Social indolence

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In psychology and sociology , social inertia describes the resistance to change in societies or social groups and the persistence of stable relationships. Social inertia is the opposite of social change .

Overview

The idea of ​​social inertia can be traced back to the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu . According to Bourdieu, every person occupies a position in a social space that consists of their social class as well as social relationships and social networks. Through the involvement of the individual in social space, he develops a series of behaviors, ways of life and habits (which Bourdieu calls habitus ), which often serve to maintain the status quo . This encourages people to “accept the social world as it is, take it for granted rather than rebel against it and compare it with its opposing, even antagonistic possibilities.” This can explain the continuity of the social order over time.

Sociologists have studied how economic and cultural heritage is passed down through generations, which can lead to severe social indolence, even during times of social progress. In particular, Bourdieu found in his Algeria studies that even in times of rapid economic change, cultural and symbolic factors limited the flexibility of society to adapt quickly to change.

Therefore, social indolence has been used to explain how dominant social classes maintain their status and privilege over time. Right now this is a hotly debated issue in the United States . While President Barack Obama affirmed America's commitment to equal opportunities in his second inaugural address, Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz believes it is a myth that modern society offers equal opportunities and high social mobility through mechanisms such as schooling .

Examples

In the culture of honor

An example of social indolence in United States culture is the "culture of honor" that exists in parts of the South and West. In the culture of honor, violence is seen as an acceptable way of responding to insults or dangers to the self, family, property or reputation of a person. Some psychologists and historians believe that the culture of honor emerged as a kind of coercive order on the border when the south and west were first settled and there was inadequate law enforcement and a low social order . According to this hypothesis, herding (a solitary activity) should be more closely linked to the culture of honor than to farming (a collaborative activity). However, some scientists have found no support for it. When researchers examined the relationship between farming practices in the rural south and the white male homicide rate in these regions, they found no higher homicide rates in hilly and arid counties, which made it more suitable for herding than agriculture. They concluded that homicide rates did not support the guard vs. Agriculture of honor culture supported. Because of this, religion and poverty have been suggested as alternative explanations for the origin of the culture of honor.

In creative work

In a 2013 article in the Journal of Sociology , sociologist Scott Brook applied the theory of social inertia to the field of creative work. Specifically, Brook was concerned with why so many students stick with pursuing degrees in the creative field ( arts , creative writing ) even when the majority of the workforce feels that many students will not find employment in the field after graduation. Even if they are able to find employment, they earn less than colleagues with non-creative degrees. Scott used Bourdieu's view of social inertia to suggest that students drawn to the non-commercial nature of the creative field came from families of low socioeconomic status and “parents with failed careers. The students followed in their parents' footsteps by choosing courses that are unlikely to lead to high-income careers, thus leading to income sluggishness over generations ”.

In collaborations

Social inertia has been used to study collaboration and interactions between people. Specifically, social inertia was defined as a measure of continued collaboration with previous partners and members of a team. Analysis of large, complex networks such as the Internet Movie Database showed that two types of “extreme” collaboration behaviors were more common than average behavior - some people work with the same partners over and over while others change partners frequently.

In settings and settings changes

Psychological studies of attitudes and changing attitudes found that participants are unwilling to decrease their confidence in an assumption even when they receive new information that goes against their original assumption. Researchers postulated that this “inertia effect” was based on participants' psychological commitments to their initial judgments.

In romantic relationships

Some psychological studies have shown that premarital cohabitation is associated with an increased risk of divorce , which has been defined as the cohabitation effect. Researchers believe that living together increases the sluggishness of the relationship - that is, the likelihood of a couple staying together or breaking up. Indolence in cohabiting couples occurs because coexistence imposes certain conditions on the relationship (shared rent, etc.), which makes it difficult to end the relationship. Therefore, a couple living together will continue to maintain the relationship even if they do not go together. Because living together represents an ambiguous commitment compared to marriage , it is unlikely to increase the partner's devotion. The partners are more likely to “slip” into marriage because of living together, rather than making a clear decision to commit to each other, which leads to problems in the future marriage.

Still, research on whether higher divorce rates are due to the cohabitation effect is inconsistent. For example, researchers found that the relationship between cohabitation and divorce was also influenced by other factors such as timing of the wedding (e.g. marriages concluded after 1996 showed no cohabitation effect), race / ethnicity, and marriage plans while moving in together depends. Other studies have shown that what is called the cohabitation effect can also be entirely assigned to other factors.

In animal behavior

The term social inertia was used by AM Guhl in 1968 to describe dominance hierarchies in animal groups. Studies of animal behavior found that groups of animals can establish social orders or social hierarchies that are relatively fixed and stable. For example, chickens establish a social order in the group based on a pecking order . Even if some of the chickens were treated with an androgen to increase their aggressiveness, the developed social order suppressed the development of the aggressive behavior, so that the social order was maintained.

The same effect was found in other bird species as well as in invertebrates such as social wasps and the gravedigger beetle N. orbicollis. Researchers have theorized that this lack of change in social hierarchies, even under the influence of anger hormones , is due to effects of familiarity - animals learn their place in the social hierarchy of a group within the first few encounters with other group members. This causes lower-ranking animals treated with anger hormones to behave aggressively towards animals from other groups, but not towards dominant members from their own group.

