Sociology Canadian 8th Edition

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Chapter 6

Social Interaction in Everyday Life

I. Social interaction is the process by which people act and react in relation to others.
II. Social structure guides human behaviour rather than rigidly determining it.
III. Status is a social position that an individual occupies.
A. A status set consists of all the statuses a person holds at a given time.
B. Ascribed and achieved statuses.
1. An ascribed status is a social position that someone receives at birth or
involuntarily assumes later in life.
2. An achieved status is a social position that someone assumes voluntarily and
that reflects personal ability and effort.
C. A master status is a status that has special importance for social identity, often
shaping a person’s entire life.
IV. A role consists of behaviour expected of someone who holds a particular status.
A. Role set refers to a number of roles attached to a single status.
B. Role conflict and role strain.
1. Role conflict refers to conflict among roles corresponding to two or more
different statuses. It can be reduced by “compartmentalizing” our lives.
2. Role strain refers to incompatibility among roles corresponding to a single
status.
C. WINDOW ON THE WORLD (p. 137) ─ Global Map 6-1: Housework in Global
Perspective. Throughout the world, housework is a major part of women’s routines
and identities.
D. Role exit is the process by which people disengage from important social roles.
V. The social construction of reality is the process by which individuals creatively shape
reality
through social interaction.
A. What people commonly call “street smarts” really amounts to constructing reality.
B. The Thomas Theorem states that situations we define as real become real in their
consequences.
C. Ethnomethodology is a subfield of sociology developed by Harold Garfinkel (1967)
which studies the way people make sense of their everyday surroundings.
D. People in different cultures experience reality very differently.
E. SOCIOLOGY AND THE MEDIA – Disease and Disability in Hollywood Films:
Twenty Years of Change (p. 140) – people with disabilities are being portrayed with
greater accuracy and realism in Hollywood movies
VI. Dramaturgical analysis, developed by Erving Goffman (1922-1982), consists of the study
of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance.
A. The presentation of self, the effort of an individual to create specific impressions in
the minds of others, is a central focus of dramaturgy.

Copyright © 2014 Pearson Canada Inc. 6-1

 B. An individual’s performances include dress, props, and manner.
1. Performances have back and front regions.
C. Nonverbal communication consists of communication using body movements,
gestures, and facial expressions rather than speech. Most of it is culture-specific.
Close attention to nonverbal communication is often an effective way of telling
whether or not someone is telling the truth. Body language can contradict verbal
communication.
D. Gender affects personal performance in areas such as:
1. Demeanor.
2. Use of personal space — the surrounding area over which an individual
makes some claim to privacy.
3. Staring, smiling, and touching.
E. Performances usually idealize our intentions.
F. Embarrassment and tact are additional important dramaturgical concepts.
G. THINKING CRITICALLY – Social Interaction: Life, Work, and Leisure in
Cyberspace (p. 143) – new information technology is restructuring reality
VII. Interaction in Everyday Life: Three Applications.
A. Emotions, more commonly called feelings, are an important element of human social
life.
1. Paul Ekman (1980) reports that people everywhere express six basic
emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise.
2. Culture plays an important role in guiding human emotions.
3. In the United States, most people are freer to express their feelings at home
than on the job.
B. Language: the social construction of gender. Language defines men and women
differently in several ways:
1. The power function of language.
2. The value function of language.
3. The attention function of language.
C. Reality Play: The Social Construction of Humor
1. The foundation of humor: contrasting incongruous realities.
2. The dynamics of humor: “getting it.” To “get” humor, the audience must
understand the two realities involved well enough to appreciate their
difference.
3. The topics of humor. For everyone, humor deals with topics that lend
themselves to double meanings or controversy.
4. The functions of humor. Humor provides a way to express an opinion without
being serious; and humor relieves tension in uncomfortable situations.
5. Humor and conflict. Humor is often a sign of real conflict in situations where
one or both parties choose not to bring the conflict out into the open.
SEEING SOCIOLOGY IN EVERYDAY LIFE – The Social Construction of
Reality: Reflections on Canadian Humour (p. 148) – one can argue that comedy is
one of Canada’s most successful cultural exports.

