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How do individuals escape embarrassing moments in interaction? Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and video recordings of weekly street corner ciphers (impromptu rap sessions), this paper expands Goffman's theory of defensive and protective face-work. The findings reveal formulaic and indirect dimensions of face-work. First, this paper shows how individuals use prescripted techniques and other canned resources to overcome embarrassing gaffes in interaction. Specifically, rappers use “writtens” (prewritten rhymes) when they are close to “falling off,” a local term for messing up and stopping abruptly during a “freestyle” (improvised) rap performance. Second, this paper describes how shared pressures to sustain an interaction can lead to collateral face-saving. In the cipher, surrounding peers “jump in” and begin rapping when somebody else falls off. Although this protects the person who is falling off from embarrassment, it is often done to “keep the flow going” in the cipher. At the end, this paper also outlines situations in which individuals withhold face protection from others. These findings point to other social situations in which individuals escape embarrassment with canned resources and through collateral face-saving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on G. H. Mead and Merleau-Ponty, this paper aims to extend our understanding of self-reflexivity beyond the notion of a discursive, abstract, and symbolic process. It offers a framework for embodied self-reflexivity, which anchors the self in the reflexive capacity of bodily sensations. The data consist of two years of ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews of vipassana meditation practitioners in Israel and the United States. The findings illustrate how bodily sensations are used as indexes to psychological states, emotions, and past experiences, while constant awareness of embodied responses is used as a tool for self-monitoring. The paper follows the interaction between discursive and embodied modes of reflexivity and the attempt to shift from one mode to the other. I suggest that currently popular practices of embodied awareness, from meditation to yoga, are based on embodied self-reflexivity and are part of the postindustrial culture of self-awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we ask whether individuals decide that people are generally trustworthy or untrustworthy by extrapolating from their experiences in localized interactions or whether a more fixed predisposition drives assessments of trustworthiness. These two contrasting theoretical perspectives on generalized trust can be translated into empirically testable models and adjudicated using confirmatory tetrad analysis. This paper is among the first substantive applications of confirmatory tetrad analysis and illustrates an important advantage of this technique—the ability to distinguish between causal and reflective indicators of a latent variable. We find that individuals develop a generalized expectation of trustworthiness based on their experiences with different groups of people in localized settings. We demonstrate the robustness of our results across disparate samples and spatially dissimilar survey sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on biases in group members' inferences about collective support for group norms. Whereas theories of "looking glass perception" suggest a tendency to project our own preferences onto others, this paper shows that observed biases simply may reflect flows of information through social networks. Members conceal counternormative behavior and disclose it selectively within confidence relations. This process yields structured inference, in which members' inferences depend on their social ties, and also pluralistic ignorance, in which members generally overestimate collective support for existing norms. These predictions are evaluated in a field study of perceived normative consensus in five vegetarian housing cooperatives. Results fail to support the "intrinsic bias" argument, but demonstrate these forms of "information bias." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper integrates research in network exchange and collective action. Network exchange research typically assumes that structurally disadvantaged actors cannot collude. Meanwhile, collective action research shows that cooperation can be undermined by the temptation to "free-ride" on others' efforts. In this paper we extend the scope of network exchange theory by allowing low-power actors to form coalitions. We also extend game-theoretic research by embedding collective action in a network of social relations and power processes. A theory of coalitions in exchange networks is presented, which predicts the critical mass below which coalitions fail to affect power inequality and above which coalitions become unstable. We present the results of a preliminary experimental test of the theory. The results demonstrate not only that coalitions form but even that they can reverse power inequality. However, larger coalitions were more stable than predicted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the many traditions of research on "identity," two somewhat different yet strongly related strands of identity theory have developed. The first, reflected in the work of Stryker and colleagues, focuses on the linkages of social structures with identities. The second, reflected in the work of Burke and colleagues, focuses on the internal process of self-verification. In the present paper we review each of these strands and then discuss ways in which the two relate to and complement one another. Each provides a context for the other: the relation of social structures to identities influences the process of self-verification, while the process of self-verification creates and sustains social structures. The paper concludes with examples of potentially useful applications of identity theory to other arenas of social psychology, and with a discussion of challenges that identity theory must meet to provide a clear understanding of the relation between self and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an interactionist explanation of gender differences in the processes leading to juvenile delinquency. Drawing on principles of symbolic interactionism and on research on gender differences in interactions, the paper specifies a theoretical model that generates predictions about similarities and differences across gender in the relationships between commitment to reference groups, role-taking, and delinquency. It then tests hypotheses using data from a national sample of youths, and finds that an interactionist theory of delinquency is supported for both