Chapter Six Sociology
How are embarrassment and stigma different concepts? (pp. 163, 166 and key terms)
A common emotional reaction to impression mismanagement is embarrassment, the spontaneous feeling we experience when the identity we are presenting is suddenly and unexpectedly discredited in front of others (E. Gross & Stone, 1964). An adolescent boy trying to look "cool" in front of his friends may have his tough image shattered by the unexpected arrival of his mother in the family minivan. We can see his embarrassment in the fixed smile, the nervous hollow laugh, the busy hands, and the downward glance that hides his eyes from the gaze of others.Embarrassment is sociologically important because it has the potential to destroy the orderliness of a social situation. Imagine being at your high school graduation. As the class valedictorian is giving the commencement address, a gust of wind blows her note cards off the podium. As she reaches down to collect them, she hits her head on the microphone and tears her gown. In front of hundreds of people she stands there, flustered, not knowing what to say or do. The situation would be uncomfortable and embarrassing not only for her but for you and the rest of the audience as well.The permanent spoiling of someone's identity is called stigma. A stigma is a deeply discrediting characteristic, widely viewed as an insurmountable obstacle preventing competent or morally trustworthy behavior (E. Goffman, 1963). Stigmas spoil the identities of individuals regardless of other attributes those individuals might have. According to Goffman, the three types of stigma are (1) defects of the body (e.g., severe scars, blindness, paralyzed or missing limbs), (2) defects of character (e.g., dishonesty, a weak will, a history of imprisonment or substance abuse), and (3) membership in devalued social groups, such as certain races, religions, ethnicities, or social classes. The impression management task when faced with stigma is not so much to recapture a tarnished identity as to minimize the social damage.The ideology of stigma often seeps into the way we describe and understand certain social problems. Take drug addiction, for instance. Various social institutions from the workplace to the criminal justice system to organized sports commonly require individuals to take—and pass—random drug tests in order to attain or maintain employment, avoid criminal charges, or compete. The language used to describe these tests is inherently stigmatizing. Results—not to mention the users themselves—are called "clean" or "dirty" depending on whether they test positive or negative (Vedantam, 2018). Some stigmas are worse than others. For instance, the use of eyeglasses to compensate for one sensory deficiency (poor vision) is usually considered far less stigmatizing than the use of hearing aids to compensate for a different sensory deficiency (poor hearing). Contemporary hearing aids are designed to be as small and unnoticeable as possible.
What is the role of socioeconomic status for impression management? (pp. 159 - 161)
A person's relative economic position in society can also influence impression management. Like the young black men in Anderson's (1990) study, some working-class youths, frustrated by their lack of access to the middle-class world and their inability to meet the requirements of "respectability" as defined by the dominant culture, may present themselves as malicious or dangerous. A tough image helps them gain attention or achieve status and respect within their group (Campbell, 1987; A. K. Cohen, 1955). Conversely, those who occupy the dominant classes of society can get the attention and respect we all want with very little effort (Derber, 1979). They get special consideration in restaurants, shops, and other public settings. They monopolize the starring roles in politics and economics and also claim more than their share of attention in ordinary interactions. By displaying the symbolic props of material success—large homes, tasteful furnishings, luxury cars, expensive clothes and jewelry—people know that they can impress others and thereby reinforce their own sense of worth and statusImpression management plays a prominent role in the socialization process within many professions (A. R. Hochschild, 1983). Managers and CEOs in large companies, for instance, become acutely aware of the image they must exude through their dress and demeanor as they rise up the corporate ladder. Salespeople are trained to present themselves as knowledgeable, trustworthy, and, above all, honest. Medical students learn how to manage their emotions in front of patients and to present the image of "competent physicians." New teachers learn what images are most effective in getting students to comply. This teacher's assessment of the importance of impression management more than 50 years ago still rings true today:
What role does non-verbal expression play in social interaction? (p. 148)
Aside from physical appearance, another important piece of information we use in forming impressions of others is what people express to us verbally or nonverbally. Obviously, we form impressions of others based on what they choose to tell us about themselves. But beyond speech, people's movements, postures, and gestures also provide cues about their values, attitudes, sentiments, personality, and history (G. P. Stone, 1981).Most of us are quite proficient at "reading" even the subtlest nonverbal messages. We learn early on that a raised eyebrow, a nod of the head, or a slight hand gesture can mean something important in a social encounter. So crucial is this ability in maintaining orderly interactions that some psychologists consider a deficiency in it to be a learning disability akin to severe reading problems (Goleman, 1989).
