Three experimental studies are reported in which we tested the prediction that negative emotion elicits the social sharing of the emotional experience. In two experiments, participants arrived at the laboratory with a friend and then viewed one of three film excerpts (nonemotional, moderate emotion, or intense emotion) alone. Afterwards, the participants who saw the film had an opportunity to interact with the friend and their conversation was recorded. In both experiments participants who had seen the intense emotion excerpt (...) engaged in significantly more social sharing than did participants in the other two conditions. A third experiment extended the investigation to social sharing in everyday life and replicated the previous results. Nonemotional explanations of the effects observed were also ruled out. Results are discussed in the context of the relation between emotional intensity and amount of social sharing. (shrink)

This review demonstrates that an individualist view of emotion and regulation is untenable. First, I question the plausibility of a developmental shift away from social interdependency in emotion regulation. Second, I show that there are multiple reasons for emotional experiences in adults to elicit a process of social sharing of emotion, and I review the supporting evidence. Third, I look at effects that emotion sharing entails at the interpersonal and at the collective levels. Fourth, I examine (...) the contribution of emotional sharing to emotion regulation together with the relevant empirical evidence. Finally, the various functions that the social sharing of emotion fulfills are reviewed and the relevance of the social sharing of emotion for emotion scientists is discussed. (shrink)

The review by Rimé challenges the current individualist view of emotional regulation, and argues that emotional experiences lead to the need and action of emotional social sharing which in turn plays a role in emotion regulation. Yet, the focus of the review itself is still hinged upon another aspect of individualistic assumption, namely the importance of language as a tool to carry out the social sharing of emotion. In so doing, the review highlights only the explicit, (...) deliberate and agentic aspects of emotion sharing that are particularly common in Western individualistic culture. The review directly and indirectly demonstrates the need for a more comprehensive reconsideration of the role of sociality in emotion. (shrink)

The psychosocial impacts of natural disasters are associated with the triggering of negative and positive responses in the affected population; also, such effects are expressed in an individual and collective sphere. This can be seen in several reactions and behaviors that can vary from the development of individual disorders to impacts on interpersonal relationships, cohesion, communication, and participation of the affected communities, among others. The present work addressed the psychosocial impacts of the consequences of natural disasters considering individual effects via (...) the impact of trauma and community effects, through the perception of social well-being, the valuation of the community and the social exchange of emotions. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between individual reactions (i.e., intensity of trauma) and the evaluation of social and collective circumstances (i.e., social well-being) after the earthquake of 27F 2010 in Chile, through collective-type intervention variables not used in previous studies (i.e., social sharing of emotions and community appraisal). For this purpose, a descriptive,ex postfacto correlational and cross-sectional methodology was carried on, with the participation of 487 people affected by the 2010 earthquake, 331 women (68%) and 156 men (32%), between 18 and 58 years old (M= 21.09;SD= 5.45), from the provinces of Ñuble and Biobío, VIII region, Chile. The measurement was carried out 4 years after the earthquake and the results show that greater individual than collective involvements were found, mainly in the coastal zone of the region. The mediation analysis showed that the relationship between the intensity of the trauma and social well-being occurs through a route that considers social sharing of emotions and community appraisal. These results indicate that the overcoming of individual affectations to achieve social well-being occurs when in the immediate post-disaster phases the affected communities activate shared emotional and cognitive processes, which allow them to jointly face subsequent threats and abrupt changes. (shrink)

Alongside social anthropology and discursive psychology, conversation analysis has highlighted ways in which cultural forms of perceiving and acting in the world are primarily rooted in socially shared normativity. However, when consideration turns to the origins and purposes of human affect and emotion, conversation analysis appears to face particular difficulties that arise from the over-arching focus on sense-making practices. This paper considers the proposal that psychoanalytic thinking might inform our understanding of how socially shared normativity emerges during infancy and (...) early childhood. First, a framework is sketched out that highlights the fact that from the beginning an infant’s earliest experience is bound up with those practices and social actions that make up what conversation analyst’s call members’ methods. Second, comparisons are drawn between conversation analysis and psychoanalytic accounts of early experience for infants during the first years of life. Discussion then moves to the Kleinian notion of object relations, and the concept of projective identification. Essentially, this is a theoretical account of how ‘what-was-once-one’ (the mother-infant unit) differentiates resulting in the gradual emergence of the ‘individuated being’. What is often glossed over in this account is the discursively embedded nature of projective identification; a process that is itself interdependent with the embodiment that makes up the infant’s lived engagement with the world. Whatever might constitute consciousness emerges from somatic, embodied, material-physical, tactile/affective experience – that is, a fundamentally social milieu. This raises the question of how transformation (i.e., from the social to the individual) occurs. One answer may be Winnicott’s idea of the transitional space, where the ‘good-enough’ parent is said to be somebody who can ‘contain’ both negative and positive identifications coming from the infant, transform and re-project such identifications, but in modified from. In this way the infant begins to recognise/experience what it is they are ‘feeling’. Such projective identifications are conveyed within and through the prevailing discourses that constitute all social practices. Concluding comments note that conversation analysis may find in psychoanalytic thinking a framework for understanding the interdependence between affect and action, as in psychoanalytic thought we find a thoroughly relational conception of human nature. (shrink)

