Everyday Sociology Blog

Feeling and Display Rules of Emotion

By Bradley Wright

When most of us think of work, we think of things like trading our time for money or maybe doing something physically difficult. It turns out, according to a large body of social psychological literature, that work can also involve emotions. That’s right, what you feel, and how you show it is “work” that is just as much of your life as your job at the local fast food restaurant.

Here’s how it works (pun intended). When we weren’t looking, society made up a bunch of rules about our emotions. Some of these rules, called feeling rules, govern what we’re supposed to feel in a given situation. For example, when you get married or graduate from college, you’re supposed to be happy, and people will be concerned if you’re otherwise. What if your wedding pictures all show you wide-eyed in terror? (Oh, wait, that was me). Other rules, called display rules, regard what emotions you present to others. With these rules, it doesn’t matter what you’re really feeling, you just have to show the right emotions. For example, when I teach, I don’t mind knowing that some of the students are bored out of their skulls, but I don’t want them showing it with loud yawns and constant eye-rolling.

Once you start thinking about it, it’s remarkable how many roles in society require serious emotion work. Most jobs, for example, pay you not just to do the official work, but they also pay you to do it with the right emotions. A classic example is being a physician. Part of being a doctor is poking, prodding, cutting, and doing all sorts of things to people that is very uncomfortable. In doing it, doctors have to maintain an emotionally-neutral, professional demeanor. What if the doctor is doing something that’s very uncomfortable for you, and they start laughing. Or, maybe they say “oh gross.” My guess is that doctor will start losing patients really quickly.

Likewise, in another example, a study of flight attendants found that they were explicitly trained in the emotions they are supposed to show to airline passengers. Despite being jammed in with hundreds of cranky people, packed together for hours with the same recycled air (you can tell I’m not a big fan of commercial airlines), flight attendants are supposed to be pleasant and cheerful. That’s their job, to smile with each passenger’s request, and if they can’t do the emotions well enough, they might be fired.

An event last summer illustrates the power of emotion work, as it defined an international news story. In Southern Italy, two cousins, aged 12 and 13, went for a swim. They got caught up in a dangerous riptide, and they drowned. This was a tragedy, as any death of a child is, but what made it newsworthy was the reaction of people on the beach. When the bodies were brought ashore, they covered them with a blanket, with the girls’ feet sticking out, waiting for the girls’ family and authorities. At first a crowd gathered around, but after not too long, the crowd dispersed and went back to their activities—sun bathing, talking on their cell-phones, having lunch and frolicking in the water—all this just a few meters away from the bodies. Eventually police officers carried away the girls’ bodies on stretchers, walking past sun bathers enjoying the nice day.

There are strong emotion rules in a situation like this. When young people are harmed, we are supposed to feel sadness, even grief. This is a feeling rule. At the very least, we’re to show proper respect and be solemn, a display rule. What we’re not supposed to do, however, is to just go about our business. The crowd violated these rules, and even though it caused no material or physical harm, their perceived indifference caused an international outcry. “The incident also attracted condemnation from the Archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Crecenzio Seppe. ‘Indifference is not an emotion for human beings,’ Seppe wrote in his parish blog. ‘To turn the other way or to mind your own business can sometimes be more devastating than the events that occur.’”

To complicate matters, the girls were Roma (formerly termed “gypsies”) and the surrounding beach-goers were Italian. There is considerably tension between the Italian authorities and the Roma minority, with the authorities accusing the Roma of increasing levels of street crime, and the Roma charging discrimination. The situation of these two girls, and the crowd’s reaction, exacerbated these tensions. 

This event, and the furor it caused, illustrates the power of emotion rules. Society holds us accountable not just for what we say and do, but for how we feel as well.

Anomie and the First Day of School

By Karen Sternheimer

Do you remember your first day starting at a new school? A new job? For some of you these memories might be as fresh as a few weeks ago. For me, it’s been a while. But no matter how long it has been since you first entered an institution with set rules, norms, and expectations, the memory of the anxiety is probably still with you.

Each year I volunteer to participate in some of my university’s orientation activities before the school year officially begins. And every year I notice students have similar questions--about the work load compared with high school, what taking exams and writing papers are like at the college level, and what happens if you come to class late. Transfer students will often ask what the differences might be between the school they came from and our university.

Basically, all of these questions boil down to one: what are the unwritten rules here? 

The incoming students know the university’s written policies (or at least are told what they are or where to find them) but tend to be curious about the informal rules. What do people wear to class? Can we eat during class? Should I have a separate notebook for my labs and lectures? How much reading will there be? Are professors friendly? Will anyone care about me?

When students ask me these questions, I try my best to answer them, although I’m sure it is frustrating when most of my answers start with “that depends, every professor and every class is different.” I assure them that within a week or two they will feel like they are veterans here.

But their anxiety is not unfounded. It is similar to what Emile Durkheim termed anomie, literally translated, a sense of normlessness. For Durkheim, societies that have competing norms or a total absence of norms experience more crime, instability, and a lack of cohesion.

Most of the students I encounter aren’t worried that a lack of knowledge of norms will lead to crime and deviance on campus. Rather, they struggle to learn exactly what the norms are so they can conform. On the first day of class, like most other professors, I hand out a syllabus and go over the rules, regulations, and expectations for the course. After a few days of attending classes and living on campus, the same students who were so nervous become confident that at the very least they are learning the norms and expectations of life as a college student.

By contrast, students who refuse to adapt to these norms tend to struggle. Maybe they find less social acceptance if they dress very differently from most other students (on our campus the dress code is casual, with a preference towards any item with the university logo). Students who refuse to do at least minimal work demanded from course syllabi will likely find themselves on academic probation at some point. And students who fail to pay their tuition on time will probably be shut out altogether, or at the very least lose their registration date until they pay up.

We might ponder whether this collective change—an influx of new students—could bring about social change. While certainly campus culture and student norms shift over time, it is remarkable how stable they have been. I have been on the same campus for fifteen years now, and have seen some positive changes in work ethic and ability as the university has become more selective. Yet incoming students first want to figure out how to fit in, not how to create change.

There is something reassuring about being in the same boat as other new students who are also unsure about what the campus norms are. Recently, the Los Angeles Times reported on a new trend of universities offering mid-year admissions. As college admissions have become more competitive, some schools have started admitting students for the winter or spring rather than the fall. 

Some are concerned that these students might miss out on the opportunity to go through the transition into college with their peers, who will be fully acclimated by the time they arrive on campus. The students who entered in the fall will have bonded with each other, leaving the newest arrivals to fend for themselves. Universities that engage in this practice (including my own) say that these students end up doing very well, having spent the fall semester taking classes elsewhere, working, traveling, or just take the opportunity to become more focused.

What do you think Durkheim would have to say about this? Are these admissions policies creating a new form of anomie?

Facebook and Social Comparison Theory

By Bradley Wright

My high-school aged son and his friends use a Facebook application that is both interesting and horrifying. With this application, the user compares him- or herself to all of their Facebook friends. Once you start this application, it shows random pairs of individuals from your Facebook friend list (which, by the way, includes me), and it asks you to judge them on a remarkably wide range of criteria.

For example, it might show pictures of two friends, and then ask who has the best profile picture or smells the nicest or is the coolest or is the best potential parent or is the most fun to go shopping with. Just think-- if you use this program, you might be able to go to school or work the next day uplifted by the knowledge that you smell nicer than any of your Facebook friends.

This program horrifies me because I’m aware of how incredibly powerful peer-influence is during adolescence and even young adulthood (read: college students). If all your friends are doing something, then you’ll probably do it too--no matter how silly or thoughtless it is. This is why young people will dress funny, have bizarre hairstyles, and listen to terrible music—but that may have just been me growing up in the 1970s disco-era. Thankfully, the program doesn’t have negative categories, in which you vote for who smells the worst. Still, I shutter to think how much power these explicit peer-comparisons have over young peoples’ understandings and feelings about themselves.

