Dramaturgy and Animal Behavior

5 min read Updated Apr 19, 2026

Two last topics for this chapter: the dramaturgical approach to everyday interaction, and the basics of animal behavior that frame the human examples in sociology.

The Dramaturgical Approach (Goffman)

Black-and-white studio portrait of a young Erving Goffman around 1940, dark-haired, in a suit and tie, looking directly at the camera — Erving Goffman (1922-1982), Canadian-American sociologist whose *The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life* (1959) introduced the dramaturgical vocabulary - front stage, back stage, impression management - the MCAT still tests verbatim. *Credit: Unknown author via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).*

Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) proposed that social life is like theater. People are actors performing roles for various audiences, using impression management to control how others perceive them.

Front Stage and Back Stage

Front stage. Where performance happens - the setting where you maintain a particular identity for an audience. The classroom for a teacher, the exam room for a doctor, the dining area for a restaurant server.
Back stage. Where the performer steps out of character and relaxes. The teacher’s lounge, the doctor’s workroom, the restaurant kitchen. Behaviors here would be inappropriate or embarrassing if seen by the audience.

The boundary matters. An audience member straying “back stage” (a customer wandering into the kitchen) disrupts the performance. Social embarrassment often reflects a slip between stages - being caught in a role you weren’t performing.

Impression Management

Impression management is active effort to control how others perceive you. Dressing for an interview, rehearsing a speech, adjusting your tone on the phone to sound friendly - all impression management.

Most impression management is automatic and unconscious. You don’t deliberately think about how to stand during casual conversation, but you’re still doing it.

Face and Face-Work

Goffman introduced face - the positive social image a person wants to claim in an interaction. Face-work is the effort to maintain one’s own face and protect others’ face. Avoiding topics that would embarrass someone, helping a friend save face after a mistake, offering polite phrases to smooth over awkwardness - all face-work.

Face-work keeps interactions running smoothly. Without it, conversations would constantly collapse into conflict and shame.

Symbolic Interactionism

Black-and-white photograph of an elderly George Herbert Mead in a three-piece suit and tie, with a thick white moustache and a serious expression — George Herbert Mead (1863-1931), American philosopher and social theorist whose work on the social self - "the I and the me" - laid the groundwork for symbolic interactionism. *Credit: Unknown author via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).*

The theoretical framework that underlies Goffman, Mead, and Cooley. Core claims:

Humans act based on the meanings things have for them. A classroom means different things to a student, a teacher, and a janitor.
Meanings arise through social interaction. We learn what things mean from others, not from the objects themselves.
Meanings are interpreted and modified through ongoing interaction. Meanings are not fixed - they’re renegotiated constantly.

Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level sociology - focused on face-to-face interaction - in contrast with macro-level theories (functionalism, conflict theory) that emphasize large-scale structures.

Animal Behavior

Human behavior didn’t arise in a vacuum. Evolutionary and ethological research on animal behavior frames many MCAT questions.

Foraging

Optimal foraging theory predicts animals will forage in ways that maximize caloric intake per unit of time and risk. An animal must decide:

Where to forage.
What to eat (marginal value).
When to move to a new patch.

Observable choices often match the theoretical predictions, with deviations suggesting additional factors (predation risk, social competition).

A meerkat sentinel scans for predators while the rest of the group forages. Sentinel behavior is a textbook example of trading off individual time spent feeding against group safety - readable through both kin selection and reciprocal altruism lenses. Credit: Bernard DUPONT via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Mating and Inclusive Fitness

Strategies for maximizing inclusive fitness (own reproduction + that of relatives):

Monogamy. Pair bonding; associated with species where males contribute significantly to raising offspring.
Polygyny. One male, multiple female mates. Common in species where females can raise offspring alone.
Polyandry. One female, multiple male mates. Rarer; sometimes involves paternal care of young.
Promiscuity. No stable bonds; each mating is opportunistic.

Sexual selection (Darwin): traits that increase mating success evolve even if they cost survival. Peacock tails, songbird displays, deer antlers. Female preference shapes male traits over generations.

The peacock's tail is the textbook case of sexual selection: extravagantly costly to grow and to drag around, but persistently selected by female preference. Survival cost, mating benefit. Credit: Narmadhashree via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

A lion pride resting in the shade: several lionesses lying together with cubs in the foreground, a single male lion visible behind them under the same tree — A lion pride - one resident male, several breeding females and their cubs - is a classic example of polygyny. Female lions can rear cubs cooperatively, which lowers the value of male parental care and tilts the species away from monogamy. *Credit: I've Got It On Film! via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).*

A pair of mourning doves perched together on a tree branch against a clear blue sky, one slightly above and behind the other — Mourning doves form long-term pair bonds and share parental care - a monogamous mating system. The MCAT often pairs lions and doves to contrast polygyny with monogamy and the parental-investment logic behind each. *Credit: Andrew Weitzel via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).*

Communication and Pheromones

Animals communicate via:

Visual signals (postures, colors).
Auditory signals (calls, songs).
Chemical signals (pheromones - species-specific chemicals that trigger innate responses in other members of the species).
Tactile signals (touch, grooming).

In humans, pheromone use is vestigial - we have a partially functional vomeronasal organ - but visual, auditory, and tactile communication dominate. Nonverbal communication (facial expressions, body language, tone of voice) often carries more weight in interpersonal interactions than the verbal content.

Two-panel diagram of the honeybee waggle dance. Top: photograph of bees on a honeycomb with the figure-eight dance path overlaid in white showing the straight 'waggle' run between two looping turns. Bottom: schematic with a sun, a flower, and a hive showing how the angle of the waggle run encodes the direction to the food source relative to the sun — Karl von Frisch's discovery: the honeybee waggle dance is a true communication system. The angle of the straight portion encodes direction relative to the sun and the duration encodes distance to a food source. A high-yield example of non-vocal animal communication. *Credit: J. Tautz and M. Kleinhenz via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5).*

Evolutionary Game Theory

Extends classical game theory (prisoner’s dilemma, hawk-dove) to evolution. Strategies succeed if they produce more offspring than alternatives. Cooperation can evolve in repeated interactions when reciprocal strategies (tit-for-tat) outperform constant defection.

What is the difference between Goffman's front stage and back stage?

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Front stage: where the social performance happens (classroom for a teacher). Back stage: where the performer steps out of character (teachers' lounge). Behaviors appropriate back stage would be embarrassing if seen front stage.

Define impression management.

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Active effort to control how others perceive you. Includes dressing for context, adjusting tone, choosing words carefully, and maintaining a particular demeanor. Much of it is automatic and unconscious.

What are the three core claims of symbolic interactionism?

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(1) Humans act based on meanings things have for them. (2) Meanings arise through social interaction, not from objects themselves. (3) Meanings are interpreted and modified through ongoing interaction. A micro-level sociology.

What are pheromones, and how do they differ from regular chemical signals?

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Pheromones are species-specific chemical signals that trigger innate (not learned) responses in other members of the same species. Common in insects and mammals for mating, alarm, and territorial marking. Vestigial in humans - visual and auditory communication dominate.