Drawing on 100 interviews with adults in Ontario, Canada, this study examines how people develop different responses to boredom across their lives. I identify four boredom orientations (avoidance, acceptance, embrace, resignation) and show how family practices and life circumstances shape their formation and transformation from childhood through adulthood. The findings reveal that childhood socialization creates enduring patterns, with structured upbringings fostering persistent avoidance and unstructured upbringings cultivating greater adaptability. Current circumstances also matter: Settled life phases favor acceptance, while unsettled phases marked by job loss, immigration, or caregiving roles intensify resignation, especially when gender and immigration status limit compensatory possibilities.
Research on the college-to-career transition emphasizes structural inequalities in opportunities and outcomes yet gives limited attention to how emotions are socially patterned during this high-stakes passage. This gap matters because emotion cultures and feeling rules shape both how students experience the search and how they are evaluated by others. We analyze survey data from 2,060 undergraduates at a large public university who were asked to provide words describing how they feel about the job search. These responses were standardized using peer-based ratings to construct an emotional positivity score, a measure that blends lexical openness with comparability. Findings show that stress and anxiety dominated students’ first associations and that positivity most often appeared second, producing layered mixtures of apprehension and excitement. Regression models reveal systematic variation in emotional positivity across demographic backgrounds, academic profiles, majors, and career aspirations. Our results highlight the patterned ways students orient to the job search, demonstrating how social location organizes feeling rules in transitional contexts and extending theories of emotion culture to a critical life course passage.
We report the results from an experiment that examines how and when joint tasks and financial incentive structures promote group performance on an objective task. The purpose is to identify behavioral mechanisms produced by these factors that link structural interdependencies to task accuracy. The context is a cooperative four-person group that seeks to resolve a collective problem (i.e., find a solution to a survival task). The experiment manipulates task jointness and group-based incentives. Subjects freely interacted in their assigned groups over a 10-minute period, and three behavioral mechanisms were derived from the coding of their interaction: nonverbal synchronization (eye contact, body orientation, task focus), evaluative engagement (statements of agreement and disagreement), and external (observers) assessments of the group's cohesion. The results indicate that (1) task jointness is a stronger predictor of group performance than the group incentive structure, (2) nonverbal synchronization and the frequency of evaluative engagement mediate the effect of task jointness, and (3) the assessments of group's cohesion reveal a negative impact on group performance. This study finds that task jointness is more important to task performance (accuracy) than collective incentives because of the interaction patterns unleashed by joint tasks.
The theory of planned behavior (TPB) has been substantially integrated to understand various behavioral decisions. Nevertheless, the significance and magnitude regarding the impacts of the TPB constructs, including attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavior control (PBC), on intention to use a certain transport mode have been argued all the time. This study uses a propensity score matching approach to identify the "pure" impact of TPB constructs on people's behavioral intention to use a certain transport mode, including bus, car, and e-bike. With the spuriousness caused by individual socioeconomic characteristics and transport mode use habits controlled, significant pure impacts of attitude, subjective norm, and PBC on mode use intention are observed in all situations. What is more, the significant role of a mode-specific subjective norm in changing people's intention to use a certain transport mode is explicitly highlighted. The results demonstrate that changes in mode-specific attitude, subjective norm, and PBC are expected to stimulate changes in intention to use the target mode, which is important for transport administrators to design intervention strategies to guide the public's travel behavior toward a more sustainable direction.
Public beliefs about the causes of good and bad health are well studied but inadequately theorized. Using nationally representative survey data and a large sample (N = 6,617), this study explores the potentially conflicting roles of system justification, politics, and personal experience. The study finds evidence for system justification, at least a contingent version that allows for self-serving biases. Multivariate regression models reveal that people believe that health reflects behavior, but those in poor health are more likely to believe that health also reflects external causes. In addition, beliefs about the causes of health have a strong political dimension, consistent with a status quo of presumed personal responsibility. Conservatives are less likely to believe health is a product of the social environment. Yet personal experiences with poor health are associated with these commitments, as revealed in multiplicative interactions. Among Republicans, experiences with poor health are positively associated with a more social view of health. Beliefs about the role of government in health follow a similar pattern. Indeed, predictions from the model indicate that differences between the political right and left deteriorate as health declines, producing majority support for government intervention in health care even among those who identify as very conservative. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there may be some political commitments people abandon when their health fails.
