Interaction Ritual Read online

  10Anonymous, The Laws of Etiquette (Carey, Lee, and Blanchard, Philadelphia, 1836), p. 188.

  11 Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, tr., ed. by Kurt Wolff (Free Press, Glencoe, 111., 1950), P- 321.

  12 E.g. F. W. Hodge, Etiquette: Handbook of American Indians (Government Printing House, Washington, D.C., 1907), p. 442.

  13 Unpublished paper prepared for Social Research, Inc., 1952.

  14 Simmel, op. cit., p. 322.

  151 am grateful to Dr. Seymour Perlin for bringing my attention to some of these avoidances and for pointing out the significance of them.

  16 Research on social distance scales has often most surprisingly overlooked the fact that an individual may keep his distance from others because they are too sacred for him, as well as because they are not sacred enough. The reason for this persistent error constitutes a problem in the sociology of knowledge. In general, following the students of RadCliffeBrown, we must distinguish between "good-sacredness," which represents something too pure to make contact with, and "badsacredness," which represents something too impure to make contact with, contrasting both these sacred states and objects to ritually neutral matters. (See M. M. Srinivas, Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of South India [Oxford University Press, 1952], pp. 106-7.) Radcliffe-Brown ( op. cit.) does not introduce the caution that in some societies the distinction between good and bad sacred is much less clearcut than in our own.

  17 Durkheim, The Elementary Forms, p. 299.

  18Emile Durkheim, “The Determination of Moral Facts,” p. 37.

  19 The only source I know on touch systems is the very inter-esting work by Edward Gross (“Informal Relations and the Social Organization of Work,” Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1949) on rights regarding pinching of females of private secretarial rank in a commercial business office.

  20 The then head nurse, a male, initiated arm embraces with the physician acting as ward administrator. This seemed to create a false note and was felt to be forward. The nurse, interestingly enough, has left the service. It should be added that on one ward in the hospital, a ward given over to the close study of a small number of highly delinquent boys, patients and staff of all ranks, including doctors, apparently formed a single ceremonial group. Members of the group were linked by symmetrical rules of familiarity, so that it was permissible for an eight-year-old to call the ward administrator by his first name, joke with him, and swear in his presence.

  21 Ernest Dichter, A Psychological Study of the Doctor-Si Patient Relationship (California Medical Association, Alameda County Medical Association, 1950), pp. 5-6.

  22 R. K. Douglas, Society in China (Innes, London, 1895), pp. 291-96.

  23 Thomas De Quincey, “French and English Manners,” Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, David Mason, ed. (Adams and Charles Black, Edinburgh, 1890), vol. XIV, 327-34.

  24 Mrs. Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (Whit-taker, Treacher; London, 1832).

  25 A kind of ceremonial profanation also seems to exist with respect to substantive rules. In law what are sometimes called “spite actions” provide illustrations, as does the phenomenon of vandalism. But, as previously suggested, these represent ways in which the substantive order is abused for ceremonial purposes.

  26 Cf. Harold Taxel, “Authority Structure in a Mental Hospital Ward,” Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1953, p. 68; and Robert H. Willoughby, “The Attendant in the State Mental Hospital,” Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1953, p. 90.

  27 George P. Murdock, Social Structure (Macmillan, New York, 1949), p. 282.

  28 Morris S. Schwartz and Alfred H. Stanton, “A Social Psychological Study of Incontinence,,, Psychiatry, 13 (1950), 319-416.

  29 E. D. Wittkower and J. D. La Tendresse, “Rehabilitation of Chronic Schizophrenics by a New Method of Occupational Therapy,” British Journal of Medical Psychology, 28 (1955), 42-47.

  30 See W. R. Thomas, “The Unwilling Patient,” Journal of Medical Science, 99 (1953), especially p. 193; and Alexander Walk, “Some Aspects of the ‘Moral Treatment’ of the Insane up to 1854,” Journal of Medical Science, 100 (1954), 191-201.

