Feminist Theory and Social Interaction

A few years ago, a researcher and his assistants eavesdropped on 1,200 conversations
of people laughing in public places, such as shopping malls (Provine,
2000). When they heard someone laughing, they recorded who laughed (the
speaker, the listener, or both) and the gender of the speaker and the listener. To
simplify things, they eavesdropped only on two-person groups.
They found that women laugh more than men do in everyday conversations.
The biggest discrepancy in laughing occurs when the speaker is a woman
and the listener is a man. In such cases, women laugh more than twice as often
as men do. However, even when a man speaks and a woman listens, the woman
is more likely to laugh than the man is.
Research also shows that men are more likely than women to engage in long
monologues and interrupt when others are talking (Tannen, 1994a; 1994b).
They are less likely to ask for help or directions because doing so would imply
a reduction in their authority. Much male–female conflict results from these
differences. A stereotypical case is the lost male driver and the helpful female
passenger. The female passenger, seeing that the male driver is lost, suggests
that they stop and ask for directions. The male driver does not want to ask for
directions because he thinks it would make him look incompetent. If both parties
remain firm in their positions, an argument may result.
Social interaction involves communication among people acting and reacting
to one another. Feminist sociologists are especially sensitive to gender
differences in social interactions like those just described. They see that gender
often structures interaction patterns.
Consider laughter. If we define status as a recognized social position, it
is generally true that people with higher status (in this case, men) get more
laughs, whereas people with lower status (in this case, women) laugh more.
That is perhaps why class clowns are nearly always boys. Laughter in everyday
life, it turns out, is not as spontaneous as you may think. It is often a signal of
who enjoys higher or lower status. Social structure influences who laughs more.
Social statuses are just one of the three building blocks that structure all
social interactions. The others are roles and norms. A role is a set of expected
behaviors. Whereas people occupy a status, they perform a role. Students may
learn to expect that when things get dull, the class clown will brighten their
day. The class clown will rise to the occasion, knowing that his fellow students
expect him to act up. A norm is a generally accepted way of doing things. Classroom
norms are imposed by instructors, who routinely punish class clowns for distracting
their classmates from the task at hand (see Figure 4.1).
Social Structure and Emotions
Just as statuses, roles, and norms structure laughter, they influence other emotions, although
their influence is often not apparent. In fact, most people think that emotions
are a lot like the common cold. In both cases, an external disturbance supposedly causes
statuses at the same time—for example, mother, wife, and flight attendant. All of
these statuses together form a status set. Each status is composed of several sets of
expected behaviors or roles. A role set is a cluster of roles attached to a single status.
For example, a wife is expected to act as an intimate companion to her husband and
to assume certain legal responsibilities as co-owner of a house. In this figure, dashed
lines separate roles and dark solid lines separate statuses.
role conflict takes place when different role demands are placed on a person by
two or more statuses held at the same time. How might a flight attendant experience
role conflict due to the contradictory demands of the statuses diagrammed here?
Role strain occurs when incompatible role demands are placed on a person in a
single status. For instance, in the 1960s, when most air travelers were businessmen,
flight attendants (or “stewardesses” as they were called at the time), were required by
their employers to be slim and single and to appear to be sexually “available.” This
requirement caused role strain; stewardesses had to be suggestive while also politely
warding off unwanted, impolite, and even crude overtures.
Source: Robert J. Brym; © Cengage Learning 2013.
a reaction that we experience involuntarily.
The external disturbance may involve a bear
attack that causes us to experience fear or
exposure to a virus that causes us to catch
cold. In either case, we can’t control our
body’s patterned response. People commonly
think that emotions, like colds, just
happen to us (Thoits, 1989: 319).
Feminists were among the first sociologists
to note the flaw in the view
that emotional responses are involuntary
(
Hochschild, 1979, 1983). Seeing how frequently
women, as status subordinates,
must control their emotions, they generalized
the idea. Emotions don’t just happen to us, they argued. We manage them. If a bear
attacks you in the woods, you can run as fast as possible or calm yourself, lie down, play
dead, and silently pray for the best. You are more likely to survive the bear attack if you
control your emotions and follow the second strategy. You will also temper your fear
with a new emotion: hope (see Figure 4.2).
When people manage their emotions, they usually follow certain cultural “scripts,”
like the culturally transmitted knowledge that lying down and playing dead gives you
a better chance of surviving a bear attack. We usually know the culturally designated
emotional response to a particular external stimulus and we try to respond appropriately.
If we don’t succeed in achieving the culturally appropriate emotional response, we
are likely to feel guilt, disappointment, or (as in the case of the bear attack) something
much worse.
Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild is a leading figure in the study of emotion management.
In fact, she coined the term. She argues that emotion management involves
people obeying “feeling rules” and responding appropriately to the situations in which
they find themselves (Hochschild, 1979, 1983). So, for example, people talk about the
“right” to feel angry and they acknowledge that they “should” have mourned a relative’s
death more deeply. We have conventional expectations not only about what we should
feel but also about how much we should feel, how long we should feel it, and with whom
we should share our feelings. For example, we are expected to mourn the end of a love
relationship. Shedding tears would be regarded as a completely natural reaction among
Americans today, but if you shot yourself—as was the fad among some European Romantics
in the early 19th century—you would be regarded as deranged. If you went on
a date a half hour after breaking up with your longtime girlfriend or boyfriend, most
people would regard you as heartless. Norms govern our emotional life.