gaza as suspected militants, marking their residences (and therefore their families as well) for potential airstrikes. The deployment of Lavender contributed to the deaths of around 15,000 Palestinians in the war’s first six weeks, according to the report.

By setting a numerical target, the Israeli military shifted from viewing outcomes as a measure of progress—like neutralizing the threat posed to Israel from Gaza—to making body counts the main standard. The trend has been reinforced by a pervasive adoption of the language of killing among military commanders. “Now we will go forward and kill them all,” Brig. Gen. Roman Goffman was quoted as saying just before the ground operation in Gaza began, in just one prominent example.

As Israel faces an impasse in Gaza, lacking a politically articulated exit strategy, the reliance on killing and its quantification as a metric for success becomes increasingly pronounced, leading to the erosion of operational constraints. This shift was evident in the recent raid at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which inflicted extensive damage to Gaza’s most crucial health care infrastructure. The hunt for Hamas members has, to a significant degree, become an end in itself, complicating the dynamics of the conflict and placing military objectives above political resolutions.

This shift provides some context for the tragic killing of the aid convoy team—though it makes it no less disturbing. Once one or two armed individuals were spotted in the convoy, their neutralization became a top priority, apparently eclipsing overarching strategic considerations—factors that should have been incorporated at the tactical level. Fundamentally, such a situation warranted an approach aimed at preventing civilian casualties, especially along a deconflicted route designated for humanitarian aid delivery and when no direct threat was posed to Israeli troops. Moreover, the overarching political rationale should have prioritized safeguarding humanitarian missions, given the potential repercussions for Israel’s global standing amid the crisis in Gaza.

Yet the events unfolded with a seeming obsession for lethal action, as vividly illustrated by reporting in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz : Upon spotting a gunman or two, Israeli forces targeted three successive vehicles from the air. After the first one was hit, passengers moved to a second vehicle, which was then struck by a missile. And when the wounded were transferred to a third vehicle, it too was fired on. This appears to be a case of obsessive kill confirmation, overshadowing the principles of necessity, proportionality, and the sanctity of civilian life.

Hence, the fundamental issue extends beyond merely revising the rules of engagement or monitoring their application more closely, as such measures alone would prove inadequate to prevent future incidents. The problem also transcends the flawed assumption that every part of Gaza can be considered a free-fire zone where engaging Palestinian militants indiscriminately is justified. What is crucial is dismantling the prevailing culture that equates killing with military success.

Yagil Levy is a professor of political sociology and public policy at the Open University of Israel. His most recent book in English is:  Whose Life Is Worth More? Hierarchies of Risk and Death in Contemporary Wars.

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Garrett West ’18 to Join Yale Law School Faculty

Dean Heather K. Gerken has announced that Garrett West ’18 will be joining the Yale Law School faculty as an Associate Professor of Law on July 1, 2024.

West’s scholarly interests include torts, remedies, federal courts, and administrative law. His scholarship focuses on the uses of private law theory in public law and on the problems of constitutional interpretation and doctrinal coherence through constitutional change. His work has been or will be published in the Yale Law Journal , Virginia Law Review , Wisconsin Law Review , and Administrative Law Review , exploring topics such as constitutional torts, the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, and contempt of Congress.

“Garrett has produced an astonishing amount of insightful scholarship while working full-time as a lawyer, and every paper showcases his creativity and brilliance,” said Dean Heather K. Gerken. “His presence on the faculty will enrich our conversation and enhance our intellectual life.” 

West received his B.A. from Hillsdale College in 2015 and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 2018, where he served as Articles and Essays Editor on the Yale Law Journal and as Submissions Editor for the Yale Journal on Regulation . During law school, West received the Thomas I. Emerson Prize in 2017 and 2018, awarded annually to a distinguished student paper on legislation. 

After law school, West clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Judge Thomas B. Griffith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Justice Samuel Alito ’75 of the U.S. Supreme Court.

West is currently an associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, where he is a member of the firm’s Supreme Court & Appellate Litigation Group.

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Responsible marketing: wear your ethics on your sleeve.

