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Chapter 4: Social Interaction. Melanie Hatfield Soc 100. What is Social Interaction?. Social interaction: Involves people communicating face-to-face or via computer, acting and reacting in relation to other people. It is structures around norms, roles, and statuses.
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Chapter 4:Social Interaction Melanie Hatfield Soc 100
What is Social Interaction? • Social interaction: Involves people communicating face-to-face or via computer, acting and reacting in relation to other people. It is structures around norms, roles, and statuses.
The Structure of Social Interaction • Status: A recognized social position that an individual can occupy. • Status set: The entire ensemble of statuses occupied by an individual. • Role: A set of expected behaviors. • Role Set: A cluster of roles attached to a single status.
Role Conflict and Role Strain • Role conflict occurs when two or more statuses held at the same time place contradictory roe demands on a person. • Role strain occurs when incompatible role demands are placed on a person in a single status.
Laughter and Humor • Robert Provine’s 2000 laughter study findings: • Speakers laugh more often than listeners do. • Women laugh more often than men. • The gender differences of laughter fit a general pattern: • Laughter is unevenly distributed across status hierarchy. • People with higher statuses get more laughs, and people with lower statuses laugh more. • Sociologically, jokes enable us to see the structure of society that lies beneath our laughter.
Emotion Management • When we manage our emotions, we usually follow certain cultural scripts. • Emotion management involves people obeying “feeling rules” and responding appropriately to the situation in which they find themselves. • Norms and rules govern our emotional life.
Emotion Labor • Emotion labor is emotion management that many people do as part of their job and for which they are paid. • Nurses • Teachers • Clerks • The emotional life of workers is increasingly governed by the organizations for which they work and is therefore less spontaneous and authentic.
Emotions in Historical Perspective • Looking at historical studies can help us see additional evidence of the impact of society on our emotional life. • Feeling rules take different forms under different social conditions which vary historically. • Three examples: • Grief • Anger • Disgust.
Emotions in Historical Perspective: Grief • In Europe as late as 1600, life expectancy was only 35 years. • Many infants died at birth or in their first year of life. • People invested less emotionally in their children than we typically do. • As health conditions improved and the infant mortality rate fell over the years, emotional investment in children increased.
Emotions in Historical Perspective: Anger • Industrialization and the growth of competitive markets in the 19th-century North America and Europe turned the family into an emotional haven from a world perceived as heartless. • Anger control became increasingly important for the establishment of a harmonious household.
Emotions in Historical Perspective: Disgust • Manners in Europe in the Middle Ages were disgusting by our standards. • As times began to change, good manners also served to define who had power and who lacked it. • The rules about the different between good manners and improper or disgusting behavior were created to signify the distribution of power in the family by age and gender.
Interaction as Competition and Exchange • As we interact, we are often competing for attention in the interaction. • Turn-taking is one of the basic norms that govern conversations; people take turns to make the conversation possible. • Research has shown that Americans usually try to turn conversations toward themselves. • Conversation typically involves the exchange of attention.
Three Modes of Social Interaction • Exchange theory - social interaction involves trade in attention and other valued resources • Rational choice theory - interacting people always try to maximize benefits and minimize costs. • Dramaturgical analysis- social interaction is constant role-playing
Ethnomethodology • Ethnomethodology is the study of the methods ordinary people use, often unconsciously, to make sense of what others do and say by adhering to preexisting norms.
The Social Context of Language • Language is a very social, cultural phenomenon. • Our shared norms and understandings help us to understand each other far better than just the words themselves. • Social interaction typically involves a complex mix of verbal and nonverbal messages.
Status Cues and Stereotypes • Status Cues: Visual indicators of other people’s social position. • Status cues can quickly create stereotypes, or rigid views of how member of various groups act, regardless of whether individual group membership really behave that way. • Stereotypes create social barriers that impair interaction or prevent it altogether.
Conflict Theories of Social Interaction • Conflict Theories of Social Interaction: Theories which emphasize that when people interact, their statuses are often arranged in a hierarchy. Those on top enjoy more power than those on bottom. The degree of inequality strongly affects the character of social interaction between the interacting parties.
Types of Interaction • Domination - nearly all power is concentrated in the hands of people of similar status. • Cooperation - power is equally distributed between people of different status. • Competition - power is unequally distributed, but the degree of inequality is less than in systems of domination.
