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An accelerometer is a device that measures force due to gravity or a change in speed or direction of travel. This paper describes accelerometers and their application in other disciplines and, by way of an example, explores the utility of accelerometers for studying aggression. We end with a discussion of additional ways accelerometers might be used in group processes research.

We first review the use of accelerometers in other disciplines. We then present the results of four studies that demonstrate the use of accelerometers to measure aggression. Study 1 establishes the measure’s concurrent validity. Study 2 concerns its stability and representative reliability. Study 3 seeks to establish the measure’s predictive validity by associating it with an existing measure. Study 4 demonstrates the ability of accelerometers to address a sociological research question.

In Studies 1 and 2, we find that accelerometers can be used to differentiate between distinct levels of aggression. In Study 3, we find that men’s average peak acceleration correlates with a previously validated measure of aggression. Study 4 uses accelerometers to reproduce a well-established finding in the aggression literature.

We conclude that accelerometers are a flexible tool for group processes’ researchers and social scientists more broadly. Our findings should prove useful to social scientists interested in measuring aggression or in employing accelerometers in their work.

Now well into the 21st century, the world’s most powerful organizations’ highest executive levels and boards of directors still fail to represent a diverse collection of people shaped by unique social identity dimensions according to age, class, culture, ethnicity, faith/spirituality, gender, physical/psychological ability, sexual orientation, and more. Offered in this book is an investigation into why a homophily framework, or a similarity-attraction hypothesis, continues to perpetuate leadership by predominantly Caucasian/White males and reinforces barriers that keep qualified people possessing a multiplicity of social identity dimensions from achieving their full human potential.

To understand interactive processes through which discrimination is reproduced in the workplace, social identity theorists explore connections between ways that people create social identity and that organizations become socially constructed. Social identity theory explains how people seek to develop oneness with groups that help them to develop and/or to enhance positive self-esteem – and to better understand how people develop notions of high-status ingroups and low-status outgroups. Both of these frameworks are central to this book’s attention to difference in organizations. Difference is positioned as a positive advance in organizational dynamics; advocating respect and appreciation for multiple and intersecting social identities – not for profitability and other business case reasons – but because it is morally justified to eradicate inequitable and exclusionary practices in organizations. This book offers an introduction to doing difference research by introducing a number of theoretical underpinnings, addressing methodological challenges, and presenting a wide cross-section of numerous bodies of literature which have been attending to difference work. Chapter 1 is divided into subthemes of: applying social identity theory, emphasizing the “center” and the “margin,” managing organizational climate, and avoiding business case thinking and other flawed models by advocating for real diversity.

This chapter examines the implications of career achievement for divorce, and whether they differ for men and women. Consistent with theory suggesting that women’s workplace achievement violates traditional expectations of gender and marriage, therefore creating domestic strain, the authors predict that career achievement is associated with a greater risk of divorce for women, but not for men. Using data from the Academy Awards, the authors find that for women, a sudden shift in achievement from winning an Oscar increases their risk of divorce compared to Best Actress nominees. There was no difference in the risk of divorce between Best Actor winners and nominees. The authors additionally examine two potential mitigating factors: whether the actor was already successful at the time of their marriage, and whether their spouse was comparably successful. For Best Actress winners, but not for Best Actor winners, the authors find evidence for the latter, indicating that women’s marriages are more stable when spouses are equally successful, or when relative achievement within the couple aligns with broadly-held norms of traditional marriage.

Social identity shaped by sexual orientation is unique because it is invisible (as compared to age and some ethnic identities); a circumstance that may activate homophobia perceptions when an individual’s sexual orientation becomes fodder for speculation. Chapter 7 enjoins a wide variety of related issues in order to sharpen a focus on sex in the workplace; love and sex in the literal sense, as well as social identity shaped by sexual orientation, sex-based discrimination, sex as political action, and important ways that sex intersects with other social identity dimensions including age, gender, ethnicity/race, and socioeconomic status. An important distinction made throughout the chapter is the degree that protections are offered to various groups with regard to sex and work. These protections (or lack of them) are critical for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, the transgendered, and queer or questioning people who consider whether or not to disclose information about their sexual identity at work.

While many multinational corporations have adopted policies or guidelines and implemented programs to communicate an inclusive perspective on sexual identity in the workplace and to promote diversity training for all employees, too few workplaces around the globe offer legal protections for workers relative to sexual identity. People are subject to workplace discrimination whether they are gay or lesbian, or simply appear to be so and sexual harassment according to gender remains a fixture of organizations. To explore the organizational research on sexuality, Chapter 7 attends to subthemes of: love, lust, and sex-based harassment in the workplace; how organizations address sexual orientation and sex-based harassment in the workplace; managing one’s sexual identity in the workplace; and intersectionalities of sexual identity with ethnicity, gender, and social class.

