Search

Drawing on interviews and focus groups from Conakry, the capital city of the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, this article examines how people talk about women working in male-dominated skilled trades alongside women's accounts of their work experiences in those sectors. We find that the idea of women doing gender atypical work, whom we call "crossovers," evokes widespread admiration. They are unanimously described as brave and virtuous, contrasted with women who rely on money from relationships with men. However, this celebration falters in the workplace, where crossovers often experience paternalism and harassment. Building on theories of both gender beliefs and femininities, we attribute this discrepancy to the differential threats to the gender order that are posed by accommodating crossovers at work versus speaking positively about them. Working together requires men to confront actual women's unexpected capabilities, while rhetorically celebrating crossovers may in fact reify stereotypes about most women and fail to fundamentally undermine men's authority. Crossovers can serve as sources of inspiration for an alternative gender order, but we find that professed admiration for "exceptional" groups of women has both limitations and risks. We conclude by suggesting that the subversive potential of admiration for gender atypical behavior must be empirically examined, rather than assumed, with attention to why such women are seen as admirable as well as how this admiration is borne out in social interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflict between groups plays a powerful role in shaping social interaction within groups. Within groups, social status—respect, prestige, and deference—organizes, motivates, and stratifies social interaction. Yet, studies exploring how conflict between groups shapes social status within groups are relatively rare. We argue that intergroup conflict creates opportunities for individuals to gain or lose status by demonstrating group commitment. We examine two contrasting intergroup behaviors—revenge and forgiveness—and evaluate the idea that these behaviors will be viewed as status-worthy to the extent that they are perceived to signal group motivation. Furthermore, we test the hypothesis that avengers and forgivers gain status by offering group-motivated accounts of their behavior. Pairing an original national probability sample with an experimental survey design, we examine how avengers and forgivers are viewed in everyday conflicts across three widely held identities: national identity, political partisanship, and sports team fandom. We find that Americans perceive intergroup forgiveness as more status-worthy, and a stronger indicator of group motivation, than intergroup revenge. In open-ended survey questions, forgiving ingroup members were described as more status-worthy, competent, and warm, and less dominant than their vengeful counterparts. However, we find little evidence that individuals can directly gain status by claiming that their actions are motivated by concern for the group. Our work speaks to theories of conflict, identity, and social status. More broadly, understanding how Americans value intergroup revenge and forgiveness offers insight into the frequency and intensity of identity-based conflict in contemporary American society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People frequently engage in preferential treatment toward those with whom they share category memberships. At the same time, sociologists have long understood that the structure of ongoing relations shapes micro-level interactions. Here, we ask whether—and if so, how—same-identity bias in cooperation interacts with key structural features of exchange relations. Specifically, we use the affect theory of social exchange (ATSE) to make predictions about cooperation in productive, reciprocal, and generalized exchange when people are embedded in networks where identities are either known and homogeneous, known and heterogenous, or unknown. Results from our experiment support both past work demonstrating same-identity bias in cooperation and the ATSE's predictions that productive exchange yields the highest levels of cooperation and affective attachment, followed by reciprocal and generalized exchange. More importantly, we find that shared identities and the structure of exchange are two orthogonal factors that distinctly promote cooperation in the presence of each other. Structures with known homogeneous identities are more cooperative and develop higher levels of affective attachment across all forms of exchange, and different types of exchange produce different levels of cooperation and affective attachment in line with the ATSE, but the identity and structural mechanisms do not interact. We conclude by discussing the theoretical implications of our findings for the ATSE and scholarship on social identity biases as well as the practical implications for facilitating cooperation in diverse groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has established that people shift their identities situationally and may come to subconsciously mirror one another. We explore this phenomenon among survey interviewers in the 2004-2018 General Social Survey by drawing on repeated measures of racial identification collected after each interview. We find not only that interviewers self-identify differently over time but also that their response changes cannot be fully explained by several measurement-error related expectations, either random or systematic. Rather, interviewers are significantly more likely to identify their race in ways that align with respondents' reports. The potential for affiliative identification, even if subconscious, has a range of implications for understanding race-of-interviewer effects, the social construction of homophily, and for how we consider causality in studies of race and racial inequality more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In everyday interactions with one another, speakers not only say things but also do things like offer, complain, reject, and compliment. Through observation, it is possible to see that much of the time people unproblematically understand what others are doing. Research on conversation has further documented how speakers' word choice, prosody, grammar, and gesture all help others to recognize what actions