Three Papers on the Relationship Between Identity and Status Processes: Occupational Status, Occupational Identity and Emotion, and the Transgender Identity

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the intersection of identity and status processes on three different levels. All three papers take an explicitly sociological social psychological theoretical view, drawing from both Affect Control Theory and Identity Control Theory to generate hypotheses. Paper one asks how we can think about the status afforded to occupational identities relationally, using network methods on a dataset of simulated deference interactions between occupational identities. I find 4 separate occupational status groups, which are separated by their cultural meaning and their likelihood of deferring to other occupational identities and receiving deference from them in turn. Paper 2 proposes an identity confirmation model to explain the relationship between occupational identity and the daily experience of emotions. Using data from the 1996 General Social Survey emotions module, I hypothesize and find support for the hypothesis that individuals are more likely to report feeling emotions that are close in affective meaning to the predicted emotion from Affect Control Theory for the perfect confirmation of one’s occupational identity. Finally, paper 3 links dominant theories of gender in sociology – namely the idea that gender is done and constituted through social interaction, with Identity Control Theory’s model of identity enactment to understand when the transgender identity is especially salient for transgender men and women. I use three datasets to test my hypotheses: the TransPop Survey, the United States Transgender Survey, and the National Transgender Survey, to test my hypotheses, and largely find support for an interactional model of transgender identity salience.