Though the commentaries on my review welcomed its focus on the social dimension of emotion and emotion regulation, they also revealed important misinterpretation. The social standpoint was not developed at the expense of the individual. On the contrary, this perspective is in line with dynamic emotions systems views. Despite variations in modalities, I argue that emotion sharing is universal because it concerns culturally-shaped knowledge and constructions when they are shattered by emotional events. Predictions regarding the recovery effects (...) of private disclosure are formulated, particularly in reference to the notions of speech styles and psychological differentiation. Finally, differentiating cognition and emotion is becoming more and more foggy and I agree that the time has come for new, less fuzzy, concepts. (shrink)

We argue that emotion cannot only be conceived of as a short-lived and intrapersonal phenomenon. Rather, based on five theoretical arguments, we propose that the social sharing of an emotional experience forms an integral part of the emotional processes. A series of six studies investigated different aspects of this hypothesis. Study 1 showed that an overwhelming majority of people reported sharing their emotional experiences and that the memories of these experiences tended to come back spontaneously to their (...) consciousness. No difference was found among emotions. Using a different procedure, Studies 2 and 3 replicated these findings in two different populations. In addition, these studies provided indications that women share their experiences with a wider array of individuals than do men. The first three studies did not find any differences among emotions, but they did not include shame. It could be argued that people are less inclined to socially share shame experiences which are typically elicited by breaking social rules. Study 4 specifically investigated this hypothesis. No differences among shame and other emotions were found except for the delay of the first sharing of the experience. Study 5 constituted a first investigation of whether the social sharing of emotion is also a significant process in now Western cultures. A comparison between Dutch and Surinamese people failed to reveal any significant difference. Based on the findings of the first five studies, a correlational model was designed in Study 6. It tested the interrelationships among disruptiveness of the emotion, social sharing, mental rumination, and recovery from the emotion disruption. A coherent pattern of findings emerged, showing that social sharing can be conceived as a bi-dimensional concept defined by features of amount and delay of sharing. In addition, both social sharing and mental rumination varied according to the disruptiveness of the emotion. Surprisingly, however, recovery could not be related to social sharing, mental rumination, or to the time elapsed since the episode. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSocial sharing of positive life experiences has been linked to increased intensity of positive emotion. Less is known about the relations among sharing, the perceived response of the listener, and the duration of positive emotion. We hypothesised that sharing an experience would sustain positive emotion when listeners responded in a manner that highlighted the appraised importance and remarkability of the experience, thereby slowing hedonic adaptation. College students who received a desirable exam grade reported their emotional response, appraisals, (...) and sharing on the day they received their grade and again the following evening. Sharing was associated with longer episodes of positive emotion and more time spent thinking about the positive event. The association between sharing and emotion duration was greatest when sharing partners were perceived as highlighting the importance and remarkability of the event. This type of sharing also mitigated the fading of emotion intensity over time.... (shrink)

Among the four components proposed by Sbarra and Coan to guide the research aimed at understanding the role of emotion in the connection between social relationship and health, I view the fourth one, labeled “transactional dimensions,” as offering particularly rich promises in this regard. To illustrate, I sketch the example of individual, interpersonal, and collective effects entailed by the process of social sharing of emotion. The example rests on the bidirectional flow of transactions that develops continuously between (...) these three levels. (shrink)

