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Motivated reasoning

Talk:Motivated reasoning

Motivated reasoning is the mental process that include mechanisms for accessing, construcing, and evaluating beliefs in response to new information or experiences. The motivation may be to arrive at accurate beliefs, or to arrive at desired conclusions. While more likely to arrive at conclusions they want, for most people such desires are constrained by the ability to construct a reasonable justification.

Motivated reasoning may involve personal choices, such as continuing to smoke after encountering evidence of the health effects of tobacco. When beliefs involve deeply held values and identities shared by many individuals in a society, motivated reasoning may have social and political effects, such as denialism and conspiracy theories.

Definitions and history

A number of psychological concepts are related to how individuals respond to threats to their current beliefs. Due to the need for cognitive consistency, contradictory beliefs cause the stress defined as cognitive dissonance. Motivated reasoning is a process for relieving this stress by either modifying beliefs to incorporate the new evidence, or constructing a rationale for maintaining current beliefs. Confirmation bias is one of the means to do the latter, by seeking to find additional evidence to support current beliefs, to discredit the new information, or both.

As described in 1990 by Ziva Kunda, motivated reasoning takes two forms, a more rational "cold" motivation favoring accuracy; or "hot" motivation to reach a desired goal, usually to maintain current beliefs at the expense of rationality. This distinction has been controversial, some finding that apparently self-serving conclusions may be seen as plausible, rather than biased, based upon prior beliefs. However, exploration of the underlying mechanisms finds that motivation plays a role in the outcome by determining which cognitive processes are used in a particular situation.

Strongly held beliefs are associated with deeply held values and identities. Political reasoning involves the goal of identity protection; maintaining status within an affinity group united by shared values.

Some research found a "tipping point" at which new information had accumulated to a level at which belief change occurred.

Motivated reasoning has become associated more often with efforts to maintain beliefs in the face of substantial contrary evidence, individuals or groups using different criteria for evaluating propositions they favor versus those they oppose. Extreme examples of refusal to accept the validity of beliefs that are well-supported by evidence is called denialism, while the invention of alternative "facts" is the basis of conspiracy theories.

Current research in motivated reasoning has been effected by technological change, both in the methods used by researchers and in the behavior being studied. Researchers employ the methodology of neuroscience to provide data on brain functioning, rather than relying solely upon self-reports or observations of behavior. The information used by people in forming beliefs now comes from online sources, which are ready-made to support a biased viewpoint.

Social values

Motivated reasoning is the tendency to assess factual claims in view of goals that are independent of their correctness. These goals include maintaining a value system. Politically motivated reasoning involves a person’s crediting or discrediting new information in accord with the impact on their beliefs and the beliefs of people in an identity-defining group, not truth-related norms. Views about policy-relevant issues become a badge of group membership. People tend to trust experts whom they believe share their values and worldview, distrusting experts they perceive to hold different commitments. How we process information is not isolated from our values, and our values move our opinions in predictable patterns. In other words, subjects view experts as trustworthy or untrustworthy bases upon their group’s values. Expertise is judged based upon the character, not reliability.

Political

A growing body of evidence shows that politicians use motivated reasoning to fit evidence with prior beliefs. In this, they are not unlike other people. We use survey experiments to reaffirm prior work showing that politicians, like the public they represent, engage in motivated reasoning. However, we also show that politicians are more resistant to debiasing interventions than others. When required to justify their evaluations, politicians rely more on prior political attitudes and less on policy information, increasing the probability of erroneous decisions. The results raise the troubling implication that the specialized role of elected officials makes them more immune to the correction of biases, and in this way less representative of the voters they serve when they process policy information.

Whether politicians actually make better decisions when given policy information has been called into question by research showing that people often use information simply to reach conclusions consistent with their political identities and attitudes (Kunda, 1990; Taber & Lodge, 2006; Kahan, 2016a). Such motivated reasoning makes it less likely that evidence will be judged on its merits. While empirical investigations have typically been based on studies of the mass public, some studies have also found evidence of motivated reasoning among elected politicians.