they are performing. In this study, we rely on spontaneous naturally occurring conversational data where people have trouble making their actions understood to examine what leads to ambiguous actions, bringing together prior research and identifying recurrent types of ambiguity that hinge on different dimensions of social action. We then discuss the range of costs and benefits for social actors when actions are clear versus ambiguous. Finally, we offer a conceptual model of how, at a microlevel, action ascription is done. Actions in interaction are building blocks for social relations; at each turn, an action can strengthen or strain the bond between two individuals. Thus, a unified theory of action ascription at a microlevel is an essential component for broader theories of social action and of how social actions produce, maintain, and revise the social world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity is a goal for many organizations, yet it is not always connected to improved performance. This study advances diversity-performance research by examining the effect of engaging social differences. The analysis uses data from a national study of organizations containing information on the race, gender, class, and religion of each organization's leaders as well as information on the type and content of interactions occurring among them. The data also contain multiple measures of organizational output, specifically the organization's performance in forming alliances, developing strategies, organizing constituents, and mobilizing people. The analysis focuses on organizations with a diverse leadership team, examining the teams' social interactions to assess whether engaging members' social differences is associated with better performance. Additionally, qualitative data illustrate how engaging social differences impacts organizational outcomes. The study finds that teams whose members regularly participate in bridging cultural activities and discuss their social differences achieve greater output. Overall, this study indicates that an organization's ability to realize the performance benefits of having a diverse leadership team is related to how the leaders interact with each other. The findings suggest that diverse organizations can improve their performance by ensuring that their members interact in ways that engage their social differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a theory of how interaction in groups influences differential participation in political activism and interrogates this theory through an empirical analysis of online Facebook group interaction. We study the refugee solidarity movement in a mixed methods design employing online ethnography, survey, and "big" social media data. Instead of conceptualizing the group as a social network or social movement organization (SMO), we argue that the group's culture emerges as patterns of interaction that have implications for what kind of activities in which group members participate. Based on observations from our online ethnography, we suggest that group interaction influences differential individual participation through processes of (1) encoding different habits and (2) attuning the activist to different aspects of situations. We support our theoretical propositions with six statistical tests of the relationship between the group-level variable of contentious group style and the individual-level variable of participation in political protest. The dependent variable, political protest , and a comprehensive set of controls stem from an original survey of the Danish refugee solidarity movement with 2,283 respondents. We link the survey data with "big" social media data used to estimate the focal explanatory variable, contentious group style , generated from content analysis of online interaction in 119 Facebook groups quantified with supervised machine learning. The results show that group style has a consistently positive relationship with the individual's degree of participation independent of networks, SMO framing, and individual attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central line of inquiry into the sources of generalized trust concerns how particularized trust (trust in known others) extends to generalized trust (default expectations about the trustworthiness of people in general). While we know that there is considerable cross-national variability in the strength of the relationship between particularized and generalized trust, little is known about the contextual factors that shape the degree to which particularized trust spills over to more diffuse forms of trust. We argue that collectivism plays a key role in the extension of trust. The nature of social interactions in low collectivism societies is conducive to the trust and distrust built up within social interactions extending to generalized and out-group trust, whereas high levels of collectivism should dampen the ability of particularized trust to extend. Analyzing data on over 52,000 respondents from 39 countries from Waves 5 and 6 of the World Values Survey, we find that the predicted effects particularized trust on generalized and out-group trust are substantially smaller in more collectivist countries. Our results also suggest that collectivism and individualism matter more for generalized and out-group trust for individuals who have higher levels of particularized trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We combine insights from the sociological and psychological traditions of social psychology to examine how status inequality may affect group performance. Specifically, we examine how synergy, that is, performance gains produced through group interaction, is realized in ethnically diverse groups. Research suggests that diverse work groups struggle to capitalize on the strengths of all group members, and in turn, achieve synergy less frequently than homogeneous groups. We examine how an intervention in the status generalizing process affects group members' influence—and how this affects synergistic gains (n = 50). We study these processes over a three-week period of time. In groups that received an intervention in the status generalizing process (experimental condition), racial hierarchy is decreased in weeks 1 and 3—but inequality remained in baseline groups. Additionally, in week 3, experimental groups achieved synergy more than baseline groups and