Copyright © 2014 Pearson Canada Inc. 6-2

Chapter Objectives
1) Define social interaction and identify its
components.
2) Distinguish between ascribed and
achieved status and describe master status.
3) Distinguish between role set, role strain,
and role conflict.
4) Discuss the extent to which reality is
socially constructed.
5) Explain the Thomas Theorem.
6) State the purposes of ethno-
methodological research.
7) Outline the characteristics of Goffman’s
dramaturgical analysis.
8) Discuss the importance of nonverbal
communication in human social interaction.
9) Examine ways in which gender
influences personal performances, including
use of language.
10) Examine the character of humor.
Essay Topics
1) What are the principal statuses which
you are presently occupying? Which are
ascribed and which achieved? Are any of
them important enough to constitute a
master status?
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Canada Inc.
2) Apply what you learned in this chapter
to explore the character of humor.
3) Identify situations in your life in which
you have experienced role strain and role
conflict. How did you reduce these
situations?
4) Suppose you want to study the social
contradictions that adolescents experience
and the consequences of such contradictions
in their development. How would you study
this question using ethnomethodology?
5) Recount some instances in which you
have realized after interacting with someone
from a different culture (or subculture) that
that person’s socially constructed perception
of reality was quite different from yours.
How did this difference influence the
ongoing pattern of interaction?
6) Develop a dramaturgical analysis of an
interaction you have recently experienced,
demonstrating your familiarity with terms
such as presentation of self, performance,
front and back region, idealization,
embarrassment, and tact.
7) Have you been in a situation in which
someone’s nonverbal messages clashed with
their words? Which type of communication
more accurately reflected that person’s
intentions?
8) Describe a recent incident in which your
interaction with someone of the opposite
gender clearly reflected some of the
differences in demeanor, use of space,
staring, smiling, and physical contact
discussed in the chapter.
9) Can you recall a situation in which you
engaged in active idealization? Describe it.
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Were you successful in convincing your
audience to accept the idealized image that
you were projecting?
10) Many people in contemporary society
downplay the significance of language in
shaping relations between the genders. How
would you respond to such a position?
11) What have you done in this class that
would represent an attempt at impression
management? What kind of impression were
you attempting to put forth?
12) Identify how language is gender
specific. For example the same behaviour by
a male and female would be described in
different terms e.g. Male-strong Female-
pushy.
13) How can humour exclude people from a
group? How effective is humour in
maintaining group boundaries? Think of an
example from your own life.
14) How important is personal space to you?
To members of your family? Why is this, do
you suppose?
Using the ASA Journal Teaching
Sociology in Your Classroom
Reed Geertsen offers an interesting
technique for approaching social
interaction in everyday life (“Simulating
the Blind Spot of Everyday Experience,”
Teaching Sociology, 21, October 1993: 392-
396). Geertsen points out that people have a
tendency to develop “blind spots” as a result
of the tendency to quickly form expectations
based on experience: “The blind spots of
human experience have far-reaching
implications for human behaviour and
constitute an important message in the
teaching of sociology.” Geertsen suggests a
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Canada Inc.
demonstration that confronts students with
their own tendencies toward “blind spots.”
In this exercise, students will develop a
better appreciation of the human tendency
toward simplistic, unidimensional thinking;
specifically, that group norms, self-images,
self-fulfilling prophecies, and culture lags
are all sustained by assumptions acquired
through everyday experience. Geertsen
believes that his approach can help students
to realize that social life is a
multidimensional reality and that
unidimensional problem solving creates
more unintended problems than it solves.
Student Exercises
1. Write a two-page reflection paper discussing
an example from you personal life that
illustrates the importance of an ascribed
status. Think about ways in which, for
example, your gender, race, or ethnicity has
benefited or hindered you in achieving a
particular status.
2. Ask five females and five males to tell you
their three favorite jokes. What are the
common themes that characterize the jokes
told by females? What about for males?
Write your response in the form of a table in
which you differentiate the patterns you
find.
