SOCL 2001 Lecture : Sociologoy Lecture 4
Lecture 4 9/20/2012 7:02:00 PM
Hypothesis of Witness Advantage
• Does the audience have any advantage over the actor?
• Can people tell who’s lying?
o Secret Service officers are the best at detecting liars.
• Can people lie effectively?
o Most people over estimate the degrees to which others
actually believe their spin?
• Liar’s Dice
o Still the working consensus
Conclusion: Symbolic Interactionism
• SI asks ‘how do people define reality?
o How they make sense of the world, how they experience &
construct what they & others are doing
• We learn meanings from others & organize our lives around them
(But they are subject to change)
• Symbols are key everyday structure
• People have concepts of themselves that lead them to expect and
define a certain response
• People have a repertoire (range of techniques to create impressions
of themselves
o Should you increase or decrease you repertoire?
• Situations limit the range of techniques
• Your real self (???)
o Consistency as choice
expatriat someone not living in home country
