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1 – 10 of over 9000The present research builds on three complementary theories to explore how social influence processes in interaction bring about opinion and sentiment change: expectation states…
Abstract
Purpose
The present research builds on three complementary theories to explore how social influence processes in interaction bring about opinion and sentiment change: expectation states theory, affect control theory, and social influence network theory.
Methodology/approach
An experimental study is used to test intersections between the theories and assess how performance expectations, affective impressions of group members, and emergent perceptions of their influence work together to generate opinion and sentiment change.
Findings
Respondent opinions shifted in the direction of group leaders’ opinions, regardless of behavioral interchange patterns. Opinion change was greater when a third group member shared the leader’s opinion. Change in affective impressions was shaped by the group leader’s opinion, the assertiveness of their behavior, and the support of a third group member. The perceived influence composition of the group predicted opinion and sentiment change, above and beyond the effects of conditional manipulations. Features of the group interaction led to inferences about status characteristics that reinforced the influence order of the group.
Research implications
The chapter tests hypotheses from earlier work and explores status signals not yet tested as predictors of opinion change – behavioral interchange patterns and the degree of support for one’s ideas. In addition, it examines inferences about status characteristics following the group discussion, and influence effects on the prevailing definition of the situation.
Originality/value
This chapter contributes to recent integrative work that explores the relationship between performance expectations, affective impressions, and social influence. Synergistic processes forwarded by earlier research are tested, along with several newly proposed linkages.
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Kimberly B. Rogers, Kaitlin M. Boyle and Maria N. Scaptura
Various mass shooters have explained their violent actions as a response to failing at dominant forms of masculinity, including rejection from women and negative social…
Abstract
Purpose
Various mass shooters have explained their violent actions as a response to failing at dominant forms of masculinity, including rejection from women and negative social comparisons to other men. The affect control theory of self (ACT-Self) posits that interactions that violate one's sense of self cause inauthenticity. This disequilibrium motivates behaviors that restore self-meanings, which may partially explain the link between challenges to the self and compensatory violence.
Methodology
In Study 1, we use ACT-Self to examine the relationship between inauthenticity, violent fantasies, and physical aggression in the autobiography of one mass shooter. We quantify self-sentiments and inauthenticity using ACT-Self measures and methods, and perform a thematic analysis of the shooter's interpretations of and responses to disconfirming events. In Study 2, we examine the relationship between these same concepts in a survey of 18-to-32-year-old men (N = 847).
Findings
Study 1 shows that the shooter's inability to achieve popularity, wealth, sex, and relationships with beautiful women (compared to other men) produced inauthenticity that he resolved through violent fantasies, increasingly aggressive behavior, and ultimately, mass violence. Study 2 finds that inauthenticity arising from reflected appraisals from women predicts self-reported violent fantasies and physical aggression in a convenience sample of men in emerging adulthood.
Implications
This work leverages a formal social psychological theory to examine the link between self-processes and violence. Our findings suggest that men's inauthenticity, particularly produced by reflected appraisals from women, is positively associated with violent fantasies and acts. Further work is needed to assess whether this relationship is causal and for whom.
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Neil J. MacKinnon and Dawn T. Robinson
To provide a comprehensive review of theoretical and research advances in affect control theory from 1988 to 2013 for academic and student researchers in social psychology.
Abstract
Purpose
To provide a comprehensive review of theoretical and research advances in affect control theory from 1988 to 2013 for academic and student researchers in social psychology.
Design/Methodology/Approach
Against the background of a concise history of affect control theory from its beginnings in the 1960s to its maturation in the late 1980s, a comprehensive review of research and publications in the last 25 years is reported in five sections: Theoretical Advances (e.g., self and institutions, nonverbal behavior, neuroscience, artificial intelligence); Technological Advances (e.g., electronic data collection, computer simulations, cultural surveys, equation refinement, small groups analysis); Cross-Cultural Research (archived data and published analyses); Empirical Tests of the Theory; and Substantive Applications (e.g., emotions, social and cultural change, occupations/work, politics, gender/ideology/subcultures, deviance, criminology, stereotyping, physiological behavior).
Findings
Reveals an impressive number of publications in this area, including over 120 articles and chapters and four major books, and a great deal of cross-cultural research, including European, Asian, and Middle-Asian cultures.
Research Limitation/Implications (if applicable)
Because of limitations of space, the review does not cover the large number of theses, dissertations, and research reports.
Originality/Value
No other review of affect control theory with this scope and detail exists.
