Mini-Lecture
© Robert J. Brym (2004)
#3
The Sociology of Emotions
Some scholars think that emotions are like the common cold. In both cases, an external
disturbance causes a reaction that we experience involuntarily. The external disturbance may
involve exposure to a particular virus that causes us to catch cold or exposure to a grizzly bear
attack that causes us to experience fear. In either case, we can't control our body's patterned
response. Emotions, like colds, just happen to us.
The trouble with this argument is that we can and often do control our emotions. Emotions
don’t just happen to us; we manage them. If a grizzly bear attacks you in the woods you can run
as fast as your legs will carry you or you can calm yourself, lie down, play dead, and silently pray
for the best. You are more likely to survive the grizzly bear attack if you control your emotions
and follow the second strategy. You will also temper your fear with a new emotion: hope. This
process is illustrated by the downloadable Figure that accompanies this min-lecture.
When we manage our emotions, we tend to follow certain cultural "scripts," like the
culturally transmitted knowledge that lying down and playing dead gives you a better chance of
surviving a grizzly bear attack. That is, we usually know the culturally designated emotional
response to a particular external stimulus and we try to respond appropriately. If we don’t succeed
in achieving the culturally appropriate emotional response, we are likely to feel guilty,
disappointed or (as in the case of the grizzly bear attack) something much worse.
Emotions pervade all social interaction but they are not, as we commonly believe,
spontaneous and uncontrollable reactions to external stimuli. Rather, the norms of our culture and
the expectations of the people around us pattern our emotions. Sociologist Arlie Russell
Hochschild is one of the leading figures in the study of emotion management. In fact, she coined
the term. She argues that emotion management involves people obeying "feeling rules" and
responding appropriately to the situations in which they find themselves. So, for example, people
talk about the "right" to feel angry and they acknowledge that they "should" have mourned a
relative’s death more deeply. We have conventional expectations not only about what we should
feel but also about how much we should feel, how long we should feel it, and with whom we
should share our feelings. Moreover, feeling rules vary from one category of the population to the
next. For example, Hochschild claims that "women, Protestants, and middle-class people cultivate
the habit of suppressing their own feelings more than men, Catholics, and lower-class people do."
That is because our culture invites women to focus more on feeling than action and men to focus
more on action than feeling. Similarly, Protestantism invites people to participate in an inner
dialogue with God while the Catholic Church offers sacrament and confession, which allow and
even encourage the expression of feeling. Finally, more middle-class than lower-class people are
employed in service occupations in which the management of emotions is an important part of the
job. Hence they are more adept at suppressing their own feelings.
Hochschild distinguishes emotion management (which everyone does in their personal
life) from emotion labor (which many people do as part of their job and for which they are paid).
For example, teachers, sales clerks, nurses, and flight attendants must be experts in emotion labor.
They spend a considerable part of their work time dealing with other people’s misbehavior, anger,
rudeness, and unreasonable demands. They spend another part of their work time in what is
essentially promotional and public relations work on behalf of the organizations that employ
them. In all these tasks, they carefully manage their own emotions while trying to render their
clientele happy and orderly. Hochschild estimates that, in the United States, nearly half the jobs
women do and a fifth of the jobs men do involve substantial amounts of emotion labor.
Across occupations, different types of emotion labor are required. For instance, according to
Hochschild, the flight attendant and the bill collector represent two extremes. If an appropriate
motto for the flight attendant is “please, placate, and promote,” the bill collector’s motto might be
“control, coerce, and collect.” Flight attendants seek to smooth ruffled feathers, ensure comfort
and safety, and encourage passengers to fly the same airline on their next trip. But as Hochschild
found when she studied a debt collection office, bill collectors seek to get debtors riled up, ensure
their discomfort, and intimidate them to the point where they pay what they owe. As the head of
the office once shouted to his employees: "I don’t care if it's Christmas or what goddamn holiday!
You tell those people to get that money in!" Or on another occasion: "Can't you get madder than
that? Create alarm!"
Notwithstanding this variation, all jobs requiring emotion labor have in common the fact that
"they allow the employer, through training and supervision, to exercise a degree of control over
the emotional activities of employees." Moreover, as the focus of the economy shifts from the
production of goods to the production of services, the market for emotion labor grows. More and
more people are selected, trained, and paid for their skill in emotion labor. Emotion labor
becomes a commodity that employers buy in much the same way a furniture manufacturer buys
fabric to upholster chairs. The emotional life of workers – or at least the way they openly express
their feelings – is increasingly governed by the organizations for which they work and is therefore
less and less spontaneous and authentic.
We can glean additional evidence of the impact of society on our emotional life from
historical studies. In turns out that feeling rules take different forms under different social
conditions, which vary historically. Three examples from the social history of emotions help
illustrate the point.
First consider grief. Among other factors, the "crude death rate" (the annual number of
deaths per 1,000 people in a population) helps determine our experience of grief. In Europe as
late as 1600, life expectancy was only 35 years. Many infants died at birth or in their first year of
life. Infectious diseases decimated entire populations. The medical profession was in its infancy.
The risk of losing family members, especially babies, was thus much greater than today. One
result of this situation was that people invested less emotionally in their children than we
typically do. Their grief response to child deaths was shorter and less intense than ours; the
mourning period was briefer and people became less distraught. Over the years, as health
conditions improved and the infant mortality rate fell, emotional investment in children increased.
It intensified especially in the 19th century when women starting having fewer babies on average
due to industrialization. As emotional investment in children rose, grief response to child deaths
intensified and lasted longer.
Next consider anger. Industrialization and the growth of competitive markets in 19th century
North America and Europe turned the family into an emotional haven from a world increasingly
perceived as heartless. In keeping with the enhanced emotional function of the family, anger
control, particularly by women, became increasingly important for the establishment of a
harmonious household. The early 20th century witnessed mounting labor unrest and the growth of
the service sector. Avoiding anger thus became an important labor relations goal. This influenced
family life too. Child-rearing advice manuals increasingly stressed the importance of teaching
children how to control their anger.
Finally consider disgust. Manners in Europe in the Middle Ages were utterly disgusting by
our standards. Even the most refined aristocrats spat in public and belched shamelessly during
banquets (with the King in attendance, no less). Members of high society didn’t flinch at
scratching themselves and passing gas at the dinner table, where they ate with their hands and
speared food with knives. What was acceptable then causes revulsion now because feeling rules
have changed. Specifically, manners began to change with the emergence of the modern political
state, especially after 1700. The modern political state raised armies and collected taxes, imposed
languages and required loyalty. All this coordination of effort necessitated more self-control on
the part of the citizenry. Changes in standards of public conduct -- signaled by the introduction of
the fork, the nightdress, the handkerchief, the spittoon, and the chamber pot -- accompanied the
rise of the modern state. Good manners also served to define who had power and who lacked it.
For example, there is nothing inherently well mannered about a father sitting at the head of the
table carving the turkey, and children waiting to speak until they are spoken to. These rules about
the difference between good manners and improper or disgusting behavior were created to signify
the distribution of power in the family by age and gender.
So we see that although emotions form an important part of all social interactions they are not
universals and they are not constants. They have histories and deep sociological underpinnings in
statuses, roles, and norms.