Racial and Ethnic Categories

On By econnellIn Race and Ethnicity, Sally Raskoff, Statistics and Methods9 Comments

new sally By Sally Raskoff

Have you ever thought about how your definition of your race and ethnicity differs from the definitions the government and science uses?

The government defines race as white, African American (or Black), American Indian or Alaska Native, and Asian while ethnicity is simply Hispanic or not. Many options are available for what type of Asian, Pacific Islander, or Other race. (See the relevant questions below imagefrom Census 2000.)

The Census Bureau defines race as follows:

The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country, and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically or genetically. People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as “American Indian and White.” People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include both racial and national origin or socio-cultural groups. You may choose more than one race category.

Scientific definitions of race are best summed up by the American Anthropological Association's (AAA) statement on race. The AAA points out the difficulties in gaining any clear definition of race due to the lack of clarity as to what we are attempting to measure. In short, scientifically, there is no physical or geographic sense of what race is, although it does have cultural distinctions and the definitions vary in different times and places. 

The surveys I’ve done with my students suggest that most of them think about themselves racially and ethnically in terms of their cultural group identities. If they are not in a group considered white, they have a clear sense of being part of an identifiable racial group (black, Asian, Latino, Native American Alaskan Native, or Pacific Islander). No matter their racial identity, most mention important distinctions related to their ethnic groups, e.g., Chicana, Armenian, Mexican American, Chinese, Guatemalan, and Jamaican.

Is it important to notice the disparities between the governmental and scientific definitions? If science says race as a concept is not useful for describing humans, why does the government do it?

It all comes down to the economics and politics of categorizing people. Keeping track of people in different categories, whatever they may be, helps us know more about our society. If we have clearly identified disparities and problems in treating certain groups fairly, studies that track these populations can help us know if our social programs and policies are actually helping or not.

What does it mean that our governmental, scientific, and personal definitions of race and ethnicity vary so much? Are the categories that the government and science use useful at all since they may not match up with those that people use?

imageIf people fill out the census forms as accurately as possible, then the data the government collects can be used as our constitution demands: to allocate political representation and governmental programs appropriately to serve the people. If people aren’t aware what those categories mean or don’t how to accurately fill out the forms, what then is the use of that data?

Good data comes when people understand the concepts and share their definitions with the researchers.

It is fascinating that although science says race is a problematic concept to define, people hold dearly to their racial and ethnic categories of identity. Thomas Theorem comes to mind– if people define situations real, they become real in their consequences.

People grow up having to fill in those forms and thus claim a racial and/or ethnic identity. People participate in some cultural group that may have racial or ethnic distinctions or identities. Thus the concept of race becomes very real. This is especially true historically as society reifies these definitions and establishes policies that either disadvantage or elevate various groups depending on racial identity. Some of the many examples of such policies include Jim Crow laws passed in the South post-slavery, and the racial steering and covenants that were used in housing markets across the country until well into the 1960s.

As social scientists, we prefer clarity of definition rather than ambiguity. What, therefore, do these ambiguous racial definitions teach us about our society?

Doing Research while Watching Sports Center

On By econnellIn Karen Sternheimer, Popular Culture and Consumption, Sex and Gender, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change, Statistics and Methods39 Comments

KS_2010a By Karen Sternheimer

Think about how many people you know whose days are punctuated by checking sports scores, and whose bedtime stories come courtesy of ESPN’s Sports Center. Even something that seems as mundane as tracking sports coverage has sociological meaning.

Suppose you wanted to learn more about this practice. You might use sociological research methods such as in-depth interviews with fans, surveys of television audience members, or ethnography of how news agencies produce sports programming to collect your data.

Another interesting method tends to be overlooked in many research methods texts and courses. Content analysis involves systematically observing the content of a text, including written, visual, and audio texts. Often used in communications research, sociologists also use content analysis to take a deeper look into media we might otherwise take for granted.

Essentially, content analysis involves counting the occurrence of specific phenomena that researchers are interested in learning more about. One of the first tenets of good content analysis is to establish specific guidelines to make sure researchers are clear and consistent about what they are counting. More than just watching TV and writing an overall opinion, content analysis requires clear definitions of a sample and the procedure the researchers will use to analyze their findings.

Something as familiar as Sports Center can be systematically analyzed, with clear quantitative and qualitative results. Sociologists Michael Messner and Cheryl Cooky recently completed a content analysis of Sports Center and the sports coverage of the three Los Angeles network news affiliates. Their report, Gender in Televised Sports: News and Highlight Shows, 1989-2009, features the results of their content analysis over five separate periods: one in 1989, 1993, 1999, 2004, and 2009.

