Overview

This text is a sociological approach to studying interactions. Its ostensible goal is to understand what sorts of interactions take place among people. The authors follow both Manford H. Kuhn and George Mead in the tradition of symbolic interaction. This work attempts to break down interactions and their dynamics into individuals, roles, identities, boundaries, and agenda. Their approach intends to be general, but has a tendency to focus on western subjects. The most promising finding of this work is the idea of the “role”, which seems to be very adaptable to a model of simulation.

Notes

Interaction is a base requirement for “humanness”. Begin looking at fundamental questions: Who, what, when, where, how, why. The focus of this research is on interactions from the perspective of the individual and not the larger social system. A point of conflict is scientism vs humanism, evidenced by western dualism. (p. 2) Rational thinking vs unconscious behavior: Strategic action is not necessarily conscious. Interesting source to look at: Manford H. Kuhn “Major Trends in Symbolic Interaction Theory in the Past Twenty-Five Years”. (p. 5) Some initial concepts: Role (Conformity, performance, improvisation), Self, Self Evaluation. (p. 6) On Self: Not reflexive, but directive. Each of these is heavily researched, as evidenced in the footnotes. Interpersonal school, self theory, exchange theory (economic model of self, allocation). “It is our view that the importance of the self lies not in its reflexive churnings and seethings but in its directive influence on human behavior.” (p. 8) Searching for an “interactionist” theory: Focusing on four dependent/effect variables: Who, why, when, where. Resembles dramatic framework of Kenneth Burke: Agent, Act, Scene, Agency (discussed in “Grammar of Motives”). This is not (supposedly) directly related, but seems relevant generally. (p. 12)

Stated task for work: Explain w’s for selection set: What actions may be empirically actualized? (p. 15) Even culture has preferred w’s to study or emulate, ideas of standard acceptable behaviors. It is important to identify and find how the subject domain is both limited and varied. (p. 24) Social boundaries and categories are ascribed and achieved. There are permeability of actions across boundaries, but these have biased permeability. Social group with higher power has freedom to transgress boundaries, but keep others out. (p. 27) Boundaries give way to an interaction-opportunity structure, model for interactions. Boundaries impede individuals, and have cost to cross. But there are perceived opportunities, so the cost and reward structure gives way to a game/economic dynamic. Knowing yields contextual knowledge of self-situation among others. One can be dissatisfied with one’s self-situation for knowledge of something better. (p. 37)

The bridge between mechanism and idealism: animal vs rational. Division between this is embarrassing and yeilds confusion, anxiety, ambivalence. It seems though, that this conflict seems more emblematic of western philosophy. The conflict of dual nature leads to a great deal of confusion and conflict, forcing man to make decisions without knowing consequences, which lies at the base of tragedy and comedy. Reality is shared in social system, and constructed through interaction. “Reality, then, in this distinctively human world, is not a hard immutable thing but is fragile and adjuciated–a thing to be debated, compromised, and legislated.” (p. 42)

A look at Mead’s theory of social acts and social objects: Any act consists of an impulse, stimulus, and response. The thing (stimulus) becomes an object by being enacted. This is a special and somewhat unconventional use of language that looks at actions and behavior in an insightful way. (p. 50) Identity is the set of perspectives and attitudes on the acting self. It appraises, evaluates, and monitors. Another take on action is dramaturgy (Goffman, Burke), which breaks things down to character, role, and audience. The self is a performance. (p. 57)

A step by step study of planning and interactions: 1) Man is a planning animal. 2) Things take on meanings in relation to plans. 3) We act toward things in terms of their meaning for our plan of action. 4) Therefore, we must identify every thing we encounter and discover its meaning. 5) For social plans of action, these meanings must be consensual. 6) The basic thing to be identified in any situation is the person himself. [Character] Symbolic interaction links things and objects. (p. 60-62)

Role identities and daydreams: Rehearsal for performances. Similar to goal based planning, but seems intrinsically different. A role identity is an imagined suite of devices for one in a particular social position. It’s a view of oneself as one would like to think of oneself being and acting as an occupant of that position. Roles are highly abstract constructs, and most are imaginary or unrealized. Roles must be shared and consensual to be accepted socially. This is done via performances, one performs a role, so it is reciprocated and supported by others. There is a balance between conventional and idiosyncratic performances (latter occurring within one’s “inner forum”). (p. 70) Roles must have audiences to be legitimized. This is role support. Audience is specific to role itself. Without role support, legitimacy, actuality of role decays over time, leading to an undermining of identity (which seems to be a trend in postmodernism). (p. 75)

Roles are separated, operate and parallel. The cluster, but clusters may be conflicted and dissociated. Roles operate in a heirarchy of prominence. Each role grants its performer various extrinsic and intrinsic rewards or gratifications. Most of these come from others (the audience) via the support and performance. (p. 77) Some interesting issues emerge from this flow: What of undesired roles? “drunk”, “failure”, or performances that may be interpreted poorly by different audience members. Ie, whining could produce either sympathy or loathing. There is a strata of actualization: “writer” vs “writer wannabe” which seems to occur as a spectrum of how roles are perceived by different audiences. Role prominence strongly informs decision making. (p. 83) Value and satisfaction planning model: Important is the notion of perceived opportunities. This seems to be treading dangerously close to goal and planning oriented AI and such thinking. (p. 85)