did not perform worse than baseline groups on any task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increased prevalence of neutral third parties in both formal and informal exchange processes, social exchange theory has yet to consider the effect of nonpartisans on important cognitive and affective outcomes of exchange. This research integrates Simmel's conceptualization of small groups and nonpartisans with contemporary theory and research in social exchange to explore how different levels of neutral third party intervention in an exchange process affect the “relational outcomes” of exchange (perceptions of fairness of, general positive regard toward, the exchange partner and optimism about the tone of future interactions). Experimental results indicate that increased third party intervention is positively related to favorable relational outcomes. The increased likelihood of external attributions and decreased salience of conflict associated with high levels of third-party intervention partially explain this result. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research demonstrates how affect control theory and its computer program, Interact, can be used to develop empirically-grounded hypotheses regarding the connection between cultural labels and behaviors. Our demonstration focuses on propositions in the modified labeling theory of mental illness. According to the MLT, negative societal conceptions of the mentally ill become personally relevant upon diagnosis and damage psychiatric patients' self-concept. This, in turn, increases patients' use of three coping behaviors: concealing treatment history, educating others about mental illness and withdrawing from social interaction. We evaluate these propositions by analyzing data generated from Interact simulations that incorporate self-meaning data gathered from psychiatric patients. We produce six general principles about the way patients' stigma sentiments (evaluation, potency and activity associated with the cultural category "a mentally ill person") and diagnostic category (adjustment, affective, schizophrenic) jointly shape patients' predicted use of these coping behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds on an important but underdeveloped social science concept-the "scene" as a cluster of urban amenities-to contribute to social science theory and subspecialties such as urban and rural, class, race and gender studies. Scenes grow more important in less industrial, more expressively-oriented and contingent societies where traditional constraints fall and self-motivated action around consumption, leisure and amenities is a more important feature of social cohesiveness and interaction. Scenes contextualize the individual through amenities and consumption-based expressions of shared sensibilities as to what is right, beautiful and genuine. This framework adds to concepts such as neighborhood and workplace by specifying 15 dimensions of the urban scenescape. Like neighborhood and workplace, scenes reduce anomie, but because of their focus on consumption and the use of specific amenities, they are more consistent with today's ethos of contingency, moving beyond traditional ideas of the fundamental power of social, family and occupational background. We introduce a new amenities-focused database to measure and analyze scenes and their dimensions for each of 40,O00 U.S. zip codes. We illustrate the framework by applying it to one distinct type of scene, bohemia, and analyze its position in the broader social system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Tocqueville, many scholars consider associations "schools of democracy" because members can develop civic capacities within them. This article identifies the distribution of civic development opportunities across civic sectors (e.g., politics, service, recreation), focusing on understudied apolitical groups. New data is introduced on a set of often referenced, but rarely studied, associations: choral societies. Choruses are shown to offer numerous opportunities for interpersonal interaction, governance experience and institutional relationships. Data are compared to opportunities offered by associations in other civic sectors. Apolitical arts associations are found to provide as many or more opportunities for individual civic development than their politically-and service-oriented counterparts suggesting their potential for shrinking the political communication gap between naturally politically interested and disinterested citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent public health research has consistently reported that self-identified multiracial adolescents tend to display more problem behaviors and psychological difficulties than monoracial adolescents. Relying on insights from qualitative analyses using small or clinical samples to interpret these empirical patterns, these studies implicitly assume a pejorative stance toward adolescents' multiracial self-identification. Building on the social psychological arguments underlying Park's and Stonequist's seminal discussions of the "marginal man," we derive hypotheses indicating that self-identified multiracial adolescents may show more psychological difficulties, but are also likely to have more active social interaction and participation than monoracial groups. We also incorporate later elaborations of the marginal man theory to develop alternative hypotheses regarding multiracial youth's school and behavioral outcomes. Based on a nationally representative sample of racially self-identified youth, the results suggest that patterns of multiracial-monoracial differences are generally consistent with the hypotheses derived closely from the marginal man theory or its subsequent elaborations. We examine the heterogeneities within these general patterns across different multiracial categories and discuss the implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how suicides influence suicide risks of others within two interaction domains: the family and the workplace. A distinction is made between dyad-based social-interaction effects and degree-based exposure effects. A unique database including all individuals who ever lived in Stockholm during the 1990s is analyzed. For about 5.6years on average, 1.2 million individuals are observed, and 1,116 of them commit suicide. Controlling for other risk factors, men exposed to a suicide