Back to Social Behavior: Mining the Mundane

Abstract

This article examines the declining attention to behavioral research in personality and social psychology and proposes an alternative to the typical laboratory paradigm for studying social behavior. Specifically, the study of ''unfocused interactions,'' that is, situations where people simply share a common presence without talking to one another (Goffman, 1963), provides an opportunity for analyzing mundane behavior in everyday microinteractions. Because unfocused interactions are ubiquitous, may serve to prime subsequent behavior, and are likely to reflect implicit attitudes and judgments, they are well suited for studying the practical link between social cognition and everyday social behavior. Examples of research on unfocused interactions are described, and their utility in studying interpersonal processes is discussed.Over the last few decades, the social cognition perspective has been dominant in social psychology. During this time, interpersonal processes have been studied primarily through a cognitive lens. Thus, most social psychological research focuses on people's judgments of others; self-reports of attitudes, thoughts, and feelings; and evaluations of hypothetical situations or scenarios. Of course, the study of the cognitive processes involved in the judgment of the self and others is important in and of itself. Nevertheless, one might also argue that the ultimate utility of such research is the understanding of social behavior. In fact, this was recognized over a century ago in William James's (1983=1890) observation that ''thinking is for doing '' (pp. 959-960). In more recent years, there was also a renewed appreciation of the pragmatic nature of social judgments. That is, social cognitions and judgments are goal directed and adaptive in shaping subsequent behavior (Bargh, 1997;Fiske, 1992;Swann, 1984). Consistent with this view, the ecological theory of social perception stressed the behavioral utility present in making affordance judgments of others (McArthur & Baron, 1983;Zebrowitz & Collins, 1997). That is, our most basic social judgments are adaptive in focusing on how we can effectively relate to others.In spite of the widespread recognition of the behavioral relevance of social judgments, the vast majority of research in social psychology measures only social cognitions and judgments and not social behavior. Years ago, in describing their paradigm for studying interactive behavior, Ickes, Bissonnette, Garcia, and Stinson (1990) lamented the dominance of pencil marks on self-report measures as the ''behavior'' of choice in most published research. Since that time, we can probably add computer keystrokes to the list of preferred measures. More recently, Hebl and Dovidio (2005) criticized the minimal investment in behavioral studies of social stigma. In a similar fashion, Furr and Funder (2007) noted that there is little research in personality psychology examining how personality characteristics affect actual social behavior.In this article, I take a closer look at the declining interest i...

The spectacular and the mundane: Chinese tourists’ online representations of an iconic landscape journey

“…The findings are consistent with the value of considering mundane consumption, behaviour and mobilities reported in the consumer behaviour and social geography literature (Atkinson, 2008;Caru & Cova, 2003;Edensor, 2007;Kleine et al, 1993;Patterson, 2008). The links to the previous work lie in the confirmation that the everyday places, activities and behaviours are represented in the Chinese photographic record as strong accompaniments to the more predictably spectacular physical landscapes (see especially Fig.…”

“…In this context, there is a possibility that tourism researchers, in seeking to elevate the power and influence of the behaviours and settings they study, may be overemphasising the extraordinary and the special features of tourists' experiences (Higgins-Desbiolles & Whyte, 2013). Studies from outside the field of tourism have noted the importance of considering the role of mundane behaviours (Patterson, 2008), mundane consumption (Kleine, Kleine & Kernan, 1993;Caru & Cova, 2003), mundane heritage (Atkinson, 2008) and mundane mobilities (Edensor, 2007;Binnie, Edensor, Holloway, Millington, & Young, 2007). The common thread in these diverse studies is that the everyday places, activities and behaviours matter as much as the extraordinary ones, and engaging in such activities and with such places brings key rewards for participants in terms of personal identity, security and a way of ordering the world (Binnie et al, 2007).…”

Job involvement, organizational commitment, professional commitment, and team commitment

“…Crumpacker & Crumpacker (2007) stated that although not every member of a generation feels the impact of the historically important events equally and all members of a specific generation are usually known to have a shared awareness of or an understanding for the events common to that generation. Similarities among members of a generation are reflected in the ways they live their lives and their participation in the workforce (Patterson, 2008). A generation builds up a personality that shapes the feeling toward authority and organizations, expectations from work, and the approach to satisfy those desires (Kupperschmidt, 2000).…”

Refining Lewin's formula: A general model for explaining situational influence on individual social behavior

“…Social psychologists interested in establishing greater ecological validity for their research will need to move beyond their typical focus on the P component of research designs to include relevant features of the situation, S, so that their outcomes of interest are grounded more firmly in the world of mundane social living, the home laboratory for persons crafting their lives (Patterson, ). If Asian social psychologists then do cross‐cultural studies using both P and S components in their designs, they will then be able to establish whether Asian populations do, in fact, respond more to the situation than do non‐Asians.…”