The experience of “burnout” is characterized by emotional fatigue and detachment associated with ... more The experience of “burnout” is characterized by emotional fatigue and detachment associated with intensive stress. Burnout is prevalent across personal and professional spheres, with increasing cultural salience. Multiple factors can contribute to burnout. Here, we focus on one: exposure to others’ trauma. This circumstance spans domains from social service professions to social media newsfeeds, with potentially deleterious effects on the self. To understand the conditions under which trauma exposure results in burnout, we propose and test a role–taking model. We do so by presenting study participants (N = 723) with a first–person account of intimate partner violence, stimulating an acute instance of trauma exposure. Findings show that higher levels of role–taking increase burnout, with antecedents and outcomes tied to role-taking’s cognitive and affective components. This study clarifies how burnout occurs within the scope of trauma exposure while expanding role–taking research bey...
The aim of this study is to expand upon the line of research exploring the suitability of Control... more The aim of this study is to expand upon the line of research exploring the suitability of Control Balance Theory (Tittle 1995, 2004), a general theory of deviance, for application to the study of deviance in juvenile populations. Previous research has highlighted the theories ability to predict general deviant behavior in adults, but studies examining the theory’s applicability to adolescents is underrepresented in the literature. Analyzing longitudinal panel study data, we inspect the theory’s ability to predict juvenile deviance and juvenile victimization at two stages in the life course. We generate new, developmentally appropriate hypotheses and test these hypotheses as well as the general hypotheses of the original formulation of Control Balance Theory.
We analyzed data from the National Crime Victimization Survey to test whether individuals from di... more We analyzed data from the National Crime Victimization Survey to test whether individuals from different ethnic groups differentially notify the police after incidents of partner violence. After finding that minority groups notified the police about intimate partner violence (IPV) events more than non-minorities, we found that socioeconomic status differences between minorities and non-minorities explained a statistically significant proportion of the reasons underlying the differences in notification. We suggest that the pattern of our results supports a structural perspective and has potential implications about the subjective and objective efficacy of police involvement in IPV.
In the late spring of 2020 amid a global pandemic, George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapol... more In the late spring of 2020 amid a global pandemic, George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, triggering mass protests under the banner of the Black Lives Matter movement. We take this moment of coinciding crises as our point of analysis observed through the lens of concurrent hashtags on Twitter. Social media content both reflect and construct the social meanings of topics and events. We thus draw from social media to understand how George Floyd and COVID-19 inform and inflect each other, building a dataset from ∼20,000 tweets that unite prevalent hashtags associated with each. Analyses reveal a repeating set of symbolic hooks — death, breath, masks, and voice — encompassing dense and competing narratives about justice and injustice, systemic inequality, degrading trust in institutions, and the changing identity of a nation. These narratives are anchored in the events under study and indexed through co-occurring social media registers. In addition to substantive f...
Role-taking is a basic social process underpinning much of the structural social psychology parad... more Role-taking is a basic social process underpinning much of the structural social psychology paradigm—a paradigm built on empirical studies of human interaction. Yet today, our social worlds are occupied by bots, voice assistants, decision aids, and other machinic entities collectively referred to as artificial intelligence (AI). The integration of AI into daily life presents both challenges and opportunities for social psychologists. Through a vignette study, we investigate role-taking and gender in human-AI relations. Participants read a first-person narrative attributed to either a human or AI, with varied gender presentation based on a feminine or masculine first name. Participants then infer the narrator’s thoughts and feelings and report on their own emotions, producing indicators of cognitive and affective role-taking. Overall, participants score higher on role-taking measures when the narrator is human versus AI. However, gender dynamics differ between Human and AI conditions...
Abstract Purpose Role-taking, perspective taking, and empathy have developed through parallel lit... more Abstract Purpose Role-taking, perspective taking, and empathy have developed through parallel literatures in sociology and psychology. All three concepts address the ways that people attune the self to others’ thoughts and feelings. Despite conceptual and operational overlap, researchers have yet to synthesize existing research across the three concepts. We undertake the task of theoretical synthesis, constructing a model in which role-taking emerges as a multidimensional process that includes perspective taking and empathy as component parts. Approach We review the literatures on role-taking, perspective taking, and empathy across disciplines. Focusing on definitions, measures, and interventions, we discern how the concepts overlap, how they are distinct, and how they work together in theoretically meaningful ways. Findings The review identifies two key axes on which each concept varies: the relative roles of affect and cognition, and the relative emphasis on self and structure. The review highlights the cognitive nature of perspective taking, the affective nature of empathy, and the structural nature of role-taking. In a move toward theoretical synthesis, we propose a definition that centers role-taking as a sociological construct, with perspective taking and empathy representing cognition and affect, respectively. Social implications Role-taking is an important part of selfhood and community social life. It is a skill that varies in patterned ways, including along lines of status and power. Theoretical synthesis clarifies the process of role-taking and fosters the construction of effective interventions aimed at equalizing role-taking in interpersonal interaction.