As their title suggests, the researchers wanted to learn about how much sports coverage is devoted to male and female athletes, as well as to better understand the context of the coverage about sports. They measured six weeks of local news coverage, selecting three two-week periods at various times of the year. In addition, they also recorded three weeks of Sports Center during similar time periods as the local news. The researchers timed the amount of coverage men’s sports and women’s sports received, including the ticker at the bottom of the screen.

If you are a regular viewer of sports coverage, you won’t be surprised to learn that men’s sports coverage dramatically overshadows women’s coverage. You might even conclude that this finding is so obvious that it isn’t necessary to conduct a systematic study.

But you might be shocked to learn that local coverage of women’s sports has dramatically declined over the past twenty years (and in the last ten especially), as the graph below illustrates. This is something we can only learn through repeated content analysis studies.

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After a rise in local news coverage between 1989 and 1999, women’s sports coverage declined dramatically from 8.7% of all sports coverage to 1.6%. Likewise, Sports Center’s coverage (only included in the last three time periods of the study) declined as well, albeit not as dramatically because women’s sports coverage was low to begin with.

Why the decline? We might even predict that coverage would increase rather than decrease; as the researchers point out, girls' and women's participation in sports has increased dramatically over the past twenty years. In 1989, 1.8 million high school girls participated in sports, compared with 3.1 million in 2009. Women are more likely to play collegiate-level sports, and women’s opportunities to play professional sports—most notably in the WNBA—expanded too. So it seems counterintuitive that coverage would decline.

While Messner & Cooky note that fans now have numerous ways besides television to get sports updates (including fan websites and smart phone apps, for example), they conclude that to understand why women’s sports coverage declined it would be necessary to study “the assumptions and values [that] guide the decisions of producers, editors and TV sports commentators on what sports stories are important to cover, and how to cover them.”

The researchers hypothesize that the structure of televised sports coverage might help us understand the lack of women’s sports coverage. As Messner & Cooky point out, the network’s promise to deliver an audience of young men to advertisers provides a financial incentive to not only keep coverage of women’s sports to a minimum, but also to portray women in specific ways:

A foundational assumption of those who create programming for men on programs like SportsCenter seems to be that men want to think of women clip_image002as sexual objects of desire, or perhaps as mothers, but not as powerful, competitive athletes.

This long-term study found another interesting change: despite the reduced coverage of women’s sports, when women are part of sports coverage the tone was more respectful in 2009 than it had been in the past. Most of the time women appear in sports coverage as male athletes’ girlfriends, wives, or mothers, and yet some coverage now focuses more on women’s athletic prowess.

By contrast, the authors observed that in the past, sports coverage frequently ridiculed women. For instance, a 1999 story on women who bungee jumped nude and a 2004 story about a “weightlifting granny” made women appear more like comic relief than serious athletes. These stories haven’t completely gone away, but they were less common in 2009. The authors conclude that involving more women in the sports news production process might produce more favorable coverage of women’s sports, but concede that there’s no guarantee. For example, female reporters might be hired more for their looks than for their sports background.

As you can see, content analysis can take an everyday activity like watching sports coverage and analyze its deeper meanings. What other kinds of sociological information might content analysis give us?

Interracial Marriage among Newlyweds in the U.S.

On By econnellIn Janis Prince Inniss, Race and Ethnicity, Relationships, Marriage and Family8 Comments

new janis By Janis Prince Inniss

Last week, I received an envelope in the mail that was clearly an invitation. I recognized the return address as that of a couple that my husband and I have been friends with for almost ten years—let’s call them the Smiths. The Smiths host several parties annually for which we receive written invitations. Still, this looked more formal than an invite for a summer gathering. The envelope was as thick as a wedding invitation, but the Smiths have been married for many years. What could it be? A ”major” birthday?

Inside was a wedding invitation for their son’s nuptials. You don’t know the Smiths, but if I told you the race of their son, would you be able to guess the race of his soon-to-be bride? How about if you had information about whom most newlyweds marry?

Who do people marry? Much has been written about romance and the challenges of finding suitable dating partners, but once people find a mate and decide to marry, who do they choose? Let’s focus on the race/ethnicity of the newly married who wed someone outside of their race/ethnicity.

By looking at the chart below, you will see the percentage of newlyweds who married someone of a different race/ethnicity than their own in 2008. Notice that that the percentage of people “marrying out” (marrying someone of a different race) varies across racial/ethnic groups.

The group with the most out- marriages—Asians—did so at a rate of almost one third (30.8 percent). Whites had the lowest out- marriage rate of the groups, with fewer than one in ten whites (8.9 percent) married to someone of a different race than their own.