  Embarrassment and Social Organization

  An individual may recognize extreme embarrassment in others and even in himself by the objective signs of emotional disturbance: blushing, fumbling, stuttering, an unusually low- or high-pitched voice, quavering speech or breaking of the voice, sweating, blanching, blinking, tremor of the hand, hesitating or vacillating movement, absent-mindedness, and malapropisms. As Mark Baldwin remarked about shyness, there may be “a lowering of the eyes, bowing of the head, putting of hands behind the back, nervous fingering of the clothing or twisting of the fingers together, and stammering, with some incoherence of idea as expressed in speech.”1 There are also symptoms of a subjective kind: constriction of the diaphragm, a feeling of wobbliness, consciousness of strained and unnatural gestures, a dazed sensation, dryness of the mouth, and tenseness of the muscles. In cases of mild discomfiture these visible and invisible flusterings occur but in less perceptible form.

  In the popular view it is only natural to be at ease during interaction, embarrassment being a regrettable deviation from the normal state. The individual, in fact, might say he felt “natural” or “unnatural” in the situation, meaning that he felt comfortable in the interaction or embarrassed in it. He who frequently becomes embarrassed in the presence of others is regarded as suffering from a foolish unjustified sense of inferiority and in need of therapy.2

  To utilize the flustering syndrome in analyzing em-barrassment, the two kinds of circumstance in which it occurs must first be distinguished. First, the individual may become flustered while engaged in a task of no particular value to him in itself, except that his long-range interests require him to perform it with safety, competence, or dispatch, and he fears he is inadequate to the task. Discomfort will be felt in the situation but in a sense not for it; in fact, often the individual will not be able to cope with it just because he is so anxiously taken up with the eventualities lying beyond it. Significantly, the individual may become “rattled” although no others are present.

  This paper will not be concerned with these occasions of instrumental chagrin but rather with the kind that occurs in clear-cut relation to the real or imagined presence of others. Whatever else, embarrassment has to do with the figure the individual cuts before others felt to be there at the time. The crucial concern is the impression one makes on others in the present—whatever the long-range or unconscious basis of this concern may be. This fluctuating configuration of those present is a most important reference group.

  Vocabulary of Embarrassment

  A social encounter is an occasion of face-to-face inter-action, beginning when individuals recognize that they have moved into one another’s immediate presence and ending by an appreciated withdrawal from mutual par-ticipation. Encounters differ markedly from one another in purpose, social function, land and number of personnel, setting, etc., and, while only conversational encounters will be considered here, obviously there are those in which no word is spoken. And yet, in our Anglo-American society, at least, there seems to be no social encounter which cannot become embarrassing to one or more of its participants, giving rise to what is sometimes called an incident or false note. By listening for this dissonance, the sociologist can generalize about the ways in which interaction can go awry and, by implication, the conditions necessary for interaction to be right. At the same time he is given good evidence that all encounters are members of a single natural class, amenable to a single framework of analysis.

  By whom is the embarrassing incident caused? To whom is it embarrassing? For whom is this embarrassment felt? It is not always an individual for whose plight participants feel embarrassment; it may be for pairs of participants who are together having difficulties and even for an encounter as a whole.
Further, if the individual for whom embarrassment is felt happens to be perceived as a responsible representative of some faction or subgroup (as is very often the case in three-or-more-person interaction), then the members of this faction are likely to feel embarrassed and to feel it for themselves. But, while a gaffe or faux pas can mean that a single individual is at one and the same time the cause of an incident, the one who feels embarrassed by it, and the one for whom he feels embarrassment, this is not, perhaps, the typical case, for in these matters ego boundaries seem especially weak. When an individual finds himself in a situation which ought to make him blush, others present usually will blush with and for him, though he may not have sufficient sense of shame or appreciation of the circumstances to blush on his own account.

