Everyday Sociology Blog

Emotional Labor and Leisure

By Karen Sternheimer

I recently had the opportunity to attend my nephews’ Little League and soccer games. Since we live in different states and I am seldom in town when they play, this was a treat for all of us.

As is automatic for a sociologist in a new setting, I couldn’t help but make some basic observations about the participants in both games. While I played softball as a child, I have never been an adult onlooker of a child’s sporting event before (hard to believe, I know). In my brief time observing, I found myself observing the parents and coaches as much as the children who were playing.

The Sociology Everyone Knows: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

By Jonathan Wynn

This month Yale economics professor and Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller posited that the next recession could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. As I read about it, thought about how common a term it is. You, perhaps, have used this term in your everyday lives but haven’t realized that it’s a sociological term in origin. (Unless you read this Everyday Sociology blog post from almost ten years ago!)

According to Robert K. Merton, the self-fulfilling prophecy is a “false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true.” The subject of an article by Robert K. Merton, he builds on the “Thomas Theorem” (coined by W.I. and Dorothy Swaine Thomas): when a situation is defined as real, it is real in its consequences. The self-fulfilling prophecy is when a prediction is stated, no matter how incorrect, the resultant series of actions will be what he calls, brilliantly, a “reign of error.” He then states that everything that happens can be used ex post facto, as proof of the initial incorrect prediction.

Why Small Social Cues are a Big Deal

By Karen Sternheimer

Hands up. Staying on topic. Remaining silent while others speak. Waiting until others are done speaking to raise your hand.

These are social rules many of us take for granted in the classroom. It helps keep the learning environment orderly and efficient, and provides opportunities for many people to participate in the learning experience.

What happens when a participant has difficulty following some of these social rules?

Racism, Stress, and Health

By Karen Sternheimer

This past weekend I was shopping at the grocery store. This wasn’t the grocery store I usually shop at, but while doing other errands in this part of town I figured I’d stop in and get this errand done too. It’s a bigger location than our local store but part of the same chain, and they have a greater selection than at my usual store.

As I was checking out, a commotion started in the front of the store. A customer was being escorted by out a security guard. I’m not sure what prompted the security guard’s action, as the store is rather big and they were walking from the other side of the store from where I stood. As people started to notice the commotion, tension hung in the air.

Emotional Intelligence and Sociology

By Jonathan Wynn

There is a secret piece of your college education that I think we could talk more about. Despite its importance, I am only now I am realizing that it’s perhaps one of the most important skill sets you need to develop as an undergraduate. It is tucked into the classes and the general requirements, hidden between the lines. It’s called emotional intelligence, and I think it can be a profoundly sociological—not just psychological—phenomenon.

The Definition of the Situation: Resisting Discussions of Death

By Karen Sternheimer

A family member’s recent illness and passing highlighted a concept within micro sociology: the definition of the situation. This idea posits that situations come with social scripts that shape our behavior within any given context. How we define a situation guides our actions; sometimes our actions might seem strange if others around us define the situation differently. Put simply, people base their behavior on our understanding of events, and we generally ascribe meaning to these events based on our interactions with others.

Although he was 85-years-old and was being treated for lymphoma, a type of cancer, my father-in-law was healthy enough to play tennis this past August when he fell and broke his hip on the court. Our family defined this situation as a sports-related injury, albeit one with more risks due to his age and overall health status. It seemed that medical professionals defined his injury the same way too.

Identity and Retirement

By Karen Sternheimer

Sociologist Michelle Pannor Silver’s new book, Retirement and its Discontents: Why We Won’t Stop Working, Even if We Can, is based on interviews with retirees, many of whom are struggling with the transition to retirement. Many of her informants who held prestigious positions as doctors, CEOs, and professors said the biggest challenge they faced was related to their sense of self.

If a big part of one’s identity comes from work, who are you if you are retired?

This challenge is complicated when work occupies most of one’s time, often to the detriment of family and maintaining social ties outside of one’s field. For occupations that demand long hours while offering titles with a great deal of prestige, leaving the field can leave people unsure of what to do and of who they are.

Meaning Making and Health

By Karen Sternheimer

Peter Kaufman’s recent post about his experience with stage IV lung cancer is an important reminder that our bodies—particularly as they appear and function at this moment—and our overall health, are temporary.

And yet we often perceive them to be permanent. Why?

We make sense of our health collectively; even the way in which we define illness is rooted in social interactions. As sociologists Peter Conrad and Kristen K. Barker explain in their article "The Social Construction of Illness," culture plays a role in how we view and respond to a condition, and people experience their condition in a social context.

Learning to Perform Emotional Labor

By Karen Sternheimer

Think about all of the things you learn as students that have nothing to do with the actual content of your classes: you learn to meet deadlines, proper classroom decorum, how to navigate a large bureaucracy, and create social ties with peers, among other things. Sociologists call this education’s hidden curriculum, or unintended lessons, many of which are quite valuable to your future career—and to your life overall.

Learning to perform emotional labor is part of the hidden curriculum. What exactly is emotional labor? It happens when we work to control our emotions in order to fit the requirements of a job. Emotional labor is part of any job that involves interacting with others, and is important to consider when pondering your own current or future career choices.

Read the Syllabus, Van Halen Style

By Jonathan Wynn

Welcome back to school! Lots of books, new friends, new classes. It’s a lot to take in.

With all the hubbub, it might slip your mind to read your syllabus carefully. I understand. You’re busy. You might think, “Hey, this class is like all the other ones. I’ll figure it out as I go along.” But, as you should expect, I couldn’t disagree more!

To encourage you to read your syllabus carefully, I would like to tell you an infamous story about a 1980s rock band, Van Halen.