in the family (at work) are 8.3 (3.5) times more likely to commit suicide than non- exposed men. The social-interaction effect thus is larger within the family domain; yet work-domain exposure is more important for the suicide note because individuals are more often exposed to suicides of coworkers than family members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research regarding the impact of repression on social movements has yielded conflicting findings; some argue that repression decreases the total quantity of protest events while others argue that it motivates protest. To move beyond this impasse, various scholars have suggested exploring how repression influences the quality of social movements. This study assesses the impact repression had on the information of alliances between different social groups participating in South Korea's democracy movement. Results from negative binomial regression analyses show that repression facilitated the formation of alliances between movement actors at a time when the overall number of protest events decreased. This study contributes to the literature on coercion and mobilization by pointing to the possibility of movement development during low levels of a protest cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social contexts in which confidants get to know each other affect the composition of their personal networks, inter alia the similarity among confidants. Results from attalyses on a representative sample of the Dutch population between 18 and 65 years of age (SSND 2000), support the idea that differences in similarity among confidants can be explained by 1.) the social composition of a context, 2.) the extent to which interactions within a context are enforced, and 3.) the amount of time people spend in a context. Moreover, there is a certain degree of path-dependency in the use of social contexts, that leads to reinforced context effects on similarity among confidants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an attempt to advance understanding of frame variation and the factors that account for it, we conduct a comparative study of how the Fall 2005 French "riots" were framed diagnostically and prognostically. We examine these framing activities across a diverse set of actors and assess the role of ideological, contextual, attributional and temporal factors hypothesized to account for the observed variation. The data come from a content analysis of articles on the French riots that appeared in newspapers from a half dozen countries during the period in which the riots occurred. Our findings, based primarily on variance and regression analyses, reveal varied support for our hypotheses, suggest the theoretical and analytical utility of examining frame variation beyond the French riots, and raise questions that call for further empirical inquiry regarding framing processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using institutional ethnography we examine the Own-Your-Own-Home (OYOH) movement as a configuration of ideological practices designed to reorder gender, family and housing arrangements in the United States during the early 20th century. We describe the social organization of these practices--with particular emphasis on the coordinating activity of the OYOH Section of the Department of Labor--and provide specific examples from texts of the National Archives and Research Administration. These texts are part of an historic, ongoing process of work organization that coordinated other sequences of action at multiple sites of production within the housing enterprise. We demonstrate that the texts of the campaign organized white, working class, married couples with children as the owners of homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have documented extreme inequalities in wealth ownership, but the processes that create these inequalities are not well understood. One important contributing factor that attracts little attention is religion. This study explores the relationship between religious participation, religious affiliation, and patterns of wealth accumulation. I argue that religion affects wealth ownership indirectly by shaping demographic behaviors. I also argue that religion directly influences wealth accumulation by identifying valuable goals, by providing a set of competencies that direct strategies of action, and by contributing to social contacts that provide information and opportunities that can enhance wealth ownership. The findings suggest that Jews enjoy tremendous gains in wealth ownership, while conservative Protestants accumulate relatively little wealth. In contrast, mainline Protestants and Catholics are indistinguishable from each other and from the general population. The results demonstrate the importance of family processes in shaping wealth accumulation, and they underscore the importance of culture in shaping economic behavior and ultimately in creating social inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the impact of use of the Worldwide Web on patterns of sociability. Its sets out a neofunctionalist model of socio-technological innovation that is designed to explore prospectively the impact of innovations in areas such as information and communications technology, on the full range of sociable and nonsociable activities. It uses evidence from a unique data set (a nationally representative time diary panel study, collected in the U.K for the period 1999-2001) to explore this model. It concludes that Internet use, contrary to "time-displacement" expectations, is not negatively associated with sociability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test the hypothesis inspired by Mead and Cooley, that one's self-perceptions are an internalization of the perceptions of the views of others, using a large set of network data from 56 naturally occurring communities. The results are compatible with an internalization model, whereby self-conceptions are instilled through interaction with high-status alters. Yet it does not seem that personality is simply an impression made in a malleable mind by the force of social interaction -- examination of longitudinal data demonstrates that over time, it is possible for individuals to bring others around to their self-conceptions, presumably because they are able to build up a reputation through consistent acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary social exchange researchers have largely ignored how variations in the value of exchange affect power relations, concentrating instead on effects of the structure of exchange, particularly the size and shape of exchange networks. In this article, we show that value, when conceptualized and studied as a dimension of actors' alternative exchange relations, has strong and systematic effects on actors' use of power. Results of a laboratory experiment support our hypotheses, showing that an actor's power over another increases with the value of that actor's exchange with alternative partners. The effects of value on power use are comparable in strength to the effects of the availability of alternatives, and they are remarkably robust, holding for both negotiated and reciprocal forms of exchange and for networks in which the availability of alternative partners is both high and low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network exchange theory (NET) predicts differences in the resource accumulations of positions in interconnected groups of actors. The theory distinguishes between two types of networks-strong and weak power. To date only a few studies have tested the theory under weak power conditions. In the present research we investigate six line networks that contain elements of both strong and weak power. Line networks have been particularly important in theories of social exchange and the importance of linear exchange is frequently reflected in natural settings. Four of the investigated lines are longer than any previously studied. We introduce new experimental features designed to minimize extraneous factors, thereby optimizing the translation of structural power differences into observable profit differentials. Results generally support the idea that longer lines may contain elements of both strong and weak power. Most notably, while positions identified as high strong power do obtain approximately 70% or more of resources, there is evidence that a nonzero likelihood of exclusion in the central position of the 7-line may decrease its power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affect control theory is a general model of how emotion, identities and actions are related in social interaction. In this study; we used affect control theory to predict how the emotions displayed by a perpetrator and a victim during their criminal trial statements influence a juror's judgments about their identities. We then asked how these identity judgments about the perpetrator and victim affect the recommended sentence for the perpetrator. An experiment used undergraduates' reactions in a mock jury setting to test the theories predictions. Maximum likelihood structural equation models show the influence of both criminal and victim emotion displays in affecting identity inferences about the participants in the crime scene. These identity inferences, as well as inferences about the severity of the criminal behavior itself determine the sentence recommended for the perpetrator, supporting affect control theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on theoretical accounts of power in social exchange networks and social exclusion in networks. It uses a new experimental setting to test assumptions that appear to be implicit in all network exchange theories of power. It also tested for the relative impact of inclusion versus exclusion and differential responses to multiple exchange partners given exchange with just one of them. Recently a number of new theories have emerged that predict resource outcomes or profit for different positions in social exchange networks. Current theories of power generally share implicit assumptions about the preferences and negotiation behaviors of those participants. The authors of Network Exchange Theory have provided for their theory a relatively high level of formalization and empirical support through rigorous laboratory tests. The article focuses on exchange relations wherein actors negotiate the terms of agreements to transmit and receive valued resources. Exchanges benefit both parties, but the use of power in an exchange relation may result in differential benefits.

This article builds upon a symbolic interactions model of delinquency (Matsueda 1992) by assessing whether an interactionist model can account for the gender gap in delinquent behavior. We argue that delinquency is determined in part by the self as conceived by simbolic interactionists, which in turn is determined by a process of labeling significant others, We estimate a cross-gender model of delinquency using data from the National Youth Survey and find that,for both males and females, parental appraisals significantly affect youths reflected appraisals, which in turn predict delinquency. Nevertheless, we find some gender interactions: for males and females parental labeling and reflected appraisals have a larger effect on delinquency, and males are more likely to he falsely accused by parents. When we take into account gender differences: in both levels of independent variables and the magnitude of effects of those variables, our model explains a substantial portion of the gender gap in delinquency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a theory to explain how actors in social exchange networks reach agreements on division of resources. Social exchange theory grew. from the application of the economic theory of exchange to social relationships. Sociology focuses on a problematic area for economic theory, the exchange of valued objects in, relatively small groups, where actors seek to settle on one optimal outcome out of a range of possibilities. Central to theoretical development today is a class of networks in which subtle power differences occur. This phenomenon is known as weak power. In these weak power networks, some positions may have advantages over others in acquiring resources through exchange. However, unlike the advantages in strong power networks, advantages in weak power networks are not progressive. Over a series of exchanges, a strong power advantage eventually results in one, exchange partner receiving nearly all available resources. Weak power is limited in range and magnitude. This necessitates theoretical refinement because adequate assessment of power differences between positions in weak power structures requires more, precise predictions of exchange rates at equilibrium.

