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Introduction
Meeting new people is an every-day possibility in the modern world, with new friends, passing acquaintances, and brief encounters with a variety of people becoming possible due to the range of people’s interests and employment. Different approaches, thus, help individuals cope with the amount of information these interactions force them to process, aided by appropriate choice social coping mechanisms. Investigating the way taken when interacting with a close friend and a store cashier permits discerning these specifics of social interaction.
First Meeting
A close friend, previously just an acquaintance, and a grocery clerk, encountered once and remaining a one-time interaction, have achieved a diametrically different place in my life. However, before delving into an interactional analysis, it is necessary to identify actors of the situation and their process of advancement towards the end-result of communication. The close friend (CF) had adopted on first interaction within class an excessively friendly manner of communication, initiated a conversation on personal interests, and garnered a positive impression due to their similarities.
The store cashier (SC) exhibited a similar friendly yet helpful manner of communication, which her working conditions demanded, thus explaining the motivation behind the interaction, leaving a positive impression based on work ethic. Through circumstances it was, therefore, possible to identify the external (SC) and internal (CF) motivation behind each person on first encountering them.
Thinking Type Used
Automatic thinking, which is easy to revert to, when presented with seemingly mundane and every-day conditions, could have been detrimental within the given circumstances. Overcoming it to achieve a controlled situational approach permitted discerning the motivation driving each person, and, for example, not misinterpreting SC’s actions as a desire to become friends. Using schemata relating to personal motives helped properly responding to situations with drastically different incentive attributes (Crisp and Turner 215).
Thus, orientation within the presented circumstances permitted achieving different outcomes from entirely work-orienteered and conversely purely friendly interactions, which could have seemed interchangeable without understanding their actor’s reasoning.
Cultural Influences
As an African American and a believing Christian, my attribution influences my impressions of others through the prism of cultural perception and identification, forming certain stereotypes, both positive and negative, relating to different individuals. This kind of “social identity is made cognitively available by particular social circumstances,” incited by situational learning or contextual apperception (Michael 175). Cultural upbringing obviously affected the used schemata, which American culture, its African American component, and religions Christian teachings thrice influenced (Aronson et al. 70).
While Christianity had not played a significant role as a factor of identification, and thus stereotyping, with either actor, due to their non-display of religious affiliation, the other two mentioned cultural components proved determinant. Additionally, the culturally-specific display rules, such as the American conception of what people consider friendliness and in which circumstances affected my reaction to the actions of SC and CF (Aronson et al. 90-91). Therefore, I had broken down the two interactions into the basics of understanding what a person would require of me in the presented circumstances by using my understanding and attribution to the American cultural context.
Conclusion
It became crucial, having first identified the motivation behind the chosen actors, SC and CF, in their interactions with me, then to classify my own reaction to the played-out circumstances. Seemingly, if controlled thinking and the possible influence of stereotypes had not played a role within the interactions, the results could have been different, if for example different cultural or religious factors were introduced. Therefore, the understanding of self in the necessary context became key in understanding others, as a group and as individuals.
Works Cited
Aronson, Elliot, et al. Social Psychology. 9th ed., Pearson, 2016.
Crisp, Richard J., and Rhiannon N. Turner. Essential Social Psychology. 3rd ed., SAGE, 2014.
Michael, Mike. “Intergroup Theory and Deconstruction.” Deconstructing Social Psychology, 2nd ed., edited by Parker, Ian, and John Shotter, Psychology Press, 2015, pp. 170-182.
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