Microsocial Interaction Research Articles

Interaction rituals in a crisis: The case of COVID-19 in China

In times of crisis, activating public collective consciousness is crucial. Applying national identity aids in building this consciousness, enhancing social identity, fostering social solidarity, and motivating a joint “state-society” response. Traditional top-down approaches to national identity, relying on symbols and rituals rooted in collective memory, may falter during crises due to formalism. Micro-social interactions, aligned with governance, construct relevant meanings through interaction rituals. Participation in these rituals energizes individuals, shaping national identity and fostering social unity. However, limited research explores this bottom-up approach. Integrating interaction ritual chain theory, this study examines shaping national identity from the bottom up. It concludes that symbolic meanings from governance behavior, social norms, and group identity through interaction rituals yield national symbols, consensus order, and emotional responses. Ultimately, interaction rituals mobilize emotions and reconstruct social order. This study's conclusion holds reference value for enhancing the government's meaning making and enriching interaction ritual chain theory.

Some trends of social and psychological maladaptation of medical university students in wartime

Annotation. In aim to study the socio-demographic and socio-psychological features of higher medical education graduates in the context of social-psychological maladaptation in wartime, a survey of 167 higher medical education graduates was conducted using questionnaires and a scale of social-psychological adaptation C. Rogers and R.F. Dymond. Statistical analysis of differences in quantitative traits was performed using the non-parametric Mann-Whitney test, categorized using Fisher's exact test (one-sided) at p<0.05. It was found that under the influence of the stress of war, the social and psychological adaptation of the students worsens in the areas of psychological well-being, microsocial interaction, learning and leisure. Socio-psychological maladaptation among students of higher medical education is more common among women and senior students, while the influence of age and material well-being on the risk of maladaptation turned out to be secondary. As socio-psychological maladaptation deepens in wartime, the specific weight of students with disorders of social functioning, in particular, intensified psychological problems, increases – among students without manifestations of socio-psychological maladaptation, 58.3%, with individual manifestations – 92.0%, with pronounced maladaptation – 90.6%; decrease in communication – 22.3%, 74.7% and 68.7%, respectively; worsening of studies – 47.2%, 59.6% and 87.5% respectively, worsening of relations with relatives – 27.8%, 47.5% and 71.8% respectively; deterioration of relations with friends – 38.8%, 61.6% and 75.0% respectively; deterioration of relations with other people – 74.9%, 71.7% and 78.2% respectively; as well as deterioration of leisure time – 55.5%, 47.5% and 81.2% respectively. At the same time, a certain part of the students without signs of socio-psychological maladaptation even in wartime proved to be able to improve their socio-psychological functioning: general psychological state – 8.4%, communication – 19.4%, education – 16.7%, relations with relatives – 50.0%, relations with friends – 44.5%, relations with other people – 8.4%, leisure – 13.9%. The revealed patterns should be taken into account when developing rehabilitation and preventive measures for higher education students with manifestations of social and psychological maladaptation.

Is scientific knowledge socially constructed? A Bayesian account of Laboratory Life.

In the book Laboratory Life Latour and Woolgar present an account of how scientific "facts" are formed through a process of microsocial interactions among individuals and "inscription devices" in the lab initially described as social construction. The process moves through a series of steps during which the details and nature of the object become more and more certain until all qualifications are dropped, and the "fact" emerges as secure scientific knowledge. An alternative to this account is described based on a Bayesian probabilistic framework which arrives at the same end point. The motive force for the constructivist approach appears to involve social processes of convincing colleagues while the Bayesian approach relies on the consistency of theory and evidence as judged by the participants. The role of social processes is discussed in Bayesian terms, the acquisition and asymmetry of information, and its analogy to puzzle solving. Some parallels between the Bayesian and constructivist accounts are noted especially in relation to information theory.

