belonging thesis

Students’ Sense of Belonging Matters: Evidence from Three Studies

On Thursday, February 16, we hosted Dr. Maithreyi Gopalan to discuss her latest research on how students’ sense of belonging matters.

• Evidence has shown that in certain contexts, a student’s sense of belonging improves academic outcomes, increases continuing enrollment, and is protective for mental health. In some of the studies presented, these correlations were still present beyond the time frame of the analysis, suggesting that belonging might have a longitudinal effect.
• Providing a more adaptive interpretation of challenge seemed to help students in a belonging intervention make alternative and more adaptive attributions for their struggles, forestalling a potential negative impact on their sense of belonging.

Professor Gopalan began her talk by discussing how the need for “a sense of belonging” has been identified as a universal and fundamental human motivation in the field of psychology. John Bowlby, one of the first to conduct formal scientific research on belonging, examined the effects on children who had been separated from their parents during WWII (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). From his pioneering work, Bowlby and colleagues proposed that humans are driven to form lasting and meaningful interpersonal relationships, and the inability to meet this need results in loneliness and mental distress. Educational psychologists adapted the concept of belonging to indicate how students’ sense of fit with themselves and with their academic context can affect how they perceive whether they can thrive within it (Eccles & Midgley, 1989; Eccles & Roeser, 2011).

After providing this brief overview of what belonging means more broadly, Dr. Gopalan introduced the concept of “belonging uncertainty” pioneered by social psychologists Geoffrey Cohen and Gregory Walton at Stanford University (Walton & Cohen, 2007) to describe the uncertainty students might feel about their belonging when entering a new social and academic situation , which is most pronounced during times of transition (e.g., entering college). Research has shown that belonging uncertainty affects how students make sense of daily adversities, often interpreting negative events as evidence for why they do not belong. Belonging uncertainty may result in disengagement and poor academic outcomes. In contrast, a sense of belonging is associated with academic achievement, persistence in the course, major, and college (Walton & Cohen, 20011, Yeager & Walton, 2011). It is the concept of belonging uncertainty that is the focus of Dr. Gopalan’s presentation, with emphasis on the findings from the following key research questions:

• How do students’ sense of belonging in the first year correlate with academic persistence and outcomes at a national level?
• Can belonging interventions during the first semester of college lead to increased persistence and academic achievement in a diverse educational setting?
• How does a student’s sense of belonging amidst the COVID-19 pandemic correlate with mental health?

Study 1: College Students’ Sense of Belonging: A National Perspective (Gopalan & Brady, 2019)

Most research examining college students’ sense of belonging has come from studies looking at one or a few single four-year institutions. To examine how belonging differs across student identities and institutions, Professor Gopalan and colleagues looked at the responses from the only nationally representative survey of college students to date that had measured belonging. The Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS) (Dudley et al ., 2020) sampled first-time beginning college students from 4070 eligible two- and four-year institutions (N= 23, 750 students), surveyed during their first year and subsequently two years later.

Professor Gopalan examined average measurements of belonging across institution type and student characteristics (Gopalan & Brady, 2019) and associations between belonging measurements and measurements of academic achievement, including GPA and persistence (continued enrollment), self-reported mental health, and self-reported use of campus services. The results, Dr. Gopalan explained, were striking: underrepresented racial and ethnic minority students (URMs) and first-generation/low-income students (FGLIs) reported a lower sense of belonging in four-year colleges than their non-URM and non-FGLI counterparts. 1 Importantly, they also found that having a greater sense of belonging is associated with higher academic performance, persistence, and is protective for mental health in year three of students’ undergraduate trajectory, suggesting that belonging might have a longitudinal effect (Gopalan & Brady, 2019). These findings were consistent with previous results from smaller studies involving single institutions. Sense of belonging is important not just in specific institutions but nationally, and social identity and context matter . One practical and policy-driven takeaway from this study is that only one national data set currently measures students’ sense of belonging using a single item. More robust measurements and large data sets might reveal additional insights into the importance of belonging for students’ educational experiences.

1 At two-year colleges, first-year belonging is not associated with persistence, engagement, or mental health. This suggests that belonging may function differently in two-year settings. More work is ongoing to try to understand the context that might be driving the difference. (Deil-Amen, 2011).

