I invite you to imagine or reflect on the stereotypes that are assigned in high school. Some of you may remember a famous ‘80s movie where five high school students had to serve an eight-hour detention on a Saturday morning. The characters (reflective of that time) included the following personas: the criminal, the princess, the athlete, the nerd, and the misfit.

Initial impressions led to assumptions that these characters did not have much in common and were often judged by the stereotypes they were assigned to. As the characters spent time together, they became vulnerable with one another and ultimately discovered that they had more similarities than differences. What we learned was that they ultimately were longing to belong. If you guessed the movie “The Breakfast Club,” you are correct.

Sense of belonging has many definitions. For this article, we will use this one: 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 behavioral outcomes (Allen et al., 2021).

Even though “The Breakfast Club” was a movie that was popular in the ‘80s, its psychological messages are very pertinent today. To provide a modern understanding of our desire to belong, Brene Brown states, “A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, and physically wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.”

For many, the various disruptions and constant ambiguity of the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increased sense of disconnection, loneliness, and mistrust of others. This resulted in decreased mental, physical, and overall well-being.

To foster and increase your sense of belonging, I invite you to consider these four areas:

Social, emotional, and cultural competencies

Develop your social skills to connect with others. Engage in active listening. Attend to nonverbal and verbal cues. Increase your emotional intelligence and self-regulate your emotions. Be open to understanding and valuing differences. Be vulnerable with others and create space for others to be vulnerable with you.

Opportunities

Seek out opportunities with various groups, people, places, times, and spaces that enable belonging to occur. Say yes to collaboration across campus, serve on committees, or attend various extra-curricular events offered through the university.

Motivations

Increasing feelings of belonging will require intentional and active effort on your part. You must display a willingness to belong. This will vary across individuals and is a reciprocal and mutually benefiting process. Some may want to develop relationships with many different groups and others will be OK with one or two individuals. There is no wrong or right way as long as you engage in ways that feel authentic and comfortable.

Perceptions

How we interpret our perception of how others see us can act as a feedback loop that can either hinder or help our sense of belonging. I encourage you to be gentle with yourself, think well of others, and reframe self-perceptions that may interfere with your sense of belonging. Also, remind yourself that you may not be a good fit all the time for every group or situation, and that is OK. Lastly, do not personalize experiences of not belonging.  

Belonging is more complex than we may have realized and is an active process. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggests we all seek belonging. The cool part is that there are many opportunities for us to foster a sense of belonging across our campus. I encourage you to extend kindness and reach out to someone who you may think is struggling and let them know you care. Sometimes just knowing one person cares about you and values you is enough.

We are all members of the Hawkeye community, so let’s take care of one another.

Kelly-Ann Allen, Margaret L. Kern, Christopher S. Rozek, Dennis M. McInerney & George M. Slavich (2021) Belonging: a review of conceptual issues, an integrative framework, and directions for future research, Australian Journal of Psychology, 73:1, 87-102, DOI:10.1080/00049530.2021.1883409

Cover photo by Hudson Hintze on Unsplash