How Contextual Frames Normalize Submission

ABSTRACT

Two studies demonstrate how contextual frames normalize submission and hereby complement and legitimize the exercise of power. Combining Kuhn’s qualitative concept of the self with Charles Osgood’s empirical measurements of self-attitudes, the first study tests the impact of the frame of submission on self-attitudes. This assessment of the self allows to quantify the influence of a frame or context. A second study tests the hypothesis that selves, organized by the context of submission, will normalize acts of submission. Computer simulations that quantitatively operationalize the Cybernetic Symbolic Interactionist perspective, find evidence for the normalizing quality of frames.