Action
On entering a scene an individual defines the situation by assigning identities to each participant, frequently in accord with an encompassing social institution. While defining the situation, the individual tries to maintain the affective meaning of self through adoption of an identity whose sentiment serves as a surrogate for the individual's self-sentiment. The identities assembled in the definition of the situation determine the sentiments that the individual tries to maintain behaviorally.
Confirming sentiments associated with institutional identities – like doctor–patient, lawyer–client, or professor–student – creates institutionally relevant role behavior.
Confirming sentiments associated with negatively evaluated identities – like bully, glutton, loafer, or scatterbrain – generates deviant behavior Affect control theory's sentiment databases and mathematical model are combined in a computer simulation program for analyzing social interaction in various cultures.
Read more about this topic: Affect Control Theory
Famous quotes containing the word action:
“Each action of the actor on the stage should be the visible concomitant of his thoughts.”
—Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923)
“Virtue is the adherence in action to the nature of things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent. It consists in a perpetual substitution of being for seeming, and with sublime propriety God is described as saying, I A—.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The philosophy of action for action, power for the sake of power, had become an established orthodoxy. “Thou has conquered, O go-getting Babbitt.””
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)