Does any of this surprise you? Did you expect any of these numbers to be higher? Lower? More similar across groups? Why would one racial/ethnic group “marry out” at a rate that is particularly different from another? For example, why do Asians and Hispanics “marry out” so much more than blacks and whites–especially whites? Or to flip the question around, why are out-marriage rates for blacks and whites so low? Do you think that some groups have cultural attitudes that shape their attitudes towards intermarriage? What role, if any, do you think the numbers of available people within one’s racial/ethnic group play in any of this?

 

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Source: Marrying Out: One-in-Seven New U.S. Marriages is Interracial or Interethnic (Pew Research Center)

Who are newlyweds marrying when they do marry out their racial/ethnic group? As indicated in the series of pie charts below, the answer depends on the group. For minority groups though, the majority of intermarriages do not occur with other minorities but with whites. Of newlywed Asians, 75.1 percent married whites, of Hispanics 80.5 percent, and of blacks 57.5 percent. So who do whites marry when they marry outside of their race/ethnicity? Almost half (48.8 percent) of all newlywed whites married Hispanics.

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Note: Other includes American Indian, two or more races and “some other” race categories.

Data reflect marriages to someone of a different race/ethnicity in the previous 12 months.

Source: Marrying Out: One-in-Seven New U.S. Marriages is Interracial or Interethnic (Pew Research Center)

What patterns, if any, can we detect in looking at the spouses of men and women in new interracial marriages? The charts below provide such data. One of the more striking differences between males and females who recently “out-married” is among whites: Of those who intermarried in 2008, far more white men married Asian women than white women married Asian men (26.9 percent compared to 9.4 percent), while white women were far more likely to marry black men than white men were to marry black women (20.1 percent compared to 6.9 percent). Another noteworthy difference is that of Hispanics who married someone of a different race/ethnicity, the proportion of Hispanic women who married black men was much higher than Hispanic men who married Black women (13.2 percent compared to 4.5 percent).

What about the “desirability” of certain groups as spouses? (I presume that marriage is some indication of someone’s desirability—at least desirability as a marriage partner.) The lack of desirability of black women and Asian men as spouses for those who intermarried in 2008 is worth noting. White, Hispanic, and Asian men in mixed marriages married women of every other racial category more than they did black women. Similarly, white, black, and Hispanic women who entered interracial marriages in 2008 did so with men from other racial/ethnic groups ahead of Asian men. Both white women and white men however, were desired as partners by blacks, Hispanics and Asians in interracial marriages in 2008. As the data in the pie charts illustrates, the majority of minorities in intermarriages—both male and female—married whites (ranging from 57.2 percent to 83.3 percent).

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Stay tuned to this space as we answer some of the questions raised in this piece and continue to learn more about intermarriage in the U.S. And regarding young Mr. Smith, like 84.5 percent of people in his racial/ethnic group, he is marrying within his race.

“Good” Meetings

On By econnellIn Sally Raskoff, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Theory2 Comments

new sally By Sally Raskoff

I recently blogged about frustrating meetings. I usually prefer to focus on the positive, so I am following up with a blog about “good” meetings. To me, a non-frustrating meeting would be one in which the meeting leaders address the reasons for calling the meeting in an effective and efficient manner.

What makes an efficient meeting possible? How can sociology help us better understand what makes meetings effective?

  1. To hold a meeting is to gather people together outside of their typical realm of activity. The meeting should have some relevant focus and purpose whether it is discussing issues or making decisions.
  2. Effectiveness has to do with implementing decisions. Actions need to come from the decisions made, and the discussion should have some impact on what goes on outside the meeting.
  3. Efficiency is different from effectiveness. It means having clear objectives and getting things done with as little “noise” as possible. We are efficient if we deal with what is before us rather than distracting the task at hand with other issues.
  4. The social context is important. If people know their social roles, they are more likely to act accordingly to do as others would expect. If everyone shares the meaning of the meeting itself and knows the symbols that are used within, communication is easier. If all key players are present, that can support efficiency since all those with something to say or do are involved in the process.
  5. Social norms exist in this microcosm. Clarity about the rules of the meeting– in terms of behavior and process– are crucial to having a good meeting. If everyone knows how to behave, those social norms ensure that people will bring appropriate and expected actions into the room.

Many meetings even come with pre-existing formal rules. Groups often use Robert’s Rules of Order in meetings to provide the basic guidelines for what happens and when. The rules include how to make a motion (suggest a decision or policy be made), how to discuss it (after the motion is made and seconded), and when to vote on it (after discussion). These rules also specify not to discuss other issues while discussing a motion – this effectively limits discussions to one issue at a time, which enhances efficiency and potential effectiveness.