This program is interesting because it is a great example of social comparison theory. This theory, developed by well-known social psychologist Leon Festinger (back in 1954, even before Facebook!), assumes that people understand themselves, in part, by comparing themselves to others. In fact, we make these comparisons constantly and in just about every area of our lives—our abilities, opinions, possessions, relationships. If we walk into a room with other people in it, even if we don’t know them well, we have probably already figured out whether we are taller or shorter, richer or poorer, and younger or older than them.

We’re especially prone to compare ourselves to people we view as similar to us. So I usually compare myself to men about my age, especially those in academia. I’m much less inclined to compare myself to someone considerably different, e.g., one of my first-grade son’s friends. The fact that I can run faster than a seven-year old really doesn’t matter much, but I’m aware of how much I publish or earn compared to my colleagues in sociology.

The fact that we compare ourselves to others is pretty straightforward. Social comparison theory gets really interesting when we consider why we do it. Sometimes we just want to know how we’re doing—to assess ourselves—and in that case we compare ourselves to people who are most similar to us. Say you were a golfer, you might want to get a sense for how well you were doing, so you would compare your golf scores with those of people like you—maybe the friends that you go golfing with. (I actually gave up golfing after a particularly difficult experience getting the ball under the windmill).

Other times, however, we want to improve how we’re doing in a given area. In this situation, we consciously choose someone much better than us to compare ourselves with. The idea is that if they are better, any differences between us and them might signal areas that we could improve on. So, a golfer might compare himself with Tiger Woods, correctly assuming that Tiger has a much better swing and approach to the game than he does.

Sometimes, however, we want to feel better about ourselves, and so we might compare ourselves to people who are doing less well than us in a particular area. So, if a golfer is down in the dumps, maybe watching a beginner play might make her feel better about her own golf skills.

The larger point here is that how we define and understand ourselves is an inherently social process, for it stems in part from who we compare ourselves to. Not only that, but we strategically use these comparisons to alter who we are and how we see ourselves. So, the Facebook social comparison application, like so much else in life, becomes a tool for making sense of who we are in the world.

Still, this is little comfort for me not having been voted the nicest smelling person.

An Effect of Measurement

By Bradley Wright

A friend of mine bought a hybrid car—one of those cars that runs on both gas and a battery engine—and when he gave me a ride, I was struck by two things. First, the car is amazingly quiet when it is running on battery power; in fact, I wouldn’t have even known that the engine was running except we were driving down the street. This, I thought, would be perfect for sneaking up on pedestrians (but that’s a topic for another blog post). Second, my friend, who is otherwise quite sensible, spoke at great length about the gas mileage that he gets with the car, and how it varies by driving patterns and terrain. Apparently braking slowly is good (or bad) because it does (or doesn’t) charge the battery. (You can tell I wasn’t paying too much attention).

Now, I thought my friend was unusual in his fascination with miles-per-gallon until I read this Washington Post article about hybrid owners. It tells of various owners who seem willing to do anything for that extra mile-per-gallon. One driver changed his route to work, just to avoid a big hill that drops his mileage to below 20 mpg. Another is so keen on keeping his mpg high that he won’t let his wife—who apparently just drives normally—drive his hybrid.

The key feature of hybrids that makes this mpg obsession possible is a dashboard mileage monitor that indicates how many miles-per-gallon the car is getting at that exact moment. This feedback appears to change drivers’ behavior.

Sociologists have long understood what is called an observer effect (also called the Hawthorn Effect). The idea here is that people change their behavior when they know they are being observed. This is why sociologists will sometimes use covert observation to study a situation, so as not to change it unnecessarily. It’s also why experimenters will often deceive their subjects about the true purpose of the study.

Well, related to the observer effect might be something that we can a measurement effect. Just the act of measuring a behavior changes it to be (usually) more in-line with our preferences and goals.

This principle applies to much more than driving hybrid cars. In fact, when people want to change their own behavior or that of others, one of the first things they’ll do is start measuring that behavior. It’s remarkable in how many areas of life we use this measure-to-change-it approach to behavior.

Weight Watchers is one of the best known weight loss programs. What’s one of the first things that a person does at the Weight Watcher’s meeting? Step on a scale, and have someone write down how much you weigh. This measurement brings your attention to what you’re trying to do, and it indicates how well you’ve done it in the previous week.

Most money management programs operate on the same principle. They have you keep track of all your expenses (i.e., measure them), and then see how they change over time. (I tried a program, called Money Counts, and I realized that I’m better at sociology than managing money.)

Want to live a more holy life? Start confessing. The Catholic Church encourages its members to periodically tally up their sins for a priest who then (hopefully) absolves them of these sins. The awareness of sin that the periodic confessions encourage should help move the individual away from behaviors they don’t desire.

Fundraising programs not only ask for money, but they also let their target audience know how much they’ve already raised. This is why every summer we see signs with thermometers painted on them. The more money given, the higher the red-mark on the thermometer.

I suppose that even classroom grading works this way. Students who know their grades throughout their semester probably study harder and are more engaged in the tests than those who are not told their grades. (This is why professors always tell students their grades.)

This principle has implications for social research. Just the act of measuring someone’s behavior, e.g., as is done in a survey, can change that person’s behavior by making them more aware of what they are doing. This may not matter in a cross-sectional survey, done only once, but with longitudinal research, it may alter the data. That is, if we measure a person’s behavior a second time, we may observe something different than if we hadn’t measured it a first time.

What’s the bottom line here? Well, when we measure anything, whether in professional research or everyday-life, realize that we’re probably changing some aspect of it. If we want to change something, probably the first thing to do is to start measuring it.

Sociology Selects a Presidential Running Mate

By Karen Sternheimer

Suppose you were in the unlikely position of choosing a running mate for your presidential bid. The right choice could help you become the most powerful person on earth. Make the wrong one and you risk becoming the pariah of your party. Can sociology help you make your decision?

Social psychologists have long studied how we make important choices like this one, and what factors make for best leaders. Here are a few simple rules based on their research:

1. Don’t Choose One of Your Friends

It seems counterintuitive, but your friends should be the last pool you draw your running mate from. Here’s why: they tend to think like you and have similar backgrounds, lifestyles, tastes, and beliefs. They even tend to be morning people if you’re a morning person, or night people if you like to stay out late. According to the Matching Hypothesis, they even tend to match our levels of attractiveness. We are also more likely to hang out with people who share similar religious beliefs, emotional style, and sense of humor. 

While all these similarities might make for a good friend, a presidential candidate benefits from a running mate who is different. Typically, a running mate will possess a quality, background, or social network that the candidate themselves lack. They might be from a different part of the country, have different constituents, and therefore can bring in different voters.

Aside from the problem of similarities, people tend to be more competitive with their friends than they are with others. Social psychologist Abraham Tesser conducted experiments where pairs of friends played Password (an old game show; a new version is now hosted by Regis Philbin), and had the chance to give their friends clues to help them answer the questions. When subjects were told that doing well was a sign of excellent verbal skills and leadership, friends were actually less helpful than strangers were! How come? Tesser’s Self-evaluation Maintenance Theory suggests that on issues highly relevant to our sense of self, we strive to perform well and save face even more with people who are in our social networks. Our identity is not bound up as much in what strangers think of us, so we are more likely to help them. 

For instance, I might feel less comfortable if friends or family scored higher on a sociology test than I did—that’s supposed to be my thing—compared with trivial pursuit questions about sports (not my thing). But with strangers I might not feel as deflated since they are not regularly in my life to remind me of my shortcomings.