3. Dorm room doors can tell a lot about the
occupant(s). Take digital pictures of the
dorm room doors of ten female and ten male
students. Take the photos of the doors in
some random order. For example, every
other door down a particular hallway, or
first door on right side of the hallway,
second door on the left side of the hallway,
and then third door on the right side, etc.
4. Interview three adults, each over the age of
fifty and ask them what the most significant
“role exit” experiences they have had to this
point in their lives. Write a paragraph for
each person in which you summarize the
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 experiences identified. Conclude with a
paragraph describing any patterns in the
experiences you notice.
Supplemental Lecture Material
Race as a Master Status
In the United States, being a member of a
minority race is frequently so important in
shaping the way that others (especially
whites) react to an individual that race
membership becomes a master status. Many
biographies of African Americans feature
poignant remembrances of the subjects’
dawning realization of the significance of
their racial identity. Here are examples from
the lives of two well-known leaders of the
civil rights movement, James Farmer and
Martin Luther King Jr. Farmer writes:
A small boy holding onto his
mother’s finger as they trudge along an
unpaved red dirt road on a hot mid-
summer day. The mother shops at the
town square and they trudge homeward,
the child still clinging to her finger. She
removes a clean handkerchief from her
purse and pats her son’s face and then
her own. The boy looks up at his mother
and says, “Mommy, I want to get a
Coke.”
“You can’t get a Coke here, Junior,”
the mother replies. “Wait till we get
home. There’s lots of Coke in the
icebox.”
“But, mommy,” says the boy, “I
don’t want to wait. I want my Coke
now. I have a nickel; daddy gave it to
me yesterday.”
“Junior, I told you you can’t get a
Coke now. There’s lots of Coke in the
icebox at home.”
“Why can’t I get a Coke now, when I
have a nickel?”
“You just can’t.”
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Canada Inc.
The child sees another boy enter a
drugstore across the street. “Look,
mommy,” exclaims Junior, “I bet that
boy’s going to get a Coke. Come on,
let’s go see.”
He pulls his mother by the finger
across the street, and they look through
the screen doors, closed to keep out the
flies. Sure enough, the other kid is
perched on a stool at the counter sipping
a soft drink through a straw.
“See that, mommy,” said the small
boy. “We can get a Coke here. He got
one. Let’s go get ours.”
“Son, I told you to wait till we get
home. We can’t get a Coke in there.”
“Then why could he?”
“He’s white.”
“He’s white? And me?” inquires the
boy.
“You’re colored.”
As King recalled it fifteen years later,
his early childhood years were spent in “a
very congenial home situation,” a family
“where love was central and where lovely
relationships were ever present.” Only one
incident, he later said, marred those early
childhood years. That came at age six, just
after he had begun his actual first grade
education at Yonge Street Elementary. For
several years one of his close playmates had
been a white child whose father owned a
small grocery near the King home. After
they began attending separate schools, they
saw much less of each other. As King later
described it:
This was not my desire but his. The
climax came when he told me one day
that his father had demanded that he
would play with me no more. I never
will forget what a great shock this was
to me. I immediately asked my parents
about the motive behind such a
statement. We were at the dinner table
when the situation was discussed, and
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 here, for the first time, I was made
aware of the existence of a race
problem. I had never been conscious of
it before.
Another distressing occurrence took
place two years later, when King and his
high school teacher, Miss Sarah Bradley,
traveled to a South Georgia town for an
oratorical contest sponsored by the black
Elks. M. L. did well, delivering his speech
on “The Negro and the Constitution”
without either manuscript or notes, but on
their way back a white bus driver insisted
that the two surrender their seats to newly
boarding white riders. M. L. resisted at first,
but his teacher finally encouraged him to get
up, and the young man had to stand for
several hours as the bus made its way to
Atlanta. “It was,” King recalled twenty
years later, “the angriest I have ever been in
my life.”
That was the most traumatic encounter
with segregation that young King suffered.
He had seen his father refuse to accept
second-class service in stores, tell white
policemen that a forty-year-old black
minister should be addressed as “Reverend,”
not “boy,” and himself had been called
“nigger” by a hostile white in a downtown
store. Looking back on these experiences a
decade later, King recalled that he had never
fully gotten over the shock of his initial
discovery of racial prejudice as a six-year-
old. “From that moment on,” he
remembered, “I was determined to hate
every white person. As I grew older and
older, this feeling continued to grow,” even
though “my parents would always tell me
that I should not hate the white man, but that
it was my duty, as a Christian, to love him.”
Sources
Farmer, James. Lay Bare the Heart. New
York: New American Library, 1985, p. 31.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Canada Inc.
Garrow, David J. Bearing the Cross: Mar-
tin Luther King Jr., and the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference. New
York: Random House, 1986, pp. 33–35.
Discussion Questions
1) The incidents recounted in these
excerpts took place in the South before the
civil rights era. Do you think that race is less
of a master status today than it was at that
time?
2) What are some other common statuses
which can have a similarly great effect on
how an individual is treated by others?
Supplemental Lecture Material
Humor as Social Bond
As you have already learned from the
textbook, humor has many important
functions in social life, including working as
a safety valve to allow the exploration of the
status quo, or promoting bonding in those
who "get" the joke. The latter function can,
in fact, be taken a step further by applying
Durkheim's notions of social integration or
differentiation. Humor is one way a group
can include or exclude people, integrate or
differentiate them. Often this dynamic is
fueled by status inequality in a setting where
all involved try to deal with this inequality
in various ways, humor being one of them.
A good example of this is a recent
observational study in a clinic housed in a
Division of General Internal Medicine at a
major university medical center, where
physicians, medical students fulfilling their
residency requirements, the clinic's Nurse
Coordinator, and, of course, patients
interact. Obviously, physicians enjoy the
highest status, with the residents next in the
status hierarchy, the Nurse Coordinator next.
Since residents have to work between 70-80
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hours a week during their three year stint
and are often exhausted, scheduling is an
issue of prime importance to them.
Here is one exchange between an
attending physician and residents, who are
worried about having to be on call more
often:
The Attending laughs and asks
somewhat lightheartedly if they ever
imagined that things might actually get
better. . . . Why do you always imagine
the worst, he asks while jokingly
suggesting at the same time that he
somewhat agrees with their projection.
One of the interns responds by joking
that they do that because their
projections are supported by huge reams
of data. Everyone laughs.
Here humor is used to further integration in
various ways. First of all, the residents bond
since they all share the same concern and
the physician also addresses them as one
group, saying "why do you. . ." The
residents' reply using the medical metaphor
of "hard data" also makes them members of
the medical establishment, thereby bonding
them with the physician.
The residents themselves bond by joking
with each other about workloads or the
patients, most of whom were nonwhite (80
percent) and of disproportionately lower
income and education. One resident, for
example, called his patients the "Two
Hundred Club" because they all weighed
over 200 pounds. Patients with psychiatric
histories are referred to as "schizos." While
this helps residents and physicians to bond,
patients are cast as outsiders, the butt of
jokes.
The researchers explained it this way:
"The combination of humor and viewing
patients as 'other,' along with the time
pressure of heavy workloads, contribute to
the residents' tendency to embrace ready-
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Canada Inc.
made societal labels when referring to
patients. . . Such humor often reflects, we
believe, a feeling of frustration, or perhaps
thwarted idealism."
When in direct contact with patients,
however, both physicians and residents treat
them with respect. Humor is often used to
make the patient feel more at ease. "Just
after we enter the room, she jokingly tells
the patient, after he responds rather slowly
to one of her questions, 'That's OK. I'm
having the same kind of day you are' —
meaning tiring, and exhausting. Everyone
laughs."
This instance blurs status lines and
integrates the patient. On the other hand,
patients occasionally ward off embarrassing
or personal questions from residents or
physicians by giving their answers jokingly.
The Nurse Coordinator serves as a
liaison between patients and various medical
staff. Though her position holds lower social
prestige, she has the final say over
scheduling the residents, and thereby holds
tremendous power, which perhaps explains
why humor between the nurse and residents
or attending physicians flows both ways.
The nurse makes fun of their ability or
commitment to medical care while the
residents joke about her power and call her
the "boss," possibly indicating a certain
uneasiness about power relations in the
clinic. On the other hand, nurses also bond
with residents by mentoring them through
humor.