If both politicians and citizens engage in motivated reasoning, we might hope that democratic accountability processes will direct politicians toward better decisions by limiting their biases. After all, in a democracy, politicians are continuously required to justify their claims, such as through committee proceedings, legislative debates, town halls and media interviews. Justification requirements have been found to foster nuance in people’s reasoning about a broad range of issues (Green et al., 2000; DeZoort et al., 2006) and to reduce a variety of cognitive biases (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999; Aleksovska et al., 2019), thereby offering what Tetlock describes as a ‘simple, but surprisingly effective, social check on many judgmental shortcomings’ (Tetlock, 1983, p. 291). However, while scholars have pointed to justification requirements as a potential way to reduce motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990; Bartels & Bonneau, 2014), evidence on the effects of justification requirements on politically motivated reasoning has been scarce. We thus ask the following research question: Do politicians and members of the general public alter their reasoning about policy information when they are required to justify their evaluation of the information?

How do biases affect political information processing? A variant of the Wason selection task, which tests for confirmation bias, was used to characterize how the dynamics of the recent U.S. presidential election affected how people reasoned about political information. Participants were asked to evaluate pundit-style conditional claims like “The incumbent always wins in a year when unemployment drops” either immediately before or immediately after the 2012 presidential election. A three-way interaction between ideology, predicted winner (whether the proposition predicted that Obama or Romney would win), and the time of test indicated complex effects of bias on reasoning. Before the election, there was partial evidence of motivated reasoning—liberals performed especially well at looking for falsifying information when the pundit’s claim predicted Romney would win. After the election, once the outcome was known, there was evidence of a belief bias—people sought to falsify claims that were inconsistent with the real-world outcome rather than their ideology. These results suggest that people seek to implicitly regulate emotion when reasoning about political predictions. Before elections, people like to think their preferred candidate will win. After elections, people like to think the winner was inevitable all along.

The tendency to evaluate information differently depending on whether it is congruent with a person’s ideology may result from the joint role of affect and cognition in information processing (Redlawsk, 2002; Zajonc, 1984): information that is incongruent with our beliefs makes us feel threatened, engendering feelings of anxiety, and promoting closer analysis of such evidence (Lodge & Taber, 2005; Marcus & Mackuen, 1993; Taber & Lodge, 2006). Redlawsk (2002) has found, for instance, that people take longer to process political information that is incongruent with a person’s ideological position. That is, motivated reasoning is an implicit tactic for emotion regulation. Consistent with this view, Weston, Blagov, Harenski, Kilts, and Hamann (2006) found that motivated reasoning engages areas of the brain that are associated with implicit affective processing, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, insular cortex, and lateral orbital cortex. When an election outcome is unknown, it may be comforting to find evidence that supports our hopeful (wished for) candidate and to discredit discouraging information.

H. Michael Crowson, Stephen J. Thoma and Nita Hestevold performed 2 studies that tested the distinction between conservative political ideology and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). Across these studies, moderate relationships emerged between RWA and our measures of cognitive rigidity, whereas the relationship between rigidity and mainstream conservative ideology was not as strong. The authors used partial-correlation and path analyses to assess the possibility that RWA mediates the relationship between (a) cognitive rigidity and (b) mainstream conservative attitudes and self-identified conservatism. The results indicated that conservatism is not synonymous with RWA. Additionally, RWA appeared to partially mediate the relationship between cognitive rigidity and mainstream conservatism.

RIGHTISTS ARE AUTHORITARIAN in their attitudes about social, moral, and political issues, fearful of social change, and generally rigid in their approach to dealing with social information—that is a common assumption among lay persons on the political left (Greenberg & Jonas, 2003). Unsurprisingly, these kinds of assumptions have led many on the left to demonize persons who identify with rightist causes and agendas, irrespective of the attitudinal contents that particular individuals may hold and the principles and motives that may have driven their adoption of those positions.

An important assumption of the present research is that the adoption of politically conservative attitudes may not necessarily indicate in the adoptee any mental rigidity or an overly fearful and moralistic stance toward social and political issues (Greenberg & Jonas, 2003). Rather, specific types of conservative attitudes may be differentiated on the basis of their distinct relationships with content-free (ideology-free) cognitive motivations (e.g., need for closure, need for cognition), epistemological beliefs (e.g., beliefs about the structure of knowledge), and level of moral judgment development. We hypothesized that higher levels of cognitive rigidity and lower levels of moral judgment development should be shown by those who hold strong right-wing authoritarian attitudes, whereas authoritarianism should mediate the relationship between cognitive rigidity and mainstream forms of political conservatism. Significantly, we argued that although political conservatism may be related to authoritarianism, these orientations are nevertheless distinct.