In the area of social psychology, sociologists have drawn more frequently from psychologists than the reverse. This is in part because sociologists more often assess the degree to which status characteristics, social relationships, and structural contexts influence individuals' thought, feelings, and behaviors, while psychologists more often explicate the mechanisms through which such social factors affect individuals. I illustrate these differences by discussing points of parallel theoretical development between the two disciplines, substantive divisions of labor, and selected topics of mutual inquiry. Although sociologists benefit substantially from psychologists' work, sociologists could offer their counterparts more pointed demonstrations that sociological mechanisms are crucial for explaining key psychological phenomena and that structural contexts constrain individuals' behaviors in ways often overlooked by psychologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tests the hypothesis that diffusion of information and values through social interaction shaped the timing and the pace of the transition from high to low levels of fertility in Costa Rica. It considers the contribution of social interaction diffusion to the fertility transition in Costa Rica, focusing on person-to-person contagion. A long-standing concern of sociologists is the contribution of diffusion processes to social change. Several prominent features of the Costa Rican transition suggest the existence of interaction diffusion effects, notably its pervasiveness toward all socioeconomic strata and the lack of evidence of a downward shift in family size preferences. Maps of the timing of fertility transition show an ordered spatial pattern suggestive of contagion between neighboring areas. A dynamic regression model estimated from pooled time series data for 100 countries reveals inter and within-county diffusion effects on birth control adoption net of socioeconomic and family-planning program effects.

The methods of agreement and difference are outdated and inappropriate procedures for comparative or historical analysis based on a small number of cases. The methods: cannot employ a probabilistic perspective, deal with data errors, use multivariate analyses, or take into account interaction effects. All of these Are critical features in contemporary ways of thinking about social processes. Although Savolainen (1994) accepts the importance. of having a method that can cope with these matters, he argues that Mill's methods permit such steps. However, he provides neither specific examples of where these methods actually address these issues nor does he present a formal set of rules whereby the methods of difference or agreement can estimate them. This is not surprising since Mill himself recognized that these methods were inappropriate for the kinds of problems addressed in most social research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contact hypothesis the idea that contact between members of different races fosters positive racial attitudes -has performed indifferently in research conducted over the past four decades, leading to a recommendation that the hypothesis be discarded and that attention turn to other sources of positive and negative racial attitudes. However, most of this research is now badly dated and focuses solely on the racial attitudes of whites. We present a new test of the contact hypothesis, drawing on a national survey of blacks and whites conducted in 1989. Analysis reveals that in several instances interracial contact is associated with more positive racial attitudes, especially among whites, and that some effects are appreciable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the results of a study which extends the analysis to the middle years of life, when transitions may occur from age identities of young to middle-aged, as well as from middle-aged to old. How it replicates previous findings for the effects of chronological age and poor health on older age identity; How having children is associated with a middle-aged (rather than young) identification; More. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from a 1972 three-state survey are used to compare city, suburban, town, and rural dwellers in terms of five urbanism characteristics: (1) anonymity, (2) tolerance, (3) community soda! bonds, (4) alienation, and (5) deviant behavior. Suburbanites displayed less urbanism than city dwellers, but they did not differ much from other noncity people in this regard. In fact, residents of the various types of settlement do not fall on a neat continuum of urbanism from country to town to suburb to city. The dominant pattern is simply a city-noncity differentiation, although there are a few anomalies. These results suggest that urban theories have limited usefulness for understanding urbanism among suburbanites, but they also reveal so little evidence of suburban distinctiveness that it may not require a unique explanation beyond that needed to account for simple urbane nonurban differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social contacts, between middle-aged women and those in the younger and older generations help define the social networks that hold the generations together. Through the interpersonal ties constituting these networks, friends, as, well as families, exchange various kinds of support that affect an individual's social, psychic, physical, emotional, and economic status. This article sets up a theoretical framework for studying women's social contacts with family and friends and tests it using data from the 1981 Wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women. Our results indicate that the contacts that middle-aged women have with kith and kin depend on the nature of the relationship, household structure, distance, resources, and a predisposition to contact with family. But the effects Of the most important of these depend on other characteristics in key ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite critical attention, Black's (1976) The Behavior of Law has been subjected only to limited empirical research, mostly at the microsociological level. These studies have at best provided mixed support for Black's thesis. The present study offers a more extensive, macrosociological test of his five major propositions through analysis of aggregate-level data for the U.S. from 1948 to 1985. We examine four models of longitudinal changes in the quantity of law as a function of levels and changes in levels of the aspects of social life addressed by Black. As with previous studies, our findings offer limited support for Black's propositions. The majority of the relationships investigated do not behave as Black has posited. We offer an extended discussion of two of the more consistent findings: the relation of organization to