females and males. The findings also show gender differences in the role-taking process leading to delinquency; indeed, these findings suggest an important difference in the process by which group social controls are transformed into self-control in delinquent situations among girls as compared with boys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a small set of interlocking definitions, this paper presents a generally applicable conceptualization of social structure developed from recollections of Merton's late-1950s formulation. A brief review of the literature supports the view that the proposed conceptualization provides sociological researchers with a relatively simple and logically consistent overall framework, generally continuous with past theorizing, in which to place their own findings. The paper pays particular attention to how social structures are related causally and epistemologically to more micro-level psychological and more macrolevel sociocultural phenomena. Theoretical considerations and empirical evidence suggest a decrease in the likelihood and speed of change as we move from psychological- to social structural- to sociocultural-level phenomena. Although they require proof in each instance, these postulated differences in the relative speed with which psychological-, social structural-, and sociocultural-level phenomena tend to affect each other provide a new and potentially useful tool for unraveling the knotted causal connections among these different-level phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the behavior of shy and self-confident individuals. Although there is a literature concerning the causes and consequences of shyness and self-confidence, nobody has systematically investigated what such people actually do. This paper reports findings obtained in a laboratory about conversational strategies used by shy and self-confident men and women. Participants were chosen from introductory courses at a midwestern university and were asked to complete the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA) questionnaire. Those with either high or low scores then were asked to participate in a laboratory experiment in which dyads "got to know each other." These interactions were audio- and videotaped. Through conversation-analytic techniques, verbal patterns of both shy and self-confident behavior were identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By bringing together a set of papers in the broad social structure and personality tradition of social psychology, this issue of SPQ seeks to manifest its centrality to social psychology, and vice versa. The papers illustrate the utility and necessity of incorporating more careful and more explicit analyses of macrosocial and psychological processes into the study of the relationships of macrosocial structures and processes to the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individual actors. Relationships between social stratification (by socioeconomic, gender, racial/ethnic, or age status) and the individual and intersections between the domains of work and family emerge as central problems in the study of social structure and personality, and of social psychology, sociology, and psychology more generally. These and other analyses could benefit from increased interplay among the different faces or branches of social psychology and of social psychology with emerging developments in the parent disciplines. The reemergence of the study of personality in psychology, especially from a cognitive perspective, the new concern of sociology with micro-macro links, increased intersections of biology with sociology and psychology, and the increased use of life course perspectives and longitudinal data in psychology and sociology are all developments that could contribute to, and benefit from, future advances in the study of social structure and personality. Each of these trends suggest the need for more attention to the interrelationships between individuals and macrosocial structures or processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that organizations with a particular social network structure are more effective than most organizations in responding to crises. Further, it is argued that the effective structure does not occur naturally, but must be designed consciously and carefully. A theory is developed based on well-founded principles of social science, most notably work on formal structure, conflict, friendships, and organizational crises. The paper concludes with an experimental test of one of the four propositions deduced from the theory. Six trials of the experiment found significant support for this proposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several earlier papers have discussed the results of a technique for analyzing paralinguistic adaptation of partners in conversation. The previous research showed that in a group of eleven tape-recorded dyadic conversations, where the actual conversation partners have been separated and then scrambled together, a set of computer routines is capable of re-matching a digitized version of the actual conversation partners through an analysis of voice frequency levels. In another paper based upon the same data set and making use of the same techniques of analysis, it was found that the adaptation phenomenon is also capable of quantitatively and objectively selecting out from a scrambled sample of group and non-group members, specific conversations associated with persons who share membership in a consolidated group. Members of a consolidated group in comparison with desparate individuals engage in a kind of paralinguistic crpto-communication constituting a code signifying their membership. These sociolinguistic techniques present innovative new ways of researching a multitude of general social psychological areas such as conversational affectivity, conflict and effectiveness, which obviously specifically influence social interaction between patient and therapist, non-native speakers and native speakers, salespeople and customers, professional interviewers and subjects, as well as a multitude of other diverse applications. Though ideas dealt with here are nor difficult to understand, some of the techniques used are less accessible. This paper explicitly sets forth methods used in this type of research in a less technical manner, in an effort to make techniques more accessible to the social psychological researcher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that inequalities can be more clearly understood by combining tool kit theories of culture that stress convergence between institutional expectations and individual behavior with symbolic interactionism, which emphasizes the interpretive and situational nature of behavior. I base