And finally, if you have ever hired one of your friends before, trust me, there is no better way to damage a friendship than to become your friend’s boss. So save your friendship and your candidacy.

2. Choose Someone You Dislike

I know what you’re thinking: why would anyone want to bestow a great opportunity upon someone that they don’t like? If you have ever worked with someone you didn’t much care for, you know that spending time with someone you don’t like is stressful.

But following the saying “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” might make a lot of sense. Keep in mind rule #1: your friends often have a similar ways of thinking and the same social networks as you do. A person you dislike frequently has a different perspective on many issues that will add valuable insight to your decision making process. They probably have completely different friends (who you will likely need favors from at some point) and different strengths to draw from.

Oh, and you will probably end up liking them too. Proximity theory suggests that we feel internal pressure to like those we spend time with out of necessity. Another way of thinking about this is what is sometimes called the Ben Franklin Effect. Franklin wrote of his decision to win over a political opponent by asking  him to borrow a valued book. The rival subsequently agreed to his request--when people ask us for favors we often feel social pressure to say yes. After Franklin returned the book with gratitude, the former rival became a lifelong friend.

Why would this happen? Social psychologists explain it this way: it makes little sense to lend a valued possession to someone you dislike, so to reconcile this cognitive dissonance (or internal contradiction) we shift our beliefs to fit our choices. 

You probably do this without realizing it. I had a coworker once who bought a new car. I suspect it was out of his price range, and he continually touted the great value and performance of that automaker, even insisting that his car would appreciate in value over time. 

I seriously doubt that it appreciated in price, but I wasn’t the person he was trying to convince: he was trying to convince himself he had made the right decision. Likewise, choosing someone to be a vice presidential candidate is a big deal, and you might settle any cognitive dissonance by deciding that they’re really not that bad after all. 

3. Agree to Disagree

Finally, pick someone who sometimes—even often—disagrees with you and is not afraid to speak up about it. If the VP can disagree with you, your other aides are more likely to be honest if they have misgivings about any of your plans. Dissenters make you develop stronger, more reasoned positions. In situations where conformity is encouraged or even demanded, decisions are more likely to be riddled with errors. 

The classic studies by Solomon Asch demonstrate this point. In his conformity experiments he asked subjects to compare lines on cards and tell him which was longer; a very simple task. Unbeknownst to the subjects, Asch instructed some participants to choose a line that was clearly shorter. While not everyone chose the wrong line, a surprisingly large percentage of subjects picked the shorter one. When there was no pressure to conform, nearly everyone made the correct choice.

The combination of conformity and power can have catastrophic effects, when agreeing with the group trumps one’s own intellectual and ethical judgment. Avoiding groupthink-the process of becoming so insulated in the group’s belief system that individual and critical thought virtually disappears--is the best way to make good decisions for the country. Besides, allowing dissent is the hallmark of a strong leader—and a free society.

Get Religion, Live Longer

By Bradley Wright 

Do you want to live a longer life? Well, science says there are a few things you can do to add years to your life: eat well, exercise, watch your weight, get regular medical check-ups, to name a few. In addition, there are various social factors that are linked to longevity, and one of them is religious involvement. That’s right, people who attend religious services and are involved in religious communities live longer. 

Dozens of studies have found a link between religion and longevity. As an example of this line of work, sociologists analyzed data from a study of about 21,000 people who were first interviewed in 1987. Researchers then followed up eight years later, in 1995, and found that about 2,000 of them had died. The study was designed to study risk factors for cancer, and it contained measures of attendance at religious services. This allowed researchers to test if the people who went to religious services were less likely to die during the study than those who did not. 

Here’s what they found. Using various fancy statistical methods, they calculated that a twenty-year-old person who did not attend religious services at all would on average live to be 75 years old. If they attended religious services less than once a week, they would live to 80 years old; and if they went once a week, they’d live to be 82. Finally, if they attended more than once a week, they would live 83 years. Wow! Going from not attending religious services to attending multiple times a week was associated with living eight full years longer. Eight years, that’s a long time. That’s how long George W. Bush will have been president. That’s two four-year college experiences. That’s about how much extra longevity you get for not smoking.

Since women live longer than men and also tend to be more religious, we might expect a different effect by gender, but the effect of religion on longevity still holds. Men who attend services more than once a week live, on average, seven years longer than men who don’t attend services (81 versus 74 years). There’s a similar finding for women.

These findings lead to the question of why. What is it about religion that has people living longer?

One answer has to do with what sociologists call selectivity. Maybe the people who become religious are the type of people who would live longer anyway, and religion really has nothing to do with it. This seems plausible. Perhaps most people who frequently attend religious services aren’t the type to live life reckless, dangerous lives and would be this way even if they didn’t go to religious services. (This is called selectivity because people “select” themselves into religion.)

It could also be that involvement in religion changes people such that—whatever their life expectancy before they become involved in religion—they live longer. This could happen in several ways. (In case you’re wondering, this is called mediation. Mediating factors are mechanisms through which X causes Y. In this case, things that religion does to make someone live longer).

Many religions have explicit norms about health related behaviors-about drinking or smoking, for example. Even when they don’t have specific rules, they encourage moderation. To illustrate, in the church that I attend, it’s fine if I regularly have a drink or two, but I think my friends there would be concerned if I were routinely getting drunk (especially if I showed up drunk on Sunday mornings). Eating well, drinking in moderation, and not smoking are things that will usually increase longevity regardless of one’s supernatural beliefs.

Another factor is more social in nature. Many religious groups provide strong social ties—friendships, social activities, personal support, and, in general, lots of social interaction. Social ties, regardless of the source, lead to longer lives. My church has numerous meetings a week in which people interact with each other, often seeking to help each other.

A final factor is the effects of stress on religious versus non-religious people. Many religious groups provide various forms of formal and informal support. The theologies espoused by religions frequently include instructions on how to cope with stress. Religious organizations often provide counseling, confession, and just plain old friendship. They also can provide material goods, such as food and money, to members who experience difficulties in these areas. 

What does all this mean? That even with something as seemingly-biological as how long we live, social conditions matter greatly. Based on this, if you’re going to smoke, do try to get to services! ;-)

Strict vs. Lax Churches

By Bradley Wright

Here’s a puzzle for you: Why are strict churches growing much faster than lax churches?

When a church is strict, they demand more of their members. They might ask members to give more money, attend more meetings, and perhaps to cede to the church more give authority over their daily lives. Basically, the strict church “costs” more than other churches. Yet this type of church typically grows more than other churches do.

In contrast, other churches are more lax. They require less time, money, and overall commitment. These types of churches tend to be decreasing in membership.

Within Christianity, worldwide, various denominations have different growth rates. In recent data, Pentecostals grew at the rapid rate of 8.1% a year. Evangelicals grew at the rate of 5.4% a year. By contrast, all Protestant denominations grew by 3.3%, and Catholics by just 1.3%. Pentecostal and evangelical churches typically are stricter than other churches.

In the United States, data from the National Council of Churches show mainline Protestant denominations, typically less demanding churches, in steady decline in membership. In 2007, membership in the United Methodist Church dropped 1%, the Evangelical Lutheran Church dropped 1.5%, and the Episcopal Church dropped 4%. Wow.

Here’s why this finding is a puzzle. We usually associate increased costs with decreased demand. If a restaurant were to double its prices, it would probably get fewer customers. If a real estate agent increased the selling price of a home, she could probably expect it to take longer to sell. This is why stores have sales when they want to attract customers, not “price-raising” events.

With churches, however, it seems to work the other way around. The more you ask of members, the more members you get. How can we explain this?