The researchers conclude: "We suggest
that humor functions as an organizational,
emotional thermostat of sorts. Persons are
continually responding to situations in terms
of their ease or disease with power and
status, two critical dimensions of the
organization's emotional climate."
Source
Yoels, William C. and Jeffrey Michael
Clair, "Laughter in the Clinic: Humor as
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Social Organization. Symbolic Interaction,
Vol. 18 No. 1: 39-58.
Discussion Questions
1) Use what you have learned about roles
to analyze the interactions of the various
groups above. What are the role sets? Is
there role conflict or strain?
2) As you have seen above, as part of
bonding, physicians and residents
occasionally denigrate patients. Do you
agree with the researchers' conclusions
regarding that issue? Why or why not?
3) Activity: Find a setting where you
might observe the use of humor, ideally
where people of differing statuses have to
deal with each other, such as a party or club,
or a sports event. Write your analysis of the
functions of humor in that setting.
Supplemental Lecture Material
Living to Laugh: The Evolution of
African-American Humor
According to Mel Watkins, a historian of
African-American humor, the long-term
oppression of blacks led to the formation of
a highly developed approach to humor.
African-American humor, like that of other
alienated groups such as Jews and the Irish,
has a keen sense of irony, of the differences
between the declared and actual values of
our social system.
Sometimes this humor has been
primarily ignorant of race in its content, as
with contemporary comedian Bill Cosby. At
other times, the humor has been driven by a
sense of race, as with Richard Pryor.
Decades ago, a black comedian named
Moms Mabley, often focused on the tension
her northern black audience felt with
southern culture: “They shipped me some
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Canada Inc.
neckbones with a whole lot of meat on it.
Not like the neckbones you get up here.
When they say neckbones, they mean neck
bones. . . . nothin’ on ’em but bones”; or
“Now they want me to go to New Orleans. .
. . It’ll be Old Orleans ’fore I get down
there. The Greyhound ain’t goin’ take me
down there and the bloodhounds run me
back, I’ll tell you that.”
Why did African Americans develop a
separate form of humor from white
Americans? For a long time humor was one
of the few ways most blacks could point out
the hypocrisy and pain of their lives, the
lack of justice and depth of pain, without
creating despair or inciting retaliation. As
Lawrence Levine says, “Black Americans
have used humor not to escape from reality
but to escape from unreality: the unreality of
slavery, segregation, discrimination,
brutality, and shattered hopes in a land
founded on the ‘inalienable rights’ of ‘life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ If ever
a paradox called for wit, this one did.”
But African-American humor has faced
two conflicting roles: presenting a black
audience with genuine and meaningful
entertainment, and avoiding the co-opting of
that humor by whites and thereby
perpetuating negative stereotypes. Often, a
particular comedian or comedy team began
as the former and ended as the latter before
disappearing from public view.
One of the earliest mass media examples
of this phenomenon is the career of film
comedian Lincoln Perry, whose stage name
was Stepin Fetchit. Perry began working in
carnivals for black audiences in a role with a
“shuffling, apparently inept and inarticulate
character [with traits that] had clearly
defined folk roots” according to Watkins.
The nonchalance and ineptitude Perry
displayed could be found in many traditional
black stock characters. Perry remembered
that “The first fifteen minutes of my act is
getting to the middle of the stage.” But the
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role of Fetchit lost a sense of humanity on
the mainstream stage, and as Watkins states,
“He came through as a pathetic, cartoonlike
figure who . . . invited ridicule.” Fetchit was
removed from the screen after World War II
by blacks who were tired of his contribution
to negative stereotypes.
Richard Pryor may have been the first
black American comic who accurately
pulled genuine African-American humor
into the mainstream. Watkins writes that
Pryor “completely unmasked the complex
matrix of pride, self-mockery, blunt
confrontation of reality, double-edged irony,
satiric wit, assertive defiance, poetic
obscenity, and verbal acuity that finally
define the elusive identity that may be called
African-American humor.” For example,
Pryor said in 1971 of Martin Luther King
Jr., that “I been to the mountaintop, too, and
what did I see? Mo’ white folks with guns.”