Positive action paradox in UK police recruitment: A critical perspective

Police recruitment across the UK is under intense political and social pressure to increase representation and legitimacy. This layered in to a quest to raise the number of police officers in England and Wales by 20,000. However, despite decades of reform initiatives, police recruitment continues to be a challenging and potentially exclusionary process for candidates from ethnic minority backgrounds. Research in this area mainly comprises macro-level process evaluation and subsequent extrapolation of the results into positive action initiatives. There is a paucity of research at the micro-interaction level among social actors. In this paper, we present a case study of police recruitment in a large English Police Constabulary over four recruitment cohorts in 2018. We conducted 26 long-form, in-depth interviews with new police recruits. Utilising the embeddedness theoretical framework based on sociological studies of the labour market, we attempt to understand police recruitment at the micro-social interaction level. We demonstrate that police recruitment has a high level of social embeddedness within the Constabulary. Candidates utilise social connections throughout the recruitment process to develop competence in the recruitment stages, while also building their respective police social identities. Although positive action recipients also receive significant organisational and instrumental support, they build a relationship with the abstract organisation and not existing police officers. This creates an imbalance in social identity development and may have implications for how positive action initiative recipients may struggle within the policing environment. Further implications exist for positive action design and implementation.

Microsocial Determination of Coping Strategies of Youth in Situations of Family Interpersonal Conflicts

The article discusses the results of the author's research obtained during the implementation of socio-psychological support of the individual in difficult life situations for several years. It is shown that coping strategies in situations of interpersonal intra-family conflicts in young people aged 18-20 years are mainly determined by the experience of their microsocial interaction. It is revealed that the accumulation of experience of microsocial interaction among young people aged 18-20 leads to an increase in the tendency to prefer coping strategies that are not related to the actual solution of the problem in the intra-family conflict. The results obtained have a pronounced practical significance and justify the need for training in constructive coping behavior in situations of intra family conflicts

TOWARD A NETWORK OF CHANGE: PROMOTING AGE-FRIENDLY COMMUNITIES FROM THE INSIDE OUT

The experience of aging is often framed by the communities in which we live, work and play. At the same time, these communities are also impacted by individuals as they age in place. This symposium presents research using community-partnered methods to highlight the agency of local actors—including older residents themselves—as they work to change their local communities. At the broadest level of geographic scale, Black illustrates how information from population surveys with older adults can be leveraged to mobilize public-private partnerships from the local to state level to advance policy and practice on housing and transportation to support aging in place. Focusing regionally in New Jersey, Greenfield and Reyes analyze longitudinal, qualitative interview data from leaders of age-friendly community initiatives to develop empirically-grounded theory on the range of roles of older adults in aging-friendly community change processes. The final two papers present depth in understanding how older adults actively construct their own sense of community vis-à-vis more micro-social processes. Yeh uses Photovoice methodology to understand how older adults aging in place manage the societal trends of urbanization and social inequalities as they manifest within their own city. Versey examines how older adults aging in place in the context of neighborhood gentrification mobilize networks to preserve a community “sense of place” when sociocultural resources are displaced. Consistent with a community gerontology framework, the presentations demonstrate how community-level dynamics around aging are shaped not only by macro-social influences, but also micro-social interactions including, and sometimes initiated by, older residents themselves.

THE VISCERAL EMBODIMENT OF DIGITAL PLEASURES

This panel explores digital pleasures that arise through the entanglement of bodies and digital technologies. Focusing on the digital structures and affordances that facilitate seeking, receiving and giving pleasure we analyse the ways in which intimacy is not only interactive, but also profoundly embodied. Haraway’s work in particular highlights the importance of taking seriously the nexus of human bodies and technologies and attending to the ways in which technologies not only deliver and mediate pleasure, but potentially expand upon our capacity to experience it. This panel explores how mediated practices engage the body as a site of pleasure and embodied affective intensity. Within this frame, we suggest that digitally mediated pleasures, while widely consumed, still have a hint of the ‘fringe’ or ‘subversive’. As well as proposing a theoretical framework for understanding embodied digital pleasures, this panel also examines specific examples of digital pleasure from sex to drugs and sound. To date the research corpus has largely focused upon the micro-social interactions of digital intimacies. This emphasis on relational intimacy puts the body into the background of the digitally mediated encounter and limits the ways in which we can talk about embodiment, sex and pleasure online. Embodied pleasure is intrinsic to the human condition, and digital media is deeply embedded in contemporary life. How these intersect is a key piece of the puzzle of what it means to be human in contemporary society.