Study 2: A customized belonging intervention improves retention of socially disadvantaged students at a broad-access university (Murphy et al ., 2020)

Professor Gopalan and colleagues wanted to understand how to adapt existing belonging interventions to different educational contexts and dig deeper into underlying psychological processes underpinning belonging uncertainty. Because previous social-belonging interventions were conducted in well-resourced private or public institutions, Professor Gopalan was interested in examining whether the positive effects of belonging interventions could be extended to a broader-access context (context matters as not all extensions of belonging interventions have been shown to reproduce persistent changes in enrollment and academic outcomes). For this purpose, the traditional belonging interventions were customized for a four-year, Hispanic-serving public university with an 85% commuter enrollment using focus groups and surveys. Based on prior research, belonging interventions provide an adaptive lay theory for why students encounter challenges during transition times (Yeager et al ., 2016). Students, particularly those with little knowledge of how college works or those who have experienced discrimination, or are aware of negative stereotypes about their social group, may make global interpretations of why college can be challenging and may even associate challenges as evidence that they and students like them don’t belong. With belonging interventions, the lay theory provided to students aims to frame the experience of challenge in more adaptive ways—challenge and adversity are typical experiences, particularly during transitional moments, and should be expected; adapting academically and socially takes time—students will be more likely to persist, seek out campus resources and develop social relationships.

• They acknowledge that challenges are expected during transitions and that these are varied.
• They communicate to students that most students, including students from non-minority groups, experience similar challenges and feelings about them.
• They communicate that belonging is a process that takes time and tends to increase over time
• They use student examples of challenges and resolutions.

The Intervention

All students in the first-year writing class were randomly assigned to either the belonging group or an active control group. The intervention was provided to first-year students in their writing class and consisted of a reading and writing assignment about social and academic belonging. The control group was given the same assignment but with a different topic, study skills. In the intervention group, students read several stories from a racially diverse set of upper-level students who reflected on the challenges of making friends and adjusting to a new academic context. The hypothetical students reflected on the strategies they used, the resources they accessed, and how the challenge dissipated over time. After the reading exercise, the students in the intervention group were instructed to write about how the readings echoed their own first-year experiences. Then, they were asked to write a letter to future students who might question their belonging during their transition to college. Research has shown that written reflections help students internalize the main messages of the belonging intervention (Yeager & Walton, 2011).

Similar to previously published belonging interventions, results in persistence and academic achievement were significant for minoritized groups in the belonging cohort:

• Persistence. Compared to the control group, continuous enrollment for URM & FGLI students increased by 10% one year after and 9% two years after the intervention.
• Performance. The non-cumulative GPA from the URM & FGLI students increased by 0.19 points the semester immediately following the intervention and by 0.11 over the next two years compared to students in the control group.

Immediately following the intervention, a selected sub-sample of students in both conditions was invited to take a daily diary survey for nine consecutive days. The daily diary survey assessed students’ daily positive and negative academic and social experiences (students were asked to report and describe three negative and three positive events that they faced daily and to rate how positive and negative the events were), as well as their daily sense of social and academic belonging. The daily-diary assignment revealed another interesting finding: the intervention did not change the overall perception of negative events. URM & FGLI students in both groups had a statistically similar daily-adversity index and reported the same number of daily adverse events on average. However, there was no connection between the adversity index and sense of belonging for students in the belonging cohort. In contrast, students in the control group evidenced a negative correlation between daily adversities and belonging: “the greater adversity disadvantaged students experienced on a day, the lower their sense of social and academic fit” (Murphy et al ., 2020).

Providing a more adaptive interpretation of challenge seemed to help students in the belonging condition make alternative and more adaptive attributions for their struggles that did not connect to their sense of belonging. A follow-up survey one year after the intervention showed that minoritized students in the belonging intervention continued to report a higher sense of belonging in comparison to their counterparts in the control group.