  The words “embarrassment,” “discomfiture,” and “uneasiness” are used here in a continuum of meanings. Some occasions of embarrassment seem to have an abrupt orgasmic character; a sudden introduction of the disturbing event is followed by an immediate peak in the experience of embarrassment and then by a slow return to the preceding ease, all phases being encompassed in the same encounter. A bad moment thus mars an otherwise euphoric situation.

  At the other extreme we find that some occasions of embarrassment are sustained at the same level throughout the encounter, beginning when the interaction begins and lasting until the encounter is terminated. The participants speak of an uncomfortable or uneasy situation, not of an embarrassing incident. In such case, of course, the whole encounter becomes for one or more of the parties an incident that causes embarrassment. Abrupt embarrassment may often be intense, while sustained uneasiness is more commonly mild, involving barely apparent flusterings. An encounter which seems likely to occasion abrupt embarrassment may, because of this, cast a shadow of sustained uneasiness upon the participants, transforming the entire encounter into an incident itself.

  In forming a picture of the embarrassed individual, one relies on imagery from mechanics: equilibrium or self-control can be lost, balance can be overthrown. No doubt the physical character of flustering in part evokes this imagery. In any case, a completely flustered individual is one who cannot for the time being mobilize his muscular and intellectual resources for the task at hand, although he would like to; he cannot volunteer a response to those around him that will allow them to sustain the conversation smoothly. He and his flustered actions block the line of activity the others have been pursuing. He is present with them, but he is not “in play.” The others may be forced to stop and turn their attention to the impediment; the topic of conversation is neglected, and energies are directed to the task of re-establishing the flustered individual, of studiously ignoring him, or of withdrawing from his presence.

  To conduct one’s self comfortably in interaction and to be flustered are directly opposed. The more of one, the less, on the whole, of the other; hence through contrast each mode of behavior can throw light upon the characteristics of the other. Face-to-face interaction in any culture seems to require just those capacities that flustering seems guaranteed to destroy. Therefore, events which lead to embarrassment and the methods for avoiding and dispelling it may provide a cross-cultural framework of sociological analysis.

  The pleasure or displeasure that a social encounter affords an individual, and the affection or hostility that he feels for the participants, can have more than one relation to his composure or lack of it. Compliments, acclaim, and sudden reward may throw the recipient into a state of joyful confusion, while a heated quarrel can be provoked and sustained, although throughout the individual feels composed and in full command of himself. More important, there is a kind of comfort which seems a formal property of the situation and which has to do with the coherence and decisiveness with which the individual assumes a well-integrated role and pursues momentary objectives having nothing to do with the content of the actions themselves. A feeling of discomfiture per se seems always to be unpleasant, but the circumstances that arouse it may have immediate pleasant consequences for the one who is dis-comfited.

  In spite of this variable relation between displeasure and discomfiture, to appear flustered, in our society at least, is considered evidence of weakness, inferiority, low status, moral guilt, defeat, and other unenviable attributes. And, as previously suggested, flustering threatens the encounter itself by disrupting the smooth transmission and reception by which encounters are sustained. When discomfiture arises from any of these sources, understandably the flustered individual will make some effort to conceal his state from the others present. The fixed smile, the nervous hollow laugh, the busy hands, the downward glance that conceals the expression of the eyes, have become famous as signs of attempting to conceal embarrassment. As Lord Chesterfield puts it:

  They are ashamed in company, and so disconcerted that they do not know what they do, and try a thousand tricks to keep themselves in countenance; which tricks afterwards grow habitual to them. Some put their fingers to their nose, others scratch their head, others twirl their hats; in short, every awkward, ill-bred body has his tricks.3

  These gestures provide the individual with screens to hide behind while he tries to bring his feelings back into tempo and himself back into play.

  Given the individual’s desire to conceal his embarrassment, given the setting and his skill at handling himself, he may seem poised according to some obvious signs yet prove to be embarrassed according to less apparent ones. Thus, while making a public speech, he may succeed in controlling his voice and give an impression of ease, yet those who sit beside him on the platform may see that his hands are shaking or that facial tics are giving the he to his composed front.