The Cooley-Mead Address presented an overview of the development of identity theory over the past five decades. This development of identity theory has followed the scientific pathway of replication, refinement, and advancement of new ideas to inform the study of roles, persons, and group identities in everyday life. This paper outlines the concepts that are foundational to identity theory, the measurement of identity, the theoretical refinements that highlight the organic nature of the theory that have led to greater specification and the addition of conceptual measures of the theory, the empirical research and methodological development in the concepts of identity theory, and suggestions for future research.
This research examines social class differences in attitudes toward secondhand products. The results of two studies reveal that social class is negatively associated with secondhand product evaluation. Lower (vs. higher) social class individuals are unfavorable toward secondhand products. The degree of concern for face, furthermore, moderates the relationship between social class and attitudes toward secondhand products. Specifically, social class difference is pronounced only when concern for face is low (vs. high) such that lower (vs. higher) class individuals are unfavorable toward secondhand products when they are low in concern for face. Social class differences in attitudes toward secondhand products dissipate when individuals are high in concern for face. This research makes theoretical contributions to secondhand product and social class literature and suggests public policy implications.
When do declarative and nondeclarative forms of personal culture align or fail to align, and with what consequences? This article uses the case of identification with two central and potentially competing societal institutions involved in the construction of reality, science and religion, to understand identity misalignment-the lack of correspondence between explicit and implicit identification. Using novel data collected from a sample of 1,436 U.S. respondents, we compare explicit (declarative) identification as scientific and religious with implicit (nondeclarative) identification with science and religion using an Implicit Association Test. Identity misalignment is more common among those individuals who explicitly identify as scientific than it is among those individuals who explicitly identify as religious. Experiences with religious institutions, especially in families of origin, are associated with science identity misalignment. Accounting for the relationship between measures of explicit and implicit identity helps explain individuals' attitudes toward science and religion and views on public policies that support science or expand religious rights, net of explicit beliefs alone. This article sheds new light on socialization by providing evidence of how the relationship between declarative and nondeclarative forms of culture varies by institutional domains.
Pronoun sharing has become a common inclusion practice in U.S. schools and workplaces. Drawing on normative discrimination theories, however, we predict that pronoun sharing can lead to negative evaluations of people who share nonconventional pronouns. In a preregistered survey experiment (N = 1,516), participants rated a fictitious potential teammate whose name and pronouns were varied. Participants reported significantly less comfort working with a person with nonconventional pronouns and perceived them as a significantly worse teammate than someone with either conventional pronouns or no pronouns, effects that were mediated by the perception that people with nonconventional pronouns are less warm and more interpersonally demanding. These negative perceptions were significantly more common among conservative respondents, whereas liberal respondents expressed bias toward people who did not share pronouns. In open responses, gender-minority participants described pronoun-sharing practices as potentially either inclusive or exposing. Our findings point to the importance of ensuring pronoun sharing is voluntary.
Drawing on 40 interviews with LGBTQ+ people about their health experiences, we examine the consequences of identity nonrecognition—which occurs when mutual recognition of the situationally relevant identities for self and other in an encounter cannot be established—and discordance in the definition of the situation. We found that respondents experienced identity nonrecognition in two ways: (1) identity reductionism, or moments when providers leaned on medical authority, heteronormativity, and essentialist ideas to reduce their LGBTQ+ patients to biological entities, and (2) identity rejection, or interactional moments between patient and provider outside of medical decision-making when respondents asserted their gender and/or sexual identities mattered in the health encounter but found that providers rejected these identities. This work contributes to social psychological theories of identities and medical sociology scholarship by situating identity nonrecognition as an overlooked but important identity-relevant stressor, examining the importance of power differentials in defining the situation, and offering new conceptual tools for understanding the perpetuation of inequality.