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Many sociologists have discussed how organizations create rules and order, most notably Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. Organizations form bureaucracies to create a set of protocols for how the organization will operate. Durkheim discussed how the division of labor provides the role definitions so that people can know what they are to do and who has the authority to make decisions or change the rules. Weber wrote extensively on how bureaucratic organizations have hierarchical structures of offices and positions in which individuals have clear career paths. These provide a conduit for the distribution and use of power and authority within the tasks of the organization. Thus, if the boss calls a meeting, the workers show up and pay attention. If a co-worker calls a meeting, perhaps fewer people will show up or will take the process seriously.

Formal and informal networks operate within a bureaucratic structure and are also linked to power. The formal network, tied to the hierarchy, has clear connections with power and authority. The informal networks that develop over time due to proximity or personal ties can supplement or detract from the official uses of power within the organization. Thus if a co-worker who calls a meeting is connected to many other workers through the informal networks and if those other workers have a lot of respect for the person calling the meeting, that meeting may draw more people and participation than the one called by the boss!

While Weber’s ideal type of bureaucracy did point out the (potential) for efficiency and rationality of organizations, it is not appropriate to assume that bureaucratic structures are always effective. A lack of focus can get in the way of implementing the decisions made.

A recent meeting I participated in illustrates this well. We gathered together to deal with issues that are partly defined and controlled by a union-management contract, state law, and many other bureaucratic structures. We focused on specific tasks, using the process to discuss the information we had gathered. Those with the formal authority expressed their opinions, as did those with less formal authority. Decisions were made based on those discussions. At the end of the meeting, many felt the process was somewhat efficient and we had made progress on the tasks at hand.

However, we will truly know how effective this meeting was only in the future. Will any of those decisions be implemented or affect the day-to-day operations of the organization? In the days after the meeting, many informal conversations occurred where people speculated on those decisions and whether or not they will be implemented. Thus a meeting that feels “good” while it is taking place may or may not continue with that qualifier if the outcome of the meeting is for naught.

What other aspects of “good” meetings can you identify? What sociological concepts can help illuminate those aspects?

Sex, Research, and Public Spaces

On By econnellIn Crime and Deviance, Statistics and Methods, Todd Schoepflin19 Comments

todd_S_2010b By Todd Schoepflin

Did you hear the one about the sociologist who watched men having sex in park bathrooms? Sounds like a setup for a joke with a bizarre punch line, doesn’t it?

Unless you’re a student of sociology, in which case it probably sounds familiar, because you know that’s what sociologist Laud Humphreys did in the course of his research. Humphreys, well known for his 1970 book Tearoom Trade, not only observed men having sex, but followed them to their cars to record their license plate information and then used a contact in a police department to obtain their home addresses.

A year later, he went to their homes (having altered his appearance so as not to be recognized) to supposedly conduct a medical survey. Basically, Humphreys used deception throughout his research to obtain information about the men’s lives and lifestyles. Although he gathered interesting information about the men he studied, he used unethical means to do so.

It’s interesting to think about whether Humphreys violated the privacy of these men when he observed them in restrooms. Humphreys watched the most private behavior that occurs between people, but the sex took place in public restrooms. So is it a violation of privacy to watch people who are having sexual relations in public space?

It’s important to remember that Humphreys was studying sex as a form of social interaction.  One thing that really interested him was the role of silence in these sexual encounters.  Participants rarely uttered a word in most of the encounters he observed.  When words were spoken, they were few, in some cases only a greeting or an utterance of “thanks” when the sex was completed. Silence served a vital function because it guaranteed anonymity for the participants and reinforced the impersonality of the situation.

Think about it: in an intimate situation, you want to get to know someone.  You talk to them and want to learn personal details about them.  But these men wanted sex without obligation or commitment. For this reason, a park bathroom was the perfect place because it provided the type of environment that suited the lack of personal involvement these men desired.  Furthermore, Humphreys suggested that in this type of setting, with fast and impersonal sex being the most important ingredients, great expectations weren’t in play. In other words, the men he studied didn’t have the highest standards for partners in terms of image appearance, personality, age, or other characteristics that people tend to focus on when they are searching for intimacy.

Humphreys discovered that men of all types came to the tearooms for sex: married, unmarried, some with heterosexual identities, others with homosexual identities, blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, all interested in what Humphreys referred to as “kicks without commitment.”  Some men were regulars, stopping at a tearoom on the way to or from work.  “One physician in his late fifties was so punctual in his appearance at a particular restroom,” Humphreys wrote, “that I began to look forward to our daily chats.” Keep in mind that Humphreys earned the trust of the men by serving as a lookout, promising to alert them of unwelcome intruders. He never identified his real purposes for being there.