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Noah E. Friedkin and Eugene C. Johnsen
This paper works at the intersections of affect control theory, expectation states theory, and social influence network theory. First, we introduce social influence network theory…
Abstract
This paper works at the intersections of affect control theory, expectation states theory, and social influence network theory. First, we introduce social influence network theory into affect control theory. We show how an influence network may emerge from the pattern of interpersonal sentiments in a group and how the fundamental sentiments that are at the core of affect control theory (dealing with the evaluation, potency, and activity of self and others) may be modified by interpersonal influences. Second, we bring affect control theory and social influence network theory to bear on expectation states theory. In a task-oriented group, where persons’ performance expectations may be a major basis of their interpersonal influence, we argue that persons’ fundamental sentiments may mediate effects of status characteristics on group members’ performance expectations. Based on the linkage of fundamental sentiments and interpersonal influence, we develop an account of the formation of influence networks in groups that is applicable to both status homogeneous and status heterogeneous groups of any size, whether or not they are completely connected, and that is not restricted in scope to task-oriented groups.
Purpose: Prior work has convincingly argued that social inequalities arise from the basic human tendency to place others into social categories with different cultural meanings…
Abstract
Purpose: Prior work has convincingly argued that social inequalities arise from the basic human tendency to place others into social categories with different cultural meanings and to allocate resources unequally across those categories. However, few studies have sought to identify the micro-level mechanisms that sustain and justify this categorical inequality. In this research, I show how affect control theory (ACT) can be used to generate novel predictions about the interaction processes that perpetuate stratification.
Methodology/Approach: I present a series of analyses based in ACT that examine (1) whether categorical inequality is reflected in cultural sentiments for social groups, (2) whether patterns of normative behavior and social treatment vary based on category membership, and (3) whether interactions produce different emotions based on category membership.
Findings: Analysis 1 identifies four distinct patterns of cultural meanings that differentiate the groups studied. Analyses 2 and 3 show how these differences in cultural meanings produce categorical inequality through interpersonal behavior and emotional experiences in normative social encounters. Unequal cultural meanings for social groups correspond with their positionality in the social order and support patterns of situated behavior and emotions that keep groups with different levels of status and power separate and unequal.
Originality/Value: This research shows how social norms constrain and enable actions and emotions by members of different social categories, how they depend on the combinations of actors who appear together in a given social encounter, and how they contribute to the reproduction of inequality in ways not well accounted for by earlier work.
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Sarah K. Harkness and Amy Kroska
We examine whether self-stigmatization may affect the everyday social interactions of individuals with a diagnosed, affective mental health disorder. Past research demonstrates…
Abstract
We examine whether self-stigmatization may affect the everyday social interactions of individuals with a diagnosed, affective mental health disorder. Past research demonstrates self-stigmatization lowers self-esteem, efficacy, and personal agency, leading to the likely adoption of role-identities that are at the periphery of major social institutions. We advance research on self-stigma by examining the likely interactional and emotional consequences of enacting either a highly stigmatized self-identity or a weakly stigmatized self-identity.
Using affect control theory (ACT), we form predictions related to the interactional and emotional consequences of self-stigmatization. We use the Indianapolis Mental Health Study and Interact, a computerized instantiation of ACT, to generate empirically based simulation results for patients with an affective disorder (e.g., major depression and bipolar disorder), comparing simulations where the focal actor is a person with a mental illness who exhibits either high or low levels of self-stigma.
Self-stigma is predicted to negatively influence patients’ behavioral expression, leading the highly self-stigmatized to enact behaviors that are lower in goodness, power, and liveliness than the weakly self-stigmatized. Their corresponding emotional expressions during these types of interactions are similarly negatively impacted. Even though these likely interactions are the most confirmatory for people with high levels of self-stigma, they lead to interactions that are behaviorally and emotionally more negative than those who have been better able to resist internalizing stigmatizing beliefs.
This piece has implications for the literature on the interactional and life course challenges faced by psychiatric patients and contributes to the self-stigma literature more broadly. This work will hopefully inform future research involving the collection of non-simulation-based data on the everyday interactional experiences of people with mental health problems.
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This paper aims to explore what Chinese doctors have learned in authentic medical practice, what they want to learn, and the dynamics behind their professional learning in working…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore what Chinese doctors have learned in authentic medical practice, what they want to learn, and the dynamics behind their professional learning in working contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses Narrative Inquiry, qualitative data which were collected by open‐ended face‐to‐face interviews and participative observation. Seven doctors from three hospitals in Shandong province were purposefully invited. Each participant was interviewed at least once, and all interview recordings were transcribed into research texts. The author narrated and re‐narrated stories of one chosen participant named Li Hengyang (pseudonym).
