Abstract
Social belongingness has been referred to as a fundamental human need, and anthropology research has considered belonging to a small group as a human survival mechanism. The aim of this study was to explore constituents of social belongingness and propose a model of perceived social belonging in the context of executive business and elite sport. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted upon 30 business executives and athletes; both elite and amateur. The interviews were transcribed and common themes were extracted. Participants did not perceive social belongingness in terms of individual relationships but instead as small groups, or example, "parents", "friends", "club members", "team" or "neighbors", clustered into three domains: family, work/occupation and social life. All participants emphasized the self- regulatory aspect of social belongingness: "contributing" to be "supported". Furthermore, participants reported feeling "energized" or "drained" depending on how they perceived their level of social belonging. Belongingness to one group could supply energy for operating in others. Senior executives and elite athletes were focused on generating sufficient energy for the work/occupation domain and reported significant situational fluctuations in perceived belongingness levels based on their perception of situational performance in high pressure environments. In contrast, employees and amateur participants were more concerned with "work-life-balance". Proposed is a model of perceived social belongingness as a hierarchy of inter-connected small group related energy reserves providing resources for self-regulation, motivation and effort regarding that specific group, other groups within the same domain or other domains, and being re-energized by perceived social belongingness to that specific group. This proposed model furthers our understanding of perceived social belongingness, may be useful for the understanding of dysfunctional and self defeating behavior, and dditionally suggests a theoretical platform for applied interventions attempting to enhance motivation and performance in areas such as business and sport.