David Schweingruber

SHAPING THE SELVES OF YOUNG SALESPEOPLE THROUGH EMOTION MANAGEMENT

This article describes how a door-to-door sales company trains sales people to engage in emotion management. Company managers and salespeople engage in emotion mining, the search for and development of potential emotional capital in salespeople’s biographies. This emotional capital forms an emotional bridge between a salesperson’s current self and the self that is supposed to be developed for the job. The article emphasizes the reflexive relationship between emotion management and the self. Salespeople manage their emotions in an attempt to develop a new, better self, which in turn will be better equipped to do emotion management.

“Popping the Question” When the Answer is Known: The Engagement Proposal as Performance

Abstract This paper analyzes the engagement proposal as a pre-wedding ritual that couples use to indicate to others that they are going to be getting married. The proposal is treated as a formality by the couples, but it is an important marker for their relationship. Based on interviews with engaged heterosexual Midwestern couples, we show how a couple works together to plan the engagement. The engagement proposal is a performance for two audiences, first for the woman and then for the couples friends and family as they use the story to demonstrate they are an engaged couple ready to get married. Standard signals are used to convey these messages, and failing to use them may confuse the audience. Although the proposal is a “surprise,” the woman works backstage to ensure that it is carried out according to her specifications. Based on this investigation, we argue that in the absence of any ideological challenge to the “traditional” proposal, the proposal as performance has more significance than other issues, such as gender-role inequality.

Childhood Physical Punishment and Problem Solving in Marriage

Drawing from social learning theories and symbolic interactionist understandings of social life, the authors suggest that physical punishment teaches aggressive and controlling strategies for solving the problems of living together and hinders the development of important problem-solving skills, specifically the ability to role take with others. These strategies and skills become part of an individual’s toolkit for problem resolution within his or her marriage. The analysis is based on 188 married couples in Washington State who participated in a longitudinal study of the first 2 years of marriage. The analysis reveals the following: Individuals who were physically punished during childhood are more likely to engage in physical and verbal aggression with their spouses, individuals who were physically punished during childhood are more controlling with their spouses, and individuals who were physically punished during childhood are less able to take their spouse’s perspective.

SUCCESS THROUGH A POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE?: The Role of Positive Thinking in Door-to-Door Sales

This case study focuses on the use of a motivational philosophy called “positive mental attitude” (PMA) by door-to-door salespersons. While agreeing with Leidners finding in her study of a similar company that PMA functions as a form of worker control, I show here how the flexibility of PMA makes it useful to salespersons, who draw upon it to deal with everyday work problems. Dealers draw upon their personal goals and values to form motivational foci—the content of the positive thinking they wish to maintain—and attempt to keep these thoughts in mind through motivational practices learned during their training.