A popular explanation comes from the work of Laurence Iannoccone, an economist who applies basic economic theories to religion. Economists talk of supply and demand, costs and benefits, and rational choice, and though one wouldn’t initially think this would apply to religion—God being somewhat different than what economists usually study—it has some interesting insights.

When churches are strict, Iannaccone writes, this "increases commitment, raises levels of participation, and enables a group to offer more benefits to current and potential members." It does this because it gets rid of the people who would want to enjoy the benefits of the church without doing their fair share of the work involved in keeping a church going. Economists call these people free-riders, and they tend to drag groups down. Because they require so much from their members, strict churches have fewer free-riders and thus can give more and do more for those people who are members. This makes them more appealing to prospective new members, which increases their size.

As Iannaccone writes, strict churches “mitigate free-rider problems. Potential members are forced to choose: participate fully or not at all. The seductive middle-ground is eliminated; average levels of commitment and participation increase; and, strange as it may seem, many members come out ahead.”

In addition, a strict church makes it difficult for members to leave. They have invested a lot in that church, and they will lose this investment if they leave. Furthermore, by virtue of being so committed to that church, they have probably not developed other social resources outside of the church, so they have less-developed options for social groups outside the church.

This type of analysis applies social science theory to a religious phenomenon, and this mixture of the secular and the sacred isn’t to everyone’s preference. Albert Mohler, a Christian writer and commentator, reviews this literature, and he concludes that “Laurence Iannaccone's rational choice theory can actually explain very little about conservative Christianity” because the growth of strict churches is the result of theological, rather than social-economic principles. “Evangelicals are willing to pay a high social cost for the Christian faith, precisely because we believe the Gospel to be true. Furthermore, Christians know better than to expect fulfillment in this world. True satisfaction will be realized only in the age to come, and a perspective focused on eternity transforms the questions of everyday life.”

The tension between the observed social and the believed theological won’t be resolved in this blog post, but as someone who is both an adherent to Christianity and a practicing sociologist, it fascinates me. I often wonder if the two perspectives complement each other rather than being mutually exclusive.

If nothing else, these two perspectives offer competing metaphors for church growth. Theology would speak of making people “fishers of men” while sociology would emphasize growing churches saying “fish or cut bait.”

Informal Social Sanctions, Prostitution, and Johntv.com

By Bradley Wright

When we think of preventing crime, we usually think of the government punishing people with fines, arrest, jail time, and so forth. It turns out, however, that informal punishments by friends, family, and neighbors also deters crime as much, if not more, than formal punishments. These informal punishments can take many forms. A family member might express disapproval; a friend might cut off the friendship, and even passing strangers looking askance can prevent crime.

These informal social sanctions are part of daily life, and they aren’t necessarily planned ahead of time as a way of preventing crime. It’s in this context that we can think about a class of informal sanctions developed explicitly to prevent crime. These sanctions threaten public embarrassment as a way of deterring criminal behavior (as former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer might for other politicians). The logic here is that people sometimes care deeply about their good reputation, and will avoid activities that would threaten it. As such, threatening reputations might be a way to influence peoples’ behavior more effectively than threatened jail time.

Recently an individual in Oklahoma City has been getting a lot of attention for his efforts to use shame to prevent crime. His name is Brian Bates, and he styles himself as a video vigilante in his efforts to prevent prostitution. Brian started some years ago when he got frustrated with the high levels of prostitution in his neighborhood. At one point, he came out of his house to find a prostitute and her client conducting business while parked in his driveway. He eventually testified in court for several cases, but no convictions resulted. Off-handedly, a prosecutor joked that maybe next time he could bring in a video clip, and he thought that was a good idea.

Armed with only a video camera, Bates drives around areas of Oklahoma City to video tape men who frequent prostitutes. He starts video taping when he sees a car slow down to pick up the prostitute, and then he follows them until they stop. After they engage their transaction, Bates will typically approach the car to film the customer. He confronts the man, asking him to explain his behavior, which the man usually denies, and Bates films the conversation.

Bates then posts his videos on-line for the whole world to see. Here is one of them, in which an Army recruiter, dressed in his uniform and driving a military car, gets caught “recruiting” paid sex. This video, and many more like it, are available on youtube.com. (In fact, Brian Bates gets a cut of the advertising dollars associated with each online view of these videotapes).

On Bates’ website, he says that deterring crime is his motivation. One of the goals of his work, he writes, is to “use those caught and published here as an example to hopefully dissuade others.” Elsewhere, Bates has been quoted as saying "If you get caught by the cops, you pay a fine. If you get caught by me, you get a life sentence… there's no reprieve, no probation. People will be hitting that video on Google searches as long as you live."

(Somewhat surprisingly, Bates supports the legalization of prostitution, in private settings. His focus is on “street” prostitution.)

Bates’ actions have raised various ethical concerns—does he have the right to follow people around and videotape them? Apparently, he does, as long as it’s all done in public. Bates also turns over his videos to the police in an effort to assist them in getting convictions for prostitution. The police, however, have reported that they tend not to be of much use.

A remaining question is whether his work is effective in deterring street prostitution in Oklahoma City. It’s difficult to know, but my guess would be that it does deter individuals who are caught once from doing it again. It seems like the shame of having friends, family, and coworkers watch such activities on-line would lead a person to find some other outlet for their desires. It’s less clear, however, that his work discourages customers who have not previously been caught. Probably many of them have never heard of Bates and his video camera, and others are from out of town.

Ironically, there could well be some reverse shaming going on here. While Bates emphasizes that he’s the good-guy here, and he’s bringing justice to the community, perhaps people have begun to wonder about somebody spending his days trying to film other people having sex.

Who knows, maybe someday we’ll all have video cameras, and we’ll be so busy videotaping each other that we won’t have time to break the law.

Attribution Theory and American Idol

By Bradley Wright

In this post, I’d like to bring together two of my favorite things: Attribution theory and American Idol.

Attribution theory is a collection of theories and models developed by social psychologists to explain how we explain things. Human beings are obsessive explainers—we always want to know why things happen. How we make these explanations (also called attributions) can be very interesting.

American Idol, of course, is the television show that dominates the ratings for the first several months of each year. In it, singers perform for a panel of judges, after which the judges give their opinions of the singer, and the viewers phone in to vote for their favorite singer.

In applying attribution theory to American Idol, we ask why things happen on that show. Why do viewers vote for a particular singer? Why does a singer choose a particular song and style to perform? Why do Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell bicker with each other? And… the question that I’ll discuss here: Why do the judges say what they say?

A powerful version of attribution theory is Kelley's Covariation model of Attribution. This model says that the way we explain why something happens depends on how we answer three different questions.

1. If person “A” does something to person “B”, the first thing we ask is whether “A” is the only person doing it or if lots of other people are doing it as well. Kelley terms this consensus.
2. Then we ask if person “A” always does this or if this particular time is a unique occurrence. This is consistency.
3. Finally, we ask if person “A” does this to everyone or to just person “B”. This is distinctiveness.

According to Kelley’s theory, how people answer these three questions tells us how they’ll explain why person “A” did what they did.

To apply this theory to American Idol judging, let’s start with Simon Cowell—the acerbic-tongued British music producer. His comments tend to be low on consensus—he’s not afraid to offer an opinion different than the other judges and the live audience. (In fact, the audience routinely boos him for expressing negative opinions.) He’s also low on consistency. One week he’ll rip a contestant while the next week he’ll praise the same contestant. Finally, he’s also high on distinctiveness. On the same show, Simon will pointedly criticize one contestant and praise another. 

How do we explain Simon’s comments? Perhaps he bases his opinion on the particular performance. As the performances differ in quality across singers on a given evening, Simon will express different opinions. If a particular singer’s performances vary across weeks, he will also give different opinions.