Findings
The paper finds that Chinese doctors divided their learning into two kinds: “professional” and “non‐professional”. The intrinsic‐motive‐driven learning of medical knowledge and techniques was attributed to “professional” and the extrinsic‐motive‐driven learning of “other things” was treated as “non‐professional”. The resultant force of intrinsic and extrinsic motives caused a performance disorder, a vague sense of professional identity, and involuntary expressive behaviours. The author finally pointed out that Chinese doctors' professional learning in working contexts is, to some extent, identity‐oriented.
Research limitations/implications
Single theoretical perspective constrained the analysis; future research may use different theoretical perspectives besides Goffman's theatrical performance theory.
Practical implications
The paper presents identity‐oriented learning of Chinese doctors and the dynamics behind it, which have practical implications for Chinese doctors, medical professional educators and national medical policy makers.
Originality/value
Although Chinese doctors' training and education have been explored a lot, their professional learning in working contexts was rarely studied before.
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Christopher D. Moore and Dawn T. Robinson
Affect control theory describes a process in which individuals work to maintain existing situated identities. In this paper, we extend affect control theory to explain selective…
Abstract
Affect control theory describes a process in which individuals work to maintain existing situated identities. In this paper, we extend affect control theory to explain selective identity preferences in occupational settings. We argue that individuals form preferences about potential future identities with an eye to maintaining consistency between their potential experiences and their existing biographical identities. In particular, we suggest that occupational identity preferences reflect work-specific biographical identities called worker identities. We then predict that individuals who are seeking alternative or additional occupational identities will prefer those that evoke sentiments that are similar to those evoked by their worker identities. We find that current worker sentiments predict reports of desired and undesired future occupational identities, to include generalized military identities, to a remarkable degree. We discuss the implications for research on occupational mobility, work, and life course, as well as for existing identity theories.
Luke Kien‐Weng Tan, Jin‐Cheon Na and Yin‐Leng Theng
This study aims to investigate three common approaches – quantitative blog features analysis, content analysis, and community identification – to detect influence in the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate three common approaches – quantitative blog features analysis, content analysis, and community identification – to detect influence in the blogosphere (i.e. among blog posts).
Design/methodology/approach
Quantitative analysis of blog features, together with manual sentiment and agreement analysis and community identification, were performed on blog postings and their content. Correlation studies of the selected influential variables were conducted to determine the effectiveness of each variable.
Findings
Agreement expressed by the linking blogger with the linked blogger, similar sentiments expressed by both bloggers on common topics, and community identity are statistically significant features for detecting influence in the linked blogs.
Research limitations/implications
A small data set of 196 blog posting pairs was used for the study as the blog features and content are analysed manually. Nonetheless statistical analysis on the data set identified significant features that could be used in future studies to automate the influence detection process.
Practical implications
Knowing the effects of blog features and content analysis in detecting influence among blog posts allows a better influence detection method to determine the main chain of information propagation within the blogosphere and the identities of influential bloggers.
Originality/value
The approach of using blog features, content analysis, and community identity provides a comprehensive evaluation of influence in the blogosphere. Unlike previous content analysis approaches that measure document similarity (i.e. common terms) between linked blog posts, our study applies sentiment and agreement analysis to consider the context of the whole blog post content.
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Sarah K. Harkness, Amy Kroska and Bernice A. Pescosolido
We argue that self-stigma places patients on a path of marginalization throughout their life course leading to a negative cycle of opportunity and advancement. Mental health…
Abstract
Purpose
We argue that self-stigma places patients on a path of marginalization throughout their life course leading to a negative cycle of opportunity and advancement. Mental health patients with higher levels of self-stigma tend to have much lower self-esteem, efficacy, and personal agency; therefore, they will be more inclined to adopt role-identities at the periphery of major social institutions, like those of work, family, and academia. Similarly, the emotions felt when enacting such roles may be similarly dampened.
Methodology/approach
Utilizing principles from affect control theory (ACT) and the affect control theory of selves (ACTS), we generate predictions related to self-stigmatized patients’ role-identity adoption and emotions. We use the Indianapolis Mental Health Study and Interact, a computerized version of ACT and ACTS, to generate empirically based simulation results for patients with an affective disorder (e.g., major depression and bipolar disorder) with comparably high or low levels of self-stigmatization.
Findings
Self-stigma among affective patients reduces the tendency to adopt major life course identities. Self-stigma also affects patients’ emotional expression by compelling patients to seek out interactions that make them feel anxious or affectively neutral.
Originality/value
This piece has implications for the self-stigma and stigma literatures. It is also one of the first pieces to utilize ACTS, thereby offering a new framework for understanding the self-stigma process. We offer new hypotheses for future research to test with non-simulation-based data and suggest some policy implications.
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