these arguments on an ethnographic analysis of student responses to ambiguous expectations around help-seeking. Teachers’ shifting expectations created interpretive moments, to which middle-class and working-class students responded differently. Through a logic of entitlement, middle-class students saw ambiguities as opportunities for reward and tried to seek assistance. Through a logic of appeasement, working-class students saw ambiguities as opportunities for reprimand and sought to placate teachers by avoiding requests. Teacher responses to student behavior varied across situations but helped to perpetuate inequalities. Such findings suggest that the activation of tool kit resources and the stratified profits that result are more interpretive and situational than scholars typically acknowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recently, scholars have used a Bourdieusian theory of practice to analyze systems of sexual stratification, including an examination of sexual fields and sexual (or erotic) capital. While the broad structural features of the sexual field have been a point of focus in this latter research, a systematic analysis of the interactional processes that operate within the sexual status order has not been performed. In this paper, drawing on original data from an urban gay enclave, I identify six key interactional processes that occur within sexual fields, including: 1) actors’ recognition that the sexual field is constituted by a set of relations anchored to competition and sexual selection; 2) the perception of a generalized other (Mead 1934) within the field, including knowledge concerning a given field’s collective valuations of sexual attractiveness; 3) a formulation of one’s own position within the sexual status order vis-à-vis intersubjective feedback and the development of a looking-glass self (Cooley 1902); 4) an assessment of others’ positions within the sexual status order; 5) knowledge of “the game” (Goffman 1959)—including how to conduct a successful self-performance (ibid.), the construction of an optimizing front (ibid.) and proper field-specific demeanor (Goffman 1967); and finally, ideally, 6) the ability to “save face.” In total, these interactional processes draw from and reproduce systems of sexual stratification, and are likely to generalize across sexual fields. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How do persons with a stigmatized identity learn potential responses to discrimination and harassment? Drawing on three and a half years of ethnographic data, this paper demonstrates how members of a group of Muslim American youth are socialized in locally dominant stigma management strategies through stigma management rehearsals. Stigma management rehearsals are small group interactions through which leaders and members encourage their peers to adopt normative stigma responses. I identify two rehearsal types that vary in their socializing function as well as in their temporal orientation toward stigmatizing incidents. In direct preparation rehearsals, individuals anticipating a stigmatizing encounter are quickly taught the normative response. In deep education rehearsals, stigmatizing incidents set in the past or hypothetical future are used to teach justifications underlying local responses and to allow for the private expression of publicly inappropriate responses. These findings suggest that intragroup dynamics and backstage processes are important considerations when investigating issues of stigma and stigma management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we consider a collection of conversational practices that arise when a professional is faced with extended resistance to their offered advice. Our data is comprised of telephone calls to a UK child protection helpline. The practices we identify occur repeatedly across our corpus of advice resistance sequences and involve (1) the repackaging of resisted advice in more idiomatic form; (2) the combination of that advice with a tag question that treats the client as able to confirm the reformulated version despite their prior resistance to it; and (3) the dampening of the response requirement by continuing past the tag question, which would normally constitute a transition place for the advice recipient. We also discuss the tension between the contrasting projects of callers and call takers, which can lead to both delivery of advice and the resistance of that advice. In doing this we highlight the way in which advice may function as an element of broader institutional practices. In specifying these practices we draw upon analytic tools employed by conversation analysts, including various features of sequence organization (Schegloff 2007) and turn design (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974). The analysis is intended to contribute to three main areas of research: to the applied topic of managing advice resistance, to the growing literature on understanding institutional practices, and to broader concerns in conversation analytic and discursive psychological literature. These concerns include the status of the “psychological” in interaction and the specification of actions across turns and sequences of talk. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the surprising case of women who ‘‘come out as fat’’ to test and refine theories about social change, social mobilization, stigma, and stigma resistance. First, supporting theories about ‘‘social movement spillover,’’ we find that overlapping memberships in queer and fat activist groups, as well as networks between these groups, have facilitated the migration of this cultural narrative. Second, we find that the different, embodied context of body size and sexual orientation leads to changes in meaning as this narrative travels. Specifically, the hyper-visibility of fat changes what it means to come out as a fat person, compared to what it means to come out as gay or lesbian. Third, this case leads us to question the importance of the distinction made in the literatures on stigma and on social movements between assimilationist strategies that stress sameness, on the one hand, and radical political strategies that emphasize difference, on the other. Finally, this case suggests that the extent to which a stigmatized trait is associated with membership in a social group—with its own practices, values, and norms— shapes what it means to ‘‘come out’’ as one who possesses that trait. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interactional research on advice giving has described advice as normative and asymmetric. In this paper we examine how these dimensions of advice are softened by counselors on a helpline for children and young people through the use of questions. Through what we term ‘‘adviceimplicative interrogatives,’’ counselors ask clients about the relevance or applicability of a possible future course of action. The allusion to this possible action by the counselor identifies it as normatively relevant, and displays the counselor’s epistemic authority in relation to dealing with a client’s problems. However, the interrogative format mitigates the normative and asymmetric dimensions typical of advice sequences by orienting to the client’s epistemic authority in relation to their own lives, and delivering advice in a way that is contingent upon the client’s accounts of their experiences, capacities, and understandings. The demonstration of the use of questions in advice sequences offers an interactional specification of the ‘‘client-centered’’ support that is characteristic of prevailing counseling practice. More specifically, it shows how the values of empowerment and child-centered practice, which underpin services such as Kids Helpline, are embodied in specific interactional devices. Detailed descriptions of this interactional practice offer fresh insights into the use of interrogatives in counseling contexts, and provide practitioners with new ways of thinking about, and discussing, their current practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although race is one of the most salient status characteristics in American society, many observers cannot distinguish the racial ancestries of multiracial youth. This paper examines how people perceive multiracial adolescents: specifically, I investigate whether observers perceive the adolescents as multiracial and whether these racial perceptions are congruent with the multiracial adolescents’ self-identifications. Results show that 1) observers perceived close to half of multiracial targets as monoracial, 2) multiracial targets who identified themselves as black were nearly always perceived as black but not always as multiracial, and 3) the demographic and environmental characteristics of observers had no bearing on the congruence of their racial perceptions. That is, regardless of their own demographic characteristics or exposure to people of other races, observers were more congruent when examining targets who self-identified as black or white and less congruent when identifying targets from Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, or Middle Eastern backgrounds. Despite the demographic trend toward multiracialism in the United States, observers’ perceptions may maintain the status quo in race relations: a black-white dichotomy where part-blacks remain in the collective black category. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers the process by which individuals estimate the risk of adverse events, with particular attention to the social context in which risk estimates are formed. We compare subjective probability estimates of crime victimization to actual victimization experiences among respondents from the 1994 to 2002 waves of the Survey of Economic Expectations (Dominitz and Manski 2002). Using zip code identifiers, we then match these survey data to local area characteristics from the census. The results show that: (1) the risk of criminal victimization is significantly overestimated relative to actual rates of victimization or other negative events; (2) neighborhood racial composition is strongly associated with perceived risk of victimization, whereas actual victimization risk is driven by nonracial neighborhood characteristics; and (3) white respondents appear more strongly affected by racial composition than nonwhites in forming their estimates of risk. We argue these results support a model of stereotype amplification in the formation of risk estimates. Implications for persistent racial inequality are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I consider one mechanism by which racial categories, racial “common sense,” and thus the social organization of race itself, are reproduced in interaction. I approach these issues by using an ethnomethodological, conversation analytic approach to analyze a range of practices employed by participants of a “race-training” workshop. These practices manage the normative accountability involved in referring to the racial categories of others when describing their actions, and thus in using racial common sense in talk-in-interaction. This accountability arises in part because a speaker's use of a racial category to explain someone else's actions may provide a warranted basis for recipients to treat the speaker's own racial category as relevant for understanding and assessing the speaker's actions. I describe three main ways in which speakers can manage this accountability, namely generalizing race, localizing race, and alluding to race. My analysis shows that, even in attempting to resist racial common sense in accounting for their own actions and those of others, speakers orient to race as a normative framework according to which individuals will produce their own actions and interpret those of others, and thus reproduce it as relevant for understanding social action. This research contributes to advancing knowledge in the fields of ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, racial studies, and categorical inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and tests a general model to predict emergent exchange patterns and power differences in reciprocal exchange networks when individual actors follow the norm of reciprocity. With an interesting qualification, the experimental results reported here support the power-dependence approach (Emerson 1972a, b): those who acquire the most resources are connected to others who are dependent on them for rewards. Although, as Molm has abundantly demonstrated (1999, 2000, 2001, 2007), the quality of the relationship in negotiated and reciprocal exchange networks is quite different, and the details of a general model of network exchange might well differ for negotiated and reciprocal exchange, experimental results presented here indicate that power in networks, no matter how complex, is linked to dependence regardless of whether actors are motivated by rational choice or a norm of reciprocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social psychological investigations of hierarchy formation have been almost entirely confined to the case of task-oriented groups and hence have produced theories that turn on the existence of such a task. But other forms of vertical hierarchy may emerge in non-task groups. One form, orderings of dominance, has been studied among animals using systematic behavioral observations, but almost never among humans, despite many discussions of such structures existing among adolescent males. Using stochastic models, this paper examines change in vertical orderings for data on dominance encounters among same-sex adolescent campers. There seem to be different paths for stabilization of vertical hierarchies for boys and girls, both of which involve the emergence of special roles, the top boy or the bottom girl. Further, stabilization seems to be greatly facilitated (at least for boys) by members adopting Roger Gould's theory of dominance encounters and turning their attention to those close in rank. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social order is possible only if individuals forgo the narrow pursuit of self-interest for the greater good. For over a century, social scientists have argued that sympathy mitigates self-interest and recent empirical work supports this claim. Much less is known about why actors experience sympathy in the first place, particularly in fleeting interactions with strangers, where cooperation is especially uncertain. We argue that perceived interdependence increases sympathy towards strangers. Results from our first study, a vignette experiment, support this claim and suggests a situational solution to social dilemmas. Meanwhile, previous work points to two strong individual-level predictors of cooperation: generalized trust and social values. In Study Two we address the intersection of situational and individual-level explanations to ask: does situational sympathy mediate these individual-level predictors of cooperation? Results from the second study, a laboratory experiment, support our hypotheses that sympathy mediates the generalized trust–cooperation link and the relationship between social values and cooperation. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations of the present work and directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case of jointly produced passion work. Passion work is emotional labor designed to elicit a strong response from subjects through an impression of extreme states such as pain, agony, or suffering. Based on an ethnographic investigation of professional wrestling participants, this study analyzes the backstage emotion teamwork that takes place within the self and with other performers. The study traces how performers do this physical labor and the social consequences of such work. The findings demonstrate that a) social rewards are intrinsic to performances of passion work, b) jointly produced passion work allows for the sort of breadth that is difficult to achieve in solo emotional work, and c) emotional labor shapes identity in recreational performances of the body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Status construction theory (SCT) has established a set of sufficient conditions for the formation of status characteristics that define informal hierarchies. However, while it has proven successful in explaining the development of status-laden personal characteristics in the laboratory, relatively less attention has been devoted to its predictions at the societal level. This paper alters the current state of affairs by examining the predictions of status construction theory using the 2001 International Social Survey Program's networks module. This data source allows the comparison of a macro-level distribution of a goal object (authority positions) with a novel measure of status derived from the social networks literature. The results are consistent with the predictions of SCT, supporting the theory outside the laboratory and cross-nationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the central tenet of social psychology and the life-course perspective that broader contexts of opportunity and constraint moderate the ability of individuals to act on their plans and ambitions. We use the 1972 National Longitudinal Study to assess the impact of mastery on achieving one's occupational expectations and to determine if the benefits of mastery are contingent on structural contexts. Three types of structural constraints are examined: local employment conditions, marriage and family, and the credentialing of upper-status occupations. In general, mastery is associated with more ambitious and stable expectations over time. Results from discrete-time event history models show that personal mastery is positively associated with achieving one's occupational expectations, and the association is contingent on some, but not all, structural constraints. Marriage increases the effect of mastery on the odds of achieving one's occupational expectations, but having children decreases mastery's effect. Mastery is more beneficial to those pursuing training-intensive occupations, partly due to the acquisition of post-secondary credentials. Lastly, women receive less of a benefit from mastery than men do, likely due to the structural barriers women face in the workplace. Contrary to expectations, poor local employment conditions do not weaken mastery's influence on goal attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of the relative success of equal opportunity laws on women's status in the workplace, we know little about the influence of such legal interventions on people's attitudes and beliefs. This paper focuses, in particular, on how sexual harassment policy affects men's beliefs about the gender hierarchy. We employ an experimental design in which we measure the effect of a policy intervention on men's explicit and implicit gender beliefs. Results show that the sexual harassment policy did not alter explicit gender beliefs. Explicit beliefs changed in a different way, however. Compared to the baseline condition, participants in the policy intervention condition believed that most people think both men and women are lower-status, less competent, and less considerate. The policy intervention also affected implicit gender beliefs. Participants in the policy condition displayed more entrenched male-advantaged gender beliefs compared to the baseline condition. We interpret this as evidence that sexual harassment policies may have the unintended effect of activating unequal gender beliefs, which run contrary to the policy's equalizing aims. This research also suggests the value of measuring both explicit and implicit gender beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effects that different patterns of similarity among group members have on a group's performance on a problem-solving task. I discuss and test hypotheses on the effects of similarity on group performance derived from two literatures: balance theory and research on homophily. In an experiment I found that the relative balance of the pattern of similarity was more important in predicting how quickly groups establish norms of interaction and complete a task than how similar group members were to each other. Neither balance nor the degree of similarity had a significant effect on the quality of the