As an aside, some of Simon’s criticisms are hysterically funny. Here are some of his greatest hits:

· “If you sang like this two thousand years ago, people would have stoned you.”

· “You don’t need a judge—you need an exorcist.”

And my personal favorite:

· “You sang like someone who sings on a cruise ship… and halfway through [the song] I imagined the ship sinking.”

Now, let’s turn to Paula Abdul, the former Laker girl and pop singer. Paula takes a very different approach to judging than does Simon. Her comments are high in consensus because she almost always agrees with fellow judge Randy Jackson. If Randy says a contestant has pitch problems, Paula will chime in too—often repeating Randy’s exact phrasing. The more the audience cheers for a singer, the more Paula will as well. Her comments are also high in consistency—she takes the same positive, supportive approach to a singer each week. If she praises a singer one week, she’s almost certain to do it again the next week. Her comments are also low in distinctiveness. She praises all the singers. In fact, that sets up one of the creative tensions of the show—Paula will gush over a singer and then Simon will lambaste them.

How do we explain Paula’s comments? Perhaps she bases her comments on a general desire to affirm and support each singer, regardless of their performance. Her comments tell us more about Paula than they do about the singer—for each singer gets rather positive comments on each show.

Now, Paula herself is very quotable, though for a different reason than Simon. Rather than being hilariously critical, she’s often unintelligible—from the tone of her voice, you know she’s praising a contestant, but from her words, it’s unclear what she actually means. Some classic Paula-isms:

· “Your voice is truly your instrument” (as opposed to what?)

· “What you brought to the song was familiarity.” (Which sounds good except I think it means that we’ve heard this rendition before.)

What about Randy Jackson? He’s somewhere in the middle between Paula and Simon—he aims to be kind in his comments (unlike Simon) but he will sometimes critique the performance (unlike Paula). I suppose that makes him somewhat less quotable…but consistent.

Do You Believe in Your Community?

By Sally Raskoff

How many people do you know in your community? Beyond your friends and family, how many people can you name or at least recognize? We may see some people repeatedly if we visit the same places regularly. Though we might recognize them, we may not know their names or think to introduce ourselves, even if we see them every week. 

In my neighborhood, because people walk their dogs regularly, we know most of our neighbors by sight as they walk by our windows: the guy with the Great Dane, the gal with the lab, the guy with the two schnauzers. I may not know all of the names of these neighbors, but their presence helps make my neighborhood a community rather than just a place to live. I like to think that we’d all come together if something were to threaten the community.

If you haven’t yet seen Be Kind Rewind, see it as an example of how neighbors can rally together for their community. This movie has many levels of complexity that make it perfect for sociological analysis. If you haven’t seen the ads or the movie, the main story involves two neighbors, Mike (Mos Def) and Jerry (Jack Black), who ruin Mr. Fletcher’s (Danny Glover) video rental business by accidentally erasing all the tapes. Mr. Fletcher’s character is away on a journey to see if he should revive his business or give it up since his building is about to be demolished. Mike and Jerry attempt to save themselves and the store by re-taping their own short versions of the movies that people want to rent.

Although I’ll try not to give everything away, if you want to keep the rest as a surprise, read no further until you’ve seen it. 

Before the clerks erased the tapes, Fletcher’s video store was not doing well; his crumbling building and business are a symbol of the dysfunctional community. The few people who do come in for videos here (rather than go to the larger chain video store some distance away) are angry, rude, or not entirely functional, which is another reflection of the disintegrating community life.

Mike, Jerry, and Alma (Melonie Diaz, a neighbor who joins their adventure) discover that their film process, which they call “sweding,” takes off after Miss Falewicz’s (Mia Farrow) nephew and his friends find the new versions entertaining. When Fletcher returns and decides to close the store, the whole neighborhood is in line to rent the sweded movies.

The building itself is a central character in the film, as the supposed birthplace of jazz pianist Fats Waller. Mike proposes that developers make the building an historic landmark because of the Waller connection. But Mr. Fletcher tells Mike that he had just made that up years ago to help him feel better; not deterred, the neighborhood comes together to make a sweded movie about their history as Fats Waller’s birthplace. 

There are many other movies that use a crumbling community as a backdrop for a storyline, and the community is saved by 2some action of the lead characters. For example, in Two Weeks Notice, Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant bicker but eventually save her parents’ neighborhood center. In Life Stinks, Mel Brooks’ slumlord experiences homelessness and brings the community together. 

In those two movies, the main characters purposefully organize the solution to saving their communities. However, in Be Kind Rewind, the entire community knowingly fabricates the “fact” that their building/neighborhood/community is the birthplace of Fats Waller. This is an example of self-fulfilling prophecy and the social construction of reality.

Robert K. Merton defines a self-fulfilling prophecy as a false belief that is acted upon and becomes real in its consequences. When we believe something is real and we act accordingly, we make that thing real because “it” changes our behavior. If we didn’t act as if it were real, it wouldn’t exist as more than a thought. 

The social construction of reality is a theory that members of a society create (or construct) for that society, and then forget that they do so. Society then seems like it has a reality outside the people, and the society then perpetuates itself by creating (socializing) more members. The members and the society are busy creating or maintaining each other, although the members are not conscious of their part in the process.

The concept of self-fulfilling prophecy is typically applied at the micro level, focusing on people’s behavior, while the social construction of reality is a macro theory focusing on entire societies and their overall structure. However, both of these are apparent at the community level in Be Kind Rewind. 

The community decides to believe that Fats Waller was born there. They pursue historic status and once they do so, it appears that it becomes “true.” The once distant and demoralized community rallies around that idea and becomes a vibrant community once again (at least for the closing scenes).

Where to Sit: Doing Qualitative Research

By Bradley Wright

One of the fun things to do in sociology is to make empirical generalizations. Sometimes in research we start with an idea or a theory, make a hypothesis, and then collect data to test if our idea is correct. This is deductive research, going from large (abstract idea) to small (collecting data about specific people or situations). Deductive research can be very interesting, because we learn if our ideas hold up in the real world, but I don’t think that it’s as fun as inductive research (and as I am aging—about a year annually—I am placing more weight on research being fun).

Sometimes when we enter a situation, even if we don’t know anything about it, we start noticing things. We notice if there are patterns to peoples’ behavior. From these patterns, we create larger explanations about how the social world works. This is inductive because we start with the smaller observation, and from it we build explanations about the larger social world. 

Here’s a simple example of how to create empirical generalizations. In my social research methods class, I asked my students why they sat where they did. It was a reasonable question because the class itself has about 100 chairs, but there are only 50 students, so they had some choice in where they sat.

After talking for about it for about 10 minutes, we came up with the following ways that students decided where to sit.

1) Look for a friend. When you walk into the classroom, first look for someone that you know reasonably well and feel positively toward and sit next to them if there’s an available seat nearby. Or, if you’re really close, see if they’ll move so that you can sit next to them. Don’t sit next to them if you know them well but feel negatively toward them (e.g., an enemy). Also, don’t sit next to them, at least too conspicuously, if you feel positively but don’t know them (e.g., you’re attracted to a stranger).

2) Figure out how close to the front of the room you like to be. If you’re right up front, you catch everything that is going on, but it does make it difficult to sleep, text message, or talk with your friends. If you want to goof around a bit, maybe sit in the back.

3) Find a comfortable seat. Classroom seating is usually pretty tight, with the seats being crammed together—just like economy seating on an airplane. The best seats are those on the aisle. Once class starts, students in the aisle seats can stretch out their legs more than those in the interior seats. The first students to arrive in the class tend to take the aisle seats, and as a result the students arriving later have to step past them to get to the middle seats.