This study explores how social identities, behaviors, and settings interact to shape urban dynamics, with gentrification and neighborhood stigmatization as example phenomena of city life. Using affect control theory (ACT) simulations, we demonstrate how social identities and behaviors recursively influence the affective meanings attributed to urban settings, thus driving local cultural change. In the case of gentrification, the simulation illustrates how positive identities, such as those related to the creative class, transform stigmatized neighborhoods into attractive spaces. Analyses of segregated areas reveal the self-reinforcing cycle of stigma. The simulations are based on a comparative empirical analysis of impression formation in settings in French and German language cultures. Our findings highlight overall similarities in impression formation across these cultures, with some subtle differences: Context effects of behavior are somewhat stronger among German survey respondents, and French participants rely more heavily on fundamental sentiments. This study shows how ACT simulations bridge the gap between qualitative and quantitative analysis and between micro and macro level of analysis, offering a novel framework for explaining urban interactions and local cultural change.
The present work takes a multimethod approach to examine young U.S. adults' engagement across political, religious, and civic activities. Of key interest was how their motivations to engage (internal vs. external), emotions when thinking about the cause (other-focused vs. self-focused), and political ideology related to their past and future engagement. We collected 1,000 survey responses and 30 interview transcripts of young adults ages 18 to 29 to identify patterns in these outcomes. We argue that although motivation of varying sources can drive engagement, the source of young people's motivation (internal vs. external) has critical implications for whether social engagement is short-lived or potentially persists into the future. In addition, the motivational and emotional reactions that the participants had to their engagement varied as a function of their political ideology. Implications for understanding the factors that may strengthen engagement and a deeper consideration of the nature of external motivation are discussed.
How do perceptions of the economy moderate the association between financial strain and powerlessness? This article tests four novel hypotheses using two nationally representative samples of American (N = 2,466) and Canadian (N = 2,501) workers collected in late 2023. The amplified threat and protective economic optimism hypotheses suggest that for those who are financially struggling, perceiving the economy as "poor" is associated with more powerlessness and perceiving it as "good" is associated with less powerlessness, respectively, relative to those who perceive the economy as "fair"; the comparison-protection and meritocratic attribution hypotheses propose the opposite. We find support for the meritocratic attribution hypothesis in both countries. Those who are financially struggling report higher levels of powerlessness if they perceive a good economy than if they perceive a poor or fair economy. In other words, the positive association between personal financial strain and powerlessness is stronger among those who perceive a good economy. By contrast, we do not find evidence that perceiving a poor economy weakens financial strain's association with powerlessness relative to those who perceive a fair economy.
The relationship between fear of death and religiosity remains unclear, with research offering conflicting evidence. Existing theories--including buffering theory, terror management theory, death apprehension theory, and curvilinearity theory-have struggled to reconcile findings that suggest positive, negative, or curvilinear relationships. This study introduces a novel framework to categorize identity meanings. Grounded in identity theory, I distinguish between behavioral religiosity meanings (e.g., religious attendance) and attitudinal religiosity meanings (e.g., self-perceived religiosity). Using Chapman Survey of American Fears (Waves 2-7) data sets, I find that results reveal opposing effects: behavioral religiosity meanings are negatively related to fear of death, and attitudinal religiosity meanings are positively related to fear of death. These findings clarify mixed results in the literature, suggesting that underlying identity meanings not only can be categorized but also have differential implications for an identity. This study advances identity theory by categorizing identity meanings and calls for nuanced analyses of religiosity's emotional consequences, informing theoretical discourse and practical interventions.