This article examines how social media can incorporate into the higher education setting in meani... more This article examines how social media can incorporate into the higher education setting in meaningful ways using optional participation, active content production, and active moderation. The authors use two authoethnographic case studies. The first case pertains to pedagogical use through a student created and maintained Facebook group for a Sociology of Gender course. The second case pertains to the construction and maintenance of a participatory learning culture through a departmental Facebook page. The article includes accounts from each case and an analysis of the successful components.
Research shows a clear intersection between humor and political communication online as “big data... more Research shows a clear intersection between humor and political communication online as “big data” analyses demonstrate humorous content achieving disproportionate attention across social media platforms. What remains unclear is the degree to which politics are fodder for “silly” content production vis-à-vis humor as a serious political tool. To answer this question, we scraped Twitter data from two cases in which humor and politics converged during the 2016 US presidential election: Hillary Clinton referring to Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” and Donald Trump calling Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman” during a televised debate. Taking a “small data” approach, we find funny content enacting meaningful political work including expressions of opposition, political identification, and displays of civic support. Furthermore, comparing humor style between partisan cases shows the partial-but incomplete-breakdown of humor’s notoriously firm boundaries. Partisan patterns reveal ...
Using 77 status-imbalanced dyads, we experimentally test the effect of status on identity stabili... more Using 77 status-imbalanced dyads, we experimentally test the effect of status on identity stability, setting the stage for research on identity change. From an identity theory perspective, we hypothesize that those with higher status will maintain greater identity stability over the course of a task-oriented interaction than their relatively lower status partners. We further test the role of identity-discrepant information. Results indicate that higher status actors are better able to maintain stable identity meanings than those with lower status. However, this relationship dissipates when situational meanings contrast with high-status actors’ self-views. More generally, this indicates that high status positively affects identity stability, yet high-status actors remain vulnerable to situational inputs.
Women who choose to stay in abusive relationships occupy a morally ambiguous identity category. T... more Women who choose to stay in abusive relationships occupy a morally ambiguous identity category. They are at once pitied for their victimhood and shamed for their participation in it. We examine debates over women who stay using the highly publicized case of Janay Rice, who actively defended her professional football player husband, Ray Rice, following the release of a video in which he knocked her unconscious. Specifically, we engage in sentiment analysis and qualitative coding of discourse on Twitter following key points in the case (N ¼ 3,761). We show that negative sentiment towards Ray Rice, the media, and the National Football League act as clear mechanisms of boundary reinforcement through which abusers, exploiters, and enablers of abuse are morally censured. In contrast, Janay Rice becomes the site of a boundary war. Moral detractors accuse Janay of greed, mental incapacity , and jeopardizing women's safety and empowerment. Moral defenders neutralize Janay through allusions to pure victimhood and medical disorder, and valorize Janay as courageous , empowered, and devoted to her family. These moral debates, though centering on a single incident, represent the collective negotiation of meanings around women who stay. K E Y W O R D S : morality work; boundary work; symbolic boundaries; intimate partner violence; gender; social media. Kai T. Erikson (1962) famously argued that moral boundaries are formed, debated, and reinforced at the public scaffold (p. 310). Through the spectacle of punishment, society stakes collective claim on acceptable and unacceptable behavior, defining a social image against those who break established norms and threaten established values. Today, the public scaffold is not a physical structure, but an ecology of digital and electronic platforms. Both professional journalists and everyday citizens utilize these platforms to respond to, and frame stories about, the public affairs of everyday life. In what follows, we use one such platform—Twitter—to analyze public sentiment toward a particular public affair—the recorded beating of Janay Rice at the hands of her professional football player husband (then fiancé), Ray Rice. In doing so, we interrogate the debate surrounding women who stay as a moral identity category. Using both sentiment analysis and qualitative coding, we show that although clear moral boundaries censure abusive men and exonerate abused women, the lines blur when the abused elects to maintain a connection with her partner. No longer pure victims, yet injured parties nonetheless, the moral position of women who stay is a subject of public debate. While the extensive moral derision of Ray acted as a means of boundary reinforcement, Janay became the object of a boundary war.