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Jennifer Chase is Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President at SAS.

Responsible marketing isn’t new. As marketers, we have always been responsible for our marketing activities. Yet changes in the past few years have brought the concept of responsible marketing to the forefront. The pandemic made us all digital consumers, thus deluging companies with more customer data than ever before. In tandem, data privacy laws have never been stricter while supply chain shortages, inflation and social discourse turns up the pressure on brands to market responsibly.

While many technologies are changing the marketing landscape, most recently, generative AI has made headlines in sensational ways.

There have been reports of AI-based chatbots that range from the passive-aggressive to the pathological, sometimes riddled with false information. Others have had chatbots compile university-quality essays from simple prompts, leading to a debate on what constitutes plagiarism. There are worries that the technology could be used to disseminate misinformation, manipulate markets and influence elections.

But despite the hyperbolic news coverage and conjecture, it’s important to remember that there are positive applications of AI, and there have been for some time. AI offers many opportunities to enhance the responsibility of your marketing and advertising programs. An AI application may seem like a black box but can be an open book—unlike the human decision-making process.

WhatsApp Deadline 48 Hours To Accept New Terms Or Delete Your Account

Why you should stop sending texts from your imessage app, wwe raw results winners surprises and grades after wrestlemania 40, ethical or unethical ai is neither.

Ethical artificial intelligence is something of a misnomer. AI is mathematics; it’s neither ethical nor unethical. Correlation of two factors implies the likelihood of other factors. It is the use cases that are good or evil, responsible or irresponsible. Fortunately, ethical marketers that we are, we already have principles by which we abide. The ANA Brands for Humanity Coalition is a good example of a collaboration united in principle around the impact of brands being a force for good; a passion for more purposeful and ethical marketing; a focus on fostering diversity, equality, inclusion and belonging; the missions of nonprofit organizations to improve the world; a drive for social responsibility and environmental sustainability; an aspiration for gender equality in all marketing and advertising; a more transparent and safe supply chain; and an internet experience free of toxicity.

Inclusivity: Ensuring Accessibility And Including Diverse Perspectives And Experiences

Often, when we talk about inclusivity, we refer to race or ethnicity, sexual or gender orientation, age, or physical and mental challenges. The “black box” vision of artificial intelligence suggests that biases can hide inside the machine without being revealed. They are easier to flush out than human biases.

Ajay Agrawal, professor at Toronto’s Rotman School of Business and co-author of Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence , put it this way in an interview :

“While you can’t open up the black box and understand the details of how the neural network works, what you can do with AI that you can’t do with a human is ask an infinite number of questions and it will always answer,” he said. For example, perhaps a loan officer denies a mortgage to someone of a marginalized race, whether through conscious or unconscious bias. “You might ask the loan officer, ‘Would you have denied that loan if the person was exactly the same, except they were of a different race?’ No human would admit, ‘Oh, yes, I would have given them this loan if they had been white as opposed to black.’ But AI will.”

At its heart, it’s the marketers themselves who own the responsibility for inclusivity in AI. Biased data and biased models mean biased results, and that falls squarely on the shoulders of the marketing team.

Transparency: Explaining And Instructing On Usage Openly

Transparency about the data we collect, and how we use it, has become a prime concern among consumers. Startups focusing on helping companies manage customer privacy grew fivefold between 2018 and 2021.

For all their concerns about how their data is collected and used, most consumers don’t really understand the principles of data collection, sharing or use. An explanation of the different types of data, and how it is used, is often buried in user agreement boilerplates. When customers understand the value being exchanged between marketer and consumer, that the company is drawing insights from their data responsibly, trust in the brand becomes relational, not transactional. And this has implications for long-term loyalty.

Accountability: Proactively Identifying And Mitigating Adverse Impacts

AI offers a proactive approach to predicting and ameliorating the threats of criminal actors. Given its huge volume of exploit and vulnerability information, it can reverse-engineer an attack before it happens. But when a failure occurs, companies must be first with the news and first with a plan to assure consumers of their safety. This preparedness also speaks to the remaining principles of AI development: resilience to survive anything from a coordinated attack by bad actors to a simple node failure; and respect for the privacy of all data subjects.