Related concepts

Psychologist Michael Zarate created the term “cultural indolence” to address responses to social change, such as those caused by immigration . Cultural inertia is defined as the desire to avoid cultural change and also as a desire to stop change when it has already occurred. Within the framework of cultural inertia, the dominant group is stable and resists cultural change, while subordinate groups want cultural changes that incorporate their cultural traditions so that they do not have to integrate into the dominant culture . In the context of the United States and immigration, the system suggests that white majority members withstand the cultural change that comes from immigration, while immigrant groups seek to initiate change in American culture.

Cultural inertia is related to social psychological theories such as the instrumental model of group conflict, cultural adaptation, and the system justification theory. It contributes to prejudice about groups because of groups' fear of cultural change.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pierre Bourdieu: The social space and the genesis of groups . In: Theory and Society . tape 14 , no. 6 , November 1, 1985, ISSN  1573-7853 , pp. 723-744 , doi : 10.1007 / BF00174048 .
  2. ^ A b David L. Swartz, Vera L. Zolberg: After Bourdieu: Influence, Critique, Elaboration . Springer Science & Business Media, 2006, ISBN 1-4020-2589-0 , pp. 92 ( books.google.com ).
  3. ^ Joseph Stiglitz: Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth . In: The New York Times , February 16, 2013. Retrieved December 9, 2013. 
  4. ^ A b Dov Cohen: Culture, social organization, and patterns of violence. In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . tape 75 , no. 2 , 1998, p. 408-419 , doi : 10.1037 / 0022-3514.75.2.408 .
  5. ↑ Rebekah Chu, Craig Rivera, Colin Loftin: Herding and Homicide: An Examination of the Nisbett-Reaves Hypothesis . In: Social Forces . tape 78 , no. 3 , March 1, 2000, ISSN  1534-7605 , p. 971-987 , doi : 10.1093 / sf / 78.3.971 ( oxfordjournals.org ).
  6. ↑ Nigel Barber: Is Southern violence due to a culture of honor? on psychologytoday.com.
  7. ^ Scott Brook: Social inertia and the field of creative labor. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Sagepub.com, 2013, archived from the original on February 9, 2016 ; accessed on February 9, 2016 (access only via login). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / jos.sagepub.com
  8. ↑ JJ Ramasco: social inertia and diversity in collaboration networks . In: The European Physical Journal Special Topics . tape 143 , no. 1 , April 1, 2007, ISSN  1951-6355 , p. 47–50 , doi : 10.1140 / epjst / e2007-00069-9 .
  9. ^ Gordon Pitz: An inertia effect (resistance to change) in the revision of opinion. (Abstract) In: Canadian Journal of Psychology. February 1969.
  10. ^ Catherine L. Cohan, Stacey Kleinbaum: Toward a Greater Understanding of the Cohabitation Effect: Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Communication . In: Journal of Marriage and Family . tape 64 , no. 1 , February 1, 2002, ISSN  1741-3737 , p. 180-192 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1741-3737.2002.00180.x ( wiley.com ).
  11. ↑ a b Scott M. Stanley, Galena Rhoades Kline, Howard J. Markman: Sliding Versus Deciding: Inertia and the Premarital Cohabitation Effect . In: Family Relations . tape 55 , no. 4 , 2006, p. 499-509 , JSTOR : 40005344 .
  12. ↑ Wendy D. Manning, Jessica A. Cohen: Cohabitation and Marital Dissolution: The Significance of Marriage Cohort. on princeton.edu.
  13. ↑ Ruth Weston, Lixia Qu, David de Vout: Premarital cohabitation and Subsequent marital stability. ( Memento of the original from March 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) In: Australian Institute of Family Studies. No. 65. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia March 13, 2003. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.melbourneinstitute.com
  14. ↑ Manee Archawaranon, Lorna Dove, R. Haven Wiley: Social Inertia and Hormonal Control of Aggression and Dominance in White-Throated Sparrows . In: Behavior . tape 118 , no. 1 , 1991, ISSN  1568-539X , pp. 42-65 , doi : 10.1163 / 156853991X00193 ( brillonline.com ).
  15. ↑ a b A. M. Guhl: Psychophysiological interrelations in the social behavior of chickens. In: Psychological Bulletin . tape 61 , no. 4 , April 1964, p. 277-285 , doi : 10.1037 / h0044799 .
  16. ↑ Rong Kou, Szu-Ying Chou, Shu-Chun Chen, Zachary Y. Huang: Juvenile hormone and the ontogeny of cockroach aggression . In: Hormones and Behavior . tape 56 , no. 3 , September 1, 2009, p. 332-338 , doi : 10.1016 / j.yhbeh.2009.06.011 ( sciencedirect.com ).
  17. ^ R. Haven Wiley, Laura Steadman, Laura Chadwick, Lori Wollerman: Social inertia in white-throated sparrows results from recognition of opponents . In: Animal Behavior . tape 57 , no. 2 , February 1, 1999, p. 453-463 , doi : 10.1006 / anbe.1998.0991 , PMID 10049486 ( sciencedirect.com ).
  18. ↑ a b Michael A. Zárate, Moira Shaw, Jorge A. Marquez, David Biagas Jr .: Cultural inertia: The effects of cultural change on intergroup relations and the self-concept . In: Journal of Experimental Social Psychology . tape 48 , no. 3 , May 1, 2012, p. 634-645 , doi : 10.1016 / j.jesp.2011.12.014 ( sciencedirect.com ).