The experience of “burnout” is characterized by emotional fatigue and detachment associated with ... more The experience of “burnout” is characterized by emotional fatigue and detachment associated with intensive stress. Burnout is prevalent across personal and professional spheres, with increasing cultural salience. Multiple factors can contribute to burnout. Here, we focus on one: exposure to others’ trauma. This circumstance spans domains from social service professions to social media newsfeeds, with potentially deleterious effects on the self. To understand the conditions under which trauma exposure results in burnout, we propose and test a role–taking model. We do so by presenting study participants (N = 723) with a first–person account of intimate partner violence, stimulating an acute instance of trauma exposure. Findings show that higher levels of role–taking increase burnout, with antecedents and outcomes tied to role-taking’s cognitive and affective components. This study clarifies how burnout occurs within the scope of trauma exposure while expanding role–taking research bey...
The aim of this study is to expand upon the line of research exploring the suitability of Control... more The aim of this study is to expand upon the line of research exploring the suitability of Control Balance Theory (Tittle 1995, 2004), a general theory of deviance, for application to the study of deviance in juvenile populations. Previous research has highlighted the theories ability to predict general deviant behavior in adults, but studies examining the theory’s applicability to adolescents is underrepresented in the literature. Analyzing longitudinal panel study data, we inspect the theory’s ability to predict juvenile deviance and juvenile victimization at two stages in the life course. We generate new, developmentally appropriate hypotheses and test these hypotheses as well as the general hypotheses of the original formulation of Control Balance Theory.
We analyzed data from the National Crime Victimization Survey to test whether individuals from di... more We analyzed data from the National Crime Victimization Survey to test whether individuals from different ethnic groups differentially notify the police after incidents of partner violence. After finding that minority groups notified the police about intimate partner violence (IPV) events more than non-minorities, we found that socioeconomic status differences between minorities and non-minorities explained a statistically significant proportion of the reasons underlying the differences in notification. We suggest that the pattern of our results supports a structural perspective and has potential implications about the subjective and objective efficacy of police involvement in IPV.
In the late spring of 2020 amid a global pandemic, George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapol... more In the late spring of 2020 amid a global pandemic, George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, triggering mass protests under the banner of the Black Lives Matter movement. We take this moment of coinciding crises as our point of analysis observed through the lens of concurrent hashtags on Twitter. Social media content both reflect and construct the social meanings of topics and events. We thus draw from social media to understand how George Floyd and COVID-19 inform and inflect each other, building a dataset from ∼20,000 tweets that unite prevalent hashtags associated with each. Analyses reveal a repeating set of symbolic hooks — death, breath, masks, and voice — encompassing dense and competing narratives about justice and injustice, systemic inequality, degrading trust in institutions, and the changing identity of a nation. These narratives are anchored in the events under study and indexed through co-occurring social media registers. In addition to substantive f...
Role-taking is a basic social process underpinning much of the structural social psychology parad... more Role-taking is a basic social process underpinning much of the structural social psychology paradigm—a paradigm built on empirical studies of human interaction. Yet today, our social worlds are occupied by bots, voice assistants, decision aids, and other machinic entities collectively referred to as artificial intelligence (AI). The integration of AI into daily life presents both challenges and opportunities for social psychologists. Through a vignette study, we investigate role-taking and gender in human-AI relations. Participants read a first-person narrative attributed to either a human or AI, with varied gender presentation based on a feminine or masculine first name. Participants then infer the narrator’s thoughts and feelings and report on their own emotions, producing indicators of cognitive and affective role-taking. Overall, participants score higher on role-taking measures when the narrator is human versus AI. However, gender dynamics differ between Human and AI conditions...
Abstract Purpose Role-taking, perspective taking, and empathy have developed through parallel lit... more Abstract Purpose Role-taking, perspective taking, and empathy have developed through parallel literatures in sociology and psychology. All three concepts address the ways that people attune the self to others’ thoughts and feelings. Despite conceptual and operational overlap, researchers have yet to synthesize existing research across the three concepts. We undertake the task of theoretical synthesis, constructing a model in which role-taking emerges as a multidimensional process that includes perspective taking and empathy as component parts. Approach We review the literatures on role-taking, perspective taking, and empathy across disciplines. Focusing on definitions, measures, and interventions, we discern how the concepts overlap, how they are distinct, and how they work together in theoretically meaningful ways. Findings The review identifies two key axes on which each concept varies: the relative roles of affect and cognition, and the relative emphasis on self and structure. The review highlights the cognitive nature of perspective taking, the affective nature of empathy, and the structural nature of role-taking. In a move toward theoretical synthesis, we propose a definition that centers role-taking as a sociological construct, with perspective taking and empathy representing cognition and affect, respectively. Social implications Role-taking is an important part of selfhood and community social life. It is a skill that varies in patterned ways, including along lines of status and power. Theoretical synthesis clarifies the process of role-taking and fosters the construction of effective interventions aimed at equalizing role-taking in interpersonal interaction.