The restrooms where Humphreys did his research were in Forest Park in St. Louis. The busiest bathrooms, he noted, were isolated from recreational areas. Ideally, then, children weren’t likely to go to them after being at a playground. Activity in the tearooms peaked at the end of the workday, so it was especially convenient if men could park their cars close to a restroom as they drove home from work. 

image For comparison, I took a picture of the bathroom building and the men’s entrance at Delaware Park in Buffalo when I last took a walk in the park. The building is a stone’s throw from an expressway, but there is no parking available close to the building. And the building is just a few steps away from where people rollerblade, bike, walk, jog, and play soccer. I honestly don’t know if any homosexual activity takes place in the men’s bathroom (or heterosexual activity, for that matter) but it doesn’t seem isolated enough for sexual activity.

In all, Humphreys provided insight into many sociological issues, including the rules that govern the process of impersonal sex, the kinds of men that frequent tearooms, and how men related their behavior to the rest of their lives. What is your opinion of Humphreys? Do you think he was an innovative researcher with a sharp sociological eye? Was he a creep in desperate need of an ethics seminar?  How would you describe him and his research? Finally, when it comes to studying people in public places, do you think sexual behavior is off limits?

College Degrees and Social Mobility

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, Karen Sternheimer, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine9 Comments

KS_2010a By Karen Sternheimer

Are you currently or about to be a college student? A recent college grad? If so, you probably hope that your college degree will help you in the job market. According to the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP)’s annual study of college freshmen, in 2009 78 percent of college freshmen said it was very important or essential to be well-off financially. This isn’t a big surprise during economically hard times. But does a college degree help you move up economically?

A recent Los Angeles Times article posed this question, noting that “a diploma is no longer seen as a guarantee of a better job and higher pay.” In light of the rising costs of a college degree, which Sally Raskoff recently blogged about, it is worth exploring whether going to college is still linked with upward mobility.

As you can see from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) unemployment data below, more education means a greater likelihood of having a job. The recent recession impacted construction work and retail positions especially hard, so it’s not surprising that those with less education who might be more likely to work in those fields would have higher unemployment rates. Having a bachelor’s degree instead of only a high school diploma essentially reduces the odds of unemployment by more than half.

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BLS data also show that more education means higher median income, as the graph below details. People holding advanced degrees have the highest median weekly income, but notice the big jump between earnings of those with some college and those with a college degree.

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Seems pretty straightforward so far: going to college means earning more money. But when we look at earnings by education and gender, the picture becomes a bit more complicated. Education has a more modest impact on women’s weekly earnings. The BLS data show that men out earn women at every education level and that women with college degrees earn only slightly more than men without four-year degrees ($45 a week).

Women with advanced degrees actually have a lower median income than men with only bachelor’s degrees; likewise, women who have attended some college earn less than men with only high school degrees. For women, a college degree might yield less income than it does for men, but it still provides a boost compared with those without degrees.

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The Times story notes that the percentage of bachelor’s degree holders in professional and managerial positions has declined over the past several decades, and future job growth is expected in the service sector. Jobs like customer service, food servers, and healthcare aides don’t tend to pay very well in contrast to professional and managerial jobs: in April 2010, the median weekly income of someone in a management-level position was $1,068 compared with $476 in a service job, according to the BLS. When you consider that service sector work is more unstable and subject to seasonal ups and downs, there is an even greater disadvantage.

So what does this mean for an aspiring college student or recent college grad?

You could choose your major based on the job prospects it carries. A 2009 Forbes magazine article lists the top ten majors with the lowest unemployment rates:

Accounting

Mechanical Engineering

Electrical Engineering

Computer Science
Business Administration

Economics/Finance

Information Systems

Computer Engineering

Management Information Systems

Marketing

Bear in mind there are likely people with degrees in these disciplines who are still looking for a job. But what if nothing on this list appeals to you?

Choosing a major only based on potential income virtually guarantees you boredom at school and on the job. I haven’t been shy about touting the marketable skills that a sociology degree brings, and a college degree is worth very little if it doesn’t enhance your personal skill set and interests.

The bottom line: college degrees matter. On average, your income will be higher and your chances of being unemployed will be lower if you have one. But keep in mind that a degree does not guarantee a permanent position in the middle class. With more people holding bachelor’s degrees than in the past, (11 percent of Americans 25 and older had a bachelor's degree in 1970, compared with nearly 30 percent today), there is more educated competition in the labor force than there was a generation ago. As the Brookings Institution recently reported, many middle-class families experience an “income rollercoaster” due to shifts in the economy.

