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8C · Thinking about ourselves and others
Social interactions
The building blocks of how people relate: status and roles, groups and organizations, self-presentation, and the bonds that draw us together or push us apart (attraction, attachment, aggression, altruism).
Status, roles, groups & organizations
Status = a social position; role = the behavior expected of a status; groups and organizations = the structures these positions sit in.
- Status — ascribed (assigned, e.g., born into) vs. achieved (earned); a master status dominates how others see you.
- Role — expected behaviors of a status. Role strain (conflicting demands within one role), role conflict (conflict between two roles), and role exit (leaving a role).
- Groups — primary (close, intimate, e.g., family) vs. secondary (impersonal, goal-directed); in-group vs. out-group; reference groups (used for self-comparison); group size effects (dyad/triad); social networks.
- Organizations — formal organizations, bureaucracy (Weber's ideal type), the iron law of oligarchy, and McDonaldization (efficiency, calculability, predictability, control).
Don't confuse
Role strain (one role, competing demands) vs. role conflict (two different roles clashing).
Self-presentation & managing interactions
We manage the impressions others form of us — Goffman's dramaturgical approach casts social life as theater.
Impression management (self-presentation) is the effort to shape how others perceive us. Goffman's dramaturgical approach: we perform on a front stage (public, in role) and relax in the back stage (private). Related: expressing and detecting emotion (cultural display rules), nonverbal communication, and animal signaling/communication.
Attraction, attachment, aggression & altruism
The forces that bind or divide: what makes us like people, how we bond, why we harm, and why we help.
- Attraction — driven by proximity, the mere-exposure effect (familiarity breeds liking), physical attractiveness, and similarity.
- Attachment — early caregiver bonds (Ainsworth's Strange Situation procedure defined the styles: secure, avoidant, anxious-ambivalent, disorganized; Harlow's monkeys showed contact comfort over food).
- Aggression — biological (amygdala, testosterone) and learned (observational, the frustration-aggression principle) influences.
- Altruism — helping at a cost to oneself; explained by kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and (debated) empathy; relates to the bystander effect and social support (cross-ref 7B).
- Social support and mate choice / foraging round out the biological behaviors AAMC may probe.
Worked question
A medical resident finds that her single role as "resident" demands she be a compassionate caregiver, a diligent learner, and a productive employee at once — and these demands frequently collide. This is best described as: