Sociology

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4. Public distance. This zone, extending beyond 12 feet, marks even more formal relation- ships. It is used to separate dignitaries and public speakers from the general public.

Eye Contact One way that we protect our personal bubble is by controlling eye contact. Letting someone gaze into our eyes—unless the person is an eye doctor—can be taken as a sign that we are attracted to that person, even as an invitation to intimacy. With the goal of becoming “the friendliest store in town,” a chain of supermarkets in Illinois ordered its checkout clerks to make direct eye contact with each customer. Female clerks complained that male customers were taking their eye contact the wrong way, as an invitation to intimacy. Management said they were exaggerating. The clerks’ reply was, “We know the kind of looks we’re getting back from men,” and they refused to continue making direct eye contact with them.

Smiling In the United States, we take it for granted that clerks will smile as they wait on us. But it isn’t this way in all cultures. Apparently, Germans aren’t used to smiling clerks, and when Walmart expanded into Germany, it brought its American ways with it. The com- pany ordered its German clerks to smile at their customers. They did—and the customers complained. The German customers interpreted the smiles as flirting (Samor et al. 2006).

Body Language While we are still little children, we learn to interpret body language, the ways people use their bodies to give messages to others. This skill in interpreting facial expressions, posture, and gestures is essential for getting through everyday life. Without it—as is the case for people with Asperger’s syndrome—we wouldn’t know how to react to others. It would even be difficult to know whether someone were serious or joking.

APPLIED BODY LANGUAGE In an interesting twist for an area of sociology that had been entirely theoretical, interpreting body lan- guage has become a tool for both business and government. In some hotels, clerks are taught how to “read” the body language of arriving guests (head sunk into the shoulders, a springy step) to know how to greet them (Petersen 2012). The U.S. army is teaching soldiers in mil- itary zones how to interpret body language to alert them to danger when they are interacting with civilians (Yager et al. 2009). “Reading” body language has also become a tool in the fight against terror- ism. Homeland Security spends $200 million a year on what it calls its behavior-detection program. Three thousand Behavior Detection Officers (their official title) are trained to look for ninety-four signs of deception by people who are going to board planes. Among those signs: A quick downturn of the mouth or rapid blinking might indicate nervousness or lying (McCartney 2014).

Let’s turn to dramaturgy, a special area of symbolic interactionism.

Dramaturgy: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life 4.7 Explain why life is like a stage according to dramaturgy; be ready to explain role

performance, sign-vehicles, teamwork, and becoming the roles we play.

Have you noticed how some clothing simply doesn’t “feel” right for certain occasions? Have you ever changed your mind about something you were wearing and decided to change your clothing? Or maybe you just switched shirts or added a necklace?

body language the ways in which people use their bodies to give messages to others

With the training of Homeland Security agents, body language has changed from being purely descriptive and theoretical to applied.

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What you were doing was fine-tuning the impressions you wanted to make. Ordinarily, we are not this aware that we’re working on impressions, but sometimes we are, especially when it comes to those “first impressions”—the first day in college, a job interview, visiting the parents of our loved one for the first time, and so on. Usually we are so used to the roles we play in everyday life that we tend to think we are “just doing” things, not that we are actors on a stage who manage impressions. Yet every time we dress for school, or for any other activity, we are engaging in impression management.

Sociologist Erving Goffman (1922–1982) added a new twist to microsociology when he recast the theatrical term dramaturgy into a sociological term. Goffman (1959/1999) used the term to mean that social life is like a drama or a stage play: Birth ushers us onto the stage of everyday life, and our socialization consists of learning to perform on that stage. The self that we studied in the previous chapter lies at the center of our performances. We have ideas about how we want others to think of us, and we use our roles in everyday life to commu- nicate these ideas. Goffman called our efforts to manage the impres- sions that others receive of us impression management.

Stages We do our impression management on front stages, places where we perform the roles assigned to us. Everyday life is filled with front stages. Where your teacher lectures is a front stage. And if you wait until your parents are in a good mood to tell them some bad news, you are using a front stage. We also have back stages, places where we retreat from performances and let our hair down. When you close the bathroom or bedroom door for privacy, for example, you are entering a back stage.

The same setting can serve as both a back and a front stage. For example, when you get into your car and look over your hair in the mirror or check your makeup, you are using the car as a back stage. But when you wave at friends or if you give that familiar gesture to someone who has just cut in front of you in traffic, you are using your car as a front stage.

Role Performance, Conflict, and Strain As discussed earlier, everyday life brings many statuses. We may be a student, a shopper, a worker, and a date, as well as a daughter or a son. Although the roles attached to these statuses lay down the basic outline for our performances, they also allow a great deal of flexibility. The particular interpretation that you give a role, your “style,” is known as role performance. Consider how you play your role as a son or daughter. Perhaps you play the role of ideal daughter or son—being respectful, coming home at the hours your parents set, and happily running errands. Or this description may not even come close to your particular role performance.

Ordinarily, our statuses are separated sufficiently that we find little conflict between our role performances. Occasionally, however, what is expected of us in one status (our role) is incompatible with what is expected of us in another status. This problem, known as role conflict, is illustrated in Figure 4.4, in which family, friendship, student, and work roles come crashing together. Usually, however, we manage to avoid role conflict by seg- regating our statuses, although doing so can require an intense juggling act.

Sometimes the same status contains incompatible roles, a conflict known as role strain. Suppose that you are exceptionally well prepared for a particular class assignment. Although the instructor asks an unusually difficult question, you find yourself know- ing the answer when no one else does. If you want to raise your hand, yet don’t want to make your fellow students look bad, you will experience role strain. As illustrated in

dramaturgy an approach, pioneered by Erving Goffman, in which social life is analyzed in terms of drama or the stage; also called dramaturgical analysis

impression management people’s efforts to control the impressions that others receive of them

front stages places where people give perfor- mances

back stages places where people rest from their performances, discuss their presentations, and plan future performances

role performance the ways in which someone performs a role; showing a par- ticular “style” or “personality”

role conflict conflict that someone feels between roles because the expec- tations attached to one role are at odds with those attached to another role

role strain conflicts that someone feels within a role

In dramaturgy, a specialty within sociology, social life is viewed as similar to the theater. In our everyday lives, we all are actors. Like those in the cast of Orange Is the New Black, we, too, perform roles, use props, and deliver lines to fellow actors—who, in turn, do the same.

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Sign-Vehicles To communicate information about the self, we use three types of sign-vehicles: the social setting, our appearance, and our manner. The social setting is the place where the action unfolds. This is where the curtain goes up on your performance, where you find yourself on stage playing parts and delivering lines. A social setting might be an office, dorm, living room, classroom, church, or bar. It is wherever you interact with others. The social setting includes scenery, the furnishings you use to communicate messages, such as desks, blackboards, scoreboards, couches, and so on.

The second sign-vehicle is appearance, or how you look when you play your roles. On the most obvious level is your choice of hairstyle to communicate messages about your- self. (You might be proclaiming “I’m wild and sexy” or “I’m serious and professional” and, for most, “I’m masculine” or “I’m feminine”). Your appearance also includes props, which are like scenery except that they decorate your body rather than the setting. Your most obvious prop is your costume, ordinarily called clothing. You switch costumes as you play your roles, wearing different costumes for attending class, swimming, jogging, working out at the gym, and dating.

Your appearance lets others know what to expect from you and how they should react. Think of the messages that props communicate. Some people use clothing to say they are college students, others to say they are older adults. Some use clothing to let you know they are clergy, others to give the message that they are prostitutes. In the same way, people choose models of cars, brands of liquor, and the hottest cell phone to convey messages about the self.

The body itself is a sign-vehicle. Its shape proclaims messages about the self. The meanings that are attached to various shapes change over time, but, as explored in the following Thinking Critically about Social Life, thinness currently screams desirability.

sign-vehicle the term used by Goffman to refer to how people use social setting, appearance, and manner to communicate information about the self

Figure 4.4, the difference between role conflict and role strain is that role conflict is conflict between roles, while role strain is conflict within a role.

Figure 4.4 Role Strain and Role Conflict

Come in for emergency overtime

You

Son or daughter Friend Student Worker

Visit mom in hospital

Go to 21st birthday

party

Prepare for tomorrow's

exam

Role Conflict

Student

Do well in your classes

Role Strain

You

Don't make other students

look bad

SOURCE: By the author.

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Thinking Critically about Social Life “Nothing Tastes as Good as Thin Feels”: Body Images and the Mass Media

When you stand before a mirror, do you like what you see? Do you watch your weight or work out? Where did you get your ideas about what you should look like?

“Your body isn’t good enough!” You are bombarded with this message. The way to improve your body is to buy the advertised products: hair extensions, “uplifting” bras, diet programs, exercise equipment, and according to your pref- erence, butt reducers or enhancers. Muscular hulks on TV show off machines that magically produce “six-pack abs” and incredible biceps—in just a few minutes a day. Female celebrities go through tough workouts without even break- ing into a sweat. Members of the opposite sex will flock to you if you purchase that wonder-working workout machine.

We try to shrug off such messages, knowing that they are designed to sell products, but the messages penetrate our thinking and feeling. They help to shape the ideal images we hold of how we “ought” to look. Those models so attractively clothed and coiffed as they walk down the runway, could they be any thinner? For women, the message is clear: You can’t be thin enough. The men’s message is also clear: You’ve got to be more muscular. Everybody loves a hulk.

These messages are powerful. Impossibly shaped models show off the latest lingerie for Victoria’s Secret and the latest fashions in Vogue and Seventeen. Adolescent girls feel fat, count calories, and think that the secret to popularity is being thin (Grabe et al. 2008; Zaslow 2009). The more time that girls spend on the Internet, especially Facebook, the more they internalize the skinny ideal (Tiggermann and Slater 2013). To look more feminine, each year about 12,000 teen girls have their breasts enlarged, while to look more masculine, about 14,000 teen boys have theirs reduced (Crerand and Magee 2013; Parry 2016).

“Thinspiration” videos on YouTube feature emaciated girls proudly displaying their skeletal frames. “Pro-ana” (pro-anorexic) sites promote eating disorders as a lifestyle choice (Boepple and Thompson 2016). I took the title of this section, “Nothing Tastes as Good as Thin Feels,” from one of these sites.

Attractiveness does pay off in cold cash. “Good-looking” men and women earn the most, “average-looking” men and women earn average amounts, and the “plain” and the “ugly” earn the least (Hamermesh 2011). Then there is that fascinating cash “bonus” available to “attractive” women: With the right facial features and shape, even the bubble-heads can attract and marry higher-earning men (Kanazawa and Kovar 2004).

More popularity and more money? Maybe you can’t be thin enough after all. Perhaps those exercise machines are a good investment. If only we could catch up with the Japanese, who have developed a soap that “sucks the fat right out of your pores” (Marshall 1995). Although we don’t

have such a soap, we do have liposuction. It’s even easier. Just lie down, and a surgeon inserts a vacuum wand in your body and sucks the fat out of your hips, butt, stomach, or wherever you feel too plumpy. A bit more expensive than the soap, but you get immediate results.

For Your Consideration S How do you view your body? Why do you have those

ideas? How do cultural expectations of “ideal” bodies underlie the images you have of your body?

S Most advertising that focuses on weight is directed at women. Women are more likely than men to be dissatisfied with their bodies and to have eating disorders (Austin et al. 2009; Wilson 2011). Do you think that targeting women in advertising creates these attitudes and behaviors? Or do you think that these attitudes and behaviors would exist even if there were no such ads? Why?

S There is a backlash against featuring emaciated models who look as though they’ll collapse on the runway. One reaction is to feature “plus-size” models in ads. What do you think about this?

All of us contrast the reality we see when we look in the mirror with our culture’s ideal body types. The thinness craze, discussed in this box, encourages some people to extremes, as with model Karlie Kloss. It also makes it difficult for larger people to have positive self-images. Overcoming this difficulty, Melissa McCarthy is in the forefront of promoting an alternative image.

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The third sign-vehicle is manner, the attitudes you show as you play your roles. You use manner to communicate information about your feelings and moods. When you show that you are angry or indifferent, serious or in good humor, you are indicating what others can expect of you as you play your roles.

Teamwork Being a good role player brings positive responses from others, something we all covet. To accomplish this, we use teamwork—two or more people working together to help a performance come off as planned. If you laugh at your boss’s jokes, even though you don’t find them funny, you are doing teamwork to help your boss give a good perfor- mance.

If a performance doesn’t come off quite right, the team might try to save it by using face-saving behavior.

Suppose your teacher is about to make an important point. Suppose also that her lec- turing has been outstanding and the class is hanging on every word. Just as she pauses for emphasis, her stomach lets out a loud growl. She might then use a face-saving tech- nique by remarking, “I was so busy preparing for class that I didn’t get breakfast this morning.”

It is more likely, however, that both the teacher and class will simply ignore the sound, giving the impression that no one heard a thing—a face-saving technique called studied nonobservance. This allows the teacher to make the point or, as Goffman would say, it allows the performance to go on.

Becoming the Roles We Play A fascinating characteristic of roles is that we tend to become the roles we play. That is, roles become incorporated into our self- concept, especially roles for which we prepare long and hard and that become part of our everyday lives. Helen Ebaugh (1988) experienced this firsthand when she quit being a nun to become a sociologist. With her own heightened awareness of role exit, she interviewed people who had left marriages, police work, the military, medicine, and religious vocations. Just as she had expe- rienced, the role had become intertwined so extensively with the individual’s self-concept that leaving it threatened the person’s identity. The question these people struggled with was “Who am I, now that I am not a nun (or wife, police officer, colonel, physician, and so on)?”

A statement made by one of my respondents illustrates how roles become part of the person. Notice how a role can linger even after the individual is no longer playing that role:

After I left the ministry, I felt like a fish out of water. Wearing that backward collar had become a part of me. It was especially strange on Sunday mornings when I’d listen to someone else give the ser- mon. I knew that I should be up there preaching. I felt as though I had left God.

APPLYING IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT I can just hear someone say, “Impression management is interesting, but is it really important?” It certainly is. In the following Applying Sociology to Your Life, you can see how impression management can even make a vital difference for your career.

teamwork the collaboration of two or more people to manage impressions jointly

face-saving behavior techniques used to salvage a performance (interaction) that is going sour

Both individuals and organizations do impression management, trying to communicate messages about the self (or organization) that best meets their goals. At times, these efforts fail.