The Queer Temporality of CandidaHomo Biotechnocultures

ABSTRACTThis article weaves together microsocial interactions, evolutionary theories of community and queer understandings of family, kinship and intimacy to grasp some of the complex microbiopolitics of the CandidaHomo ecology. I discuss contemporary scientific understandings of Candida albicans sociality as highly tactile and sensual, bodies constantly in touch with surfaces – chemicals, cells, tissues, prosthetics. I explore the highly contested field of evolutionary theories of social selection, including biogenetic kin selection and its biases about reproduction, intimacy and care. CandidaHomo ecologies are woven through queer kinship that is biological, but not genetic; embodied, but not essentialist. Queer communities, founded on choice and more-than-biological recognition, are considered as an alternative to dominant gene-centric kinship theories. These communities are intimate, performative and more-than-human, emerging from necessity and constantly co-created. However, homonormativity and biogenetic exclusion lurk in the closet of contemporary families of choice. I consider Luce Irigaray’s figuration of eros as a visceral and tactile reorientation of relatedness and care towards CandidaHomo kind, always already formed through impersonal intimacies and caresses. Finally, the artwork Surface Dynamics of Adhesion (2015) is discussed as a material-semiotic resolution and ‘technology’ for making kin, as Donna Haraway might say.

New Institutionalism in Everyday Life

In this paper, I examine how new institutionalism is similar to, and may expand upon Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis of human action and social life. I argue that while Goffman’s dramaturgical lens is useful for examining micro-social interactions among individuals, the ‘audience,’ and the organization, integrating new institutionalism as a theoretical framework into Goffman’s framework of dramaturgical analysis may provide the tools for combined micro-/macro-social analysis that incorporates the overarching influence of the institution (the ‘theater’) on micro-social interactions. I examine the potential of combining new institutionalism with dramaturgical analysis and I provide a brief example using ‘education’ as the institution to demonstrate how new institutional theory may be used in conjunction with Goffman’s dramaturgical theory.

Finding citizenship: What works?

ABSTRACTCitizenship is a foundation for mental health recovery and community integration. Achievement of full citizenship in the community is curated by a person’s social environment, including social connections and the support and capital offered by those connections. This article presents qualitative findings of community integration experiences of individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) and details social environment elements they identified as critical to integration. Three primary themes were identified as contributing to achievement of citizenship among participants: (1) macrosocial interactions, described by a civic consciousness and receipt of positive social recognition; (2) microsocial interactions, including intimate relationships with family and friends; and (3) interactions at an intermediate level, fleeting relationships with passersby in public spaces. All three were underlain by the importance of social recognition of acts of giving. Individuals with SMI who were identified as succe...

Between Collective Action and Individual Appropriation

Examining the concept of clientelism in analysis of participatory processes, we investigate how collective and individual action are articulated in practices in the case of participatory budgeting (PB) in Recife, Brazil. We use ethnographic work to look how collective actors mobilize within the PB process in Recife and show that PB’s territorial and redistributive nature provides fertile ground for informal exchanges to be entrenched in institutional processes at the micro level. Microsocial interactions between political entrepreneurs, intermediaries, and ordinary participants in Recife participatory practice are shaped by two processes: individualization of political loyalties and territorialization of politics. These, we argue, allow informal exchanges to coexist with institutionalized forms of collective action. PB presupposes that participants engage in local struggles and introduces competition and inequalities among them, as access to resources is conditioned by their ability to mobilize and enter into informal interactions that underlie political exchanges within PB.

