Triad (sociology)

Triad is a group of three people in sociology. It is one of the simplest human groups that can be studied and is mostly looked at by microsociology. The study of triads, as well as dyads, was pioneered by German sociologist Georg Simmel at the end of the nineteenth century. A triad can be viewed as a group of three people that can create different group interactions. This specific group is common and overlooked in society for many reasons. Those being that it is compared to the lives of others, how they shape society, and how communication plays a role in different relationships scenarios. Georg Simmel, a sociologist that discovered a triad and how it came to be today. It was derived in the late 1800s to early 1900s and evolved throughout time to shape group interactions in the present. Georg Simmel also hypothesized between dyads and triads and how they may differ. A dyad is a group of two people that interact while a triad is another person added on to create more communicational interactions. For example: adding an extra person, therefore creating a triad, this can result in different language barriers, personal connection, and an overall impression of the third person. Simmel wanted to convey to his audience that a triad is not a basic group with positive interactions, but how these interactions can differ depending on person to person.

Both tests and studies have been conducted as to how siblings interact and how age, gender, and the amount of siblings can create a triad. A majority of the population has doubled over the last decade and recently has been proven that the more parents conceive, the better outcome a child will have when relating to other siblings. It can all depend on the relationships that different families have acquired as children get older. Creating and distinguishing between how a family can interact is a perfect everyday example of a triad in sociology. Applying the attachment theory created by John Bowlby can help decipher the differences between communication and interactions across the world.

In triadic closure, a group of three people can form relationships between each individual in that group. Therefore, creating both personal and emotional connections amongst all three individuals. This can be extremely important for others to understand that each person in this triad performs different roles and has different characteristics.

Even though a triad consists of three people, an open form of a relationship can alter because two out of three members in this group can clash. This can be due to both structural construction and informational construction. They both provide a means of stability and assurance to sustain an open form relationship into a closed form relationship. Structural construction can impose stress and clustering as a sense of bad communication between individuals and their different interactions. Informational construction conveys the need for privacy and how various individuals can clash when knowing something the other does not. This can be for societies own advantage.

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