Identity Implications of Conformity: Sex Differences in Normative and Attributional Judgments

Although most social scientists maintain that human behavior is controlled by the environment, they differ greatly in their conceptualizations of social control. Behavior has been said to be controlled by reinforcements (Skinner, 1953), incentives (Mischel, 1979), behavior setting programs (Wicker, 1979), roles and norms (Biddle and Thomas, 1966), and other factors that are understood to inhere in situations. In contrast, sociologists who have taken seriously the conceptualizations of G. H. Mead and W. I. Thomas (Ball, 1972) maintain that behavior is under the control of the meanings that people bring to, and construct in, social situations. According to this perspective, when actors fail to establish and maintain consensus about the social meanings of situations, interaction is stymied (Goffman, 1959; McHugh, 1968) because the direction and organization of behavior depend on its current and anticipated meaning to those gathered together. In a setting, individuals will act in a fashion that helps to define the situation to self and to others. The identities that actors claim for themselves and attribute to others in a situation are an important part of the meanings that must be defined. According to situated identity theory (cf. Alexander and Lauderdale, 1977), behavBased on situated identity theory, which postulates that behaviors are enacted in order to claim