Responsible AI can also drive an organization's accountability proactively. Bissell Centre, in Edmonton, Canada, has been on a mission since 1910 to alleviate the impact of poverty in the northwestern city. It has recently turned to AI's comprehensive data analysis for better outcomes—and to keep the success of its programming and the need for adequate funding front and center among political and other stakeholders.

AI’s future as a tool for consumers and brands, rather than a threat to them, is bright, if we take a principled approach, both as technologists and marketers. Used strategically, AI is no different than any technology: It manages the work that can be done by a machine while allowing humans to focus on more important value-adds that demand human judgment and creativity. Without it, there’s a risk of falling behind in productivity. AI is changing the world. It’s not taking the world over. It is empowering humans to create a better world.

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Woman Sentenced to Month in Prison Over Theft of Ashley Biden’s Diary

Aimee Harris sold the diary to Project Veritas, a right-wing group, in what prosecutors said was a brazen plot to damage Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the 2020 election.

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By Adam Goldman

A federal judge in Manhattan sentenced a Florida woman on Tuesday to one month behind bars for her role in a brazen scheme to steal the diary of President Biden’s daughter and sell it to a right-wing group in the hope of disrupting the 2020 election.

The conduct of the woman, Aimee Harris , “was despicable and consequently very serious,” Judge Laura Taylor Swain of Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York said before handing down a punishment.

Ms. Harris, 41, tested the patience of prosecutors and the judge overseeing the case, missing repeated sentencing dates and jeopardizing what otherwise appeared to be a likely path to probation. In August 2022, she pleaded guilty to conspiring to transport the stolen diary to New York, where she met with employees of the group, Project Veritas, and sold it for $40,000 just weeks before the election.

The judge also sentenced her to three years’ probation, along with three months of home confinement, and ordered her to pay back the money she earned from the sale.

The sentencing of Ms. Harris reflects the seriousness of the government’s efforts to deter people from interfering in elections. That includes former President Donald J. Trump, who is awaiting federal trial in Washington on charges of trying to subvert the outcome of the 2020 race.

In a statement provided to the court, Ms. Biden described what happened to her as “one of the most heinous forms of bullying.”

Initially federal prosecutors had recommended Ms. Harris face up to six months of home confinement and three years of supervised release, while her lawyers had requested probation. But her sentencing was pushed back repeatedly — a dozen times — in part because Ms. Harris claimed she had child care issues or was sick.

At a scheduled hearing in late January, Ms. Harris called the court from a hospital emergency room, prompting Judge Swain to describe the situation as “highly irregular.” At a hearing in February, the judge told Ms. Harris that the reasons she had cited in seeking a delay were “matters of great concern for the court.”

Prosecutors, exasperated, asked the judge this month to impose a sentence of four to 10 months in prison, saying Ms. Harris had “repeatedly and consistently engaged in tactics to improperly delay this proceeding.” They accused her of misrepresenting the nature of her child care, failing to get an identification card so she could travel to New York and flouting the court’s rules.

Judge Swain finally threatened to have her arrested and brought to New York by U.S. marshals if she did not comply with the court’s orders.

After her guilty plea in August 2022, prosecutors said that Ms. Harris was later arrested and charged with driving under the influence with property damage and had tested positive for marijuana. The judge ordered her to undergo treatment for alcohol abuse.

Ms. Harris claimed that the diary had been abandoned, discarded at a friend’s house where she had been staying. But prosecutors said that in August 2020, she stole the diary, which President Biden’s daughter Ashley Biden had left at the house to store along with other personal items.

Ms. Harris then enlisted the help of a friend, Robert Kurlander, to sell the diary. Eventually, the pair found a buyer in Project Veritas, with each making $20,000. The two later returned to the house, taking other items belonging to the president’s daughter to confirm she was in fact the diary’s author.