What role does physical appearance play in impression formation? (pp. 141 -143) How does our textbook connect being perceived as overweight to social dynamics of class, race, and gender? (pp. 144 - 147)
But again, culture can influence these impressions. Physical attractiveness is enormously important in U.S. culture. Everywhere we turn, it seems, we are encouraged to believe that if our complexion isn't perfect, if we are too short or too tall, if we are overweight or underweight, if our hair isn't stylish, if our clothes don't reflect the latest fashion trend, we have fallen short of some attractiveness threshold. Although we readily acknowledge that using a person's physical appearance to form an impression is shallow and unfair, most of us do it anyway.We often assume that goodlooking people possess other desirable traits, such as happiness, kindness, strength, and sexual responsiveness (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972). Decades of research has also found that perceptions of attractiveness are associated with a variety of positive outcomes, such as the number of votes a candidate receives in an election or the quality of a professor's end-of-semester teaching evaluations (Lee, Pitesa, Pillutla, & Thau, 2018). Such judgments can sometimes be converted to financial gain. After all, one of the cornerstones of the hiring process is the face-to-face interview where impressions are formed and selection decisions are made. Economists have even coined a term, the beauty premium, to refer to the economic advantages attractive people enjoy:
What would be an example of a "performance team"? (p. 161 and key terms)
Erving Goffman (1959) uses the term performance team to describe individuals who intimately cooperate in staging a performance that leads an audience to form an impression of one or all of the team members. Team members are highly dependent on one another and must show a fair amount of trust and loyalty, because each member has the power to disrupt or "give away" the performance at any moment. Individuals who can't be trusted—such as political advisers who have worked for another party or people who are emotionally unstable—thus make poor teammates. One of the most obvious performance teams is the married couple. Couples are socially obligated to present a believable and cooperative image, particularly if the audience does not know them very well.
What is Goffman's dramaturgical approach and what core concepts are tied to this approach? (pp. 152- 153 and key terms)
Goffman argues that impression management is not just used to present false or inflated images of ourselves. Many authentic attributes we possess are not immediately apparent to others; sometimes our actions may be misinterpreted. Imagine yourself taking the final exam in your sociology course. You look up from your paper and make brief eye contact with the instructor. You're not cheating, but you think the instructor may interpret your wandering eyes as an indication of cheating. What do you do? Chances are you will deliberately overemphasize your noncheating behavior by acting as though you're deep in thought or by glancing up at the clock to highlight your "law-abiding" image.Analyzing social interaction as a series of theatrical performances—what sociologists call dramaturgy—has been a staple of symbolic interactionism for decades. Like Shakespeare, Goffman (1959) argues that people in everyday life are similar to actors on a stage. The "audience" consists of people who observe the behavior of others, "roles" are the images people are trying to project, and the "script" is the content of their communication with others.In social interaction, front stage is where people maintain the appropriate appearance as they interact with others. For workers in a restaurant, front stage is the dining room where the customers (the audience) are present. Here, the servers (the actors) are expected to present themselves as upbeat, happy, competent, and courteous. Back stage, however, is the region where people can knowingly violate their impression management performances. In the restaurant, back stage is the kitchen area where the once courteous servers now shout, shove dishes, and even complain about or mock the customers.
What is the role of race and ethnicity on impression management? (pp. 157 - 158) How does Elijah Anderson's excerpt "The Public Faces of Young Black Men" demonstrate this? (pp. 158 - 159)
Such impression management requires an enormous amount of effort and places responsibility for ensuring social order on this man. He feels compelled to put strangers at ease so he can go about his own business. He understands that his mere presence makes others nervous and uncomfortable. He recognizes that trustworthiness—an ascribed characteristic of Whites—is something Blacks must work hard to achieve
How do politicians in particular use impression management? (pp. 155-156) What are "gesture politics"? (p. 156)
The impression management dilemma many candidates running for office face is how to downplay their affluence. Privileged backgrounds don't provide the "up-from-nothing" life story many candidates these days seem to want (Leibovich, 2014). Every election cycle, we watch all manner of exceedingly wealthy candidates go through the charade of altering their clothing, mannerisms, tastes, and vocabulary to show voters that they're just like them. They'll highlight the hardscrabble lives they had when younger: living with an abusive, alcoholic father; being raised by an immigrant single mother; dealing with daily racial or religious taunts; struggling with their sexual identity; growing up poor, whether on the Texas-Mexico border, in a Pennsylvania steel town, in rural Oklahoma, or on the tough streets of Brooklyn.Often a president's goals are accomplished through "gesture politics"—actions or initiatives that are largely symbolic and convey, whether purposefully or not, particular characteristics. National leaders frequently find themselves judged not so much by the effectiveness of their policies as by how the public responds to their gestures: At least one European newspaper described [former] President Bush's effort to aid tsunami victims [in 2004] as a bid to show U.S. compassion. What was important was not the particulars of Bush's own aid plan, but whether the public would find it convincingly noble. . . . In the public mind [programs] are secondary to (and their success is dependent on) the personal gestures that accompany them. (Caldwell, 2005, p. 11) Like all of his predecessors, Barack Obama had his share of gesture politics appearances following such tragedies as floods
How is impression management different from impression formation? (p. 148, 150 - 151 and key terms)
The process by which people attempt to present a favorable public image of themselves is called impression management. Erving Goffman (1959), the sociologist most responsible for the scholarly examination of impression management, portrays everyday life as a series of social interactions in which a person is motivated to "sell" a particular image to others. The primary goal of impression management is to project a particular identity that will increase the likelihood of obtaining favorable outcomes from others in particular social situations (E. E. Jones & Pittman, 1982; Stryker, 1980). To do so, we can strategically furnish or conceal information. At times, we may need to advertise, exaggerate, or even fabricate our positive qualities; at other times, we conceal or camouflage behaviors or attributes that we believe others will find unappealing.
