Field
Sociology
Project Description
Our team’s goal is to identify communicative strategies that promote successful interactions and foster connection across social divides, be they demographic or attitudinal. We will do this using a mixed methods approach to analyze natural, unstructured conversations between strangers who are either sociodemographically very similar or very different. We believe that through doing this we will be able to gain insight into the ways that people show greater kindness, empathy, and generosity towards others in in interactions between people who are or feel different.
Team
Tanya Stivers, Amanda Morris, Giovanni Rossi
Tanya Stivers is a Professor of Sociology at UCLA. She is a conversation analyst with an interest in social interaction in ordinary and healthcare settings, particularly with regard to the structures that underlie conversation. Her books include Prescribing Under Pressure: Parent-Physician Conversations and Antibiotics, The Book of Answers, Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural and Social Perspectives (co-edited with Nick Enfield), and (co-edited with Lorenza Mondada and Jakob Steensig) The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation.
Giovanni Rossi is an Associate Professor of Sociology at UCLA. He uses conversation analysis to study human language and gesture as a system of tools for social interaction, with special interests in action understanding, everyday cooperation, and cultural differences/similarities. He a co-editor of Getting Others to Do Things (2020, Language Science Press) and the author of Systems of Social Action (2025, Oxford University Press).
Amanda Morris is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at UCLA. She uses conversation analysis as a lens to study human connection and relationships. She is particularly interested in first and early interactions between strangers, and how these initial encounters shape an individual’s perception of their partner, as well as shape their desire to establish a relationship with the other person.