Mr. Kurlander, 60, who also pleaded guilty and has cooperated with the Justice Department’s investigation into the theft, is scheduled to be sentenced later this year. On Friday, prosecutors asked for a six-month delay. Mr. Kurlander was previously convicted of fraud in a federal court in Florida. He also faces prison time but unlike Ms. Harris decided to cooperate with prosecutors.

As part of its investigation, the F.B.I. searched the homes of three former employees of Project Veritas, including its founder, James O’Keefe, but so far none of them have been charged. All three have since left the group.

Mr. O’Keefe was pushed out of Project Veritas after employees denounced his management style and questionable spending. Hannah Giles, who succeeded him as chief executive, laid off employees.

But she abruptly quit in December. She wrote on social media that she had “stepped into an unsalvageable mess — one wrought with strong evidence of past illegality and past financial improprieties.”

In December, a federal judge ruled that prosecutors could review hundreds of documents related to the theft of the diary. Project Veritas had claimed that the materials were protected under the First Amendment and that “disclosure to the government would violate their constitutional rights, constituting irreparable harm.”

Lawyers for Mr. O’Keefe and the two other former operatives of Project Veritas — Spencer Meads and Eric Cochran — asked the judge to temporarily halt that order as an appeal moved forward. But the judge denied the motion in January, noting that additional delay could “frustrate the investigation and raise concerns about witness recollection, evidence availability and statutes of limitations.”

Mr. Meads has appealed the ruling. The status of the investigation remains unclear but Mr. Kurlander’s delayed sentencing until October most likely means prosecutors have not ended their pursuit of Mr. O’Keefe.

Over the course of the inquiry, investigators obtained evidence that indicated that Ms. Harris hoped not only to profit from selling the diary to the group but also to hurt Mr. Biden’s chances of defeating Mr. Trump.

“Stealing personal belongings of a candidate’s family member, and selling them to an organization to exploit them for political gain, was wrong and illegal no matter the political agenda,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memo. “Such criminal conduct does not merely harm the victim, but seeks to undermine the political process.”

The memo added, “The calculus must be clear that criminal conduct of this sort will not be tolerated regardless of one’s political affiliation, ideology or motivation.”

Text messages obtained by prosecutors showed that Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander knew that they were stealing Ms. Biden’s diary and her other belongings and that the group planned to publicize the contents of the diary, which she had kept while she was recovering from drug addiction.

Olivia Bensimon and Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.

Adam Goldman writes about the F.B.I. and national security. He has been a journalist for more than two decades. More about Adam Goldman

Missouri executes Brian Dorsey despite pleas from 70 prison guards

An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Brian Dorsey had spent 17 years on death row. He had been in custody since 2006, but he was not sentenced to die until after he pleaded guilty in 2008. The article has been corrected.

The state of Missouri executed Brian Dorsey, who was convicted in the December 2006 double murder of his cousin and her husband, shortly after 6 p.m. local time Tuesday.

Hours earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop the execution. No dissents were noted in the court’s decision to reject two bids filed Sunday by the death row inmate. Dorsey, 52, had been held at Potosi Correctional Center in Washington County, Mo.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) denied a separate plea for clemency this week, supported by more than 70 correctional officers.

Dorsey’s legal team and his supporters had argued in the clemency petition that it would be wrong to execute Dorsey because he has been rehabilitated.

• Dorsey pleaded guilty in 2008 but argued that he should not be put to death. His execution warrant was issued Dec. 13, 2023, for shooting and killing the two family members with a shotgun.
• He had “unprecedented” written support of dozens of prison staff members, including the former warden, who said he should not be executed, his attorneys wrote . He had a pristine disciplinary record during his 17 years in custody, they added.
• Family members argued for and against Dorsey’s clemency. A statement from Sarah Bonnie’s side of the family given to local television station KOMU argued Dorsey should receive no reprieve because the couple’s daughter never knew her parents. Meanwhile, video provided by Dorsey’s attorneys show cousins of his saying they want his life spared.

Two days before Christmas 2006, Dorsey’s cousin Sarah Bonnie and her husband, Ben Bonnie, took in Dorsey because a pair of drug dealers were threatening him to collect on his drug debt, according to a news release from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R).