Who killed in Rwanda’s genocide? Micro-space, social influence and individual participation in intergroup violence

In episodes of intergroup violence, which group members participate and which do not? Although such violence is frequently framed as occurring between distinct ethnic, racial or sectarian groups, it is easily overlooked that it is usually only a subset of the group’s members who in fact participate in the violence. In predicting participation, extant research has privileged an atomistic approach and identified individual attributes indicative of a predisposition to violence. I suggest instead that a situational approach should complement the atomistic paradigm and present evidence that an individual’s micro-spatial environment is an important predictor of differential participation in intergroup violence. Using GIS data on 3,426 residents from one community, I map the household locations of participants, non-participants, and victims of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. I find that participants are likely to live either in the same neighbourhood or in the same household as other participants. Specifically, as the number of violent to nonviolent individuals in an individual’s neighbourhood or household increases, the likelihood of this individual’s participation also increases. In explaining these neighbourhood and household effects, I suggest social influence is the mechanism at work. As micro-spatial distance decreases, micro-social interaction increases. Neighbours and household members exert influence for and against participation. Participation then may be as much the product of social interaction as of individual agency. What neighbours and family members think, say and do may influence participation in collective action such as intergroup violence. The conceptualization of neighbourhoods and households as micro-spheres of influences suggests the importance of social structure as a determinant of participation.

GO WITH YOUR GUT: A THEORY OF EMOTION AND INEQUALITY IN HIRING

In the following paper, I present labor market stratification as an emotional process fundamentally rooted in micro-social interaction. Drawing from Randall Collins’ theory of interaction ritual (2004), I provide a case study of hiring in elite professional service firms to analyze how evaluators’ “gut” feelings and emotional responses to candidates during job interviews affect hiring outcomes and inequalities. This analysis represents the first empirical application of Collins’ intriguing but heretofore untested theoretical propositions about the role of emotion in social stratification. After demonstrating how feelings of excitement and emotional energy generated in interaction serve as crucial mechanisms of candidate evaluation, I then extend Collins’ work by proposing a theoretical model of emotional energy development in job interviews. I highlight the mechanisms and characteristics that tend to produce, sustain, and inhibit feelings of emotional energy in interaction as well as parse out the various phases at which energy gains and losses are most consequential for influencing hiring outcomes and inequalities. I conclude by discussing the implications of my findings for both interaction ritual theory as well as recent research on organizational inequalities.

The gendered construction of physical education content as the result of the differentiated didactic contract

Background: Research on gender in physical education has pointed out the social construction of gendered bodies and minds through the curriculum. It has been shown that girls do not benefit from equal opportunities to participate in physical activities. Developed within the theoretical framework of the didactique tradition, this paper tries to understand how teacher and students (girls and boys) jointly construct gendered content knowledge during formal episodes of teaching and learning in physical education. Purpose: To focus on student learning with special attention to the gendered content taught and learned with the aim of understanding the differentiated process which is as the root of gender issues in physical education. Setting and participants: Sixteen students (six girls and ten boys) and two teachers during coeducational volleyball units in two high schools (Lycée) in France. Research design and data collection: The study investigates how the attack is learned in volleyball according to gender through a design experiment within a didactique research methodology. The protocol included collecting data regarding student intentions, actions and interpretations of content through the use of lesson observation and pre- and post-lesson participant interviews. Data analysis consisted of the identification and evolution of the differentiated didactic contract (DDC) across the pedagogical interactions which occurred during two learning tasks concerning ‘how to perform an efficient attack’. Findings: Students do not develop the same nature and degree of understanding and performance of the attack in volleyball due to the differentiated ways in which the didactical interactions evolve during formal lessons in physical education. Five factors influence the process: (1) the gendered nature of knowledge; (2) the ways in which the knowledge is developed by the teacher; (3) the gendered perspectives individuals bring into and invoke during the didactical interactions; (4) the evolution of the enacted content knowledge as a consequence of the ongoing process through (5) the tacit and implicit negotiations which originate the differentiated didactic contract. Conclusions: The study supports a research agenda which gives attention to the domain-specific content taught and learned during classrooms interactions. It supports the theoretical idea that curriculum is enacted through micro-social interactions around particular content and within specific contexts.

