Browsing by Subject "identity"

In this dissertation, I present a set of studies that contribute to our understanding of the effects of uncertainty on social understanding and interaction. In chapter 2, I present a meaning measurement strategy that captures two types of uncertainty on two levels of analysis: that which exists within people and that which exists between them. I test this method by using it to measure meanings for 140 social identities and behaviors in an online survey. My results show that uncertainty within people is patterned differently and so needs to be measured separately than uncertainty within them. Additionally, I show that in general there is broad cultural consensus in within-person uncertainty. In chapter 3, I study the outcomes of conversations that take place in uncertain contexts. I ask to what extent subjective experiences of political conversation—people’s perceptions of their influence—align with the influence they actually have. I use data from two field experiments in which respondents were asked to discuss a political issue with an anonymous partner using a messaging app. I find that people’s subjective estimates of their conversation influence are not related to the influence they actually had. Instead, perceptions of influence are determined by political knowledge and ideology: people who know more about politics and who are more ideologically extreme perceive less influence in political conversation, though their actual influence is the same. These findings suggest that conversation outcomes are subject to substantial uncertainty and respondents “fill in the gaps” using general expectations about the utility of political engagement: expectations that may be affected by political knowledge.