A Thesis Submitted in Partial Satisfaction of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Anthropology Diane Elaine
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CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE LAS VEGAS PIO~TEERS: A.t\f APPLICATION OF DISSONA.l\JCE THEORY A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Anthropology by Diane Elaine Ainsworth January, 1980 The Thesis of Diane Elaine Ainsworth is approved: Keith Morton Lynn Mason David Hayano California State University, Northridge ii DISCLAIMER The names of the informants in this study have been changed to protect them. However, certain historical facts that may identify them have, by necessity, been left unchanged. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page DISCLAIMER iii ABSTRACT vi 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Purpose of the Study 1 Organizational Design 6 Delimitations of the Study 7 2 lliEORY AND MElliODS 10 Symbolic Interactionism as a General Perspective 10 Cognitive Dissonance Theory 17 The Experimental Evidence 23 Other Perspectives 33 Methods and Materials 36 3 HISTORY: THE PIONEERS OF LAS VEGAS 41 The Settlers of Las Vegas 41 The Founding of Las Vegas 44 Hoover Dam and the Resort Hotel Business 53 About the Informants 60 4 DATA PRESEl'ITATION: PATTERNS FOR CONSTRUCTING A SOCIAL LIFE 69 Introduction: Organization of the Data 69 Small Town Las Vegas 73 Roles 86 Groups and Organizational Scales 90 The Significance of Gambling in Las Vegas 96 The Significance of Religion in Las Vegas 107 iv 5 WORLDS IN CONFLICT: TI-IE EVIDENCE FOR DISSONANCE 112 Introduction: Merging Data and Theory 112 Dissonant Images of Las Vega~ 112 Behavior, Commitment and the Conditions for Dissonance 117 Self-Attribution as Evidence of Commitment 123 Mechanisms for Dissonance Reduction 124 Psychological Distancing 125 Spatial Distancing 126 Social Distancing 129 Commitment and Psychological Implications 130 Linking Attitudes and Behavior 132 BIBLIOGRAPHY 139 v ABSTRACT lAS VEGAS PIONEERS: AN APPLICATION OF DISSONAl'IJCE THEORY by Diane Elaine Ainsworth Master of Arts in Anthropology This study serves to identify the various psychosocial charac teristics of a subculture of pioneer Las Vegans who have created and upheld a distinctive view of their environment in the face of rapid change within the more complex society of Las Vegas today. The per spective of symbolic interactionism is a convenient conceptual framework for looking at such social and psychological phenomena. By further incorporating the psychological principles of cognitive dissonance (Festinger 1956) into the everyday situations of this group, it is possible to account for the pioneers's successful main tenance of an exclusive "mindset" which binds them together. The observation of parallels between individual psychological and collective processes must be recognized before the use of any psychological orientation can be injected into a body of field obser vations. These parallels involve the distribution of information, which in turn, induces possible attitude changes. A common need for cognitive consistency, however, can be found at both levels. Disso nance theory attempts to explain this struggle to minimize perceived vi inconsistencies in the environment. Consequently, it is a vehicle for more fully understanding a group's constnJctions of the world and how they function within it. The results of this study indicate that specific behavioral and psychological "distancing" mechanisms are functioning to support a view of Las Vegas that is lillcommon to the rest of the residential population. These mechanisms include psychological, spatial and social separations among the informants, and are rooted primarily in their past experiences of settling the town of Las Vegas. vii CHAPTER ONE INI'RODUCTION Purpose of the Study The social worlds that people build are rich with information about themselves and their environment. Social knowledge is gained from participation in various social events and interactions with others. The social world is not only "known about," it is acted within (Glick 1978:5) and "interactively maintained" (Garfinkel 1967). Accordingly, we might expect that situations from which we construct our worlds lead to strategies of knowledge, or knowing, that sustain a coherent course of action related to each interactive context (Glick 1978:5). These courses of action do not appear to be fully "rational" in form, dealing as they do with shifting social and informational domains. Hence, in order to understand the construction of a particular social world, it is necessary to treat the participant as both an "observer" and "theorizer" of the world as it is displayed to him or her in different social arenas (Glick 1978:6). Social knowledge is, in turn, referenced to external devices which serve to reduce the amount of information in the environment while, at the same time, allowing for the maintenance of some basis for social action (Abelson 1976). Schank and Abelson (1977) refer to these conditions as "social scripts," in which coherent action 1 2 sequences must be carried out in relation to the situational context and the internal state of the participant. Knowledge for an actor is determined as much by the conditions of its application (Glick 1975) as it is by its structure, or coherence, as a domain of information. As Glick describes it: Two bodies of knowledge must intersect: knowledge of a domain of information and knowledge of the domain of application ... In much the same way that we use appropriate syntax without being able to talk explicitly about grammar, or follow rules of conversational sequencing [Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974] without being able to describe them, we probably know about sociability without that knowledge being explicit [Glick 1978:5]. The advantages to using this perspective, then, are much the same as those o£ cognitive anthropologists; ethnographic description takes the form of a knowledge domain defined by the ways in which the actor behaves in his or her interactive context rather than what the actor knows about the interactive context. The act of "knowing" about one's social domain is not equivalent to the act of "behaving" in one's environment. The topic of this thesis revolves around a small group of women who share such a social domain. They participated in the settling of the town of Las Vegas, Nevada, and remain residents of that town today. The perspective that they have constructed of this environment stems from a number of common experiences: they all arrived in Las Vegas at the time of its official founding in 1905, or shortly thereafter, 3 with the exception of one informant; they all became active members of the community, centering their efforts on the establishment of social and religious groups and activities; they are all approximately the same age; they all see themselves as "religious" people, "actively concerned citizens," involved in community projects or religious fundraisers that they feel contribute to the "well-being" of the community; and importantly, they see themselves as "separate" or "apart" from the larger connnunity in which they live. The environ mental feature that they dissociate themselves from, but which allows them to maintain their "separateness" from the rest of the connnunity, is the gaming industry, an enterprise which gainfully employs half of the residential population of Las Vegas. For these "pioneer" women, that environmental aspect no longer plays a part in their world. It instead creates a major source of conflict in their lives because it represents a set of values and attitudes that do not match the values that they attribute to themselves and "their" conummity. There are several underlying assumptions that influence the depiction of the world of these pioneer women of Las Vegas. First, it is assumed that a participant's thinking within a specific domain is characterized by a unity of organization, underlying rules that participants adhere to in nonexplicit ways. Second, any changes in these social domains reflect an internal process or reorganization of one form of thinking into another. The participants act in such ways as to construct frameworks by which their social domains can be defined. In the lives of these pioneer Las Vegans, then, such conceptual frameworks as the world of gambling are directly affected 4 by the behavioral patterns of their everyday lives, and in this way, can be defined within their domains. Further, recognizing that more information is understood or intended than is actually received or expressed presumes what Cicourel (1973) describes as a reflective monitoring of information that is perceived, retrieved from memory, and generated during interactional exchanges with others. We recognize more information than we actually express in external events, and this stored and shared body of knowledge constitutes a sociocultural reconstruction that is linked to both the context of social interaction and the orientation of the participants (Cicourel 1978:275). The particular circumstances that exist at the time of observation provide the context for the inferen tial step of making interpretations about what is happening in a social exchange. As Cicourel (1973) explains, the observation of facts by participants in social interactions means that those participants perceive a setting in terms of what is assumed to be culturally known in common with others. Hence, the refusal by these pioneers to identify and associate with the gaming industry in Las Vegas is detected in their behavioral patterns and the shared values that undercut those behaviors. This viewpoint stems from a well-established notion that social interaction is an