This article examines how social media can incorporate into the higher education setting in meani... more This article examines how social media can incorporate into the higher education setting in meaningful ways using optional participation, active content production, and active moderation. The authors use two authoethnographic case studies. The first case pertains to pedagogical use through a student created and maintained Facebook group for a Sociology of Gender course. The second case pertains to the construction and maintenance of a participatory learning culture through a departmental Facebook page. The article includes accounts from each case and an analysis of the successful components.
Research shows a clear intersection between humor and political communication online as “big data... more Research shows a clear intersection between humor and political communication online as “big data” analyses demonstrate humorous content achieving disproportionate attention across social media platforms. What remains unclear is the degree to which politics are fodder for “silly” content production vis-à-vis humor as a serious political tool. To answer this question, we scraped Twitter data from two cases in which humor and politics converged during the 2016 US presidential election: Hillary Clinton referring to Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” and Donald Trump calling Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman” during a televised debate. Taking a “small data” approach, we find funny content enacting meaningful political work including expressions of opposition, political identification, and displays of civic support. Furthermore, comparing humor style between partisan cases shows the partial-but incomplete-breakdown of humor’s notoriously firm boundaries. Partisan patterns reveal ...
Using 77 status-imbalanced dyads, we experimentally test the effect of status on identity stabili... more Using 77 status-imbalanced dyads, we experimentally test the effect of status on identity stability, setting the stage for research on identity change. From an identity theory perspective, we hypothesize that those with higher status will maintain greater identity stability over the course of a task-oriented interaction than their relatively lower status partners. We further test the role of identity-discrepant information. Results indicate that higher status actors are better able to maintain stable identity meanings than those with lower status. However, this relationship dissipates when situational meanings contrast with high-status actors’ self-views. More generally, this indicates that high status positively affects identity stability, yet high-status actors remain vulnerable to situational inputs.
Women who choose to stay in abusive relationships occupy a morally ambiguous identity category. T... more Women who choose to stay in abusive relationships occupy a morally ambiguous identity category. They are at once pitied for their victimhood and shamed for their participation in it. We examine debates over women who stay using the highly publicized case of Janay Rice, who actively defended her professional football player husband, Ray Rice, following the release of a video in which he knocked her unconscious. Specifically, we engage in sentiment analysis and qualitative coding of discourse on Twitter following key points in the case (N ¼ 3,761). We show that negative sentiment towards Ray Rice, the media, and the National Football League act as clear mechanisms of boundary reinforcement through which abusers, exploiters, and enablers of abuse are morally censured. In contrast, Janay Rice becomes the site of a boundary war. Moral detractors accuse Janay of greed, mental incapacity , and jeopardizing women's safety and empowerment. Moral defenders neutralize Janay through allusions to pure victimhood and medical disorder, and valorize Janay as courageous , empowered, and devoted to her family. These moral debates, though centering on a single incident, represent the collective negotiation of meanings around women who stay. K E Y W O R D S : morality work; boundary work; symbolic boundaries; intimate partner violence; gender; social media. Kai T. Erikson (1962) famously argued that moral boundaries are formed, debated, and reinforced at the public scaffold (p. 310). Through the spectacle of punishment, society stakes collective claim on acceptable and unacceptable behavior, defining a social image against those who break established norms and threaten established values. Today, the public scaffold is not a physical structure, but an ecology of digital and electronic platforms. Both professional journalists and everyday citizens utilize these platforms to respond to, and frame stories about, the public affairs of everyday life. In what follows, we use one such platform—Twitter—to analyze public sentiment toward a particular public affair—the recorded beating of Janay Rice at the hands of her professional football player husband (then fiancé), Ray Rice. In doing so, we interrogate the debate surrounding women who stay as a moral identity category. Using both sentiment analysis and qualitative coding, we show that although clear moral boundaries censure abusive men and exonerate abused women, the lines blur when the abused elects to maintain a connection with her partner. No longer pure victims, yet injured parties nonetheless, the moral position of women who stay is a subject of public debate. While the extensive moral derision of Ray acted as a means of boundary reinforcement, Janay became the object of a boundary war.
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