change in law and the lack of a relationship between morphology and change in law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates a multilevel theory of community social organization and its structural antecedents. The main hypothesis derived from a systemic conceptualization of community is that the effect of residential stability on social cohesion is mediated by the density of friendship and acquaintanceship networks. This hypothesis is tested in two stages using data bases constructed from a 1984 national sample of 11,030 residents of over 500 localities in Great Britain. First, the community-level results show that the positive effect of residential stability on a measure of social cohesion is accounted for by the increased level of friendship/acquaintanceship ties and the decreased level of anonymity among residents, regardless of urbanization and other sociodemographic controls. Second, the individual-level analysis indicates that residential stability has both individual and contextual effects on local social ties, which in turn promote individual attachment to community. Social cohesion is also directly related to community satisfaction at both levels of analysis. Overall, the results support and extend a systemic theory that bridges the micro- and macrolevel dimensions of community social bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the individual and structural factors that promote transition from stable, transitive friendships to unstable, intransitive ones. Arguing that inequalities in social relationships govern this transition, we identify ascribed and achieved characteristics of individuals as well as dyadic and triadic features of their friendships that lead to intransitive ties. Analyses of the friendship choices of 335 elementary school students over a school year reveal important race differences as well as significant effects of network structure on the formation of intransitive ties. Following these intransitive relationships over time confirms their instability. Implications of the findings for the structure of larger social networks are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract Principles of social exchange and Heider's balance theory are combined to arrive at a predictor variable called an "exchange ratio." Two actors and an exchange item are treated as a three-point structure consisting of three dyads. Two dyads connect each person to the exchange item. The third dyad represents the degree of balance between the two actors as derivable from an examination of their inputs and outcomes vis-a-vis the exchange item. The model is expanded to treat relationships consisting of several exchange items as complex structures made up of overlapping three-point structures. The resulting "exchange ratio" is a value representing the composite balance or imbalance in the exchanges of a relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Emile Durkheim's early analysis of structural differentiation and modes of integration is reconciled with his later examination of interaction and ritual These ideas are reconciled by initially constructing an abstract causal model and then converting various causal paths into general laws of human social organization. It is argued that, despite a number of problems in interpreting Durkheim's analysis of cause and function, it is still possible to construct a general model that summarizes the basic classes of variables in his theory. And, despite Durkheim's failure to analyze power and inequality extensively, the contours of an important ecological theory are nonetheless evident. By converting the causal model into abstract laws, this theory is seen to denote some of the most basic dynamics of the social universe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Traditional models of local labor market racial inequality have emphasized regional location, differences in economic and social organization, and human capital differentials as explanatory factors. Such models, however, were developed before the rise of the Sunbelt, before the transformation from a goods-producing to a service-based economy was seriously under way, and before women were a substantial portion of the United States labor force. In this article we investigate whether traditional predictors successfully explain male and female racial inequality across the 100 largest MSAs in 1980. We argue that previously developed perspectives, emphasizing singular causes, lead to misspecified models that fail to capture the diversity of factors that currently impact inequality. We show how the resource approach to economic segmentation (Hodson & Kaufman 1982; Hodson 1983) provides a conceptual framework suggesting variables that more adequately explain racial inequality in major metropolitan areas, particularly for males. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The assumption that relationships between variables are unaffected by formal features of the measurement indicators has been shown to hold for most associations between attitudes and other variables, where the other variables are either background characteristics or other attitudes. This article tests the assumption of "form-resistant correlations" in the context of studying social change, where the other variable is time. It examines whether alternate forms of the same attitude item behave in similar fashion across time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This is a metatheoretical examination of Simpson's overview of the history of the sociology of work. There is a broad correspondence between changes in the sociology of work and in sociological theory. The early period of the sociology of work was characterized by a micro-focus on creative actors, paralleling the dominance of the similarly oriented symbolic interaction theory. The middle period of the sociology of work witnessed a shift to a focus on more macro-level phenomena and their impact on more passive actors; this corresponded with the ascendancy of more macro-level theories like structural functionalism, conflict theory, and some varieties of neo-Marxian theory. More recently, there has been a rise of more integrated micro-macro concerns in the sociology of work and Simpson calls for even more of this kind of work. The 1980s have witnessed a boom in theoretical work on micro-macro integration. Sociologists of work have much to learn from this literature and theorists could learn from the empirical work on micro-macro integration in the sociology of work. Some elements of a synthetic micro-macro approach to the sociology of work are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To some extent fear of crime is thought to be a social problem because it is assumed to cons train social interaction. However, empirical support for the effects of fear on social behavior is mixed. This may reflect