Social Interaction

Question 1

Statuses

Answer 1

• Social Statuses: Positions in society that are used to classify individuals and that exist in relation to other statuses (being premed student is a status and has meaning because being a medical student or a resident are also statuses). Three types of statuses.

• Ascribed Status: One that is given involuntarily (usually at birth) due to such factors as race, ethnicity, gender, and family background (such as being an Indian male).
• Achieved Status: One that is gained as a result of one’s efforts or choices (such as being a doctor).
• Master Status: The status by which a person is most identified and is the most important status the individual hold; affects all aspects of that person‘s life and can be pigeonholing (such as being the president).

Question 2

Roles

Answer 2

• Roles: Sets of beliefs, values, attitudes, and norms that define expectations for those who hold a particular status (doctor is a care provider).
• Role Performance: The carrying out of behaviors associated with a given role (doctor performs check-ups and prescribes medications).
• Role Partner: The person with whom one is interacting (such as nurse or patients). Behaviors and expectations change as a result of the role partner.
• Role Set: The various roles associated with a status.
• Role Conflict: The difficulty in satisfying the requirements or expectations of multiple roles (being a single parent and a full-time worker).
• Role Strain: The difficulty in satisfying multiple requirements of the same role (doctor being professional and providing negative prognosis to patient).
• Role Exit: The dropping of one identity for another (bachelor to parent).

Question 3

Groups

Answer 3

• Social Group: Consists of two or more people who share any number of similar characteristics as well as a sense of unity; can be a Dyad (group of two), Triad (group of three), or larger group that trades intimacy for stability.

• In-Group: Social group with which a person experiences a sense of belonging or identifies as a member (football player in a team).
• Out-Group: Social group with which an individual does not identify (teammates do not identify with marching band).
• Group Conflict: Competition between out-groups and in-groups (Christians vs Atheists).
• Peer Group: Group that consists of self-selected equals associated by similar interest, ages, or statuses.
• Family Group: Group determined by birth, adoption, and marriage and joined by emotional ties.
• Reference Group: Group that an individual uses as a standard for evaluating themselves (reference group of all med school applicants used to determine your own strength as a med school applicant).
• Primary Group: Interactions between members of the group are direct, with close bonds providing warm, personal, and intimate relationships to members; lasts a long time (core circle of friends or tightly knit family).
• Secondary Group: Interactions between members of the group are impersonal and businesslike, with few emotional bonds and with the goal of accomplishing a specific purpose; lasts a short time (students working on a group project).

Question 4

Tönnies’ Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

Answer 4

• Gemeinschaft (Community): Groups unified by feelings of togetherness due to shared beliefs, ancestry, or geography (families and neighborhoods).
• Gesellschaft (Society): Less personal groups formed out of mutual self-interests working together toward same goal (companies and countries).

Question 5

Observing and Analyzing Groups

Answer 5

• Interaction Process Analysis (SYMLOG): Technique for observing and immediately classifying the interactions within and activities of small groups; three fundamental dimensions of interactions are Dominance vs Submission, Friendliness vs Unfriendliness, and Instrumentally Controlled vs Emotionally Expressive.
• Group Conformity: Individuals are compliant with the group’s goals even when the group’s goals may be indirect contrast that the individual‘s goals in order to fit in and be accepted by group.
• Groupthink: Members focus on reaching a consensus at the cost of critical evaluation of relevant information leading to groups not exploring all sides of an issue and group members self-censoring.

Question 6

Networks

Answer 6

• Network: The observable pattern of social relationships among individuals or groups (university’s alumni association).
• Network Redundancy: Overlapping connections with the same individual.
• Immediate Networks: Dense networks with strong ties (such as one composed of friends).
• Distant Networks: Looser networks with weaker ties (such as one composed of acquaintances).
• Combination of immediate and distant networks is most beneficial when the networks work complementarily to provide different resources.

Question 7

Organizations

Answer 7

• Organizations: Complex secondary groups set up to achieve specific goals and are characterized by having a structure and a culture (such as community action committee).
• Formal Organization: Organizations with explicit goals and enforcement procedures that guide and control the activities of members; characterized by hierarchical allotment of formal roles or duties (such as corporations and schools).
• Characteristic Institution: The social structure or institution about which societies are organized; characteristic institution of modernity is bureaucracy.
• Bureaucracy: The basic organization of society; rational system of political organization, administration, discipline, and control. Characterized by paid non-elected officials on a fixed salary; officials who are provided rights and privileges as a result of making their careers out of holding office; regular salary increases, seniority rates, and promotions upon passing exams or milestones; officials who enter the organization by holding an advanced degree or training; responsibilities, obligations, privileges, and work procedures rigidly defined by the organization; and responsibility for meeting the demands of one’s position. Bureaucracies are often slow to change and less efficient than other organizations.
• Iron Law of Oligarchy: Democratic, egalitarian, and bureaucratic systems naturally centralize and shift to be ruled by an elite group due to the necessities of leadership and specialization.

