Steven Hitlin

Time, Self, and the Curiously Abstract Concept of Agency*

The term “agency” is quite slippery and is used differently depending on the epistemological roots and goals of scholars who employ it. Distressingly, the sociological literature on the concept rarely addresses relevant social psychological research. We take a social behaviorist approach to agency by suggesting that individual temporal orientations are underutilized in conceptualizing this core sociological concept. Different temporal foci—the actors engaged response to situational circumstances—implicate different forms of agency. This article offers a theoretical model involving four analytical types of agency (“existential,” “identity,” “pragmatic,” and “life course”) that are often conflated across treatments of the topic. Each mode of agency overlaps with established social psychological literatures, most notably about the self, enabling scholars to anchor overly abstract treatments of agency within established research literatures.

Handbook of the sociology of morality

10.1057/9781137391865 The Palgrave Handbook of Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, 7 Modern Roots of the Sociology of Love: Tolstoy, Addams. 2014. the moral background: an inquiry into the history of business ethics. princeton in: handbook of the sociology of morality. edited by hitlin and vaisey (pdf). “Morally Bonded and Bounded: A Sociological Introduction to Neurology. In Handbook of the Sociology of Morality, Springer (Eds. Hitlin, Steven and Stephen.

Agency: An Empirical Model of an Abstract Concept

Abstract Agency is a core life course principle that represents individual influences within structured pathways. Discussions of agency are rarely related to empirical indicators. We offer an empirical model that joins together previous treatments of agency and adds a subjective sense of ones life chances (“optimism”). Using nationally representative data, we present a series of models supporting this constructs measurement properties and utility for predicting social psychological and behavioral outcomes. Our model represents how social actors understand their own skills as well as their life chances and take both into account as they construct their life courses within constrained options.

Reconceptualizing Agency within the Life Course: The Power of Looking Ahead.

Empirical treatments of agency have not caught up with theoretical explication; empirical projects almost always focus on concurrent beliefs about one’s ability to act successfully without sufficiently attending to temporality. The authors suggest that understanding the modern life course necessitates a multidimensional understanding of subjective agency involving (a) perceived capacities and (b) perceived life chances, or expectations about what life holds in store. The authors also suggest that a proper understanding of agency’s potential power within a life course necessitates moving beyond the domain-specific expectations more typical of past sociological work. Using the Youth Development Study, the authors employ a scale of general life expectations in adolescence to explore the potential influence of a general sense of optimistic life expectations in addition to the traditional approach on a range of important outcomes.

Doing good, feeling good: Values and the self 's moral center

Rarely do social psychological treatments of the self highlight its moral dimension. We expect people with prosocial values to feel better about themselves when enacting such values. Social identities situate individuals within social groups and wider social structures; successfully enacting important identities increases feelings of self-esteem. This paper looks at individual differences and demonstrates that enacting a social identity (volunteering) contributes more to feelings of self-esteem for those individuals whose values align with that identity. Volunteering may increase self-esteem in general; but for those who claim the identity and hold especially prosocial values, volunteering becomes an important route toward positive self-evaluation.

Copresence: Revisiting a Building Block for Social Interaction Theories

Copresence, the idea that the presence of other actors shapes individual behavior, links macro- and micro-theorizing about social interaction. Traditionally, scholars have focused on the physical p...Copresence, the idea that the presence of other actors shapes individual behavior, links macro- and micro-theorizing about social interaction. Traditionally, scholars have focused on the physical proximity of other people, assuming copresence to be a given, objective condition. However, recent empirical evidence on technologically mediated (e.g., e-mail), imaginary (e.g., prayer), and parasocial (e.g., watching a television show) interactions challenges classic copresence assumptions. In this article we reconceptualize copresence to provide theoretical building blocks (definitions, assumptions, and propositions) for a revitalized research program that allows for the explicit assessment of copresence as an endogenous, subjective variable dynamically related to social context. We treat copresence as the degree to which an actor perceives mutual entrainment (i.e., synchronization of attention, emotion, and behavior) with another actor. We demonstrate the ramifications of this reconceptualization for classic theorizing on micro-macro linkages and contemporary research questions, including methodological artifacts in laboratory research and disparities in patient-provider rapport.

Values, Attitudes, and Ideologies: Explicit and Implicit Constructs Shaping Perception and Action

Human perceptions are vital cognitive-emotional constructs for understanding belief, judgment and action. This chapter explores how beliefs – values, attitudes, and ideologies – are reciprocally influenced by social structure, as well as how and when these constructs influence situated behavior. We pay particular attention to the recent surge of research on implicit beliefs, vital for a social psychological understanding of the socialized actor.

Values, Personal Identity, and the Moral Self

This chapter outlines a theoretical backdrop for incorporating research on human values into the study of the self. The chapter takes a sociological, interactional perspective suggesting that socially shaped patterns can be empirically determined underlying the supposedly idiosyncratic notion of “personal identity.” Human beings anchor their sense of self across situations within feelings of right and wrong and the importance they place on various abstract, desirable goals. Values allow the study of this aspect of personal identity and allow bridges to be built with the long-standing sociological literature on the relationship of social structure and individuals’ values. I illustrate how this focus on the moral dimension of values operates at two well-established levels of the self – cognition and emotion – and sets the stage for the broad development of a theory of the moral actor over time.

Agency and Mental Health: A Transition to Adulthood Paradox

Building on calls within the health literature for a deeper engagement with the concept of agency, we utilize nationally representative survey data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 13,592) to develop an empirical conception of the traditional treatment of health agency focused on two social psychological constructs that build upon current foci on personal control within the stress process model: (1) “subjective vitality” and (2) a forward-looking orientation (“optimism”). We find an interesting paradox: adolescents with higher health-based agency early in the transition to adulthood have significantly higher status attainment (occupational and educational) outcomes, but early mental health advantages disappear over the transition to adulthood. This suggests that while subjective beliefs about health agency put adolescents on trajectories toward higher socioeconomic status, they also set them up for declines in mental health due to unachieved expectations. There seem to be objective upsides and subjective downsides of possessing greater agency in adolescence.

Morality and Emotions

Sociologists have long considered morality to be a core aspect of social life, though direct interest in the topic has waxed and waned in the past century. Research in this area has been increasing over the past decade, however, especially as cognitive disciplines highlight the importance of emotions for understanding moral development, moral action, and the power of moral codes to circumscribe individual functioning. This chapter summarizes these parallel bodies of work as they can inform sociological understanding of emotions and their cultural milieu. We begin with a brief overview of the extant research on the role emotions play in cognitive processing and decision making. We then discuss the universality and cultural specificity of moral emotions before tracing arguments about the cultural moral systems that, often implicitly, shape individual moral feeling, and conclude with a call for more sociological research on the cultural facets of moral emotions.