Sheldon Stryker

Identity salience and psychological centrality: Equivalent, overlapping, or complementary concepts?

Social psychologists currently conceptualize self as composed of many parts; often they visualize the parts as organized hierarchically by differences in salience or psychological centrality. We ask whether these concepts are equivalent, overlapping, or independent, and whether one concept «works» better in an identity theory context. Models relating commitment to role relations to salience and centrality, and salience and centrality to time spent in role, are estimated for four roles and identities related to university students. Results show that identity salience and centrality are independent for some roles, but overlap for others. When they are independent, both are predicted by commitment and both predict time in role, although salience «works» somewhat better in these terms

Commitment, Identity Salience, and Role Behavior: Theory and Research Example

The generic, indeed the defining, task of social psychology is to investigate the interrelationships among society, the social person, and social behavior. Every theoretical perspective or framework in social psychology approaches this immense task by narrowing it, by selecting particular dimensions of society, persons, and behavior as especially worthy of attention. While the ultimate goal for social psychology may be a single, unified theoretical framework sufficiently comprehensive to incorporate “all” the “important” aspects, etc., of the defining conceptual variables of social psychology,1 that goal is not in sight. In the meantime, and before the millenium, all social psychological perspectives or frameworks are partial, selective in their approaches to the world they hope to explicate. That assertion is true of symbolic interactionism, the theoretical framework out of which the theory examined in this chapter develops, although perhaps less so than for most contemporary frameworks in social psychology.

Stress and well-being: The buffering role of locus of control beliefs☆

Data from the 1969 and 1971 panels of the National Longitudinal Survey of Middle-Aged Men are analyzed to assess the mediating effects of locus of control beliefs in the relationship between stressful job and economic events and psycho-physiological well-being. The analyses indicate that men with internal locus of control orientations respond more adequately to stress than do those with external locus of control beliefs. A more detailed examination of the data revealed that men with moderately internal locus of control orientations cope more effectively with stress than those whose locus of control beliefs may be classified as extreme internal, extreme external or moderately external. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Extending self-esteem theory and research : sociological and psychological currents

List of contributors Part I. The Frame: 1. The future of self-esteem: an introduction Timothy J. Owens and Sheldon Stryker 2. The self as social product and social force: Morris Rosenberg and the elaboration of a deceptively simple effect Gregory C. Elliot Part II. Conceptual and Methodological Issues: 3. Theorizing the relationship between self-esteem and identity Laurie H. Ervin and Sheldon Stryker 4. Measuring self-esteem: race, ethnicity, and gender considered Timothy J. Owens and Adam King 5. The self as a social force Viktor Gecas 6. Self-certainty and self-esteem Ron Wright Part III. Social and Life Course Contexts of Self-Esteem: 7. Self-esteem of children and adolescents David H. Demo 8. Failure of the dream: notes for a research program on self-esteem and failed identity in adulthood Norman Goodman 9. Self-esteem and work across the life course Carmi Schooler and Gary Oates 10. Comfort with the self Roberta G. Simmons Part IV. Self-Esteem and Social Inequalities: 11. Self-esteem and race Pamela Braboy Jackson and Sonia P. Lassiter 12. Gender and self-esteem: narrative and efficacy in the negotiation of structural factors Anne Statham and Katherine Rhoades 13. Bereavement and the loss of mattering Leonard I. Pearlin and Allen J. LeBlanc 14. Self-esteem and social inequality L. Edward Wells 15. Self-evaluation and stratification beliefs Matthew O. Hunt Part V. Self-Esteem and Social Problems: 16. The science and politics of self-esteem: schools caught in the middle Martin V. Covington 17. Self-esteem and deviant behavior: a critical review and theoretical integration Howard B. Kaplan 18. Low self-esteem people: a collective portrait Morris Rosenberg and Timothy J. Owens Index.

Structural Precursors to Identity Processes The Role of Proximate Social Structures

This research investigates how participation in college-based science-training programs increases student intention to pursue a scientific career. Using identity theory, we delineate three levels of social structure and conceptualize science-training programs as proximate social structures. Results from a sample of 892 undergraduate science students are supportive of identity theory and indicate that participation in proximate social structures leads to increased commitment to a science identity, increased salience of a science identity, and increased intention to pursue a scientific career. This study contributes to the literature on identity theory by demonstrating how participation in proximate social structures can lead to subsequent identity processes, thus refining the understanding of how society shapes the self and clarifying how social positioning affects choices for behavior. Additionally, the conceptualization of proximate social structures provides an avenue for applications of identity theory to investigations of other social interventions as well as mechanisms leading to social inequality.