4) Keep an empty seat between you and others (unless you know them). When at all possible, pick a seat that has empty seats on both sides. Seating directly next to someone invades their personal space, and it gives you less room as well.

5) Sit in same area each time. Once you find a suitable seat, try to sit in it, or near it, every class period. This way you get the best seat for you each time, and you don’t really have to think about it. Of course, you may have to change if someone is sitting too close to that seat.

We came up with some other factors that might be incorporated, such as left-handed desks for left-handed students and not sitting directly behind people, especially if they are tall, but the five criteria listed above represented the main decisions made by the students. 

Because students follow these criteria, when I as a professor look out on a classroom, I see alternate seating with only friends sitting next to each other. The aisle seats are always taken. Also, since students tend to sit in the same area each time, I learn to recognize them in 

part by where they sit. In fact, on test days, when I assign random seating, I have trouble recognizing all of my students.

These seating rules are strong enough that they represent social norms, and it can be considered deviant to violate them. For example, if you have friends in a class, but you go sit by yourself, they would probably be upset. Likewise, if there are plenty of empty seats, but you pick one right next to someone, they may take offense.

 

Obviously where to sit in classrooms is a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things. Still, it represents a highly structured social interaction, demonstrating the reach of social norms into every aspect of our lives.

No Exit: Sociology Meets Air Travel

By Karen Sternheimer

When I was in high school I was really into existentialism. Not a surprise, considering that teens are often trying to figure out the meaning of their lives (even though existentialists consider life to be without inherent meaning…but I digress). 

One of my favorites was the Jean-Paul Sartre play, No Exit. If memory serves, the play is about a group of people, each seriously flawed in their own way, who had to spend eternity together. To paraphrase Sartre’s point, “hell is other people.”

For some reason this idea really struck a chord with me when we read it in my 12^th grade world literature class. Other people can really help create friction that otherwise might not exist. (The irony that I would become a sociologist is not lost on me, by the way).

This thought occurred to me on a recent flight. As in Sartre’s play, I was placed in close quarters with a selection of strangers, each with their own unique set of characteristics. Although I thankfully will not spend eternity with them, for the four hours of the flight’s duration we had to learn to negotiate relationships with one another and manage our emotions in the process.

Our challenge began immediately upon boarding. There was someone sitting in my aisle seat, so I had to ask her to move. She did, reluctantly leaving her eleven-year-old son sitting in the middle seat. As I was getting settled in, the woman asked him repeatedly if he was okay from her middle seat across the aisle. 

Each time he answered that he was, but within minutes she asked if I wouldn’t mind sitting in her middle seat just for take off, that I could move back for the flight, and then we could switch again when the plane descended. I said we should just switch, that I didn’t want to move back and forth. I admit I was less than gracious about exchanging seats, until I saw a rather attractive man who had the window seat now next to me, which seemed like a just reward.

So I fully admit to being part of the friction, which increased when I asked the flight attendant if I could use the bathroom in first class before the flight left, since it was much closer than walking to the back of the plane as people were getting seated. She was clearly annoyed but agreed. 

This type of social situation produces all sorts of opportunities to breach norms and challenge what we think are agreed upon social rules. I gave up a highly valued aisle seat for the least valued middle seat. I also crossed “class” lines by using the bathroom in the wrong cabin.

Other social rules get tested while flying too. The young woman in front of me chatted quite loudly with her seat mate for a good part of the flight. It was obvious from the conversation that they did not know each other, as they talked about where they lived and the weather in their respective homes. 

Nothing is unusual about this, except that the loud conversation was continually peppered with profanity. I had the sense that the man next to me was annoyed too, but neither of us said anything to each other or to her. 

I thought about this for a few minutes—what would I say? Do I ask the flight attendant to remind her of the unwritten social rule to watch your language? She might have thought that since only adults were immediately next to her and behind her it was totally acceptable to use the f-word as her favorite adjective. Or maybe she was trying to bond with her similarly-aged seat mate by using words she thought might connote familiarity.

The other people surrounding me carried on conversations too: where they grew up, where they live now, favorite restaurants in their destination city, places to shop, and so forth. This type of conversation seems quite acceptable under the circumstances, yet for those trying to sleep (as I was) any talk was disturbing.

In fairness, I’m sure sitting next to me was not so great either. I had a raging cold and spent the entire flight blowing my nose and sucking on cough drops. Because of the absence of personal space, there is a good chance that these unsuspecting strangers left the flight with my germs.

When the plane landed, I couldn’t wait to get out of there and leave my temporary intimates forever. I learned more about them that I wanted to (the lady next to me had ten children, the man next to me played fantasy soccer league on his Mac, even after the flight attendant asked us to turn off all electronic devices). 

But with the critical distance of walking through the airport terminal, I realized the absurdity of my irritation. After all, I safely traveled more than 2,000 miles in four hours. The flight was smooth, landed and departed on time. They even served a hot meal in coach (yes, Continental still does that!), and the only challenge was in negotiating being so close to other people.

This experience reminded me that unspoken rules often contradict each other; while some people might prefer that one rule be followed, others might be following another. Is hell other people? I wouldn’t go that far, but we do present challenges to each other when we are in close quarters with no exit.

Getting a Job: Weak Social Ties and On-Line Connections

By Bradley Wright

Last summer my wife was looking for a summer job, and she did the usual things—read the employment bulletins and sent out applications. Ultimately, though, she got a job through an acquaintance. We see this person a few times a year, and she heads up an administrative unit here on campus. My wife applied, got the job, and we all lived happily after.

This story illustrates the somewhat cynical mantra of all job seekers that it’s not what you know but who you know. Sociologists call this phenomenon the strength of weak ties.

A “weak” social tie, in every day language, is an acquaintanceship—someone with whom you are familiar with but not too close. In contrast, a “strong” tie would be a good friend or close family member, someone with whom you interact a lot. An “absent” tie would be someone who you know but don’t really have any kind of relationship with.

In a famous sociological study, Mark Granovetter interviewed several hundred business people and asked them how they got their jobs. Seventeen percent reported learning about their jobs from a close friend (strong tie), 28% reported learning about it from someone they barely knew (absent tie), and a full 56% of the respondents reported learning about it from an acquaintance (weak tie).

It’s a bit of a paradox: Why are acquaintances, people we sort of know, more important in the job search process than our close friends and family? Our strong ties, after all, care about us more and would be much more willing to help us.

The answer, according to Granovetter, is that weak ties are a unique social resource: they connect us with a wider set of social networks than do social ties. Your acquaintances each have their own strong ties—family and friends to whom they are very close to. Through your acquaintances, you gain access to their strong ties—and to the social networks to which they belong. All social networks offer various resources, such as information about job opportunities, and so by connecting with a greater number of social networks, via weak social ties, you gain access to more possible employment opportunities. 

Strong ties, in contrast, connect us with fewer social networks. Your best friend in the world would probably do anything for you, but chances are that the two of you know many of the same people. As such, it’s not that your close friends and family don’t want to help you in a job search; it’s just that they have less to offer because you probably already know about most of the contacts that they would offer. You already share many of the same networks with them. So, there’s a trade-off. Strong ties are more willing and available to offer help, but weak ties typically have more resources to offer.

In this context, it’s interesting to think about the many social ties created by the Internet. About a year ago, I started blogging, and through that I have had contact with dozens, if not hundreds, of people with similar personal and research interests as mine. Likewise, most college students have Facebook accounts in order to keep track of their friends and make friends with their friends’ friends (got that?). As a result of this on-line networking, this generation may have more casual social ties than any before.

The question, then, becomes the nature of these online ties. Granovetter studied fairly conventional acquaintances—people you see in person at places like the work place or social gatherings. Online acquaintances are different. If I met some of the people I know from online, I don’t think that I would even recognize them. Yes, we’ve exchanged many comments on our blogs, and I know a fair amount of information about them, how they think, what they do, but I’ve never met them in person.

