Gregory P. Stone

Embarrassment and the Analysis of Role Requirements

Since embarrassment incapacitates persons for continued role performance, it can provide an indicator of basic requirements of role performance. Study of one thousand instances of recalled embarrassment revealed three major requirements: identity, poise, and confidence in established identity and poise. The analysis of identity reveals the significance of adjunct roles and reserve and relict identities. Disturbances of poise revolve about the handling of spaces, props, equipment, clothing, and the body. Violations of confidence are prevented by performance norms. Finally, deliberate embarrassment is shown to have major social functions.

Local Intimacy in a Middle-Sized City

This Study demonstrates that the residents of a middle-sized city generally establish and maintain intimate relationships with other urbanites. These intimate relationship are both locality-centered and spatially diffuse. While locality-centered intimacy is found in high socioeconomic areas, residents of low socioeconomic areas report that neighbors are their most frequent source of friends. This anomaly may be explained, in part, by the fact that intracity mobility is greater and carried on over a larger territory among lower socioeconomic groupings. Hence, intimacy within these groups, although established on the basis of residential propinquity, is spatially diffuse.