Political conservatism

Analyzing political conservatism as motivated social cognition integrates theories of personality (authoritarianism, dogmatism–intolerance of ambiguity), epistemic and existential needs (for closure, regulatory focus, terror management), and ideological rationalization (social dominance, system justification). A meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r � .50); system instability (.47); dogmatism–intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (–.32); uncertainty tolerance (–.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (–.20); fear of threat and loss (.18); and self-esteem (–.09). The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat.

Psychological

How and why do moral judgments vary across the political spectrum? To test moral foundations theory (J. Haidt & J. Graham, 2007; J. Haidt & C. Joseph, 2004), the authors developed several ways to measure people’s use of 5 sets of moral intuitions: Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/ respect, and Purity/sanctity. Across 4 studies using multiple methods, liberals consistently showed greater endorsement and use of the Harm/care and Fairness/reciprocity foundations compared to the other 3 foundations, whereas conservatives endorsed and used the 5 foundations more equally. This difference was observed in abstract assessments of the moral relevance of foundation-related concerns such as violence or loyalty (Study 1), moral judgments of statements and scenarios (Study 2), “sacredness” reactions to taboo trade-offs (Study 3), and use of foundation-related words in the moral texts of religious sermons (Study 4). These findings help to illuminate the nature and intractability of moral disagreements in the American “culture war.”

Social

Most theories in social and political psychology stress self-interest, intergroup conflict, ethnocentrism, homophily, ingroup bias, outgroup antipathy, dominance, and resistance. System justification theory is influenced by these perspectives—including social identity and social dominance theories—but it departs from them in several respects. Advocates of system justification theory argue that (a) there is a general ideological motive to justify the existing social order, (b) this motive is at least partially responsible for the internalization of inferiority among members of disadvantaged groups, (c) it is observed most readily at an implicit, nonconscious level of awareness and (d) paradoxically, it is sometimes strongest among those who are most harmed by the status quo. This article reviews and integrates 10 years of research on 20 hypotheses derived from a system justification perspective, focusing on the phenomenon of implicit outgroup favoritism among members of disadvantaged groups (including African Americans, the elderly, and gays/lesbians) and its relation to political ideology (especially liberalism-conservatism).

End of ideology

The “end of ideology” was declared by social scientists in the aftermath of World War II. They argued that (a) ordinary citizens’ political attitudes lack the kind of stability, consistency, and constraint that ideology requires; (b) ideological constructs such as liberalism and conservatism lack motivational potency and behavioral significance; (c) there are no major differences in content (or substance) between liberal and conservative points of view; and (d) there are few important differences in psychological processes (or styles) that underlie liberal versus conservative orientations. The end-of-ideologists were so influential that researchers ignored the topic of ideology for many years. However, current political realities, recent data from the American National Election Studies, and results from an emerging psychological paradigm provide strong grounds for returning to the study of ideology. Studies reveal that there are indeed meaningful political and psychological differences that covary with ideological self-placement. Situational variables—including system threat and mortality salience—and dispositional variables—including openness and conscientiousness—affect the degree to which an individual is drawn to liberal versus conservative leaders, parties, and opinions. A psychological analysis is also useful for understanding the political divide between “red states” and “blue states.”

Evidence evaluation and belief revision

Does one’s stance toward evidence evaluation and belief revision have relevance for actual beliefs? We investigate the role of having an actively open-minded thinking style about evidence (AOT-E) on a wide range of beliefs, values, and opinions. Participants indicated the extent to which they think beliefs (Study 1) or opinions (Studies 2 and 3) ought to change according to evidence on an 8-item scale. Across three studies with 1,692 participants from two different sources (Mechanical Turk and Lucid for Academics), we find that our short AOT-E scale correlates negatively with beliefs about topics ranging from extrasensory perception, to respect for tradition, to abortion, to God; and positively with topics ranging from anthropogenic global warming to support for free speech on college campuses. More broadly, the belief that beliefs should change according to evidence was robustly associated with political liberalism, the rejection of traditional moral values, the acceptance of science, and skepticism about religious, paranormal, and conspiratorial claims. However, we also find that AOT-E is more strongly predictive for political liberals (Democrats) than conservatives (Republicans). We conclude that socio-cognitive theories of belief (both specific and general) should take into account people’s beliefs about when and how beliefs should change – that is, meta-beliefs – but that further work is required to understand how meta-beliefs about evidence interact with political ideology.