Context works in application to evaluation of performance self. The audience/self expectation and appraisal must sacrifice some expectations to fulfill others. There is a difference between the real and idealized self/performer. (p. 93) Legitimization is only necessary when a discrepancy is large or frequent. A discrepancy is a difference between expected role-identity support and actualized support. Reconciliation patterns are: Selective perception (dismiss some discrepancies, impose a border between noise and intention in performance), Selective interpretation (reinterpretation of the audience’s response), Rationalization (explaining away discrepancies, as arising from unimportant or external causes), Scapegoating (blaming another for the failure, due to their failure in counterroles), Deprecation of audience (the audience does not understand the role and its opinions are of no merit), Disavowal (the performance with discrepancy is not relevant to role identity). These patterns of justification are interesting in their nature of human rationalization and cognitive dissonance. (p. 95-99)

Selective and functional understanding of things [images of objects], interpretation and being interpreted, are active processes. Perception and recoding resembles semiotic analysis. (p. 107) There are culturally relevant means of perception. Perception is a learned contextualized cultural skill. Reflection on Nouveau Riche as matter of cultural perception of goods and tastes. (p. 111) Stereotyping is a means of generalizing, it simplifies individuals/things into categories. A category is characteristic, it has properties, but it is also functional. Stereotypes are relevant to different groups in their functional characteristics: compare stereotype of policeman to square vs hippie. Stereotyping; “It is an inherent and inevitable aspect of every human appraisal of every person encountered.” (p. 115) Stereotype and reputation. Stereotype: social identity, Reputation: personal identity. SOUNDS LIKE GURPS!!! Status/Reputation. Both shape and mold each other. (p. 117)

Knowledge of others is flawed. We cannot truly (metaphysically) know someone, but there is a minimum necessary to do so. There is a wide chasm between minimum and complete. The authors define some processes in which perceptions are formed and reinforced. This turns to reinforcing cycles (p. 123):

1. Ego makes an inference about Alter.
2. Ego acts toward Alter in terms of this inference.
3. Alter makes inferences about Ego in terms of his action.
4. Alter tends to react toward Ego in terms of his inference.
5. Thus Ego’s influences tend to be confirmed by Alter’s actions.

There are a multitude of situations under which interactions may occur. Under conflict [collision] some protocol must be established. Conflict is conflict between role identities, which one must be used in a given circumstance. This must be resolved seamlessly, hence the use of ritual. (p. 129) Roles are perceived in people. People perform a line of action (as in Goffman). The goal is to discern motives. Different groups understand actions to indicate motives in varying senses. Motives are deduced via projection of self onto others’ roles. This approach is totally different from the standard model of communication, which is transmission of ideas, this approach is much more internal, wherein agents attempt to discern motives (or the role they would desire Ego to have) of others and react accordingly. (p. 132) Roles are negotiated and determined via a working agreement between interactors. This cycle defines roles for both parties, via interpretaive and presentative processes. There is a neat graph on this page of the dynamics of interactions. “A working agreement can be said to exist when the cognitive processes of one person, with respect to social identities are not in gross conflict with the expressive process of the other person.” (p. 142). Example of this sort of dynamic occurs when a man and woman are wavering between being friends and more than friends, roles are presented, cast, altercast, responded to, etc.

Role of power in interactions: occurs when imbalance of “resources” that is, gratification of tasks [interactions]. An “operator” is one who uses and manipulates others knowing the rules of social exchange. (p. 160) Some types of multi-person encounters: 1) conflict of roles, 2) simultaneous performances, 3) central performances. In these, roles and interactions are performed and negotiated, have a tendency to drift towards a low energy states (break off into single interactions, where there aren’t conflicts). (p. 162)

Features that drive interpersonal relationships: Reward dependability, Ascription, Commitment, Investment, Attachment. These features also relate to relationship formation. The model here is an economic one, balancing various features rewards for other qualities. (p. 170) Some sentimental characteristics of relationships [perceived in eyes of agents]: Uniqueness, Intimacy, Consecration, Purity of Reciprocity. These are qualities that agents see in their relationship that makes it special. (p. 177) Some juicy bits here: How relationships are formed: Initiation of relationships, first encounters, selection of role or persona[s] for such encounters. Subset of personas may be applied, but how big a subset? (p. 181) Concealment of roles in relationships: Some roles may be hidden or concealed. Sometimes these slip up. Some relationships need or depend on limitation of roles/personas. This leads to covertness and multiplication of identity. May be simple or serious: A poet in a workaday environment, vs a homosexual in a strained marriage. (p. 191)

Roles are learned, anticipatory socialization in development. Children “play at” roles. Play relates to role learning, seems to relate to concept formation as well (inasmuch as roles are concepts). Denaturalization vs system learning as roles and performances. (p. 210) Role identities are observed, fantasized, then change or evolve and are made more realistic. Being vs Being Like. Relates to changes in perception, as perceptions grow and evolve over development and over time in general (Connect Vygotsky.) Are roles changed or destroyed or recreated? (p. 215)

In logistics of identity, there is an economic model of what roles to perform based on the relative rewards to be gained vs costs of performance. Relative worth of actions from different roles, gratifications are highly relative. The economic model here must be stochastic. Interesting things happen when individuals overestimate, or underestimate roles and costs. (p. 238) Agenda construction and negotiation of relationships: there are scales and scopes of agendas, long and short. Relationship between them is problematic, when is an agenda short term vs long term? (p. 246)

The authors seem to have used some survey questions to elicit data from respondents. The effectiveness is curious, but there is a nice distribution of questions: 1) Average past degree of self-support. 2) Average past degree of social support. 3) Average past degree of intrinsic gratification. 4) Average past degree of extrinsic gratification. 5) Average past degree of commitment. 6) Average past degree of investment. Each question could be applied to various abstracted roles. (p. 265)