{"id":43407,"date":"2012-01-10T12:40:59","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T17:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=43407"},"modified":"2012-01-12T00:23:12","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T05:23:12","slug":"stereotypes-social-groups-and-sociality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/01\/10\/stereotypes-social-groups-and-sociality\/","title":{"rendered":"A Theater Full of Bikers: What Would You Do?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and in Portuguese at Conhecimento Prudente<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This ad illustrates some sociological idea, something I could use in class. I\u2019m just not sure what it is.\u00a0 (You may have already seen it. It\u2019s been around on the Internet for a few months.)<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s a beer commercial, not a documentary, not \u201creality.\u201d\u00a0 But the couples are real and unscripted \u2013 like the victims in a \u201cCandid Camera\u201d bit (or the subjects in some social psychology experiments).\u00a0 Real and unscripted too is our reaction as viewers.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know about you, but after the ad was over, I realized that I had shared something of the couples\u2019 anxiety at being different and hence excluded.\u00a0 The bikers are neutral, maybe they are even silently hostile, so when they suddenly became accepting, my sense of relief was palpable.\u00a0 I laughed out loud.<\/p>\n

So sociological point one is that we are social animals.\u00a0 Excluded we feel fear, accepted and included we feel comfort.\u00a0 Point two is that laughter is social.\u00a0 Here (and in many other situations) it\u2019s a kind of tension-meter.\u00a0 There ad had no joke that I was laughing at.\u00a0 It was just a release from tension.\u00a0 No tension, no laughter.<\/p>\n

The ad also illustrates \u201cdefinition of the situation.\u201d\u00a0 The rigged set-up shatters the couples\u2019 standard definition of going to the movies. They are anxious not just because they are different but because they nave no workable definition and therefore no clear sense of what to do.<\/p>\n

Finally, the ad raises the issue of stereotypes.\u00a0 Stereotypes may actually have some general statistical accuracy.\u00a0 The trouble is that the stereotype converts a statistical tendency to absolute certainty.\u00a0 We react as though we expect\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0members of the stereotype to be that way all the time or most of the time.\u00a0 Is it reasonable when you see 148 bikers to be fearful even to the point of leaving (I think some of the couples didn\u2019t take the available seats)?\u00a0 You don\u2019t need to have read\u00a0Hunter S. Thompson<\/a>\u00a0 to know there is some truth in the image of bikers as above the mean on violence.\u00a0 But in a theater where you find them quietly awaiting the movie?<\/p>\n

What other sociological ideas does the ad suggest?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog\u00a0and in Portuguese at Conhecimento Prudente. This ad illustrates some sociological idea, something I could use in class. I\u2019m just not sure what it is.\u00a0 (You may have already seen it. It\u2019s been around on the Internet for a few months.) Yes, it\u2019s a beer commercial, not a documentary, not \u201creality.\u201d\u00a0 But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,212,37],"class_list":["post-43407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-alcohol","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43407"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43727,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43407\/revisions\/43727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}