Bandura

This article discusses motivation from the perspective of Bandura’s social cognitive theory. Motivation refers to processes that instigate and sustain goal-directed activities. Motivational processes are personal/internal influences that lead to outcomes such as choice, effort, persistence, achievement, and environmental regulation. Motivation has been a prominent feature of social cognitive theory from the early modeling research to the current conception involving agency. The conceptual framework of reciprocal interactions is discussed, after which research is summarized on behavioral, environmental, and personal influences on motivation. Key internal motivational processes are goals and self-evaluations of progress, self-efficacy, social comparisons, values, outcome expectations, attributions, and self-regulation. Critical issues confronting the theory include diversity and culture, methodology, and long-term effects of interventions. The article concludes with additional recommendations for future research on contexts, conceptual clarity, and technology.

EMCA Durkheim, Goffman

This article presents a theoretical argument for examining the previously unexamined interface between the strong program in cultural sociology ethnomethodology/conversation analysis (EMCA). While these two approaches have radically different theoretical and empirical commitments, they nonetheless share a common root in Durkheim’s sociology, specifically with regard to the centrality of solidarity, ritual, and morality to collective life. Similarly rooted in Durkheim, Goffman’s theory of interaction ritual provides an analytic pivot between EMCA and the strong program. The broader theoretical argument is illustrated using data from interviews with adults about their most recent encounter with a rude strangers in public space, which are here treated a breaches of the interaction ritual of civil inattention. Members readily draw on the specifics of a particular stranger interaction gone awry to reflect on the nature of life in public and to expound on their understandings of the ethics of face-to-face interaction and everyday morality more generally. Where EMCA focuses on the discoverability of the organizational features of everyday interaction, the position developed here is concerned with the organization of members’ interpretations of everyday interaction. While centered on specific kinds of interactional breaches, by finding common ground between EMCA and cultural sociology, the argument advances a potentially more broadly applicable approach that treats everyday encounters as morally meaningful and everyday lifeworlds as moral landscapes. Developing a comprehensive understanding of copresent interaction as a basic building block of society requires attention to both the organizational dynamics of copresent encounters and to the interpretive resources that ordinary members use to account for and justify their own and others’ conduct.

References

• Graham, Jesse; Haidt, Jonathan; Nosek, Brian A. (2009). "Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 96 (5): 1029–1046. doi:10.1037/a0015141. Retrieved 2018-10-25.
• Horgan, Mervyn (2024-04-25). "Moral Landscapes and Morally Meaningful Encounters: How Interaction Ritual Connects Conversation Analysis and Cultural Sociology". Frontiers in Sociology. 9. doi:10.3389/fsoc.2024.1251164. ISSN 2297-7775. Retrieved 2025-02-28.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
• Jost, John T.; Glaser, Jack; Kruglanski, Arie W.; Sulloway, Frank J. (2003). "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition". Psychological Bulletin. 129 (3): 339–375. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339. ISSN 0033-2909.
• Jost, John T.; Banaji, Mahzarin R.; Nosek, Brian A. (2004). "A Decade of System Justification Theory: Accumulated Evidence of Conscious and Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo". Political Psychology. 25 (6): 881–919. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00402.x. ISSN 1467-9221. Retrieved 2019-03-16.
• Jost, John T. (2006). "The End of the End of Ideology". American Psychologist. 61 (7): 651–670. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.61.7.651. ISSN 0003-066X.

• Kahan, D. (2016). The politically motivated reasoning paradigm, part 1: What politically motivated reasoning is and how to measure it. In R. Scott & S. Kosslyn (Eds.), Emerging trends in the social and behavioral sciences. John Wiley & Sons.