Shared intentions supporting cooperation and other social practices are often used to describe human social life but not the social lives of nonhuman animals. This difference in description is supported by a lack of evidence for rebuke or stakeholding during collaboration in nonhuman animals. We suggest that rebuke and stakeholding are just two examples of the many and varied forms of social maintenance that can support shared intentions. Drawing on insights about mindshaping in social cognition, (...) we show how apes can be stakeholders of a different sort in joint action. Drawing on pluralistic social maintenance methods of behavior enforcement, we show ape joint action can be supported by different forms of positive and negative social pressures, and not just protest. We explain how diverse relationships, contexts, social structures, and forms of communication may play a role in forming and successfully fulfilling joint commitments for humans, great apes, and other animals. (shrink)

Liking and respect are postulated as two dimensions of interpersonal attitudes. Liking-disliking is an idiosyncratic response which depends mostly on how target persons influence interests and well-being of the attitude holder and is accompanied by beliefs in their communal traits. Respect-disrespect is a socially shared response which depends mostly on the social status of target persons and is accompanied by beliefs in their agency. This Self-interest /status Model of differences between liking and respect was tested in two studies. It (...) was predicted and found that respect responses are socially shared to higher extent than liking responses. (shrink)

We humans have a formidable armamentarium of social display behaviours, including song-and-dance, the visual arts, and role-play. Of these, role-play is probably the crucial adaptation which makes us most different from other apes. Human childhood, a sheltered period of ‘extended irresponsibility’, allows us to develop our powers of make-believe and role-play, prerequisites for human cooperation, culture, and reflective consciousness. Social mirror theory, originating with Dilthey, Baldwin, Cooley and Mead, holds that there cannot be mirrors in the mind without (...) mirrors in society. I will present evidence from the social and behavioural sciences to argue that self-awareness depends on social mirrors and shared experiential worlds. The dependence of reflectivity on shared experience requires some reframing of the ‘hard problem’, and suggests a non-trivial answer to the zombie question. (shrink)

Research programs regularly compete to achieve the same goal, such as the discovery of the structure of DNA or the construction of a TEA laser. The more the competing programs share information, the faster the goal is likely to be reached, to society's benefit. But the "priority rule"—the scientific norm mandating that the first program to reach the goal in question receive all the credit for the achievement—provides a powerful disincentive for programs to share information. How, then, is the clash (...) between social and self interest resolved in scientific practice? This paper investigates what Robert Merton called science's "communist" norm, which mandates universal sharing of knowledge, and uses mathematical models of discovery to argue that a communist regime may be on the whole advantageous and fair to all parties, and so might be implemented by a social contract that all scientists would be willing to sign. (shrink)

A growth in consumer and media ethical consciousness has resulted in the need for organizations to ensure that members understand, share and project an approved and unified set of ethics. Thus understanding which variables are related to sharing and variation of ethical reasoning and moral intent, and the relative strength of these variables is critical. While past research has examined individual (attitudes, values, etc.), social (peers, significant others, etc.) and organizational (codes of conduct, senior management, etc.) variables, it (...) has focused on their influence on the individual – and not on their role in relation to patterns of group sharing and variation in an organization. Introduced as a new methodology to study ethics, microcultural analysis stipulates that to explain patterns of sharing and variation, one must understand how individual, social and organizational variables influence sharing and variation. Key hypotheses predict that managers who share in individual, social or organizational determinants will be more likely to share in ethical reasoning and moral intent. Qualitative and quantitative research supports the key hypotheses, finding social ties, personal moral intensity, Machiavellianism, locus of control and codes of ethics as significant determinants. Individuals who share in these determinants are more likely to share in ethical reasoning and moral intent. Additionally, regression analysis reveals social ties and personal moral intensity to be the strongest determinants. Based on these results, managerial recommendations focus on a holistic approach, manipulating these three determinants to cultivate a unified code of ethics within an organization. (shrink)

The paper looks at the intersection of extended cognition and social cognition. The central claim is that the mechanisms of shared intentionality can equally be considered as coupling mechanisms of cognitive extension into the social domain. This claim will be demonstrated by investigating a detailed example of cooperative action, and it will be argued that such cases imply that socially extended cognition is not only about cognitive vehicles, but that content must additionally to be taken into account. It (...) is finally outlined how social content externalism can in principle be grounded in socially extended cognition. (shrink)

