“Does Hazing Actually Increase Group Solidarity? Re-Examining a Classic Theory With a Modern Fraternity”, 2022-09 ():
Anthropologists and other social scientists have long suggested that severe initiations (hazing) increase group solidarity. Because hazing groups tend to be highly secretive, direct and on-site tests of this hypothesis in the real world are nearly non-existent.
Using an American social fraternity, we report a longitudinal test of the relationship between hazing severity and group solidarity. We tracked 6 sets of fraternity inductees as they underwent the fraternity’s months-long induction process…All participants were pledges to the pseudonymous fraternity chapter “Beta”, located at an anonymous university in the United States. In order to conduct the study, the principal investigator established a rapport with an active member of Beta. Through the PI’s relationship with this active member and subsequent conversations with other Beta actives, the chapter formally agreed to participate in a longitudinal survey study of their induction process. The study period covered their ~ten-week induction, with pledges filling out the same survey at 5 time points. Each anonymous survey measured pledges’ self-reported ratings of the harshness and fun of their induction and self-reported ratings of solidarity (see Measures for details). This process was repeated for 6 different Beta pledge classes between January 2012 and October 2014 (total n = 126, Table 1).
Our results provide little support for common models of solidarity and suggest that hazing may not be the social glue it has long been assumed to be.
[Keywords: hazing, newcomers, rites of passage, fraternities]