This chapter examines the tension between interdependence and dominance. First, we briefly review prominent social psychological theories regarding the development and maintenance of status systems. Next we briefly describe how these structures help distribute social power in modern society. We then examine how prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination stem from status systems and interdependence, using the Stereotype Content Model (Fiske, Xu, Cuddy & Glick, 1999; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). Next, we consider the unique circumstances of gender relations and how they give way to complementary justifications of gender inequality, using Ambivalent Sexism Theory (Glick & Fiske, 1996, 1999, 2001a, 2001b). Last, we review evidence to support our argument that women do not necessarily acquiesce joyfully to the present hierarchical arrangement, but rather guide their choices by their pragmatic alternatives, as dictated by benevolent and hostile ideologies.

The paradigmatic shift in gender theory, which focuses attention away from the individual and toward structural accounts, has undoubtedly advanced the amount and quality of research on gender as a macro-level phenomenon. However, social psychological accounts of gender have been less frequent among gender scholars in sociology, perhaps due to the perception that studying individuals might reinvigorate sex role and socialization accounts. This concern is especially understandable since sociology as a field has yet to fully incorporate current theories of gender (Stacey & Thorne, 1985; Ferree & Hall, 1996). For example, Ferree and Hall (1996) have shown that many introductory sociology textbooks still present gender as simply the product of socialization, even while examining other bases of inequality, such as race and class, at a structural level. Rather than rehearsing past debates, we argue that social psychological perspectives make a unique contribution to bridging the multiple levels of the gender system, and are especially well suited to helping us understand the ways that gender is achieved through interaction. Understanding gender as an interactive process sheds light on how structural conditions constrain individual choices as well as how structural patterns of gender inequality are generated and recreated. Discovering mechanisms at the micro level, which play an active role in the persistence of inequality, is especially fruitful because they suggest ways by which gender inequality might be lessened.

Beginning in 1982, the majority of college students have been women and that majority has increased since. Explanations for the predominance of women in college enrollments and completion include a variety of labor-market factors that might now advantage men less than in the past. Avariety of labor-market analyses show that, while some recent developments may have reduced incentives for men to enroll in college, labor-market explanations alone cannot account for the predominance of women in college. Some of the reduced incentives for male college enrollment point to gender identities typical of young men and women as an important explanation for the predominance of women in college. Preliminary evidence for the gender identity explanation is offered. More controlled studies capable of testing and exploring the implications of the gender identity explanation are proposed.

In this chapter I discuss judicial contributions to Italian penality. I look at the penal incentives produced by interactions between judicial and political classes, and ask whether judges and prosecutors have been forces for punitiveness or moderation. I discuss the relevance of the Italian case for broader analyses of Western penality.

My chapter offers a political-sociological account of judicial contributions to punishment. I analyse the penal incentives created by different national institutional set-ups, specifically addressing judicial contributions to penality using a framework developed by Joachim Savelsberg and Nicola Lacey. The framework examines judicial structure in the institutional context looking at the penal implications of bureaucratisation of the judiciary and the capacity for co-ordination between judges and politicians. I include judicial legitimacy as an additional dimension in this framework.

I conclude that the Italian judiciary have been forces for punitiveness and moderation. Their contributions can be systematised by looking at the waxing and waning of judicial legitimacy, and the consequent expansion and contraction of judicial powers. I claim that judicial legitimacy is also relevant to other (‘non-Italian’) analyses of judicial contributions to contemporary Western penality.

By adding legitimacy to investigations of judicial contributions to penality I provide an organising principle with which to analyse the penal role of Italian judicial actors. I thus allow Italy to be kept in conversation with existing comparative models, without assuming that it either conforms to the models entirely, or that the models should otherwise be eschewed. I use the Italian case to demonstrate the relevance of legitimacy when analysing judicial contributions to Western penality, arguing that changing legitimacy affects the terms and effect of interaction between judicial and political classes.

The sexual division of labor remains a strong, discriminatory aspect of Brazilian society, with a high percentage of women engaged in precarious, caregiving, and service work that is devalued within the traditional patriarchal family and school socialization. This chapter relates and analyzes the development of a multidisciplinary, intersectional, and interinstitutional project, Fast Girls, which addresses this situation of inequality and exclusion by promoting and strengthening learning in STEM and psychosocial dimensions for adolescent female students. It is currently deployed in three public schools on the outskirts of Brazil’s capital, Brasilia, but the focus here will be on the pioneering initiative, in one high school which has reached 150 participants since 2013. This project was conducted by professors and researchers from the engineering, social sciences, and humanities departments of the University of Brasilia (UnB) in Brazil and France’s Sorbonne Paris North University who are the authors of this autoethnography, which is based on interventions, interviews, and field observations. Principle academic results included articles, dissertations, and expositions at related national and international events characterized by the integration of various scientific fields. The intervention prepared participants for college attendance who was both unprecedented in their families and contributed to their occupying a social and subjective place quite different from the majority of youths in black and poor communities around the capitals of Brazil.