• McDonaldization: Shift in focus toward efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control in societal practices (such as 24-hour news channel providing footers with bite-sized headlines to increase efficiency and predictability of news reporting).

Question 8

Self-Presentation and Emotional Expression

Answer 8

• Self-Presentation: The process of displaying ourselves to society both visually (through clothing and grooming) and through our actions to make sure others see us in the best possible light.

• Darwin’s Basic Model of Emotional Expression: Emotional expression can occur with or without conscious awareness and involves facial expressions, behaviors, postures, vocal changes, and physiological changes; related to Ekman’s Universal Emotions in that basic human emotions are universally experienced and their facial expression are universally recognized.
• Appraisal Model: Assumes there are biologically predetermined expressions once an emotion is experienced but there is a cognitive antecedent to emotional expression.
• Social Construction Model: Assumes there is no biological basis for emotions and that emotions are instead based on experiences and the situational context alone; certain emotions can only exist within social encounters and emotions are expressed differently across cultures. One must be familiar with social norms for a certain emotion to perform the corresponding emotional behaviors in a given social situation.
• Display Rules: Cultural expectations of emotions; govern which emotions can be expressed and to what degree (crying at funeral or smiling at wedding).
• Cultural Syndrome: Shared set of beliefs, attitudes, norms, values, and behaviors among members of the same culture that are organized around a central theme. Countries with more individualistic cultural syndromes like the US apply happiness to individual successes or experiences (I am happy), while countries with more collectivist cultural syndromes like Japan apply happiness to collective experiences (I am sharing happiness with others).

Question 9

Impression Management

Answer 9

• Impression Management: Our attempts to influence how others perceive us by regulating or controlling information we present about ourselves in social interactions. Done by using three selves and five strategies.
• Authentic Self: Who the person actually is including both positive and negative attributes.
• Ideal Self: Who we would like to be under optimal circumstances.
• Tactical Self: Who we market ourselves to be when we adhere to others’ expectations of us (similar to Ought Self).
• Self-Disclosure: Giving information about oneself to establish an identity (disclosing that you are a premed student).
• Managing Appearances: Using props, appearance, emotional expression, or associations with others to create a positive image (wearing a white coat or calmly dealing with difficult patient to create image of a good doctor).
• Ingratiation: Using flattery or conforming to expectations to win someone over (blindly agreeing with someone else’s opinion or complimenting friend before asking favor).
• Aligning Actions: Making questionable behavior acceptable through excuses (blaming a bad grade on too little sleep or justifying missed deadlines).
• Alter-Casting: Imposing an identity onto another person (a good friend would…).
• Goffman’s Dramaturgical Approach: Uses theatrical performance metaphor to describe how individuals create images of themselves in various situations via two personas.
• Front Stage Self: The persona a person presents to an audience adapted to specific social situation (like how an actor performs according to different roles or scripts).
• Back Stage Self: The persona adopted when not in a social situation and there is no concern about upholding the performance of a desired public image.

• Mead’s Theory of Me and I: “Me” is the part of self developed through interaction with society and by considering the Generalized Other (person’s established perceptions of the expectations of society). “I” is the individual’s own impulses and is shaped by his interpretation of society’s expectations. Foundation of Theory of Symbolic Interactionism.

Question 10

Verbal and Nonverbal Communication

Answer 10

• Communication: Ability to convey information by speech, writing, signals, or behavior.
• Verbal Communication: Transmission of information by the use of words, whether spoken, written, or signed; often depends on nonverbal cues for receiver to understand sender’s full meaning.
• Nonverbal Communication: Communication performed without words, intentionally or unintentionally, and is often dictated by culture (not making eye contact in US is sign of lying but not making eye contact in Thailand is sign of respect); includes facial expressions, tone of voice or prosody, gestures, body language, and eye contact/movements.
• Animal Communication: Communication between nonhuman animals and between humans and other animals through body language, visual displays, scents, and vocalizations.