• Kunda, Z. (1990). "The Case for Motivated Reasoning". Psychological Bulletin. 108 (3): 480–498. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480. ISSN 0033-2909.
• Miller, Joanne M.; Saunders, Kyle L.; Farhart, Christina E. (2016-10-01). "Conspiracy Endorsement as Motivated Reasoning: The Moderating Roles of Political Knowledge and Trust". American Journal of Political Science. 60 (4): 824–844. doi:10.1111/ajps.12234. ISSN 1540-5907. Retrieved 2016-12-06.
• Pennycook, Gordon; Cheyne, James Allan; Koehler, Derek J.; Fugelsang, Jonathan Albert (2019-05-24). On the Belief That Beliefs Should Change According to Evidence: Implications for Conspiratorial, Moral, Paranormal, Political, Religious, and Science Beliefs. PsyArXiv. Retrieved 2020-07-22.
• Schunk, Dale H.; DiBenedetto, Maria K. (2020-01-01). "Motivation and social cognitive theory". Contemporary Educational Psychology. 60: 101832. doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2019.101832. ISSN 0361-476X. Retrieved 2023-12-20.

Civil inattention

Civic inattention, a concept developed by sociologist Erving Goffman, refers to the practice of individuals acknowledging each other's presence in public spaces while deliberately avoiding direct engagement. In the complex and dynamic environments of modern cities, individuals constantly navigate spaces filled with strangers. While direct interaction is essential for building relationships, an equally important yet often overlooked social practice is civic inattention. This term describes the subtle balance between recognizing another person’s presence and refraining from unnecessary engagement, a behavior that contributes to social order by reducing unwanted confrontations and preserving personal autonomy. Goffman introduced civic inattention as part of his broader work on social interactions and public order. His research suggests that individuals use this practice to maintain a respectful distance from strangers while signaling mutual awareness. Unlike avoidance, which implies a deliberate effort to ignore someone, civic inattention involves a brief acknowledgment followed by disengagement.

Functions

Preserving Personal Space: Urban environments require individuals to coexist in close proximity. Civic inattention allows for the smooth functioning of public spaces by preventing overcrowding from leading to excessive social demands.

Reducing Social Friction: By limiting unnecessary interactions, civic inattention minimizes potential conflicts and misunderstandings. It establishes an implicit social contract where individuals respect each other’s boundaries.

Enabling Autonomy: Civic inattention permits individuals to navigate public life without constant social obligations, fostering a sense of independence while still existing within a collective society.

While civic inattention contributes to social harmony, it has its drawbacks. It may lead to social isolation, discourage community engagement, and reinforce social divisions, particularly along lines of race, class, and gender. For instance, marginalized groups may experience exclusion or heightened surveillance due to selective civic inattention. Additionally, in situations requiring intervention—such as witnessing an accident or a crime—civic inattention can contribute to bystander apathy.

Civic inattention plays a vital role in managing social interactions in urban spaces. It serves as a means of balancing personal autonomy with collective order. However, its implications must be critically examined, especially in contexts where excessive detachment can lead to social alienation or reinforce systemic inequalities. Future research should explore ways to foster a more inclusive and conscious approach to public engagement without undermining the benefits of civic inattention.

Definition

Civil inattention is the respectful recognition of a stranger in a public space without treating them as an object of curiosity or intent. Civil inattention establishes that each recognizes the other's personhood without engagement. For example, persons passing on a street will typically glance at each other, noticing and then withdrawing their attention. This minimal recognition is contrasted with other interactions such as the "hate stare" of the racist or the refusal to notice a begger. Civil inattention is one of Irving Goffman's most celebrated concepts in his analyses of the rituals of public conduct in everyday life.

Civil inattention is required to avoid the otherwise problematic encounters between strangers in an urban culture, to behave with courtesy while maintaining strangeness. Situations often studied are those in which strangers must share a public space in closer proximity than normal, as do the passengers using mass transportation, riding an elevator, or in a waiting room. The typical behaviors observed to maintain strangeness include not staring or talking.

The wearing of masks in public poses challenges for civil inattention, since they conceal many of the facial nuances and expressions that convey such inattention by acknowledging the presence of another while signaling a lack of untoward interest. Without the signifying presence of the rest of the face, such messages can be obscured.