  Since the individual dislikes to feel or appear embar-rassed, tactful persons will avoid placing him in this position. In addition, they will often pretend not to know that he has lost composure or has grounds for losing it. They may try to suppress signs of having recognized his state or hide them behind the same kind of covering gesture that he might employ. Thus they protect his face and his feelings and presumably make it easier for him to regain composure or at least hold on to what he still has. However, just as the flustered individual may fail to conceal his embarrassment, those who perceive his discomfort may fail in their attempt to hide their knowledge, whereupon they all will realize that his embarrassment has been seen and that the seeing of it was something to conceal. When this point is reached, ordinary involvement in the interaction may meet a painful end. In all this dance between the concealer and the concealed-from, embarrass-ment presents the same problem and is handled in the same ways as any other offense against propriety.

  There seems to be a critical point at which the flustered individual gives up trying to conceal or play down his uneasiness: he collapses into tears or paroxysms of laughter, has a temper tantrum, flies into a blind rage, faints, dashes to the nearest exit, or becomes rigidly immobile as when in panic. After that it is very difficult for him to recover composure. He answers to a new set of rhythms, characteristic of deep emotional experience, and can hardly give even a faint impression that he is at one with the others in interaction. In short, he abdicates his role as someone who sustains encounters. The moment of crisis is of course socially determined: the individual’s breaking point is that of the group to whose affective standards he adheres. On rare occasions all the participants in an encounter may pass this point and together fail to maintain even a semblance of ordinary interaction. The little social system they created in interaction collapses; they draw apart or hurriedly try to assume a new set of roles.

  The terms “poise,” “sang-froid” and “aplomb,” referring to the capacity to maintain one’s own composure, are to be distinguished from what is called “graciousness,” “tact,” or “social skill,” namely, the capacity to avoid causing oneself or others embarrassment. Poise plays an important role in communication, for it guarantees that those present will not fail to play their parts in interaction but will continue as long as they are in one another’s presence
to receive and transmit disciplined communications. It is no wonder that trial by taunting is a test that every young person passes through until he develops a capacity to maintain composure.4 Nor should it come as a surprise that many of our games and sports commemorate the themes of composure and embarrassment: in poker, a dubious claim may win money for the player who can present it calmly; in judo, the maintenance and loss of composure are specifically fought over; in cricket, self-command or “style” is supposed to be kept up under tension.

  The individual is likely to know that certain special situations always make him uncomfortable and that he has certain “faulty” relationships which always cause him uneasiness. His daily round of social encounters is largely determined, no doubt, by his major social obligations, but he goes a little out of his way to find situations that will not be embarrassing and to by-pass those that will. An individual who firmly believes that he has little poise, perhaps even exaggerating his failing, is shy and bashful; dreading all encounters, he seeks always to shorten them or avoid them altogether. The stutterer is a painful instance of this, showing us the price the individual may be willing to pay for his social life.5

  Causes of Embarrassment

  Embarrassment has to do with unfulfilled expectations (but not with those of a statistical kind). Given their social identities and the setting, the participants will sense what sort of conduct ought to be maintained as the appropriate thing, however much they may despair of its actually occurring. An individual may firmly expect that certain others will make him ill at ease, and yet this knowledge may increase his discomfiture instead of lessening it. An entirely unexpected flash of social engineering may save a situation, all the more effective for their being unanticipated.

  The expectations relevant to embarrassment are moral, then, but embarrassment does not arise from the breach of any moral expectation, for some infractions give rise to resolute moral indignation and no uneasiness at all. Rather we should look to those moral obligations which surround the individual in only one of his capacities, that of someone who carries on social encounters. The individual, of course, is obliged to remain composed, but this tells us that things are going well, not why. And things go well or badly because of what is perceived about the social identities of those present.