Study 3: College Student’s Sense of Belonging and Mental Health Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic (Gopalan et al ., 2022)

Dr. Gopalan presented the third study, which turned out to provide a unique opportunity to assess whether sense of belonging had predictive effects on mental health. In the fall of 2019, researchers sent a survey to students at a large, multicampus Northeastern public university called the College Relationship and Experience survey (CORE), which included two questions about belonging, among other items. In the Spring of 2020, after students were sent home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a variation of the same survey was sent to students who had taken the CORE survey. After controlling for pre-COVID depression and anxiety, Dr. Gopolan and colleagues found that students who reported a higher sense of belonging in the fall of 2019 had lower rates of depression and anxiety midst-COVID pandemic , with the effects on depression more strongly predictive than those for anxiety. The correlation between a lower sense of belonging and higher rates of depression and anxiety was also found to be strongest for first-year students, who had little time during their first year to build community and adjust to college before the pandemic hit.

Dr. Gopalan concluded with some practical advice for instructors: “Stop telling students they belong, show them instead that they belong,” citing a recent op-ed from Greg Walton . We do this by modeling the idea that belonging is a process that takes time and by communicating to students that they are not alone , which can be done through sharing our own experiences with belonging, and by allowing students space to hear the experiences of their peers and learn from one another.

• Classroom Practices Library which includes Overview: Effective Social Belonging Messages are more.
• The Project for Education Research That Scales (PERTS) : a free belonging intervention for four-year colleges and universities.
• Research library on belonging
• Article on Structures for Belonging: A Synthesis of Research on Belonging-Supportive Learning Environments
• “Stop telling students ‘You Belong!’”
• Everyone is talking about belonging: What does it really mean?
• Post-secondary
• Academic Belonging : introduction to the concept and practices that support it.
• Flipping Failure : a campus-wide initiative to help students feel less alone by hearing stories about how their peers coped with academic challenges

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117 (3), 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497

Deil-Amen, R. (2011). Socio-academic integrative moments: Rethinking academic and social integration among two-year college students in career-related programs. The Journal of Higher Education , 82(1), 54-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2011.11779085  

Dudley, K., Caperton, S.A., and Smith Ritchie, N. (2020). 2012 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:12) Student Records Collection Research Data File Documentation (NCES 2021-524). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved 2/27/2023 from https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid-2021524

Eccles, J. S., & Midgley, C. (1989). Stage/Environment Fit: Developmentally Appropriate Classrooms for Early Adolescence. In R. E. Ames, & Ames, C. (Eds.), Research on Motivation in Education , 3, 139-186. New York: Academic Press.

Eccles, J. S., & Roeser, R. W. (2011). Schools as developmental contexts during adolescence. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21 (1), 225–241. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7795.2010.00725.x

Gopalan, M., & Brady, S. T. (2020). College Students’ Sense of Belonging: A National Perspective. Educational Researcher , 49(2), 134–137. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X19897622

Gopalan, M., Linden-Carmichael, A. Lanza, S. (2022). College Students’ Sense of Belonging and Mental Health Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic, Journal of Adolescent Health , 70(2), 228-233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.10.010

Murphy, M.C., Gopalan, M., Carter, E. R., Emerson, K. T. U., Bottoms, B. L., and Walton, G.M., (2020). A customized belonging intervention improves retention of socially disadvantaged students at a broad-access university Science Advances, 6(29). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aba4677

Walton, & Cohen. (2007). A question of belonging: Race, social fit, and achievement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(1), 82. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.1.82

Walton, G.M., & Cohen, G.L. (2011). A Brief Social-Belonging Intervention Improves Academic and Health Outcomes of Minority Students. Science,  331(6023), 1447-1451.  DOI: 10.1126/science.1198364

Yeager, D. S., & Walton, G. M. (2011). Social-Psychological Interventions in Education They’re Not Magic. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 267–301. http://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311405999

Yeager, D.S., Walton G.M., Brady, S.T., Dweck, C.S.,(2016). Teaching a lay theory before college narrows achievement gaps at scale, Psychological and Cognitive Sciences , 113(24), E3341-E3348. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1524360113

belonging inclusive classroom student engagement wellbeing

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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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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.  