The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective and Identity Theory

Symbolic interactionist perspectives or frames underlie most sociological interest in identity. We focus first on the presentation of these perspectives, beginning with the eighteenth-century Scottish moral philosophers and the later work of the philosopher-psychologist George Herbert Mead, tracing their influence on current sociological thinking about social psychology and identity. Two important variants in symbolic interactionist thinking, “traditional symbolic interactionism” and “structural symbolic interactionism,” share fundamentals but exhibit significant variation making for differences in utilities. The essay then focuses on a structural interactionist frame and issues of identity emergent from that frame. The evaluation of a frame rests traditionally on its capacity to serve as supplier of images, assumptions, and concepts used to develop testable theories. That structural symbolic interactionism has this capacity is evidenced in discussions of identity theory, affect control theory, and identity control theory incorporating empirical tests. A second criterion for judging the utility of a frame rests on its capacity to bridge to alternative frames. Discussions of the reciprocal relation of structural symbolic interaction and frames and theories in cognitive social psychology, personality psychology, self-esteem theory, and the social psychology of organizations illustrate that value.

Bereavement and the Loss of Mattering

INTRODUCTION Mattering is an important, albeit overlooked, component of self-concept. First specified by Rosenberg and McCullough (1981), it is potentially a powerful analytic tool. Rosenberg and McCullough viewed it as having multiple dimensions. First, it is based on ones understanding that he or she is the object of anothers attentions. Individuals are not likely to harbor a sense of mattering to a person if they are not an object on whom that person focuses at least some attention. Moreover, in order for attention to contribute to the sense of mattering, the attention must be of a certain quality; specifically, it needs to convey the understanding that one is a valued and important object to the other. The sense of mattering is thus based on the individuals conviction that what he or she thinks, wants, or does is of salient concern to others. A third dimension of mattering, central to the analysis presented in this chapter, is ones perception that others depend on her or him for something needed or wanted. The recognition that another person depends on us can be, according to Rosenberg and McCullough, a powerful reinforcement of mattering. As we will detail, the sense of mattering that stems from the knowledge that the satisfaction of the vital needs of another person depends on our assistance is a pivotal source of mattering in the population being studied here. We will show that the loss of that source can have deleterious consequences.

The Causal Ordering of Prominence and Salience in Identity Theory An Empirical Examination

Identity theory invokes two distinct but related concepts, identity salience and prominence, to explain how the organization of identities that make up the self impacts the probability that a given identity is situationally enacted. However, much extant research has failed to clearly distinguish between salience and prominence, and their empirical relationship has not been adequately investigated, impeding a solid understanding of the significance and role of each in a general theory of the self. This study examines their causal ordering using three waves of panel data from 48 universities focusing on respondents’ identities as science students. Analyses strongly support a causal ordering from prominence to salience. We provide theoretical and empirical grounds to justify this ordering while acknowledging potential variation in its strength across identities. Finally, we offer recommendations about the use of prominence and salience when measures of one or both are available or when analyses use cross-sectional data.

MAKING GOOD ON A PROMISE: THE IMPACT OF LARGER SOCIAL STRUCTURES ON COMMITMENTS

We present here research on the impact of three levels of social structure – large-scale, intermediate, and proximate – on commitment to three types of role-related relationships: family, work, and voluntary associational. This research is carried out using data from a sample survey of Whites, Blacks, and Latinos drawn from a five-county area of southern California. The central problem of this paper is to explicate the social structural sources of commitment to social network relationships. Our interest in this problem arises out of earlier work on Identity Theory.

Social Psychology from the Standpoint of a Structural Symbolic Interactionism: Toward an Interdisciplinary Social Psychology

Publisher Summary Social psychology is ideology and relates to the way human beings are conceptualized. This chapter discusses the structural symbolic interactionaism and developments in the two social psychologies. The common developments and developments in psychological and sociological social psychology are reviewed in the chapter. The ultimate end of an interdisciplinary social psychology and the more immediate goals of maintaining contact and benefitting from one another obviously require that the separate social psychologies be open to mutual influence. There are two main social psychologies with important internal variants––one with a disciplinary base in psychology and the other in sociology. The attack on the theories and methods of contemporary sociological and psychological social psychology that asserts their ideological character follows closely from what has already been said about relevance. The social psychologies have, of course, been criticized from a variety of metatheoretical perspectives implying very different conceptions of human beings, of social interaction, and of society.