groups' work. I conclude that groups with balanced similarity structures produce task solutions that approximate the quality of those from other groups, but they do so in significantly less time. That is, balanced groups are more efficient than unbalanced groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The BBC Prison Study was an experimental case study in which participants were randomly assigned to groups as prisoners or guards. This paper examines the impact of interventions designed to increase prisoners' sense of shared social identity on processes of leadership. It presents psychometric, behavioral, and observational data which support the propositions that (a) social identity makes leadership possible, (b) effective leadership facilitates the development of social identity, and (c) the long-term success and failure of leadership depends on the viability of identity-related projects. The study also points to the role of identity failure in precipitating change in general and the emergence of authoritarian leadership in particular. Findings provide integrated support for claims that social identity and self-categorization processes are fundamental to the leadership process and associated experiences of collective efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two complementary agendas. One is to develop a formal analysis of temporal ambiguity in self-identification. This refers specifically to having two conflicting orientations toward the future with regard to one's identity (e. g., a temporary expecting orientation and a permanent accepting orientation). I use the recovery identity (e. g., alcoholic, anorexic, agoraphobic) as a temporally ambiguous case because this identity is established as a means to an end but is susceptible to becoming an end in itself through identification with the disorder label. My analysis is based on the recovery narratives of individuals who have disidentified with their disorder labels; this allows for a consideration of the entire recovery career, from entry to exit. My second agenda is to explore the underresearched phenomenology of exiting from recovery identities specifically. Both of these agendas contribute new insight into identity research, labeling theory, and the sociology of mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies by Holmes, Miller, and Lerner (2002) support the norm of self-interest and exchange fiction hypotheses. Together these arguments state that people want to act on compassionate feelings (e.g., by donating to charities) but are reluctant to do so if they cannot justify their behavior as being in line with their own self-interest. Thus a person will be more likely to contribute to a charity when he or she receives a product in exchange for the contribution. This exchange fiction gives the person egoistic cover for the compassionate act. In this paper we critically evaluate the evidence for this line of reasoning and offer an alternative explanation for that evidence based on cognitive dissonance theory. We report the results of a new field experiment designed to tease apart the exchange fiction argument and the alternative approach. Results of the study support our application of dissonance theory over the exchange fiction account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the identity negotiation processes of North African immigrant women in France. Participants engaged in various forms of identity work, including selective association and management of appearance, as well as resisting others' attempts to categorize them as immigrants. Given that these women have chosen to move to France and remain there, this finding is surprising. Using the concept of the Not-Me identity, we explore how people can redefine and refuse labels that seem to be self-evident and to lack room for negotiation. At the same time, we examine how class and educational resources and other structural factors influence these immigrant women's ability to control others' perceptions of their identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we interrelate different theories of identity and describe how various social contexts and cognitive motives influence the process of identity change. We consider two competing theories about the linkage of contexts with motives for identity change: the effect of category traits, based on social identity theory, and the effect of social networks, based on identity theory. To explore these relations, we use data collected on more than 6,000 adolescents at six high schools in two consecutive school years. Multilevel logit models reveal a strong relationship between contexts and perceived identity imbalances, and a strong effect of identity imbalance on identity change. More important than category traits are the social network characteristics of prominence, homogeneity, and bridging; these form social contexts that affect perceptions of identity imbalance, and the perceptions in turn lead to a heightened incidence of identity change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the relationship between cohabitation and mental health tends to ignore social psychological factors that help explain mental health differences between the married and the unmarried, including coping resources and perceived relationship quality. In this paper I draw on social psychological theory and research to clarify differences in depression and alcohol use between married and cohabiting individuals. Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, I examine the independent and combined influences of socioeconomic status, coping resources, and relationship quality to account for marital status differences in distress. I find that marital status differences in coping resources and relationship quality help explain the gap in depression, but not in alcohol use, between married and cohabiting individuals. I also find that social selection is not responsible for marital status differences in distress. The implications of these findings for future research on cohabitors' mental health are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes "empathy" and "sympathy" as situated practices, sequential processes that are coconstructed by the participants in the situation. The data consists of 228 sequences of patients' descriptions of their problematic experiences and professionals' responses to them in videorecorded general practice and homeopathic consultations. One deviant case, in which the practitioner shows compassion to the patient in an exceptional way, is subjected to detailed analysis. It is argued that both professionals and patients orient to a degree of professional neutrality in these situations, but also that affiliative practices can be adjusted to the otherwise problem-governed course of the