Social Interaction, Organizations & Discrimination

The Interaction Order

Goffman treats interaction as performance: impression management runs on the front stage, and the back stage, defined relative to an audience, is for rehearsal and repair. Feeling rules script emotion at work, and a chronic gap between felt and paid-for emotion predicts burnout. Strong ties are dense and redundant; weak ties bridge clusters and carry novel information such as job leads. Weber's bureaucracy (division of labor, hierarchy, written rules, impersonality, merit hiring) buys predictability but breeds goal displacement, and Michels's iron law says large organizations drift toward rule by a few.

Prejudice and Discrimination

A stereotype is a belief, prejudice an attitude and discrimination a behavior, and each can occur without the others. Institutional discrimination lives in rules and procedures, so it persists even when no individual is prejudiced. Contact reduces prejudice only with equal status, common goals, cooperation and institutional support. Stereotype threat is situational and reversible, and a self-fulfilling prophecy makes an expectation real by changing how people are treated. In an audit study, random assignment, not sample size, makes the group cue the only difference.

Key Takeaways

• Back stage is relative to an audience, not a fixed place.
• Goal displacement is structural: staff follow the rules and the system still defeats its goal.
• Behavior in a randomized audit outranks self-reported attitudes.