two problems. Extant research does not control for the negative effect of social behavior on fear while estimating the effect of fear on social behavior; and research assumes that the effect of fear on social behavior is the same for all people. Using the NCS dataset and simultaneous equation techniques, we address this issue. The analysis suggests that fear and constrained soda! behavior are part of a positive escalating loop (fear constrains social behavior which increases fear) and that the strength of the loop is contingent on age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper describes a biosocial model of status in face-to-face groups. It argues that status ranks are allocated among members of a group through face-to-face interaction and that the allocation process is similar across each primate species, including humans. Every member of a group signifies its rank through physical or vocal demeanor. For example, behavioral signs of dominant status include erect posture, glares, eye contact, strutting, and (in humans) assertive speech. Individuals whose behaviors exhibit dominance show high or rising levels of testosterone compared to those who exhibit deference. Testosterone and dominance are reciprocally related. The model relies more on research on males than on females. It is proposed as a theory about both sexes, but with a caution that little is known about sex differences in the relation of hormones to dominance behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract A macrosociological theory's central principle, suggested by Simmel's concepts of crosscutting social circles and web of group affiliations, is that intersecting social differences promote intergroup relations. This theorem is tested with data on intermarriage rates in the 125 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Since the theorem refers to intermarriage generally, the research testing reported here analyzes measures of ten different forms of intermarriage and not only the more commonly studied ethnic intermarriage. The theorem is respecified on the basis of preliminary analysis to stipulate that multiple, not merely bivariate, intersection of social affiliations fosters intermarriage, as is, indeed, implicit in the original theoretical discussion. Eight independent empirical tests corroborate the theorem that multiple intersection of social differences furthers not merely superficial but even profound and lasting intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Kanter's argument that relative numbers shape perception and social interaction and that observed sex differences in groups may be attributable to the fact that women usually form a small proportion of the membership was tested empirically in relation to union workers' committees. The dynamics of boundary heightening, role entrapment and power differences were significantly more pronounced in skewed than in balanced committees, supporting Kanter's contention. Changes in group sex proportion, however, had a stronger impact on stereotypical views of women than of men. Furthermore, while structure had a moderating effect, sex was still found to have a main effect on the relationship between sex ratios and the dependent variables. The need to distinguish between numerical and institutionalized dominance is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response by sociologist D. D. Hechathorn on valid and invalid interpersonal comparisons. The preponderance of experimental evidence does not currently favor power dependence theory over resistance theory. Finally, procedures are described for conducting more fully adequate tests of power-dependence theory and resistance theory and some additional areas for empirical research are indicated. In the absence of information regarding what individuals guess their best hopes to be in such circumstances, resistance theory is indeterminate. Interpersonal comparisons like direct interpersonal utility comparisons made by social scientists i.e., comparisons of utility scales which depend on the scale unit or zero point of individuals' utility scales and second, comparisons made by actors during social interaction which may be termed interpersonal comparisons of preference intensity.

In this article the author comments on academic learning, worker learning and the Hawthorne studies. According to the author, after 50 years, the debate over the significance of the Hawthorne Studies rages on in the professional journals. These studies have been credited with inspiring major redirection in the disciplines of sociology, psychology, and social anthropology, as well as helping to precipitate the emerging fields of social psychology; industrial relations, and organization behavior. Nonetheless, this research developed two schools of hardened critics. Moreover, the fundamental components of the learning hypothesis are highly questionable. The different wage incentive had dubious results in the other study conditions and never contributed to a steady increase in output. Similarly, the notion of daily performance feedback to the workers was not novel or superior for workers in the relay assembly test room. The workers participating in the Hawthorne studies interviewed here had never read any of the published manuscripts on the research, but in their opinions, the important conditions which contributed to their improved performance were the test room characteristics which encouraged a cooperative group culture.

Status characteristics theory provides a detailed account of the operation of status organizing processes in social interaction. In general, this work specifies the constituents of status situations, posits the processes by which these elements organize status situations, and predicts behavior patterns on the basis of such organization of status situations. This study considers one of the processes by which status elements become interrelated so as to organize the situation: the spread of relevance process. Specifically, the study evaluates whether, given a path of task relevance linking a specific status characteristic with a task outcome, dissimilarity in the evaluation of elements along the path affects the strength or likelihood of induction of the direct task relevance relation across that path. Using a standardized experimental procedure, one tested the prediction that the spread of relevance would operate identically, regardless of dissimilarity in the evaluations of path elements, against alternative predictions that dissimilarity would either inhibit or prevent the spread of relevance. The results of the study provide support for the argument that dissimilarity has no effect on the spread of relevance. The result is important to status characteristics theory in that it allows people to extend the spread of relevance process to more complex status organizing situations.