As generative artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly adopted, understanding how its usage is perceived has become crucial for theory and practice. Our investigation highlights how disclosing AI usage reduces trust by triggering legitimacy concerns arising from deviations from taken-for-granted human-centered norms. Drawing on a micro-institutional perspective, we unpack legitimacy into its dimensions and propose that they operate via three context-specific processes-perceived typicality, commitment, and authenticity-that jointly account for the erosion of trust resulting from AI disclosure. An initial structured content-analytic study of directed written interviews reveals that people indeed voice these legitimacy concerns when scrutinizing AI usage and addresses research questions about how such concerns manifest across facets. A subsequent vignette experiment shows that disclosing AI usage sequentially diminishes perceptions of typicality, commitment, and authenticity, ultimately lowering trust. A supplementary replication experiment confirms this pattern. Altogether, our investigation clarifies the paradoxical nature of transparency, advances empirical testing of legitimacy theory, and helps bridge the literatures on trust and institutional theory.
Framing is a commonly recommended strategy for building consensus on issues such as climate change and the pandemic response. These recommendations stem from research identifying potent messages across audiences and domains. Framing research, dominated by survey experiments, often overlooks crucial social context, however, limiting direct applicability of findings. This disconnect motivates our central question: How effective are framing strategies in socially embedded informal communication networks? We develop an agent-based model incorporating three contextual elements known to moderate strategic framing: (1) the identities of interacting parties, (2) the competitive nature of political communication, and (3) the structure of communication networks. Simulation results demonstrate that framing's effect on aggregate opinion is strongly diminished when modest levels of partisan homophily or potential for cross-partisan backlash are introduced. Under conditions of homophily, strategic framing by one group can actually widen partisan cleavages by creating echo chambers of highly persuasive individuals. Alternative interventions, such as increasing cross-partisan interaction or depoliticizing existing interactions, may be even more effective than framing efforts in informal networks. When framing campaigns appear effective, as many professional campaigns do, their success may stem less from the frame's persuasive power itself and more from how communication professionals strategically navigate the social constraints we identify.
Although homophily is a widely studied phenomenon, less is known about how choice homophily forms at the micro level. Leveraging identity theory, this article uses qualitative methods to trace a four-stage process of identity matching within the case site of psychotherapy. Drawing from 90 interviews with therapists and 30 interviews with clients of therapy, I show how client and therapist (1) make salient certain identity meanings and (2) attempt an initial identity verification. Then, as client and therapist enter the therapy room, they (3) negotiate this perceived identity verification toward an identity match. This process generates safety and trust and leads to a final stage in which therapist and client (4) deepen their identity-based connections and generate satisfaction by mutually enacting their shared identities. I conclude by proposing a spectrum of homophily from thin homophily to thick homophily.
A central tenet in social psychology is the importance of perceived control in the stress process; another focuses on the well-being implications of mismatches between preferred and actual arrangements. Integrating these perspectives and leveraging the pandemic-driven shift to remote work, we examine "work-place captivity," the misalignment between employees' actual and preferred work locations combined with feeling a lack of control over location. Applying mixed-effects models on nationally representative panel data (April 2021 to April 2022) of employees who worked from home at some point during the pandemic, we reveal heterogeneities in work-place captivity: Hispanic workers, those without a college degree, and on-site workers are more likely to experience it. We find considerable fluidity in work-place captivity over time. Both sustained and transitions into captivity predict declines in subjective well-being. This study contributes to understanding the links between structure and agency in times of organizational fluidity around the geography of work.
Views on equality of opportunity influence perceptions of fairness and redistributive attitudes, and yet the sources associated with these views remain underexplored. This study investigates how individual experiences, socialization with friends and family, and media consumption are related to perceptions of equality of opportunity across three welfare state regimes in Europe: Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Using original cross-national survey data, we analyze responses to a statement on current levels of equality of opportunity, employing-among other methods-an inverse probability weighting approach. Findings reveal moderate cross-country variation, with higher optimism about equality of opportunity in the United Kingdom than in Germany and Sweden. Personal experiences are the most influential factor: upward mobility tends to be associated with beliefs in equality, whereas downward mobility is linked to perceptions of inequality. Socialization with family and friends links to perceptions to a more limited extent. Media consumption also plays a role; individuals who watch reality TV shows are more likely to perceive greater equality of opportunity. As shown by previous research, however, this optimism may have counterintuitive effects; by fostering the belief that opportunity is already widespread, it can dampen public support for redistributive measures, potentially reinforcing existing inequalities.