This article explores the norms that govern regular users’ acts of sharing content on social networking sites. Many debates on how to counteract misinformation on Social Networking Sites focus on the epistemic norms of testimony, implicitly assuming that the users’ acts of sharing should fall under the same norms as those for posting original content. I challenge this assumption by proposing a non-epistemic interpretation of (mis) information sharing on social networking sites which I construe (...) as infrastructures for forms of life found online. Misinformation sharing belongs more in the realm of rumour spreading and gossiping rather than in the information-giving language games. However, the norms for sharing cannot be fixed in advance, as these emerge at the interaction between the platforms’ explicit rules, local norms established by user practices, and a meta-norm of sociality. This unpredictability does not leave us with a normative void as an important user responsibility still remains, namely that of making the context of the sharing gesture explicit. If users will clarify how their gestures of sharing are meant to be interpreted by others, they will implicitly assume responsibility for possible misunderstandings based on omissions, and the harms of shared misinformation can be diminished. (shrink)

We propose that abstraction is an interpersonal process and serves a social function. Research on shared reality shows that in communication, people raise their level of abstraction in order to create a common understanding with their communication partner, which can subsequently distort their mental representation of the object of communication. This work demonstrates that, beyond building accurate models, abstraction also functions to build socially shared models – to create a shared reality.

Recent scandals involving executive leadership have significantly contributed to the topic of corporate social responsibility (CSR) becoming one of the most important concerns of the management literature in the twenty-first century. The antithesis of CSR is embodied in executive corruption and malfeasance. Unfortunately such things are all too frequent. We view the degree of centrality of leadership, and the primary power motivation of leaders, as key factors that influence the engagement in corruptive leader behavior and consequent corporate social (...) ir-responsibility (CSIR) in organizations. Shared and self-leadership, on the other hand, we introduce as alternatives to traditional top-down centralized views of leadership that can establish needed checks and balances capable of reducing corruptive tendencies. We offer a conceptual model along with several propositions to help guide future research and practice. (shrink)

Leading social innovation is challenging. Creating enduring social innovation requires navigating the tension of simultaneously engaging top-down and shared leadership. We outline the crux of the challenge and provide key takeaways and practical advice for the tandem deployment of top-down and shared leadership for social innovation success.

Kinship terminologies are basic cognitive semantic systems that all human societies use for organizing kin relations. Diversity in kinship systems and their categories is substantial, but constrained. Rácz, Passmore, and Jordan explore hypotheses about such constraints from learning theories and social pressures, testing the impact of a community‐size driven learning bottleneck against the social coordination demands of different kinds of marriage and resource systems.

The sharing economy has transformed economic transactions, created new organizational forms, and contributed to changes in consumer culture. Started as a movement with promises of a more sustainable, democratic, and inclusive economy, the sharing economy, and its impact on issues such as privacy, discrimination, worker rights, and regulation, is now the subject of heated debate. Many of these issues root in the changes that digital technologies have brought and the unresolved moral and ethical questions emerging therefrom. This special (...) issue contributes to this ongoing debate with five articles that develop theoretical frameworks and conduct empirical investigations, providing fine-grained analyses of urgent issues in the sharing economy. In this article, we highlight these and other issues that we believe deserve further attention from business ethics scholarship. (shrink)

Social learning has been shown to be an evolutionarily adaptive strategy, but it can be implemented via many different cognitive mechanisms. The adaptive advantage of social learning depends crucially on the ability of each learner to obtain relevant and accurate information from informants. The source of informants’ knowledge is a particularly important cue for evaluating advice from multiple informants; if the informants share the source of their information or have obtained their information from each other, then their testimony (...) is statistically dependent and may be less reliable than testimony from informants who do not share information. In this study, we use a Bayesian model to determine how rational learners should incorporate the effects of shared information when learning from other people, conducting three experiments that examine whether human learners behave similarly. We find that people are sensitive to a number of different patterns of dependency, supporting the use of a sophisticated strategy for social learning that goes beyond copying the majority, and broadening the situations in which social learning is likely to be an adaptive strategy. (shrink)