A degree is like having a life vest while sailing: it’s really important to have, but it will not always save you. The rising costs of a four year degree may make earning one a bigger challenge, particularly as colleges raise tuition and fees. It’s likely that a degree has never been more economically important, but it is vital to be realistic about your earning potential, especially if you are going into debt in the process. Graduating with massive student loan debt could offset the income gains a degree brings.

No Backstage Pass: Student Presentations of Self to Professors

On By econnellIn Janis Prince Inniss, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Social Psychology7 Comments

new janis By Janis Prince Inniss

Dear Class,

When I was creating my syllabus, I forgot to mention that there is one more exam covering everything we did for the semester—yes, it’s cumulative—and a 20 page research paper. I know that this is the last week of class but could you please excuse me? Pick whichever reason you like best from the following to excuse my lapse:

A. My child had a fever and I had to take her to the doctor and then to the hospital and I didn’t get any sleep at all that night. And my dog was hit by a bus. Plus, my computer was acting funny. I think it has a virus. (If you’re taking an on-line course, add this: I was having trouble getting into Blackboard and Blackboard kept kicking me out.)

B. I was focused on my career and really needed to get some other work done to make sure I get promoted.

C. I really didn’t understand that I was so supposed to put all of that in the syllabus. It’s so hard trying to figure out months beforehand what I’m going to do with a class. The university wants us to hand in the syllabus long before the class even starts. I didn’t expect all of this to be so hard. I’m really good at all the other things I do and get really good evaluations on all of my other work.

D. This is the last class I’m going to teach. I’ve always got good evaluations for all the other courses I taught and I really don’t want this class to bring down my overall evaluation grade.

E. I just need an extension. That way I can add this information to the syllabus and nobody will have to know that it wasn’t there when you first got it.

Do you think I have ever told the student version of any of these to my professors? In earning four degrees, I have taken about seventy university courses so I’ve had ample opportunity. I’ve pulled a few all-nighters, pecking away at a typewriter trying to finish papers on-time. I trudged to the library in snow to do research. I was up until 2 and 3 o’clock studying for exams. Eventually, I realized that the students hovering around my professors were not asking questions clip_image002[6]about the materials but instead were explaining why they need an extension on this or that assignment. An extension? I thought a deadline was …well, the point after which you might as well drop dead as far as your professor is concerned. I didn’t realize it was only a suggestion. I wasn’t familiar with the ritual of negotiating a new deadline or alternative assignment.

I complied because that’s what I knew. I was lucky in that though, because, let me let you in on a secret that your professors may not have told you: Most of us have worked very hard to complete our own degrees, and have done so despite a variety of personal problems, challenges, and frustrations. In fact, many of us struggle to meet deadlines (teaching, writing articles, books, conducting research) that cause us stress. So when you tell us your personal problems in the hopes that we will extend deadlines, it can be infuriating to us. When you go on about how good your grades are, but show little or no evidence of how you could have possibly attained those grades, we don’t feel sympathy for you. We feel frustration. And we tell each other jokes about the most outrageous excuses that our students give us. (We don’t use your names though.) It suggests that you don’t understand the concept of impression management. For sociology students, this is particularly egregious because the concept was developed by sociologist Erving Goffman.

Impression management is an awareness of how others view us and how we can manipulate that perception and ultimately shape the way others treat us. Goffman differentiated between front stage and back stage behavior. Front stage refers to our public persona, our “onstage” roles. Front stage is what we want others—our audience—to think, know, or feel about us. Back stage is our private self; the dressing room at the back of a theatre where we put on make-up, get dressed, and prepare before entering the front stage.

clip_image002Back stage: You tell your friends/spouses/significant others about your burdens and why you really need to pass this class without really doing the work.

Back stage: We—faculty—talk about bizarre student excuses.

Front stage: You ask questions of your professors and make comments to them that illustrate how hard you are working to earn a good grade. You find ways to let them know that you’ve done all of the readings, exercises, and other assignments, even if they’re only “recommended”.

Front stage: We teach. And we act like we believe unbelievable student excuses.

As at a theatrical performance, the ”audience” should not be permitted to go back stage. Create an impression that you are a serious student, even if it is only an impression. Otherwise, make your excuse as good as this one in the video below….

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Why Are Meetings So Frustrating?

On By econnellIn Sally Raskoff, Social Psychology4 Comments

By Sally Raskoff

Do you find workplace meetings frustrating? I’ve been feeling frustrated with meetings a lot lately.

Meetings are an organization’s way of making group decisions. Individual decision-making is so much easier. For example, I’ve decided to write this blog on frustrating meetings! Done!

But meetings require including the opinions of others; their viewpoints must be heard and discussed and that takes time. And patience.

When power enters into the equation, meetings can be much quicker but just as frustrating.

