By Kirsten Hilgeford
Do the little, everyday ways we relate to one another really matter? From avoiding awkward moments to singing together at a concert, the small interactions people share every day may have a bigger impact on society than previously understood, according to new sociological research.
In their study “Between Two Rituals: Face and Effervescence as Moments of Social Life,” appearing in the June 2026 issue of the American Sociological Review, authors Anders Vassenden (University of Stavanger), and Nicholas Hoynes (New York University), Taylor Price (Amherst College), and Iddo Tavory (New York University) looked at micro interactions and shed light on their potential to shape society.
The authors distinguished between two types of micro interactions: rituals of face and rituals of effervescence. Rituals of face are behaviors people use to protect their dignity, maintain social standing, and avoid embarrassing others. This includes such behaviors as ignoring a mispronunciation, circumventing political differences in a conversation, or softening a critique of someone’s idea. People are essentially “saving face.”
Rituals of effervescence are those that produce emotional entertainment. This can include joking together or sharing enthusiasm for a common experience, such as board games, concerts, or sports events. In their study, the authors demonstrated that the rituals of face and of effervescence are simultaneously at play in our social interactions and are used differently depending on the situation and the individuals involved.
Rituals of face and effervescence are woven into our everyday interactional life, from work to family life to leisure activities, and many macro-level outcomes sociologists study are rooted in such seemingly small moments. To show this, the authors analyzed data from two very different research studies. The first study focused on ethnic minorities in Norway from various migrant backgrounds and consisted of 39 in-depth interviews with 32 individuals, conducted from May 2021 to September 2025. The biggest single minority group represented was Somali-Norwegians (13 individuals). These participants were interviewed alternately by two researchers—one a white Norwegian man and the other a woman of Somali background—to assess how the researchers’ own ethnoracial identities affected the responses.
The second study focused on observations of creative songwriting sessions in Canada, collected between February 2019 and November 2021. Participants were a collaborative network of 20 songwriters in Toronto who worked across genres of pop, rock, and R&B. The network consisted of 16 men and 4 women; the songwriters were of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, and they ranged in age from their early 20s to their mid-30s. Field recordings documented songwriters’ activities before their sessions, during their sessions, and after their sessions, including collaborative dynamics.
In the first study, the authors found that patterns of ritual were markedly different in minority-to-minority vs. minority-to-majority interactions. Study participants demonstrated that they had learned which interaction rituals to expect in a social situation, depending on the racial dynamic. Participants deftly navigated their social interactions, ritually segregatingtheir social worlds by saving face for white audiences and producing solidarity and effervescence with minority audiences.
The authors found surprisingly similar dynamics during the second study that explored the creative processes of songwriting teams, noticing how ritual moments followed each other. Showing deference (ritual of face) at the beginning of a songwriting session allowed musicians to test half-formed ideas. Effervescence, in turn, emboldened participants to be vulnerable in their performances. The authors explain that “the rituals buttress each other, so that effervescence is aided by moments of facework, and performances of vulnerability are scaffolded by moments of effervescence. Facework and effervescence form feedback loops that are crucial to actors’ ability to sustain creative work and deepen bonds between collaborators.”
The authors propose that the interplay among interaction rituals both reinforces existing order and creates openings for change. Further understanding of this dynamic has the potential to shed light on the complexities of human interaction. The authors propose that the ideas presented in this article can be used in studies of work, social movements, politics, and beyond.
“When social movements emerge, do members segregate their ritual moments?" noted Vassenden. "When members try to sustain the movement and keep it from disintegrating into bickering factions, do they intertwine effervescence and care for each other’s face? Or else, how do startup companies keep their overworked employees enthusiastic? How do they both make them feel as if they were part of something exciting and bigger than themselves, while also trying to make them feel personally valuable? More prosaically, when you, somewhat anxiously, present a sketch of an idea at a work meeting and then join your colleagues’ enthusiasm once the idea seems to catch on, you have engaged in both rituals. We are constantly engaged in such moments. Understanding their dynamics is crucial for both an appreciation of small, everyday moments and for a better understanding of how these congeal into broader outcomes.”