Would these on-line ties be as useful in a job search? The answer is… I don’t know. The focus of these on-line relationships is social networking, getting to know each other pretty much for the sake of getting to know each other. The interactions with these people tend to be more social—what you’re doing, what interests you share in common. I’m not sure how often instrumental concerns come up. In everyday conversation, it’s easy to drop in the information that you’re looking for a job, but it might fit in more awkwardly in online interactions.

Perhaps more importantly, though, is that the social networks and resources offered by online connections are often too distant to be of much value. For example, one of the people I interact with online lives in Kenya. Now, he may know of great job opportunities for me, and be very willing to help, but unless I’m willing to relocate to Africa they don’t do me much good. This maybe why in-person acquaintances remain so important—by virtue of meeting them face-to-face, you occupy the same physical location, at least briefly. Chances are, therefore, that the social resources they have to offer would also be close and thus of greater value.

So, do you want to get a job? Make sure to let your acquaintances know since they may be very helpful. Your online connections might be as well, but probably not as much.

Do we Really Know Better?

By Sally Raskoff

With the holidays and family gatherings over, it is a good time to ponder our behavior in these settings. During the holidays, do you indulge more in specific behaviors than you do in your everyday life? Most of us do.

Did you eat more food than usual? Did you eat more sugar or fat? Did you drink more than you usually do? Can’t remember what you did on New Year’s Eve? Do you have some tension or guilt about what you ate, drank, or did during the holidays?

These over-indulgent behaviors can cause cognitive dissonance in the holiday season and at family gatherings. Cognitive dissonance is a social-psychological term that describes this “tension” that we experience when we think (or behave) in ways contrary to our “normal” modes. In other words, our thoughts (and behaviors) are in conflict with each other, and this creates ”dissonance” or tension that we find very uncomfortable. 

A great example of this phenomenon is a typical smoker’s attitude toward their habit: they know smoking is not healthy, yet they continue the behavior and may even value the act of smoking as much as they value their health. Social psychologist Leon Festinger first coined this term after investigating a doomsday cult and their behaviors after their prophesied event didn’t take place. In resolving the conflict between their belief in the cult and the reality that the event had not occurred, some cult members gave up their belief while some rationalized the conflict by reinforcing their beliefs.

The more important something is to us or the more intense the conflict, the greater the cognitive dissonance. For example, when a strongly held belief is in conflict with our political thoughts or our behaviors, the dissonance can be quite strong. Compare a person who runs a red light with a Catholic who uses birth control, a pro-life person who chooses to end a pregnancy, and a lifelong political activist who votes for a candidate from the opposing party. How might their relative dissonance levels compare? The importance of one’s belief may affect dissonance.

Intensity also affects dissonance. For example, a person who abuses alcohol knows intellectually that drinking isn’t good for them but they may drink anyway. If that person gets liver disease because of the drinking, that increases the conflict, which increases the dissonance. The disease may not make it easier to quit; but it will make them more uncomfortable by increasing the tension between their knowledge and their behavior.

Resolving cognitive dissonance involves alleviating the conflicts by either ignoring one side of the issue or rationalizing ideas or behaviors. The act of rationalizing adds more support to one side of the conflict, thus minimizing or overpowering the other side. 

Many of us know that we will violate our typical eating and drinking patterns during the holidays. That causes some dismay but we figure we’ll slow down after the holidays and go back to our regular pattern, possibly fasting or cutting back for awhile to compensate. The act of rationalizing that behavior acts to reduce the cognitive dissonance we are feeling. But do we really end up fast or cut back our calories to compensate for the over-consumption?

I know that over the holidays this year, I’ve been eating more sugary foods (chocolate) than I typically do during the rest of the year. Why do I do this when it makes my body feel unwell? Because they taste good! Because relatives or friends made them or at least bought them. Because my favorite treats are rarely in the house during the rest of the year so why not eat while we have ‘em? Because this is what we do at our house—eat the foods and drink the beverages that people bring over. Are any of these good and rational reasons to eat all this sugar? Not really—but these rationalizations do enable me to pick up another cookie and not feel so guilty about it.

Alternatively, I could give myself more important reasons not to eat these items. For example, I could think about how I don’t feel well when I eat a lot of sugar. That should be rather important to me since I’d rather feel healthy than unhealthy. However, that rationale rarely overwhelms the others presented above because it is more abstract, not as immediate, and not as strong a connection. After all, I may feel bad for some other reason thus I’d miss out on these treats. (See how that rationalization process keeps working?)

I have some relatives who were expected the morning of New Year’s Day. They showed up at three in the afternoon because they had gone out on New Year’s Eve and “partied” a bit longer than they had planned. Their cognitive dissonance rested with their decision to stay up and out most of the night and that was in conflict with their plan to come over in the morning. When they finally showed up in the afternoon, they mentioned that they had hangovers and were “so tired” so we shouldn’t chide them about being so late. Their attempt to relieve their dissonance involved focusing on how bad they were feeling so that they could feel less guilty about being late. If we knew they felt terrible because of their own choices, we would give them less grief about it, and their dissonance would dissipate. (We still teased them about it.)

Holiday behaviors are similar to those behaviors we may choose in young adulthood. In many American cultures, it is appropriate for people in their twenties (“college age”) to experiment and try new as they develop their independence and maturity. That experimentation can generate plenty of cognitive dissonance since the things we try may be in conflict with the values we were taught.

Cognitive dissonance can happen anytime, but it is more likely to occur during the holidays and at certain points in the life cycle (mid-life crisis, anyone?). What other examples come to your mind? How might they be resolved?

Social Selection and Social Causation

By Bradley Wright 

Some of the most interesting puzzles for sociologists have to do with differences between groups of people, and two common explanations for social differences are “social selection” and “social causation.” They apply to a remarkably wide range of phenomenon, and they are kind of interesting to think about. 

Here’s how they work. Suppose we have two types of people, those in social group “A” and those in social group “B”. Furthermore, we observe that the “A” and “B” people are different along some personal characteristic, say “X”. 

How do we interpret this difference? If being in group “A” increases people’s “X”, then we are making a social causation argument. That is, we believe that being in that social group causes people to be different. 

It could be, however, that being high on characteristic “X” makes people join group “A”. If so, we’re making a social selection argument because being the type of person “X” causes people to join a different group. 

As such, the correlation between group “A” and characteristic “X” can be explained by both social selection and social causation, and what’s really interesting is to try to figure out which, if not both, are operating. To do so, you try to figure out which is the most plausible story and find any evidence that you can. 

Here are some examples. 

I know several people who graduated from Harvard, and they are some of the smartest people that I know. Freaking genius comes to mind. (Just for fun, I should say that one of them is a dunce just to keep my Harvard friends wondering if I mean them, but it wouldn’t be true. They’re all bright.) Why are they so smart? 

It could be that Harvard provides a superior education. You have brilliant professors, world class facilities, and a rich legacy. If sitting in Harvard classrooms makes you really smart, this would be a social causation argument. Or, it could be that Harvard attracts the smartest students. The very brightest of high school students get their choice of schools to attend, and if they favor Harvard (and other top schools) then Harvard will produce very smart graduates, even if a Harvard education isn’t better than other schools. 

Hm-m-m-m, how can we figure out which it is? If I were to guess, I would probably lean more to social selection. We know for a fact that Harvard attracts the best students. Ninety-five percent come from the top 5% of their high school classes, and they have SAT scores well north of 2000. Wow! (Digression. The best line I’ve ever heard about SAT scores—Jennifer Lopez was asked what she got on her SATs, and she replied “nail polish.”) 