• Mondada, Lorenza; Peräkylä, Anssi (2023-08-17). "The Social Organization of (In-)attention". New Perspectives on Goffman in Language and Interaction: Body, Participation and the Self (1 ed.). New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-00-309411-1. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

• Sharon, Tamar; Koops, Bert-Jaap (2021-09-01). "The Ethics of Inattention: Revitalising Civil Inattention as a Privacy-Protecting Mechanism in Public Spaces". Ethics and Information Technology. 23 (3): 331–343. doi:10.1007/s10676-020-09575-7. ISSN 1572-8439. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

• Igbinedion, Ofurhe (2021). Sidewalk Interactions: A Study of Urban Interpersonal Moments (Thesis). United States -- California: University of California, Davis. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

Ritual

• Kádár, Dániel Z.; House, Juliane (2020-03-13). "The Pragmatics of Ritual: An Introduction". Pragmatics. 30 (1): 1–14. doi:10.1075/prag.19016.kad. ISSN 2406-4238. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

• Horgan, Mervyn (2020-03-13). "Urban Interaction Ritual: Strangership, Civil Inattention and Everyday Incivilities in Public Space". Pragmatics. 30 (1): 116–141. doi:10.1075/prag.19022.hor. ISSN 2406-4238. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

• Tavory, Iddo; Hoynes, Nicholas (2025-03-01). "Order and Potentiality in Interaction Ritual Theory". Sociological Theory. 43 (1): 52–66. doi:10.1177/07352751251315940. ISSN 0735-2751. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

• Horgan, Mervyn (2024-04-25). "Moral Landscapes and Morally Meaningful Encounters: How Interaction Ritual Connects Conversation Analysis and Cultural Sociology". Frontiers in Sociology. 9. doi:10.3389/fsoc.2024.1251164. ISSN 2297-7775. Retrieved 2025-02-28.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

Crowded spaces

In a series of experiments, groups of students stood silently in busy streets, breaching normal behavior, while the reaction of passers-by were recorded. Reactions included becoming an audience by slowing or stopping to watch, or joining the performance. Rather than being a breach of norms explained by civil inattention, the events were assumed to be demonstrations, protests or "flash mobs".

• Benediktsson, Mike Owen; Tuckel, Peter; Milczarski, William; Caruso, Farimata; DeCurtis, Michelle; Gadtaula, Prahelika; Herman, Matt; MacDonald, Nicholas; Silipo, Nicholas; Singh, Daniell (2020-05-03). "The Subway as Fourth Place: Anomie, Flânerie and the "Crush of Persons"". Applied Mobilities. 5 (2): 103–121. doi:10.1080/23800127.2018.1426522. ISSN 2380-0127. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

• Luna, Erick Serna (2022). "Das Geistesleben Unter Die Großstädte: The Socio-Affective Order in the Subway from a Simmelian Perspective". Digithum (29): 1–9. doi:10.7238/d.v0i29.396391. ISSN 1575-2275. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

• Sträuli, Louise (2023-10-26). "Negotiating Difference on Public Transport: How Practices and Experiences of Deviance Shape Public Space". Urban Planning. 8 (4): 89–98. doi:10.17645/up.v8i4.6456. ISSN 2183-7635. Retrieved 2025-02-28.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

• Zviadadze, Sophie (2024). "Code of the Passenger and Situational Sociability in Public Transport in Tbilisi". In Lakić, Sonja; Pereira, Patrícia; Índias Cordeiro, Graça (eds.). The Everydayness of Cities in Transition: Micro Approaches to Material and Social Dimensions of Change. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 203–230. ISBN 978-3-031-63414-7. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

• Earl, Catherine (2022-04-28). "Social Distancing, Interaction, and (Un)crowded Public Space in Mass Transit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam". Medicine Anthropology Theory. 9 (2): 1–26. doi:10.17157/mat.9.2.5375. ISSN 2405-691X. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

Unwanted attention

Harassment

Integrate with Street harassment

• In feminist scholarship, there is no consistent term for “public-space sexual harassment" (PSH). An early approach identified PSH as a breach of rules of civil inattention by strangers in public spaces, which places women as low status individuals. Sexual harassment of women and girls in public spaces is often trivialized. Responses to questions about twelve specific forms of harassment indicate that PSH experience is ubiquitous. Women who experience PSH are not only unable to lead lives free of harassment but also deprived of the ability to enjoy emotional well-being, be physically mobile, seek educational opportunities, earn a living, and be free of restrictions overall.