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• 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 .
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The interplay between teacher empathy, students’ sense of school belonging, and learning achievement

• Published: 12 October 2022
• Volume 38 , pages 1167–1183, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Yuyang Cai 1 ,
• Yan Yang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0016-8914 2 ,
• Qianwen Ge 2 &
• Hongbo Weng 3  

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Teacher empathy has become an essential topic in educational research for enhancing students’ learning achievement. However, most existing studies focused on the direct relationship between teacher empathy and students’ learning achievement. They ignored the mediation of student factors (e.g., students’ sense of school belonging) between teacher empathy and learning achievement. Among the few studies that included sense of school belonging, most were based on classroom-based observations, which render the generalizability of their findings uncertain. The present study was designed to investigate the relationship between teacher empathy, students’ sense of school belonging, and learning achievement with data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 generated by 506,317 15-year-olds from 75 countries/territories (mean age = 15.79, SD = 0.29; 51% girls). Results of multilevel structural equation modeling showed that teacher empathy was positively related to reading achievement directly and indirectly through students’ sense of school belonging. Specifically, students’ sense of school belonging mediated 29% of the total effect of teacher empathy on reading achievement. These results have theoretical implications for future research in teacher empathy on the importance of simultaneously including other student features, such as students’ cognitive and emotional differences. The results also have practical implications for teacher training on raising teachers’ attention to student emotions during reading instruction.

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Data availability.

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in OECD PISA 2018 dataset at https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/2018database/ .

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The work was supported by The Program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning (Code: TP2018068) given to the first author.

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Centre for Language Education and Assessment Research (CLEAR) & School of Languages, Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, Shanghai, China.

Current themes of research .

Language assessment. Educational psychology. Large-scale international educational assessment. Psychometrics. Educational statistics. Educational data mining.

Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education :

Bernardo, A. B. I., Cai, Y., & King, R. B. (2021). Society-level social axiom moderates the association between growth mindset and achievement across cultures. British Journal of Educational Psychology , 91 (4), e12411. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12411 .

King, R. B., Cai, Y., & Du, H. (2021). Societal‐level utility value strengthens the relationship between student‐level utility value and achievement: A person‐culture fit perspective. British Journal of Educational Psychology , 91 (1), 328–346. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12354 .

Nalipay, M. J. N., Cai, Y., & King, R. B. (2021). The social contagion of utility value: How parents’ beliefs about the usefulness of science predict their children’s motivation and achievement. School Psychology International , 42 (3), 221–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143034320985200 .

Nalipay, M. J. N., King, R. B., & Cai, Y. (2020). Autonomy is equally important across East and West: Testing the cross-cultural universality of self-determination theory. Journal of Adolescence , 78 , 67–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2019.12.009 .

Xie, Q., King, R. B., & Cai, Y. (2022). Emotional contagion: A cross-cultural exploration of how teachers’ enjoyment facilitates achievement via students’ enjoyment. Current Psychology , 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02878-6 .

Yeung, S. S. S., King, R. B., Nalipay, M. J. N., & Cai, Y. (2022). Exploring the interplay between socioeconomic status and reading achievement: An expectancy‐value perspective. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 92 (3), 1196–1214. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12495 .

School of Languages, Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, 1900 Wenxiang Road, Songjiang District, Shanghai, China. Email: [email protected]

Language education and assessment.

Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education :.

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School of Languages, Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, Shanghai, China.

Hongbo Weng

College English Department, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China.

Curriculum studies. Narrative studies. Life history.

Weng, H. (2013). Constructing meaningful narrator: The perspective of life history [Chinese]. Education Research Monthly , 2013 (2), 32–35. https://doi.org/10.16477/j.cnki.issn1674-2311.2013.02.001 .

Weng, H. (2015). Discourse strategies of teacher’s prejudice [Chinese]. Education Research Monthly , 2015 (10), 27–32. https://doi.org/10.16477/j.cnki.issn1674-2311.2015.10.005 .

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Cai, Y., Yang, Y., Ge, Q. et al. The interplay between teacher empathy, students’ sense of school belonging, and learning achievement. Eur J Psychol Educ 38 , 1167–1183 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-022-00637-6

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Received : 03 May 2022

Revised : 12 September 2022

Accepted : 27 September 2022

Published : 12 October 2022

Issue Date : September 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-022-00637-6

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