The Need to Belong: IELTS Reading Answer Key & Full Translation

In modern society, feeling left out or not being invited to a party can inflict deep psychological pain. Why are humans so sensitive to isolation? The reading passage “The Need to Belong” takes us back to prehistoric times to decode this instinct through an evolutionary lens, while uncovering the psychological tactics—both conscious and subconscious—that we use to gain social acceptance.

Featuring question types like Summary Completion, Flow Chart, and Multiple Choice, this is an excellent passage for practicing information location and deep paragraph structure comprehension. Join ECE English as we break it down in detail below!

Reading Passage

THE NEED TO BELONG

No one likes to feel left out, ignored by colleagues at meetings or not be invited to the big party that everyone is talking about. Imagine not being part of a joke, or worse still, if the joke is on you. For most people, living the life of an outsider can have a negative effect on self-esteem and mood. It can even lead to negative behaviour. The pull to belong is extremely strong. Scientists believe that, in part, there is an evolutionary explanation for why we have this need to belong.

In the past, people hunted and cooked together in tribes and each member of the group would be assigned a role. As each member had a purpose, it meant that in the event of the loss of one person, the group as a whole would suffer. For this reason, they had a vested interest in protecting each other. To our prehistoric ancestors, membership of a group meant the difference between survival and death. Those who were rejected and excluded from joining a group had to fend for themselves and struggled to stay alive alone in the wild. Apart from protection, being part of a group also ensured that genes could be passed on to future generations. Although it is very different now from the way our primitive ancestors lived, our brains have not had time to evolve to fit today’s lifestyles. In this day and age, it is no longer a matter of survival to be affiliated to a tribe or group, but the evolutionary instinct to find protection still lingers.

This inherent feeling of security that comes with being part of a group is powerful enough to make people employ both conscious and unconscious strategies to gain membership. One obvious way people try to be accepted into a group is self-presentation, which is the act of portraying yourself in the best possible light. An individual will attempt to outwardly display the characteristics which are important to the group’s advancement. At the same time, they will conceal any parts of their personality that may be seen as undesirable or not useful to a group. An example of self-presentation is the job application process. A candidate applying for a job will promote themselves as motivated, but is likely to hide the fact that they are disorganised. These conscious tactics that people use are not a surprise to anyone, but we also use other strategies unknowingly.

Psychologists Jessica Larkin, Tanya Chartrand and Robert Arkin suggested that people often resort to automatic mimicry to gain affiliation into groups, much like our primitive ancestors used to do. Before humans had the ability to speak, physical imitation was a method of begging for a place in the group. Most will be unaware they are doing it. Larkin and her co-workers decided to test this hypothesis.

They took a group of student volunteers and had them play a game called Cyberball, a ball-tossing arcade game that resembled American football. The volunteers were led to believe they were all playing against each other, but in actual fact they were not. The computer was manipulating the game by passing the ball to some volunteers and excluding others.

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