consultation. These orientations seem to address questions similar to those of theoretical distinctions made between the terms empathy and sympathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the general framework of agreement on a state of affairs, the matter of the terms of agreement can remain: determining whose view is the more significant or more authoritative with respect to the matter at hand. In this paper we focus on this issue as it is played out in assessment sequences. We examine four practices through which a second speaker can index the independence of an agreeing assessment from that of a first speaker, and in this way can qualify the agreement. We argue that these practices reduce the responsiveness of the second assessment to the first; in this way they resist any claim to epistemic authority that may be indexed by the first speaker in "going first" in assessing some state of affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The peer group is an important developmental context for children. In this paper we present a method to operationalize a child's integration into the classroom by their informal social classroom roles, which we obtained using a blockmodel analysis based on role equivalence. This method differs in several respects from the common sociometric status approach. Analysis of multiplex social relationships of 1,241 first-grade children in 71 classrooms showed nine empirical classroom roles. The roles were not associated with physical attractiveness not with ethnic ancestry, were associated only weakly with age, sex, and intelligence, and were associated strongly with school adjustment. Classroom roles and sociometric status were clearly associated, but measured different aspects of a child's integration into the classroom. For all school problems except academic performance, classroom roles explained a much larger proportion of the variance than did sociometric status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper examines existing links between identities and the social structure in the context of identity control theory. I point out that, whether social structure is conceived as positions (roles and group memberships) to which identities are tied, or as the human organization of resource flows and transfers that are controlled by the identity verification process, identities and social structure are two sides of the same coin. Building on this theme, I develop hypotheses that explore some of the implications of this identity-social structure link Some hypotheses suggest contexts in which identity change is likely; others explore the various consequences of identity verification, which depend on the different ways in which identities are fled to the social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some researchers argue that negative racial stereotyping by white Americans is fueled in part by the continuing association between race and economic disadvantage. If blacks continue to fall behind economically, many whites reason, then blacks must not be trying hard enough. In this paper we draw on status construction theory to elucidate the social psychological processes that contribute to such reasoning. We also test several related hypotheses with national survey data. In keeping with theoretical expectations, our results indicate that whites' awareness of blacks' relatively disadvantaged position contributes to negative stereotyping. Moreover, this is the case even among whites who recognize the contribution of structural forces to economic outcomes. Thus awareness of blacks' disadvantaged position in society appears to buttress the very stereotypes that are used to explain and justify inequality in the first place. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown how black scholars' experiences differ from those of their white counterparts in regard to research and service, but few studies have addressed the influence of race on professors' teaching experiences. In this paper I examine how and to what degree race shapes professors' perceptions and experiences in the undergraduate college classroom. I analyze how students' social and cultural expectations about race affect professors' emotional labor and management, shaping the overall nature of their jobs. The findings suggest that black professors' work in the classroom is different and more complex than that of their white colleagues because negotiating a devalued racial status requires extensive emotion management. Social constraints affect the negotiation of self and identity in the classroom, influencing the emotional demands of teaching and increasing the amount of work required to be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate friendship processes in a group of Italian children in their last year of preschool and during their transition to one of four first grade classrooms. We found that in the preschool the children and their teachers collectively had produced a highly integrated community that was evident in the lack of status differentiation in the peer culture. Despite some gender separation in the children's play contacts, this division was not nearly as highly developed as found in previous studies in the United States. In the first grade classrooms and peer cultures we saw similarities, extensions, and divergences in peer relations and friendship processes in relation to the preschool. We discuss the implications of these findings for friendship processes among youths and adults; we make a general argument for an interpretive approach to friendship that stresses how agency and temporal and structural factors are interrelated in the development and maintenance of friendships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does gender affect cooperation? In this paper we analyze the effects of gender and group gender composition on prosocial behavior. We make two competing predictions: one based on literature suggesting that women are more cooperative than men, the other building on research regarding the effect of expectations on behavior. Using data drawn from micro-credit borrowing groups, we find that gender composition, not gender per se, is correlated with the likelihood that individuals will default on loan payments. The findings suggest that behavior which might appear to be a consequence of inherent gender differences more likely results from expectations associated with group gender composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on agency neglects temporality; the literature on temporality neglects agency. This paper integrates these largely separate lines of research with the concept "time work," which is defined as individual or interpersonal efforts to create or suppress particular kinds of temporal experience. Semistructured, open-ended