Social roles, gender, and stress: Revisiting switching dynamics

• In Event: 4467 - Section on Social Psychology Refereed Roundtables (Cosponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions)
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 8: Gender and Health

Abstract

In a recent article, Cornwell (2013) argued that frequent daily switching between roles and role contexts is a rarely examined minor stressor that may negatively influence the mental health of women more than it does for men. In fact, he finds evidence that frequent daily switching predicts higher perceived stress among women but not men. Granted, switching certainly constitutes circumstances to which it is hard to adjust and manage, especially considering a person holds multiple roles in his or her social life. However, past research fails to consider the fact that roles are organized according to its identity structure, an important fact that has implications for health outcomes. Drawing on role-identity theory, I propose to pay attention to the significance of persons’ subjective sense of the import of an identity. I argue that it is the contexts in which there is the discrepancy between identity salience (i.e., the probability that a given identity will be invoked in social interaction) and identity prominence (i.e., one’s subjective sense of the import of an identity with regard to his or her social behavior) that matter. Specifically, I hypothesize that switching roles and role contexts can serve as a stressor when it would lower the likelihood that a given identity will be invoked despite the high prominence. In doing so, the current study aims to expand on scholarship that addresses the significance of identity structures and provide the implications for stress research.

Author

• Eun Hye Lee, Indiana University-Bloomington