On another occasion, Pryor said, “I was a
nigger for twenty-three years. I gave it up,
no room for advancement.”
His appeal to whites as well as blacks
marked a turning point in American humor.
While African-American humor retains
distinctive qualities, mainstream tastes have
moved closer to integration and appreciative
coexistence.
Sources
Levine, Lawrence. “Laughing Matters: How
Black Americans Have Used Humor as
Strategy for Survival.” New York Times
Book Review (February 27, 1994) pp. 1, 27–
28.
Mel Watkins, Laughing, Lying, and
Signifying: The Underground Tradition of
African-American Humor That Transformed
American Culture, From Slavery to Richard
Pryor. Simon & Schuster. New York: 1994.
Discussion Questions
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Canada Inc.
1) Do you think the kinds of stereotypes
portrayed in pre–World War II movies could
succeed in a mainstream context today? If
so, can you think of any recent examples?
2) Have changes in African-American
humor been the result of differences in the
civil rights status of African Americans?
Why or why not? How might a researcher
determine this?
Supplemental Lecture Material
The Philosophy of Deception
The Clinton years in the White House will
be remembered for many things, not the
least of which is the issue of honesty.
Clinton was impeached…not for his sexual
proclivities but over the question of “Did he
lie (or tell someone else to)?” Substantial
concern arose over the fear that if the
president would lie about one thing, he
would lie about another.
The issue of honesty really must be
examined in a way that distinguishes
between public and private life. Perjury, by
its very nature is public, and the
consequences can be tremendous. In a trial,
a jury’s assumption that a person who lies
about one thing will lie about another is
perfectly justified. Sex, with a few obvious
exceptions, is part of our private life. And
just about everyone is less than forthright
about sex. Robert C. Solomon, a professor
of philosophy at the University of Texas at
Austin, notes that while lying about sex may
have grave significance for people in an
intimate relationship, it has nothing to do
with one’s public credibility. Indeed, when
publicly asked a rudely inappropriate
question about one’s private life, it seems
“not only natural but even obligatory to lie,
finesse, or refuse to answer.”
Solomon contends that “Not all untruths
are malicious. Telling the truth can
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complicate or destroy social relationships.”
When honesty would be cruel, deception
becomes not a vice, but a social virtue. In
such cases systematic deception becomes an
essential part of the order of the social
world. In some ways, seeking the truth at all
costs is an ethnocentric peculiarity that is, at
least in part, a product of our strong sense of
individualism, and what Solomon sees as a
dangerously unsociable conception. He
concludes “Deception and self-deception are
part and parcel of our engagements in the
world, including, not least, the development
and maintenance of our sense of ourselves.”
For public figures, lying is sometimes a way
of protecting their private lives. A lie or an
invitation to lie that is provoked by a breach
of sacred personal boundaries is what
Solomon calls this “moral limbo” and in no
violation of a public trust.
Source
Robert C. Solomon. “Is It Ever Right to
Lie? The Philosophy of Deception.” The
Chronicle of Higher Education (Feb. 27,
1998) p. 60.
Discussion Questions
1) Is a lie told in desperation any less wrong
than a calculated, merely convenient lie?
Why or why not?
2) Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant
both believed that lying is always wrong.
What’s your feeling about their Absolutist
stand on lying?
Supplemental Lecture Material
Embarrassment
Both ethnomethodologists and those
employing dramaturgical analysis have
discovered that one of the best ways of
understanding the seen but unperceived
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Canada Inc.
basis of everyday interaction is to examine
what happens when people’s implicit but
fundamental assumptions about one another
are violated. Gross and Stone’s 1964 article,
“Embarrassment and the Analysis of Role
Requirements,” uses the dramaturgical
perspective to investigate the phenomenon
of embarrassment.
The authors define embarrassment as
occurring “whenever some central
assumption in a transaction has been
unexpectedly and unqualifiedly discredited
for at least one participant. The result is that
he has been incapacitated for continued role
performance…. In the wreckage left by
embarrassment lie the broken foundations of
social transactions” (p. 2). The underlying
assumption of the article is that, since
embarrassment results from a failed or
inadequate role performance, a solid
understanding of embarrassment will help us
identify some of the rules that normally
maintain smooth and positive interaction,
but whose violation produces
embarrassment.