What are aligning actions and why are aligning actions interesting sociologically? (p. 164 and key terms) How are accounts and disclaimers different? (pp. 164-165 and key terms) What is "cooling out"? (p. 165 and key terms)
To restore social order and overcome a spoiled identity, the transgressor will use an aligning action (Stokes & Hewitt, 1976). Sometimes aligning can be done easily and quickly. If you step on a person's foot while standing in line at a cafeteria, a simple apology may be all that's needed to avoid the impression that you're a clumsy oaf.Other situations, however, call for more detailed repair: An account is a verbal statement designed to explain unanticipated, embarrassing, or unacceptable behavior (C. W. Mills, 1940; M. Scott & Lyman, 1968). For example, an individual may cite events beyond their control ("I was late for the wedding because there was a lot of traffic on the highway") or blame others ("I spilled my milk because somebody pushed me"). An alternative is to define the offending behavior as appropriate under the circumstances, perhaps by denying that anyone was hurt by the act ("Yeah, I stole the car, but no one got hurt"), by claiming that the victim deserved to be victimized ("I beat him up, but he had it coming"), or by claiming higher, unselfish motives ("I stole food, but I did it to feed my family"). A disclaimer is a verbal assertion given before the fact to forestall any complaints or negative implications (Hewitt & Stokes, 1975). If we think something we're about to do or say will threaten our identity or be used by others to judge us negatively, we may use a disclaimer. Phrases such as "I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but . . ." or "I'm not a racist, but . . ." introduce acts or expressions that ordinarily might be considered undesirable. As long as a disclaimer is provided, a self-proclaimed nonexpert can pretend to be an expert and a person claiming to be nonracist feels entitled to go ahead and make a racist statement.Other people may also try to deal with a transgressor's spoiled identity through a process called cooling out (E. Goffman, 1952): gently persuading someone who has lost face to accept a less desirable but still reasonable alternative identity. People engaged in cooling out seek to persuade rather than force offenders to change. It's an attempt to minimize distress. The challenge is to keep the offender from realizing that they are being persuaded. Cooling out is a common element of social life; it is one of the major functions of consumer complaint departments, coaches, doctors, priests, and bosses. Picture, for instance, the factory manager who, in the process of demoting an employee from a supervisory to an assembly line position, says, "Your skills were being wasted in that office job. You'll be happier and the company will benefit more if your speed and dexterity could be used on the shop floor." Cooling out also plays a major part in informal relationships. Imagine the initiator of a relationship break-up, telling the soon-to-be ex-partner, "I value you as a friend so much that I don't want to risk losing our bond by complicating things with sex and romance. It's better this way.
What is impression formation and role does group membership play in impression formation? (p. 141 and key terms)
When we first meet someone, we form an immediate impression based on observable cues such as age, ascribed status characteristics such as race and gender, individual attributes such as physical appearance, and verbal and nonverbal expressions. This process of impression formation helps us form a quick picture of the other person's identity.Social group membership provides the necessary backdrop to all encounters between people who have little if any prior knowledge of one another.Social group membership has a profound effect on the impressions we form of others. We can often determine people's age, sex, race, and to a certain degree ethnicity merely by looking at them; social class is less obvious but sometimes becomes known early in an encounter with another person through their language, mannerisms, or dress. Our socialization experiences have taught us to expect that people displaying these indicators of social group membership have certain characteristics in common.
What did we learn from the visual essay on Miss America contestants? (p. 149)
t should be obvious by now that whether we like it or not, we frequently judge people's character by their size, shape, and physical attractiveness. Furthermore, you've seen that meeting cultural standards of beauty has always been a more treacherous and consequential endeavor for women than for men. What makes things even trickier is that the standards of physical attractiveness can shift over time. For instance, although standards of beauty can vary between cultures or between ethnic groups within the same culture, the idealized female body type has become thinner and thinner over the years.