Social Interaction and Impression Management in Everyday Life

1. Social Interaction and Everyday Life in the Age of the Internet Chapter 5 Martin Parr Richard Renaldi

2. Social Interaction and Everyday Life in the Age of the Internet • Imagine you are in need of assistance in a crowded subway car. A person who is listening to her iPod will probably: • (a) willingly provide help. • (b) begrudgingly provide help. • (c) react angrily to your request for help. • (d) ignore your request for help altogether.

3. Learning Objectives • Basic Concepts • Understand the core concepts of the “impression management” perspective • See how we use impression management techniques in everyday life • Theories of Social Interaction • Learn about sociological theories of interaction, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis

4. Learning Objectives • Contemporary Research on Social Interaction • Understand how social interaction and broader features of society are closely related • Unanswered Questions • See how face-to-face interactions remain important in the age of the Internet

5. Basic Concepts

6. Basic Concepts • The World as a Stage • Roles-the expected behaviors of people occupying particular social positions. • Status-The social honor or prestige that a particular group is accorded by other members of a society. • Social Position-The social identity an individual has in a given group or society.

7. Basic Concepts • The World as a Stage • Impression Management-Preparing for the presentation of one’s social role.

8. Basic Concepts • Audience Segregation-We segregate our social groups to avoid role conflicts.

9. Basic Concepts • Civil Inattention • Acknowledgement of strangers in our environment • People who break the rules of civil inattention disrupt the social order • This social interaction constantly shapes our reality

10. Basic Concepts • Face, Gestures, and Emotion • Nonverbal communication • Body gestures or postures are cultural not innate • Culture affects exactly how wide the smile or fleeting the smile, but the smile itself is a universal expression of happiness. • Some facial expressions are used deliberately to communicate information rather than true emotion

11. Basic Concepts • Face, Gestures, and Emotion • Paul Ekman and the Facial Action Coding Systems (FACS)

12. Basic Concepts • Unfocused Interaction • people are aware of the others around them and may engage in civil inattention • Focused Interaction-Encounters • expressions people “give” • expressions people “give off”

13. Basic Concepts • Response Cries • the verbal utterances that people add to their speech such as “oops!” or “duh!” to convey that a lapse or mistake is minor or momentary and that they do have command of the situation. • They reveal that people are aware that they’re in performance mode during social interactions, and that they are constantly monitoring and censoring themselves.

14. Basic Concepts • Time-space dimension of social interaction • Regionalization • the spatial and temporal dimension of interaction • Clock time • Ex. Jogging at 3am

15. Theories of Social Interaction

16. Theories of Social Interaction • There are three important reasons why the study of daily life is central to sociology: • Our daily routines teach us a lot about ourselves as social beings and about social life. • Studying daily life reveals how we act creatively to shape reality. • We learn a lot about larger social systems and institutions by studying social interactions in everyday life. • Erving Goffman • Did the most to create a new field of study called microsociology or social interaction

17. Theories of Social Interaction • Erving Goffman • Did the most to create a new field of study called microsociology or social interaction • Dramaturgical Analysis • front region • Where the performance takes place, with a particular audience. • Stakes are high • back region • Where one retreats or lessens social performance

18. Theories of Social Interaction • Edward T. Hall • Personal space • Intimate-up to 1.5’ • Personal 1.5-4’ • Social 4-12’ • Public 12’ • The amount of personal space required for comfort varies across cultures. • When people violate the rules about social distance, particularly when they confuse intimate and personal distance, people feel threatened.

19. Theories of Social Interaction • Harold Garfinkel • Ethnomethodology • Study of how people make sense of what others says and do in the course of daily social interaction • Ethnomethodologists try to understand the social order by disrupting it.

20. Theories of Social Interaction • Harold Garfinkel • Verbal “search procedures” • Used to break down social interaction and reveal the taken-for-granted • His experiments revealed that without shared understanding communication becomes impossible. • When the shared understanding is violated, we cannot engage in meaningful social interactions.

21. Contemporary Research on Social Interaction Women Harassing Men Experiment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P24bL18mR8M Civil inattention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6HtljS7Prs https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/07/20/men-who-harass-women-online-are-quite-literally-losers-new-study-finds/ 10 hours of men catcalling women https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A

22. Contemporary Research on Social Interaction • Interactional Vandalism • When a person of lower status breaks rules of everyday social interaction that are of value to the more powerful (ex. homeless person trying to talk to a businessman) • Children and parents • Conversation Analysis

23. Contemporary Research on Social Interaction • Linking Macrosociology and Microsociology • Women and men in public • The harassment, threat, and insecurity that women feel when strange men ogle or call out to them in public places can be linked to gender stratification systems in our society. • Blacks and whites in public • Crossing to other side of street when black man is approaching

24. Unanswered Questions • Impression Management in the Internet Age • Back and front regions on the Internet?

27. Unanswered Questions • The Compulsion of Proximity • desire to meet face to face

28. Discussion Question: Thinking Sociologically Smoking cigarettes is a pervasive habit found in many parts of the world and a habit that could be explained by both microsociological and macrosociological forces. Give an example of each that would be relevant to explain the proliferation of smoking. How might your suggested micro- and macro-level analyses be linked?