The data used in this study consisted of
roughly 1000 accounts of embarrassing
situations, mostly collected from
undergraduate sociology students and from
the researchers’ colleagues. Careful analysis
of the data suggested that embarrassment
tended to occur in three general contexts:
1. Inappropriate Identity
In any interaction, people must know the
sort of person with whom they are dealing.
In structural terms, this means the
individual’s status; dramaturgical analysis
uses the term identity. “When one has
identity, he is situated—that is, cast in the
shape of a social object” (p. 3).
Embarrassment results when people
find themselves in a scene inappropriate for
their identity, as when a man blunders into
the women’s washroom. It also occurs when
people are unable to substantiate their
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identity, as when a speeding motorist is
unable to produce the appropriate “identity
documents” when asked to do so by a traffic
officer. Embarrassment may also occur if
people have failed to properly announce
their correct identity, as when an individual
who has failed to establish his or her identity
at a party is forced to listen to jokes
belittling his or her ethnic heritage.
Embarrassment may also result from
an individual’s secondary or past identities
if (a) these secondary or past identities are
incongruent with the dominant identity
currently being projected, or (b) the
audience pays excessive attention to
secondary or past identities and ignores
what the actor regards as his or her primary
current identity. As an example, if a college
professor (primary identity) smokes a cigar
(secondary identity) while lecturing and
accidentally ignites the papers in a
wastebasket with his discarded ash,
embarrassment will certainly ensue.
2. Loss of Poise
“Personal poise refers to the performer’s
control over self and situation.” Loss of
poise, which can be highly embarrassing,
may result from a number of different
interactive elements. First, inappropriate use
of space, as in the example of a man who
enters the wrong washroom, will disturb
one’s poise. Excessively thin walls that
permit people to hear embarrassing things
from the next room are another example.
Second, inappropriate use of props
and equipment can be embarrassing.
Examples include slipping on one’s own
rug, stalling a car in traffic, dropping
bowling balls, or spilling food.
Third, clothing must be properly
maintained, controlled, and arranged.
Wearing blue jeans to a fancy restaurant will
threaten one’s ability to maintain one’s pose
and can be highly embarrassing.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Canada Inc.
Finally, loss of poise may also result
from inappropriate use of the body, as with
marked clumsiness, flatulence, involuntary
drooling, pimples, or warts.
3. Ongoing Maintenance of Identity and
Poise
As an interaction proceeds, an effectively
established identity and well-developed
poise serve as a “scaffold” to maintain
people’s confidence in the interaction.
In time persons come to expect that
the way they place the other is the way the
other announces himself [identity] and that
poise will continue to be maintained.
Persons now begin to count on these
expectations and to have confidence in
them. But at any time they may be violated
(p. 11). Such violations seriously threaten
the ongoing fabric of interaction and
therefore must be avoided if a seamless
performance is to be presented. In order to
promote this end, two crucial performance
norms are widely observed in social
interaction. First, since a number of lapses
are inevitable, “the standards of role
performance almost always allow for
flexibility and tolerance” (p. 12). Second,
we must always strive to “give the other
fellow the benefit of the doubt” (p. 13).
Gross and Stone conclude their
discussion by noting that, while most
embarrassment is accidental, there are
certain circumstances in which people
deliberately set out to embarrass one
another. “Examples are practical jokes,
teasing, initiation into secret societies [and]
puncturing false fronts” (p. 13). Given how
disruptive embarrassment is to smooth role
performance, why would people ever
deliberately embarrass one another? The
authors suggest several reasons.
First, deliberate embarrassment
serves a socialization function. Since we all
must learn how to handle embarrassing
6-11
situations effectively, early training amongst
friends will help us to establish identity,
maintain poise, and sustain the continuity of
interactions with strangers at a later point.
This explains why childhood and
adolescence are the life stages in which we
are most likely to encounter deliberate
embarrassment.