interviews were conducted with 398 subjects, who were asked to describe ways in which they engage in time work. Analytic induction yielded five themes: in descending order of prevalence, the subjects reported efforts to control or manipulate duration, frequency, sequence, timing, and allocation. The variety and prevalence of time work suggests the sovereignty of self-determination; for the most part, however, time work contributes to cultural reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the effects of work and family relations on feelings of control among married persons with children in the home. Previous research is unclear as to whether married men enjoy higher feelings of perceived control than their female counterparts, although theory suggests that women will feel a lower sense of mastery. On the basis of Mirowsky and Ross's (1989) theory of control, we find that wives report significantly less mastery than husbands. Our findings indicate the importance of personal earnings in accounting for husbands' greater mastery and reveal the effects of social-economic factors, work, and family strains on mastery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore the validity of a survey question commonly used for measuring generalized trust. Trust has become a key variable in a variety or fields, including sociology, social psychology, political science, and economics; therefore the accuracy with which it is measured has profound implications for many studies. We suggest that ambiguous wording on this survey item has led to misinterpretations concerning actual trust levels, especially in a cross-cultural context. To test this claim, we conduct an extensive survey of students at UCLA and at Hokkaido University, Japan. Results strongly suggest that the survey question measures differences in caution levels rather than in trust. Implications of this research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper elaborates and refines a theory of evaluations and expectations by Fisek, Berger, and Norman which is an integration of status characteristics and expectation states theory with source theory. The elaboration of evaluations and expectations theory is achieved by incorporating ideas from Moore's role enactment and second-order expectations theory. The new formulation can generate predictions for situations where the sources of evaluations are not only designated evaluators but also interactants; it also can differentiate between situations where enactment of evaluations does and does not occur. The formulation is tested against data from five experimental studies and agrees well with the results of these studies. Among other results, our research shows how a theoretical formulation that deals with a classic sociological problem, one concerned with the effect of others' evaluations on actors' behaviors, can be formalized mathematically and investigated experimentally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we extend the analysis of social structure and personality, heretofore generally limited to the class positions and social-stratification levels of the employed, to encompass the nonemployed as well. We do this in a comparative study of Poland and Ukraine during an early period of their transformations from socialism to nascent capitalism. The analysis in volves the systematic comparison of the nonemployed segments of the adult populations of these countries--those who were unemployed and looking for work, housewives, pensioners, and students--with the employed and with each other. The relationships between "structural location" and personality are statistically significant and nontrivial in magnitude, both for men and for women in both countries. Some of these relationships appear to reflect the extent of' job loss and the resulting social compositions of the nonemployed segments of the population. The relationships result also, in substantial part, from the conditions of life experienced by the nonemployed segments of the population. Some of the nonemployed (most o fall, the involuntary housewives) were subjected to economic duress, resulting in a sense of distress. Moreover, the conditions of life of unemployed and pensioned Poles (we do not have comparable data for Ukraine) were not as conducive to, or requiring of complex activity as are those of gainfully employed men and women. This finding helps explain their relatively low levels of intellectual flexibility and self-directedness of orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we focus on a long-standing debate surrounding the measurement of interruptions in conversational behavior. This debate has implications for conversational analysts interested in turn-taking structures, researchers interested in close relationships who interpret them as an exercise of power, and group processes researchers studying status-organizing structures. We explore two different measurements of interruptions: (1) a syntactic measurement that operationalizes an interruption as simultaneous talk initiated more than two syllables from the end of a current speaker's sentence, and (2) a more contextual measurement that takes into account situational factors such as the current speaker's intentions and the content of what both speakers say when judging whether a speech act is an interruption. We coded transcripts from 86 task group discussions using West and Zimmerman's (1983) syntactic criteria and Murray's (1985) context-sensitive method for identifying interruptions. Factor analyses found a one-factor solution, an indication that both measurements capture the same underlying construct. Confirmatory factor analyses identified more subtle variations, however, suggesting that gender and subcultural differences affect how coders construe interruptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American society has witnessed a clear ideological shift to less traditional, more egalitarian gender attitudes. In this paper we draw on Mannheim's theory of social change and examine forerunners of the change: men and women who are much less traditional than their parents' generation and their own generation. Specifically we explore how forerunner parents and children's own contemporary experiences shape the probability that the children will become forerunners and agents of change. Drawing on interview data from a national longitudinal study of parents and their offspring, we find that contemporary experiential factors are more important for forerunner socialization of daughters, whereas parents' forerunner status underlies sons' becoming forerunners. We argue that these sex differences in socialization effects explain in part why men's gender ideology and behaviors lag behind those of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]