Redefining the Situation

Others behaving inappropriately and displaying inappropriate emotions suggests that one's definition of the situation isn't shared. One way to deal with that problem is to redefine the situation, inferring correct identities for people at the scene from actors' behaviors. If others are affirming different identities than we supposed, then we can choose new identities that account for their observed conduct and emotional displays.

An individual can be reidentified with an entirely new identity - the focus of labeling theory in sociology. Assigning a new identity amounts to accounting for recent events in terms of revised role expectations. Alternatively, a person can be reidentified by combining a personal characteristic with the individual's current identity - the focus of trait attribution studies in psychology. Combining a modifier with the individual's original identity amounts to interpreting recent events in terms of someone's personality or character.

Example: Suppose we identify an individual as a doctor and her interaction partner as a patient. The doctor seems fundamentally quite good and powerful and neither lively nor still, and the patient seems fundamentally neither good nor bad, quite weak, and slightly quiet. Now suppose we observe the doctor insulting the patient, and we wish to redefine the situation in order to understand this event better.

Redefining the doctor requires answering the question: What kind of person would insult a patient? The transient impression of a doctor who insults a patient is slightly bad, slightly potent, and slightly active, so we might try an identity with that fundamental affective meaning (e.g., fanatic, big-shot). Such a reidentification works well: a fanatic insulting a patient does maintain the meaning of patient and also confirms the potency and activity meanings of a fanatic. However, when the actor's identity is bad then the transient impression of the actor in this event is especially bad, so we can do a bit better by providing the actor with an even more negative identity (like quack, lunatic). Such an identity explains the happening: in insulting the patient, the actor behaves like a quack or a lunatic. We might use such an identity to understand her subsequent behavior, too.

Alternatively, we can try to understand the event as the work of a person with a peculiar character or personality enacting the doctor role. By the above reasoning we know that an actor who insults a patient is fundamentally quite bad, a bit potent, and slightly active. So what kind of a trait would make a doctor into such a person? A trait that is quite bad, neutral on potency, and slightly lively - like self-centered or spiteful. A doctor insulting a patient could be expressing her self-centeredness or her spitefulness. We can use such a trait to understand her peculiar behavior as a doctor, and her peculiar behavior in other roles, too.

A different way to understand the event would be by redefining the patient, asking the question: What kind of person would a doctor insult? Such a person would be quite bad, neutral on potency, and active. Among the identities with fundamental meanings like this are bigot and fault-finder. Thus, we could better understand the doctor's insult if the recipient is a bigot or fault-finder instead of a patient. Alternatively we could attribute a trait like bossy or manipulative that makes the recipient into a patient who is quite bad, neutral on potency, and active, and thereby explains the doctor's behavior.

A number of hypotheses about reidentification come from theory and research on affect control.

The button below takes you to an Event Builder which you can use to study reidentification. For example, set the behavior and object person EPA profiles, and then experiment to see what kind of actor is needed to get the least deflection. Alternatively, have a specific actor engage in a specific behavior, and then see what kind of object person generates the least deflection.

Identity Filtering

Typically, there are many identities that would be affectively appropriate in an observed event. Many of those don't make sense because they don't fit with the established institutional setting in which a happening occurred. For example, a doctor who insults a patient logically can be reidentified as a quack. However, the doctor cannot logically be reidentified as a burglar, traitor, or bigamist, even though these identities are just as affectively appropriate as quack. A reidentification has to stay true to the identity of the interaction partner, the setting, and the nature of the act performed.

A reidentification also has to accord with essential features of the person being reidentified - especially whether the individual is male or female. The women's movement has made gender less of an issue in the workplace, where many identities like executive which were explicitly ungendered also are becoming implicitly ungendered, and where gendered identities like chairman have been changed to ungendered forms (chair).   However, appropriate use of gender still is important in labeling others with some informal roles such as beauty, stud, bitch, and bastard.

Inferences From a Person's Affect

So far we have discussed character re-assessments as being made on the basis of conduct alone with no account taken of emotions. Sometimes, though, people re-assess each other on the basis of conduct and the emotional tone displayed during conduct. For example, middle-class boys who interact respectfully with policemen often escape being villainized by officers, whereas lower-class boys who interact with insolence often get treated as rogues; and people who admit misconduct with shame may escape harsh judgment whereas those who make the same confessions cavalierly are viewed as having character flaws.

In general, displaying an affective state that fits the positiveness or negativeness of one's actions leads to reidentifications with more positive identities. Notably, deviant actions accompanied by negative emotional displays do not require stigmatization of the actor because the negative emotions signal that the actor still may be operating with a positive identity. However, deviant conduct accompanied by positive emotion requires providing a negative identity for the actor because only deviants can engage in deviant behavior and feel good about it. Such processes become important in courts. Defendants who show remorse about their illegal deeds get reduced punishments! They don't seem as inherently bad as defendants who show no remorse or grin during accounts of their criminal acts.

Emotions displayed by recipients of action also can influence reidentifications of an actor. For example, on observing a woman speaking to a man we might suppose that she is his friend, until we notice that the man  is embarrassed, and then we might imagine that the woman is something grander, like a supermodel. The reasoning that explains this is that as a woman gets smarter, more authoritative, more famous, the men with whom she deals feel quieter, less comfortable, more vulnerable! The same principle applies to actors, too: men feel quiet, uncomfortable, and vulnerable when engaged by men who are smarter, more powerful, and famous. Thus the identity of an actor is linked to the expressed emotions of both the actor and the recipient in an event.

If emotions are so important in reidentifications, then why aren't emotions involved in the ordinary reidentifications we looked at first? In fact, those reidentifications do involve affective states implicitly. In an ordinary reidentification we search for an identity to explain an action while assuming that the person is trying to maintain the characteristic emotion associated with that identity. Additionally we presume that the other person in the event also is experiencing the emotion characteristic of his or her identity.

Reidentifications cannot always do what they are supposed to do. Just as sometimes there are no actions that can mutually confirm a pair of roles, so too sometimes there are no identities to explain totally how a given event occurs in the context of certain emotions.

Identity Fluctuation

People give up their definitions of a situation reluctantly, even to the point of endangering themselves at times. For example, scores of people died in a 1977 dinner-club fire because they interpreted an announcer's appeals to leave the room as just another comedic routine.

Yet definitions of social interactants are fluid, too, as you easily can prove by watching yourself to see how you turn others into grumps and jerks and other things, attribute moods and traits, and do all this with a flexibility that might take someone from hero to fool and back again within a few events.

It seems that we maintain multiple definitions: a stable official one along with loose informal definitions. Official definitions don't change easily, can't change easily because they are anchored materialistically and weaved into social networks beyond the immediate scene. However, informal definitions, tacit and ephemeral, may last just as long as they are needed to explain occurring events and emotions.

A fair amount of fluidity in definitions seems necessary in order to proceed through real life events. According to ACT, arguments and betrayals wouldn't happen as long as people maintain the positive identities of official definitions: parents with children, co-professionals, co-workers, roommates, teammates - all can be only supportive with each other. Actors require negative identities to argue, exploit, nag, lie, abandon, ridicule, heckle, shun, etc. Since such negative actions occur, the implication is that people slip into negative identities without too much resistance. And most interpersonal turmoil is transitory, so a further implication is that returning to positive roles is easy, too.