Those with power move things along when they run things, share their opinion, or make a decision. This can be speedier, yes, but frustrating if you don’t agree, couldn’t give input, or if your input is discounted or ignored.

Some people with power participate in collaborative meetings, but their power is typically still in play. It’s hard to ignore the boss if they are in the room with you.

My graduate school mentor told a great story that he had experienced. The way I remember it, he and many others were sitting in a room discussing the topics at hand and a decision had to be made. Everyone was sitting in the same type of chair around the room; since no one was at the head of the table or in a bigger chair than others it was a very level playing field. Everyone spoke their piece, stated their opinions, and voiced their concerns. The discussion went all the way around the room until the last man spoke up and shared his opinion on the matter. At that point, everyone nodded and agreed that his was the correct decision. This person was Carl Rogers, an eminent psychologist whose work on group processes is well known. His status and power lifted him above a level hierarchy despite the efforts to flatten it.

True collaborative work or shared governance is tough and slow.

This is especially true if the groups sharing the process are culturally heterogeneous. If the group is culturally homogeneous, the similarity of culture can be helpful in avoiding miscommunications. With heterogeneous groups, the likelihood of someone not fully understanding another is increased above and beyond the typical personal miscommunications that can plague any group.

One reason the Spanish Mondragon Cooperatives, a federation of workers who co-own the corporation, has been so successful is that their cultural homogeneity supports the groups’ cohesiveness.

In-group and out-group dynamics might also affect a meeting’s dynamics. If you are part of an in-group, you might identify with that group and feel loyalty towards it. Thus, if a member of your in-group makes some points during the meeting, the other members of that in-group will probably agree with and support that point. If you’re not a member of that group, you can get quite frustrated, especially if that group’s members are in the majority. If an out-group is dominating the meeting and your in-group members are in the minority, you can feel very disempowered.

Have you ever sat in a meeting and wondered why you were getting frustrated? What other sociological dynamics might have been occurring?

Hoarding and the Sociology of Consumption

On By econnellIn Karen Sternheimer, Popular Culture and Consumption, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change, Social Psychology15 Comments

KS_2010a By Karen Sternheimer

If you ever want to be sure you don’t snack while watching television, tune into a show like Hoarders on A&E or one of the several other shows about compulsive hoarders and the unbelievable messes they live with. The team that comes to clean their homes will invariably discover some really gross stuff—particularly if the resident has pets—that aren’t conducive to eating while watching.

At the same time, the people profiled are typically in immense emotional pain, which can be hard to watch. I know people who hoard and have seen up close how difficult it can be for them to try and go through their stuff. I also know the frustration of spending hours helping them clean up only to see the piles return within days or weeks.

Hoarders tends to focus a lot on the psychological problems of its participants, as the American Psychiatric Association lists compulsive hoarding as a symptom of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and is considering classifying compulsive hoarding as a separate diagnosis. While it’s unclear exactly how many Americans are compulsive hoarders, estimates suggest that somewhere between 1.3 million to 3 million people collect too many items, have difficulty in disposing of and organizing things to the point that stuff takes over their living spaces and interferes with their quality of life.

It’s easy to watch Hoarders in judgment, see the piles of trash and think the subjects should just get over it and clean up. Watching the cluttered lives they lead make it tempting to see the hoarders as oddballs who are totally different from “normal” people.

Watching this show got me thinking about what sociological factors likely play a role in hoarding in addition to psychological disorders. After all, in a society where we are all encouraged to consume our way towards happiness and acceptance, it’s not a big surprise that many people are afraid to let go of their things, even things others might see as garbage.

The proliferation of self-storage businesses attests to how much stuff many of us collect. One in ten American households rented a storage unit in 2007, and the United States is home to about 86% of the world’s self-storage facilities. As you can see from the ad below, accumulating stuff appears totally normal, and only a problem if not stored properly. We have also built bigger houses to hold more stuff; as this National Public Radio (NPR) report details, the average square footage in American homes doubled between the 1950s and 2000s despite families getting smaller (home sizes actually decline for the first time in decades in 2009, likely due to the recession).

Consumption is critical to our economy as well. You might hear news analysts talk about consumer confidence—essentially how good we feel about the economy—and how it may impact consumer spending. Since more than two-thirds of economic growth is driven by spending, our economy is very dependent on people doing lots of shopping. If you recall the days after September 11, 2001, one of the things the president asked citizens to do was to go to the mall and to Disneyland. In large part our economic structure is based on us buying more, whether we have space for it or not.

Our consumer-based culture suggests that our possessions define us, that brands identify our social position and social status. Giving things is also the way we are encouraged to show others we love them on their birthday and special holidays. On some level it shouldn’t be surprising that those experiencing psychological problems have taken these values to extremes.