Recently, social Q&A communities have grown increasingly popular, serving as a primary platform for people to learn and share information. Nonetheless, fewer knowledge producers in these communities are significant than knowledge consumers. Thus, promoting users’ participation in knowledge sharing is a challenge for managers of social Q&A communities. Even though many scholars have studied factors influencing willingness to share knowledge, they tend to start with one theory and ignore the impact of several factors on behaviors. Thus, this (...) manuscript presents a multi-factor model based on three dimensions of technology, cognition, and security to explore the effects of the six factors of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, perceived behavioral control and subjective norms, perceived security, and perceived privacy in terms of the three knowledge sharing methods of browsing including like and favorite, publishing and replying, and to compare users’ willingness to use the three knowledge sharing methods. A total of 482 questionnaires were collected online, and the hypotheses were tested and analyzed using structural equation modeling. According to the results, the factors affecting different sharing methods are not the same. Perceived behavioral control and perceived security can have a significant influence on their willingness to browse, users’ willingness to publish and reply to posts is significantly influenced by their perception of behavioral control and subjective norms, while perceived usefulness also affects their willingness to respond, it can be seen that cognition is the most important factor affecting users’ knowledge sharing among the three dimensions. In addition, users’ willingness to browse is significantly greater than their willingness to reply, and their willingness to post is the lowest. (shrink)

The origin of the concept of “emotional sharing” can be traced back to the first edition of Sympathiebuch [1913/23], in which Max Scheler paved the way to a phenomenology of emotions and to social ontology. The importance of his findings is evident: consider the central role of emotional sharing in Michael Tomasello’s analysis and the lively debate on social ontology and collective intentionality.

Future technological developmentsconcerning food, agriculture, and theenvironment face a gulf of social legitimationfrom a skeptical public and media, in the wakeof the crises of BSE, GM food, and foot andmouth disease in the UK (House of Lords, 2000). Keyethical issues were ignored by the bioindustry,regulators, and the Government, leaving alegacy of distrust. The paper examinesagricultural biotechnology in terms of a socialcontract, whose conditions would have to be fulfilled togain acceptance of novel applications. Variouscurrent and future GM applications areevaluated against (...) these conditions. Successwould depend critically on how far a sharedvision can be found with the public. Tore-establish trust, significant changes areidentified in the planning and pursuit ofbiotechnology. (shrink)

This is contribution to a symposium on Michael Bratman's book Shared Agency : A Planning Theory of Acting Together.

May social unity - the unity of a society or social group - be a matter of sharing values? Political philosophers disagree on this topic. Kymlicka answers: No. Devlin and Rawls answer: Yes. It is argued that given one common 'summative' account of sharing values a negative answer is correct. A positive answer is correct, however, given the plural subject account of sharing values. Given this account, those who share values are unified in a substantial (...) way by their participation in a joint commitment. Some consequences of such sharing of values for the liberty of the people involved are noted. (shrink)

A person’s financial well-being is the complete contentment gained from one’s present financial condition. This has a powerful impact on the entire achievement of an employee’s “well-being.” Researchers, financial analysts, financial planners, educationists, and economists have explored the “enablers” to improve employees’ living standards by investigating the possible “FWB” resources for decades. There is no literature available to show the connection between social capital theory, social exchange theory, social cognitive theory, financial literacy and FWB, and employees’ financial (...) knowledge sharing a moderator to expand the complete FWB. (shrink)

Given that work teams have been widely used in a variety of organizations to complete critical tasks and that the use of social media in work teams has been growing, investigating whether and how team social media usage affects team creativity is imperative. However, little research has empirically explored how TSMU affects team creativity. This study divides TSMU into two categories, namely, work-related TSMU and relationship-related TSMU. Basing on communication visibility theory and social exchange theory, this study (...) constructs a moderating mediation model to understand how TSMU affects team creativity. In this model, team knowledge sharing is used as mediating role and team-member exchange is used as moderating role. Two-wave research data collected from 641 employees in 102 work teams in Chinese organizations are used for regression analysis. Results show that Work-related TSMU and relationship-related TSMU are positively affect team creativity. Team knowledge sharing plays a partly mediating effect on the relationship between work-related TSMU and team creativity and that between relationship-related TSMU and team creativity. TMX not only positively moderates the indirect effect of work-related TSMU and relationship-related TSMU on team creativity through team knowledge sharing. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed. (shrink)

On the premise that people achieve knowledge of things by sharing mental resources, what are the scope and philosophical significance of acts of shared intentionality in social discourse? Some philosophers and scientists of social cognition, most notably Jane Heal and Michael Tomasello, have drawn upon insights about the capacity of individual people to share mental resources and contents to argue for the importance of sociality in shaping mental activity. In this paper, I synthetize these strands of research (...) with the aim of comparing different claims about shared intentionality, and facilitate an assessment in the debate on the social aspects of self and mentality. (shrink)

I agree with Gurven that costly signaling can explain food-sharing phenomena. However, costly signaling may also explain the role of food sharing in deterring rivals. Details of food-sharing interactions may reveal gains and losses in the social prestige of the interacting parties. The evolutionary models of kin selection and of reciprocal altruism are unstable and should be avoided.