In addition, embarrassment may also
be deliberately provoked as a kind of social
control. “Since embarrassment does
incapacitate the person from performing his
role, it can clearly be used to stop somebody
from playing a role that might discredit a
collectivity. Empirical categories include
public reprimands, exposure of false fronts,
open gossip, and cattiness” (pp. 14-15).
Source
Edward Gross and Gregory P. Stone.
“Embarrassment and the Analysis of Role
Requirements.” American Journal of
Sociology (LXX/1), July 1964, pp. 1-15.
Discussion Questions
1) Recall incidents you have experienced
that you found embarrassing and analyze
them using the ideas developed by Gross
and Stone.
2) Is deliberate embarrassment always done
with hostile intent or are there times when it
is intended to benefit the target? Can you
give some examples of well-intentioned
deliberate embarrassment?
3) How do the other people in an interaction
typically respond to an embarrassing
performance? Under what circumstances
will they criticize people who have
misbehaved, under what circumstances will
they cooperatively attempt to help them to
minimize the significance of their error, and
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Canada Inc.
under what circumstances will they merely
attempt to flee the situation?
Supplemental Lecture Material
The Male Breadwinner Role
Toronto sociologists Livingstone and
Luxton conducted a study of steelworker
families in the mid-1980s, when Stelco
(Hamilton, Ontario) was under pressure to
hire more women. Pressure to hire women
came from broad social values dealing with
gender equality, but also from a union-
supported committee, Women Back into
Stelco Campaign. The researchers wanted to
study the attitudes of Stelco families to the
influx of women and did so through
interviews with 186 married steelworkers
and their wives. The steel industry is
thought to be “one of the strongest preserves
of traditional white working class masculine
identity and opposition to women trying to
do a ‘man’s job’” (p. 238), thus an ideal
context within to study the male
breadwinner role.
In occupational settings where workers
are largely male, paid work tends to be
equated with masculinity. “It is assumed that
workers in that field are, and should be,
male” (p. 240). This implies acceptance of a
sex/gender division of labour and the belief
that women should be wives and mothers
while men are breadwinners. Confrontation
with an unpleasant and brutal working
situation (as in the steel mills) is seen as an
exercise of heroic manliness — clearly not
as work that could as easily be done by a
women. To accept the latter would be a
blow to the self-esteem that comes with
rough and physically challenging work;
dirty, dangerous and heavy work must be
men’s work.
When men who work in these male-
dominated industries feel discontent, they
tend not to express this as political
6-12
discontent against their bosses. Instead, they Everyday Life: A Reader, pp. 238–249.
express the conflict in terms that express Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
“sexual competition and antagonism.”
Especially difficult work is “a real bitch”
and requires men to “give her hell” while Discussion Questions
malfunctioning machinery is “a bitch” or “a
slut.” Disliked bosses are “wimps” or 1) In what other occupations would you
“cream puffs” or “bitches.” Exploitation by expect to find similar attitudes towards the
management is “getting screwed around.” employment of women?
Standing up to management requires
fighting back hard, involving potential fist 2) The attitudes of male steelworkers at
fights and combative language. Stelco may have changed in the decade
Not surprisingly, there is a general since the study was conducted. How much
reluctance to expand the roles of women at change do you think would have occurred?
Stelco on the part of male steelworkers,
despite a wider acceptance of the idea of 3) What kinds of experiences would be
gender equality. common to women working in such male-
dominated industries?
The notion of steelmaking as
essentially men’s work is not
merely a simplistic assertion of
male chauvinism, but is typically
bound to a deeper sense of
responsibility to provide for their
families. Both the wages earned
and the very sacrifice and strength
required to the work offer a basic
self-esteem and self-worth. The
wage packet is seen as confirming
that the man has fulfilled his
obligation as family provider.
(p. 244)

Steelworkers’ wives tended to be a little

more pragmatic about the prospects of
women’s employment at Stelco and
expressed no concern about the work being
too much for women. Nonetheless, support
for women as steelworkers was strongest
among men who had worked with women
before and among wives who were
employed outside the home.

Source
Livingstone, David W. and Meg Luxton.
1992. “Gender Consciousness at Work” in
Lorne Tepperman and James Curtis,

Copyright © 2014 Pearson Canada Inc. 6-13