An Introduction to the Special Issue on Advances in Process and Dynamic System Analysis of Social Interaction and the Development of Antisocial Behavior

A thorough understanding of how social relationships contribute to child and adolescent trajectories for antisocial behavior may be facilitated by: (a) ascertaining multiple relationship processes (e.g., warmth and reciprocity, coercion and deviancy training); (b) focusing on multiple relationships (e.g., with parents, peers, siblings, and teachers): and (c) assessing relationship processes using increasingly sophisticated measurement and theoretical models (e.g., global ratings and sequential and dynamical systems analyses) of observed microsocial interaction. The reports comprising this special issue, and how they build on and advance previous research efforts, are described from this frame of reference.

A multilevel analysis of parental discipline and child antisocial behavior

We demonstrate graphical and analytical methods for multilevel (2- and 3-level) models using the analysis of observed microsocial interaction between parent-child dyads as an example. We also present multilevel path diagrams and argue that while not as compact as equations, path diagrams may communicate results better to a wider audience. The example data were drawn from an urban risk sample of kindergarten children and their parents observed in a 1-hour structured lab task and coded for behavioral process using the Family Peer Process (FPP) Code. Four repeated assessments of aversive parent discipline across the 1-hour observation session were nested within dyads, which were nested under coders, which created a 3-level model. The model also included the random effect of observed child aversive behavior as a time-varying predictor of parent aversive discipline at Level 1, child school antisocial behavior as a Level 2 predictor and coder gender as a Level 3 predictor. Our results indicated that coders accounted for about 13% of the variance, families accounted for about 20% of the variance, leaving 67% of the variance in parent aversive discipline due to random, time-specific influences. We discuss the psychometric implications of the small (20%) trait-like component of parent discipline in detail. We also found that observed child aversive behavior provoked parent aversive discipline more strongly in some families than others but child school antisocial behavior was not related to the magnitude of the child aversive effect on the parent.

Connections: social and cultural studies of the telephone in American life

Perhaps no other technology has done so much to so many, but been studied by so few, as the telephone. Even as its physical size diminishes, the telephone is becoming more important. In Connections, James E. Katz presents a series of pathbreaking studies, that give greater visibility to this important element in modern life. Katz examines how the telephone reveals gender relations in a way not predicted by feminist theories, how it can be used to protect and invade personal privacy, and how people harness telephone answering machines to their advantage. Katz's inquiry reports on obscene phone calls, the abuses of caller-ID technology, and attitudes toward voice mail. National data about cellular telephones are presented to show the extent to which beepers and car phones have become status symbols. Katz ranges from microsocial interaction to macrosocial theory, and from the family and personal levels of organization to that of large-scale industrial bureaucracies. The result of this multidisciplinary investigation is a compelling mosaic spanning sociology and psychology, and organization and communication studies. These arresting portraits will offer profound insight to historians, students of American culture, and those concerned about the nature and direction of the emerging information society.

Gender, Status, and Behavior in Task Situations

Gender is among the most extensively investigated constructs of the social sciences. It is a basis of macrosocial organization and an individual characteristic that shapes microsocial interaction. The social psychological literature contains at least four alternative conceptions of how gender operates in face-to-face interaction: the normative-influence, the informational-influence, the weighted-averaging, and the expectation-states hypotheses. Using a rich set of experimental data on mixed-sex problem-solving discussions entailing feminine, gender-neutral, and masculine tasks, we investigated the relative empirical adequacy of these four hypotheses. Dependent variables included amount of time speaking and frequencies of gesturing, speech initiations, looking while speaking, looking while listening, chin thrusts, smiling, laughing, and self-touching. Dovidio and his colleagues reported that for some measures, but not for others, statistical interactions exist between the actor's gender and the gender linkage of the task. Using a more precise theoretical analysis, we found that the expectation-states hypothesis describes the first category of variables extremely well, while the normative-influence hypothesis describes the second category extremely well. The weighted-averaging hypothesis deviates systematically from the empirical data collected by Dovidio and his colleagues. We conjecture that gender effects in putatively task-oriented interaction emanate from gender-as-worth and from gender-as-personal-identity. Some implications for further research are discussed.