Harvard professors are brilliant, but they are selected for their ability as researchers, not teachers. Just because a professor creates new theories to revolutionize their field doesn’t mean they are particularly good at explaining the basics to students. They are also rewarded with salary and promotion for being star researchers, not for high quality teaching. I’m not saying they are bad teachers, but I can’t see how they would be much better teachers than those found in other four-year universities. If there is social causation, I would imagine it has to do with being around other smart students. Studying with, competing against, and talking to smart people will make you smarter, but this would be true with a group of people standing in a farmer’s field, it’s not a Harvard thing per se. 

Here’s another social puzzle. There is a significant correlation between mental illness and lower social class; poor people are more likely to exhibit mental illness than rich people, including depression. How do we explain this? 

A social causation argument would say that being poor increases mental illness. Not having enough money creates stress in people’s lives, and this stress can result in depression and other disorders. The poor are also less able to afford medication, counseling, and other ways of dealing with mental illness such that their conditions are more likely to get worse than those of wealthy people. 

A social selection argument would portray the mentally ill as less able to get ahead in society. If you’re depressed, it may be hard to go to work regularly or to put a lot of energy into your career. People who have observable symptoms of mental illness might be less likely to interview well for a job or be promoted once they have a job. (An interesting question: Is this a form of discrimination?) 

Which do I think it is? Well, I’m cheating here because I participated in a study that looked at this very question, and we found that both social selection and social causation mechanisms were in effect. 

I’ve discussed two examples, but there are lots of other social phenomena that lend themselves to both social causation and selection arguments. For example: 

• Religious people live longer than non-religious people. Does religion change people’s life expectancy, or does it attract people who would live long already?
• Criminals have more criminal friends than do non-criminals. Does having criminal friends make you into a criminal, or do criminals attract other criminals as friends?
• Capitalist countries are wealthier than those with other types of economies. Does capitalism make a country wealthy, or do wealthy countries gravitate toward capitalism?

Interesting stuff, no? If you keep these two mechanisms in mind, you’ll be surprised by how many things you can explain by using them.

Social Facilitation versus Social Interference

By Bradley Wright 

Here’s a puzzle for you. Sometimes having other people watch us work makes us work faster, but other times having other people watch slows us down. 

For example: I was at the gym recently lifting weights, and a friend came over to talk. I was just getting ready to do bench presses at the time, and he offered to spot me (i.e., stand there and help if the bar got too heavy). With him watching, I focused more on what I was doing and was able to lift substantially more than I had before. 

In contrast, when I write (as I am doing now), I have to be alone. When a family member comes into my office when I writing, I slow way down to the point where I no longer even try. I’m not able to concentrate on my work. 

Why the difference? 

It turns out that the effect of others watching us work varies according to how complex the task is. Bench pressing, though a lot of work, is relatively simple. Up, down, up, down, and so forth. In contrast, writing is much more complex involving choices of paragraph order, sentence structure, grammar, word choice, etc… 

 

When other people watch us do simple tasks, it tends to make us do them better. This is called the social facilitation effect, and it was discovered in one off the earliest social psychological experiments. In 1897 (when your great-great grandparents were alive) Norman Triplett did a study in which he had some boys cast a fishing rod and reel it in as fast as they could. Sometimes they were by themselves, other times they had other boys there also casting and reeling. The boys reeled much faster when they had other boys around. Triplett found the same effect with bicycle riding. Having other people watch us provides psychological arousal and so we apply extra energy and effort to our task. 

When other people watch us do complex tasks, we also encourages tend to put in extra effort-- but with different results. Complex tasks take time and concentration, and the extra energy we apply to them when someone is watching causes us to try too hard. We don’t take the time to do it correctly. Also, the other person can distract us. This is called social interference. 

Here’s something really cool about the social facilitation and interference effects—they apply to animals as well as humans. Robert Zanjonc did a famous study in which he demonstrated these effects with cockroaches, of all animals. He created two mazes, one easy, one hard. Behind the maze walls were other cockroaches, and sometimes the walls were glass, so that the other cockroaches could watch and other times they were covered with paper, so that they couldn’t watch. (Stay with me here). 

What were the results? With the easy maze, a cockroach ran the maze faster when it could see other cockroaches—social facilitation. With the hard maze, a cockroach ran slower with others watching—social interference. Wow, who would have guessed? (Zajonc also demonstrated the effect with rats, which for some reason I find much less interesting than with cockroaches). 

There are several wrinkles to these effects. For one thing, what is complex for one person might be simple for another, and so they would have different reactions to having others watching. For example, my grade school son is learning to play the violin, and he plays a mean “Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star” here at home. At recitals, however, with other parents watching, he gets nervous and doesn’t do as well. In contrast, a concert violinist, who practices hours and hours a day, is skilled enough that having a group of people watch him or her would inspire them to play even better. 

Another wrinkle has to do with whether or not we care about the people watching us. If we think highly of them, and value their esteem, then social facilitation and social interference effects are stronger. If we don’t know them, or otherwise don’t care about them, then these effects are weaker. For example, I have difficulty writing when family or friends watch me, but I have no problem doing it at the library, where there are other people around, but I don’t know them. Likewise, a runner running through a neighborhood far from their home probably isn’t inspired by the strangers who would be watching them. 

What does this mean for you? Well, first off, this knowledge gives you a distinct advantage the next time you go to the cockroach races. Also, it might help you structure your own work for maximum performance. If you find the work relatively simple, but are having trouble getting motivated, put yourself in a place where others can watch you work. However, if it’s work that you have difficulty with, you might want to find a place to be by yourself or at least among people you don’t know.

The Beautiful People

By Bradley Wright 

Like many people, you want to get ahead in life… have a successful career, be well-liked, you know, all that good stuff. So, you go to school, work hard, treat others well, and hope for the best. 

Well, you’re forgetting something, and that is to look good. Why? It turns out that we attribute all sorts of positive qualities to good looking people, and these qualities have a way of becoming true. 

Here’s how it works. Social psychologists have identified something called the “what is beautiful is good stereotype.” If someone is good looking—clear skin, symmetrical face, sparkly eyes or whatever else we see as beautiful or sexy or cute—we think that they are also lots of other good things. Just because they are hot, we think that they are more intelligent, sensitive, interesting, competent, and kind. 

Our positive expectations for attractive people can serve as a self-fulfilling prophesy. If we think someone is smart and has a great personality, we start to treat them differently. We expect them to live up to our expectations, and, lo and behold, they do. As such, if we think that beautiful people are better people overall, they become so. 

Usually we think about stereotypes being negative, and the problems that they cause. For example, if teachers think that girls are inherently worse at math than boys, they might put less effort into teaching them, call on them less in the class, and in general have lower expectations. The result, girls end up doing worse in math because the teachers think they will. 

The “what is beautiful is good” stereotype is positive, and it can be just as powerful. In a classic study, researchers had men talk with a woman via intercom for 10 minutes, and after the conversation the men were asked to rate the woman’s personality. Half the men were shown a picture of an attractive woman and told that was the woman they were talking to. The other half were shown a picture of an unattractive woman. In reality, as you probably guessed, it was the same woman talking to each of the men. 

The men who thought they were talking to an attractive woman rated her as more friendly, sociable, and likable than those talking to an “unattractive” woman. They perceived her as having a much better personality just because she was beautiful. Why? Self-fulfilling prophesy. The men talking to the “attractive” woman treated had higher expectations for her, and she lived up to them. 

The effect of this stereotype varies. As might be expected, it works most strongly with first impressions. We evaluate somebody’s appearance when we first meet them, and that information becomes most important. The more we get to know them, however, the more we factor in their other characteristics as well. Also, some people put more weight on physical appearances than others, and so they would be more affe