• McDonald, Lucy (2022). "Cat-Calls, Compliments and Coercion". Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. 103 (1): 208–230. doi:10.1111/papq.12385. ISSN 1468-0114. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

• Lewis, Sian; Saukko, Paula; Lumsden, Karen (2021-02-01). "Rhythms, Sociabilities and Transience of Sexual Harassment in Transport: Mobilities Perspectives of the London Underground". Gender, Place & Culture. 28 (2): 277–298. doi:10.1080/0966369X.2020.1734540. ISSN 0966-369X. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

• Fileborn, Bianca; O’Neill, Tully (2023-01-01). "From "Ghettoization" to a Field of Its Own: A Comprehensive Review of Street Harassment Research". Trauma, Violence, & Abuse. 24 (1): 125–138. doi:10.1177/15248380211021608. ISSN 1524-8380. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

• Brockschmidt, Eva; Wadey, Ross (2022-05-04). "Runners' Experiences of Street Harassment in London". Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health. 14 (3): 345–362. doi:10.1080/2159676X.2021.1943502. ISSN 2159-676X. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

• Fairchild, Kimberly (2023-06-01). "Understanding Street Harassment as Gendered Violence: Past, Present, and Future". Sexuality & Culture. 27 (3): 1140–1159. doi:10.1007/s12119-022-09998-y. ISSN 1936-4822. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

Surveilance

• Rampton, Ben; Eley, Louise (2021). "Goffman and the everyday experience of surveillance1". Security, Ethnography and Discourse. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-00-308090-9.

Goffman (1963) defines civil inattention as when strangers quickly glance at each other and then withdraw their gaze. By this civil inattention, we acknowledge each other’s presence, showing that we have no hostile intentions and that we are not seeking further interaction. Several of my interviewees claimed that perhaps the one aspect they found most challenging in working covertly was not to be able to breach the norm of civil inattention in relation to gaze (Dahl, 2019). This was difficult because it meant they had to stop having staring contests when meeting a known or suspected criminal in a public space. The ‘winner’ of such competitions was the one who did not lower his eyes. According to my interviewees, this was a test to see whether a person is a criminal. When conducting such staring contests, the police officers know they are breaking social codes. Apparently only two groups, police and criminals, prolong their gaze and refuse to lower their eyes, and thereby breach this social code of civil inattention (Dahl, 2019).

Gaze

• Arminen, Ilkka A. T.; Heino, Anna S. M. (2023-09-05). "Civil Inattention—on the Sources of Relational Segregation". Frontiers in Sociology. 8. doi:10.3389/fsoc.2023.1212090. ISSN 2297-7775. Retrieved 2025-02-28.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

References

• Alloa, Emmanuel (2021). "Transparency, Privacy Commons and Civil Inattention". In Berger, Stefan; Fengler,, Susanne; Owetschkin, Dimitrij; Sittmann, Julia (eds.). Cultures of Transparency: Between Promise and Peril. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-32693-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)

• Mondada, Lorenza; Peräkylä, Anssi; Bergmann, Jörg R.; Peräkylä, Anssi (2023-08-17). "The Social Organization of (In-)attention". New Perspectives on Goffman in Language and Interaction. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-00-309411-1. Retrieved 2025-02-28.
• Blonk, Laurine; Trappenburg, Margo; Bredewold, Femmianne (2022-05-01). "'I Can't Just Go up to a Person to Ask What's Going on.' How Dutch Urbanites' Accounts of Non-Engagement Enhance Our Understanding of Urban Care". Urban Studies. 59 (6): 1185–1201. doi:10.1177/0042098021997013. ISSN 0042-0980. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

• Arielli, Emanuele (2020). "Spheres of Action. The Technological Shift of Control". img journal (3): 40–53. doi:10.6092/issn.2724-2463/12246. ISSN 2724-2463. Retrieved 2025-02-28.

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