There are cases of emotion that we readily describe as 'sharing emotions with other people.' How should we understand such cases? Joel Krueger has proposed the Joint Ownership Thesis : the view that two or more people can literally share the same emotional episode. His view is partly inspired by his reading of Merleau-Ponty -- arguably Merleau-Ponty advocates a version of JOT in his "The child's relations with others." My critical analysis demonstrates that JOT is flawed in several respects: (...) 1) It involves a vague account of joint subjects; 2) It relies on a confusion between phenomenological and ontological levels of analysis. When these are clearly distinguished, Krueger's phenomenological analysis contradicts JOT understood as an ontological claim; 3) It relies on a highly problematic coupling-constitution inference; 4) It relies on a shift from the claim that the child and the caregiver jointly _realize_ an emotion, to the claim about joint _ownership_, which is a _non sequitur_. I argue that we can reach a better understanding of the phenomenon of shared emotions by bringing in another level of analysis: that of _social relationships_. I propose that shared emotions are a special case of _social-relational emotions_, typically arising within and/or giving rise to communal relationships. (shrink)

The book offers a new treatment of the capacity to perceive, act on, and know about the world together with others. I argue that creatures capable of joint attention stand in a unique perceptual and epistemic relation to their surroundings: they operate in an environment that they, through their communication with their fellow perceivers, help constitute. I show that this relation can be marshaled to address a range of questions about the social aspect of the mind and its perceptual (...) and cognitive capacities. I begin with a conceptual question about a complex kind of sociocognitive phenomenon—perceptual common knowledge—and develop an empirically informed account of the spatial structure of the environment in and about which such knowledge is possible. In the course of his argument, I address such topics as demonstrative reference in communication, common knowledge about jointly perceived objects, and spatial awareness in joint perception and action. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Sociality offers new ideas and conceptual tools for philosophers and social scientists in their analysis of the social world.

Solidarity as a social phenomenon means a sharing of feelings, interests, risks and responsibilities. The Western-European Welfare State can be seen as an organized system of solidarity, historically grown from group solidarity among workers, later between workers and employers, moving towards solidarity between larger social groups: between healthy people and the sick, between the young and the elderly, between the employed and the unemployed. This sharing of risks at a societal level however, has revealed the risks (...) of sharing. In the postwar development of the welfare state, solidarity has been organized mainly in administrative forms, run by anonymous bureaucracies and giving way to free riders and calculative citizens. This article describes this development and provides arguments for a reorientation of the welfare state and for the re-allocation of rights, risks and responsibilities. (shrink)

Pietraszewski provides a compelling case that representations of certain interaction-types are the “cognitive primitives” that allow all tokens of group-in-conflict to be represented within the mind. Here, I argue that the folk concept GROUP encodes shared intentions and goals as more central than these interaction-types, and that providing a computational theory of social groups will be more difficult than Pietraszewski envisages.

Joint activities are ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, but they differ substantially in their underlying psychological states. Humans attribute and share mental states with others in the so‐called shared intentionality. Our hypothesis is that our closest nonhuman living relatives also attribute some psychological mechanisms such as perceptions and goals to others, but, unlike humans, they are not necessarily intrinsically motivated to share those psychological states. Furthermore, it is postulated that shared intentionality is responsible for the appearance of a suite of (...) behaviors, including joint attention, declarative communication, imitative learning, and teaching, that are the basis of cultural learning and the social norms and traditions present in every human culture. (shrink)

Taking ontological realism about social groups as the thesis that groups are composite material objects constituted by their members, this paper considers a challenge to the very possibility that groups be regarded as material entities. Ordinarily we believe that two groups can have synchronic co-extensive memberships—for example, the choir and the rugby team—while preserving their distinctive identity conditions. We also doubt that two objects of the same kind can be in the same place at the same time, which would (...) appear to be the case when groups have identical memberships. I explain that the principle denying the synchronic co-location of objects of the same kind need not apply universally to material objects and that it is a mistake to take resistance to penetrability as a necessary feature of materiality. Therefore, initial appearances notwithstanding, groups can be in the same place at the same time. Key Words: identity • materiality • location • social group. (shrink)