On one episode of Hoarders, a young man explained why he could not throw out an empty water battle or a soda can. His mother bought those for him, he said, and throwing them out would be just like rejecting her. Clearly very depressed, he knew that all of the clutter around him was interfering with his life, and yet he felt paralyzed to do anything about it.

While most people would not think of empty bottles in quite the same way, how many people store old gifts that they no longer use because of some sentimental value attached to the giver? I confess to this one. I have an item in my closet my grandmother gave to me a few years before her death—in 1986. So there is a very fine line between someone like me—sentimental yet orderly—and someone who assigns sentimental value to objects that clutter their living space.

Hoarding may fall on the extreme end of the consumption scale, but it is a spectrum most of us are on ourselves. In some ways, shows like Hoarders may help us see compulsive hoarders as completely separate from us, and help us avoid looking critically at our own consumption habits. Most of us might not live among piles of garbage…or do we?

Short Text Messages: Illusion over Substance

On By econnellIn Janis Prince Inniss, Popular Culture and Consumption, Relationships, Marriage and Family, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change10 Comments

new janis By Janis Prince Inniss

I have discussed my anti-texting bias in previous posts, but I do recognize that texting can be useful. For example, I taught my mother to text when she was in her late 70s! Recovering from surgery meant to give her a sense of sound, Mum was down to one poorly performing ear. As she prepared to visit family by plane in another state, I realized that she would be virtually deaf upon arrival. My mind filled with worst-case scenarios of family attempting to pick her up at the airport, but being unable to locate her despite repeated calls to her cell phone or airport pages. Mum’s sight is pretty good, however, so I taught her to text a few hours before she departed. That holiday season, she kept me apprised of her activities with several texts per day; I got running commentary on her vacation and she got my responses without any problem .

Although I object to how expensive texting can be, I understand why people might find it useful. Texting allows people to ”say” things when they can’t speak; the advantages of this are obvious and often we are saying things we probably shouldn’t, to people we probably shouldn’t, and at times when we probably should be doing something else. Consider that text messages were allegedly a part of Tiger Woods’ extramarital affairs, are used by teachers who prey on their students sexually, and helped cause the downfall of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. The consequences of teen sexting have been widely discussed and debated. Less dramatic, but still in the same category of inappropriate use is texting someone while you’re in a meeting or in class.

People text while doing other things, such as watching movies, having conversations, eating, and working. (Note that research on multitasking indicates that the term more properly refers to doing more than one thing poorly.) That’s what one Wal-Mart cashier who texts at work is doing: While customers push their goods up to the cashier, he reads a text. And while I get my credit card out of my purse, swipe, and sign it, he types a text! (I’ve seen this particular cashier do this repeatedly, so I know he wasn’t doing it once in an emergency). People—teens in particular— are even texting and driving, giving rise to increasing numbers of car accidents due to distracted driving. (Oprah Winfrey has been raising awareness to this issue through her “No Phone Zone” campaign.)

About one third of teens send more than 100 texts per day—and this is the primary way that teens communicate (over phone calls, instant messages, emails, face-to-face, and social networking.) Why is texting so popular? Is it because it allows us to seem communicative, even when we really aren’t?

Let me give you a few examples. I have friends and family members who send annual Christmas Day text message blasts to everyone in their address books. It’s great to receive a holiday greeting, of course, but it feels so impersonal. (Is a blast text any less personal than a computer generated greeting card, electronic card, or an annual family newsletter sent to everyone?) A short telephone call, even voice message seems more personal to me than the blast.

Now that Mother’s Day seems to be cause for acknowledgment not only with those who mothered us, but all mothers we know (a post for another time), I have started receiving blast texts wishing me a Happy Mother’s Day; other so-called holidays also bring me blast texts wishing me a Happy Whatever! Given that the text senders and I don’t communicate on a regular basis, I think actual conversations such as “How are the kids?” “And your Mom?” “How are things at school?” would be real—or at least better approximations of—communication. A text message can give the illusion that we are communicating even when we are not.

Ever think about why someone is sending you a text rather than calling or visiting you? I do. Visits are not as convenient (or maybe even appropriate) as other methods of communication. But given that texts are inconvenient to type (at least for some of us) and that there is a 160 character limit, a text message provides a limited form of communication. This makes sense when we remember that we refer to as texts are technically “short message service”. Short message, not full conversation. As one among other modes of communication, texts are fine but if used too often they give the appearance of communication, in a medium that is by nature unable to support a substantive conversation. Texts can’t convey emotion to the extent that a voice or non-verbal cue can, which is why sensitive conversations are not as suitable for this medium. And given that people are often texting while attending to other tasks, how engaged can they really be with the person they are texting or with the people around them?