Sociology Student Scholarship

Gender-biased Diagnosing, the Consequences of Psychosomatic Misdiagnosis and 'Doing Credibility'

Eda Clare Smith — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:24:00 PDT

This research was aimed at exploring patient perspectives on the gender-politics of

doctor-patient relationship , finding the number of men and women who had

experienced psychosomatic diagnosis or misdiagnosis, and assessing the detrimental

health consequences of psychosomatic misdiagnosis by investigating patient

experiences. Thirty-nine respondents (13 men and 26 women) of ages ranging 18 to

71 completed open-ended questionnaires designed to gauge their relevant feelings

and experiences. Hypothesis was that findings would be indicative of gender-biased

diagnosing; that women would have significantly more reports of psychosomatic

diagnosis and misdiagnosis, more negative experiences with doctors, and more

experiences in which they physically suffered as a result of psychosomatic

misdiagnosis. This research found strong evidence of gender-biased diagnosing. It

also found that 1) many women reported experiencing sex discrimination in a

doctor-patient relationship, and over half of women had discontinued seeing a

doctor for this reason, 2) a small phenomenon of "doing credibility" was found in

that patients, mostly female, reported downplaying severity of symptoms in dialog

with their doctor in fear of complaining or appearing "irrational," and 3) women

were found to suffer traumatic and health-crippling experiences, sometimes ending

up in the emergency room needing surgery or suffering for years with debilitating

undiagnosed medical conditions, as a direct consequence of their symptoms being

mislabeled as psychosomatic.

Attitudes Towards Alcohol and Drug Use within the LGBTQ Community

Erica Boudette — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:51:30 PDT

Beyond Cravings: Gender and Class Desires in Chocolate Marketing

Jamal Fahim — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:15:10 PDT

Of the many comfort foods available, chocolate is identified as being the most craved, tellingly expressed by the coinage of such terms as “chocolate addiction” or “chocoholic.” It has become a fetishized commodity in the United States that people associate with reward, comfort, luxury and sensuality. “Chocolate consumption” is an appropriately ambiguous phrase for it may refer to either the purchasing or the eating of chocolate. The unresolved tension of this ambiguity draws forth the latent connotation of “consumption” where both meanings are combined – consumption is the act by which a consumer merges with a commodity. It is this deeper significance and its close relationship to the Marxist phenomenon of fetishism that I will explore. This paper seeks to answer the question, “How is chocolate an example of a fetishized commodity in 21st century U.S. society?” My study will touch upon the overall structural and supportive role of fetishism within the capitalist system, but primarily aims to clarify the exact mechanism by which the consumer class is successfully manipulated by it. I argue that chocolate marketing exemplifies the way a commodity’s fetish status may be created and intensified through the promise of an object’s capacity to transform the consumer’s deepest aspects of his or her self.

Exploring Web 2.0: The Impact of Digital Communications Technologies on Youth Relationships and Sociability

Sarah M. Long — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:31:15 PDT

The recent and rapid increase of Internet culture and new communications technologies is one important facet of changes in contemporary social life. Understanding the multiple and complex nature of these changes is an important sociological question. This paper uses qualitative data gained through face-to-face interviews and technology-mediated interviews conducted with college-aged students to explore the ways in which Internet culture and digital socialization affect youth relationships and sociability. Previous research has suggested that the pervasive and intensive use of Internet in education, communication and entertainment may be leading to decreasing face-to-face interaction among youth. Other research focuses on how technology may also expand and transform sociability by allowing people to communicate with a wider and more diverse network of people. Due to the contradictory findings about the consequences of widespread use of Web 2.0 technology among youth, the goal of this research is to explore the depth of the effects that digital socialization has on youth relationships, sociability, connectivity, and identity formation.

Exploring the Power of Imaginative Play: A Comprehensive Study on Performances of Exclusion

Lauren E. Lee — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:10:07 PDT

This article draws from field research performed in a Los Angeles preschool to explore the ways boys negotiate power, constructing identities that facilitate exclusion during imaginative play. Previous sociological research only discusses the female tendency to clique and exclude. This research ascertains that boys behave in similar ways. Imaginative play offers the rare opportunity for children to manipulate social status, something that is relatively stagnant in the rest of society. Authority is gained through creativity, a factor that is unique to children this age. In this study, to assert transient and momentary power, boys perform acts of exclusion. Power is exercised on the playground as a socially situated phenomenon that depended on children acknowledging the imaginative realms. The existence of those realms offered change to the hierarchies evident in the preschool’s social-real realm. Because every child possessed power in different imaginative games, this research illuminates that children not only learn exclusion through the very act of being excluded, but through the influential performance of exclusion of others.