Dorsey was in a “psychotic state” from not sleeping for 72 hours while on a crack cocaine bender, according to his attorneys. That night, prosecutors said, Dorsey shot the couple with their own shotgun in their bed. They left behind a 4-year-old daughter.

Prosecutors said Dorsey took a cellphone, jewelry, two firearms and a copy of “Bambi II” belonging to the daughter of the victims. He took the items to repay his drug debt, according to court records filed by prosecutors.

When he learned police were looking for him, he turned himself in and cooperated, his attorneys wrote.

Concerns with the case

Dorsey’s current attorneys argued that their client received ineffective counsel at his trial.

The trial attorneys conducted no investigation, his current attorneys wrote, adding that the trial attorneys “obtained nothing for Mr. Dorsey in exchange for his guilty plea.”

They say the original attorneys did not disclose that Dorsey was in a drug-induced psychosis. The current attorneys argue that part of the reason may be financial: The trial attorneys received a flat fee of $12,000 — a practice Mary Fox, director of the Missouri State Public Defender System, said discourages thorough work.

Fox wrote a letter to the courts arguing that the flat fee is an issue in this case because it has since been recognized as a violation of American Bar Association guidelines and Missouri Rules of Professional Conduct.

“Missouri State Public Defender acknowledges the prevalence of unconstitutional and ineffective assistance of counsel in death penalty flat fee cases,” she wrote.

Three years before the crime, the American Bar Association wrote that “counsel in death penalty cases should be fully compensated at a rate that is commensurate with the provision of high quality legal representation and reflects the extraordinary responsibilities inherent in death penalty representation.”

The bigger picture

Dorsey was diagnosed with major depression disorder when he was young, his attorneys wrote, and medication did not help him. He later began self-medicating with crack cocaine when he was a teenager, according to his attorneys.

An open question in this case is whether the Eighth Amendment protects from execution people who have been rehabilitated, his attorneys argued in their latest attempt to stay the execution.

“Because of Mr. Dorsey’s unsurpassed record on Missouri’s death row, this case presents the best vehicle for the Court to take up this question,” his attorneys wrote.

Parson, the governor, wrote in a Monday news release that the execution would “provide closure.”

“The pain Dorsey brought to others can never be rectified, but carrying out Dorsey’s sentence according to Missouri law and the Court’s order will deliver justice and provide closure,” Parson said.

• Upon hearing the nation’s highest court would not consider saving Dorsey’s life, his attorney Kirk Henderson said: “Executing Brian Dorsey is a pointless cruelty, an exercise of the State’s power that serves no legitimate penological purpose. ... We will miss his smile and his bear hugs. It has been my honor to know Brian and to share his story.”
• Dorsey was called a model inmate, one who lived in the honor dorm and works as the prison’s barber. He gave haircuts to the prison guards, Dorsey’s attorneys wrote.
• Retired warden Troy Steele, who headed the Potosi Correctional Center, wrote of Dorsey that “his behavior is reported as exceptional, having received no reports for any type of misconduct.” He wrote that Dorsey has achieved the “highest levels of respect and confidence” from staffers in the prison.
• A group of more than 70 corrections staff members at the prison wrote a letter to Parson in which they said they are usually in favor of the death penalty but “are in agreement that the death penalty is not the appropriate punishment for Brian Dorsey,” according to a court filing. They know he was convicted of murder, but that’s not the Brian “they know.”

A final public statement

Hours before Dorsey was executed, his attorneys released a handwritten statement in which he said he was “truly deeply overwhelmingly sorry.”

“Words cannot hold the just weight of my guilt and shame,” he said to his victims’ families. “I still love you. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I am sorry I hurt them and you.”

He then addressed his family, friends and supporters.

“I am grateful for you,” the letter said. “I have peace in my heart, in large part because of you.”

“To all sides of this sentence, I carry no ill will or anger, only acceptance and understanding.”

Mark Berman and Kim Bellware contributed to this report.