Kathryn J. Lively

Reciprocal Emotion Management Working Together to Maintain Stratification in Private Law Firms

Using qualitative evidence, the concept of reciprocal emotion management is introduced and the role it plays in the reproduction of status inequality in the workplace is illustrated. Reciprocal emotion management is the reciprocal effort of similar others to manage one anothers emotions. Three norms that exist in the workplace are also identified: professionalism, deference, and caretaking, and it is proposed that as paralegals strive to appear professional, they display deference to attorneys and accept having deference withheld. Reciprocal emotion management is one mechanism through which they are able to manage their emotional reactions to the status inequity in their daily interactions with attorneys. Ironically, pursuit of professionalism in these ways tends to perpetuate their marginal or inferior status in law firms.

Sociological Realms of Emotional Experience1

The authors examine self‐reported emotional experiences of individuals in a large probability sample of Americans, using two theories in the sociology of emotions as lenses to apprehend social order in emotional processes. Viewing emotions as indicators of individuals’ positions in a three‐dimensional affective space (e.g., Heise, Smith‐Lovin, MacKinnon), the authors find emotional station correlates with a variety of social structural, circumstantial, and individual‐level variables. Viewing emotions as the focus of emotion norms and emotion management efforts (e.g., Hochschild), the authors arrive at new postulates about how transformations of emotions can be achieved in social support groups and other types of social institutions. A further demonstration that emotions reflect multiple sociological realities develops through the examination of sex differences in emotional experience. The authors find that there are concrete though subtle sex differences in the experience, structure, transformation, and contextual significance of emotions. The analyses suggest complementarities between affect control and emotion management that may have been overlooked in other studies.

Emotional Expression at Work and at Home: Domain, Status, or Individual Characteristics?

Using the emotions module of the 1996 General Social Survey, we examine strategies that individuals use to express emotion. We focus on anger, one of the emotions most problematic or potentially disruptive to human interaction. Relying on insights from three theoretical approaches to emotion—the cultural perspective, the structural perspective, and affect control theory—we explore not only whether the expression of anger is affected by the social domain in which anger occurs (home or work) and the status difference between the individual experiencing anger and the actor triggering the emotion, but also the degree to which these effects are independent of individual characteristics such as gender, race, and education. Analyses indicate that social domain and status differences are such powerful predictors of emotional expression that they eclipse the influence of other individual characteristics, most notably the gender of both the individual and the target of the anger. Moreover, the status mechanism governing emotional expression does not vary across work and family settings. This study supplements previous research by disentangling the relative effects of domain, relative status, and individual characteristics. It also suggests that a more complementary approach, which integrates different theoretical paradigms, may be necessary for a fuller appreciation of the social constraints governing emotional expression.

Sex, Anger and Depression

A social problem that has preoccupied sociologists of gender and mental health is the higher rate of depression found among women. Although a number of hypotheses about this health disparity between men and women have been advanced, none consider the importance of subjectively experienced anger. Drawing on theoretical and empirical insights from the sociology of emotion, we hypothesize that: (1. intense and persistent anger are associated with more symptoms of depression, and (2. sex differences in the intensity and persistence of anger are involved in the sex difference in depressed affect. Analyses of data from the 1996 GSS Emotions Module provide support for these two hypotheses and strongly suggest that womens intense and persistent anger play a pivotal role in their high rate of depression. We discuss the extent to which sex differences in these emotions are a function of social factors, biological factors, or a complex interaction between them. We also comment on the implications of our findings for future theory and research on gender, emotion and mental health.

Multiracial Self-Identification and Adolescent Outcomes: A Social Psychological Approach to the Marginal Man Theory

Recent public health research has consistently reported that self-identified multiracial adolescents tend to display more problem behaviors and psychological difficulties than monoracial adolescents. Relying on insights from qualitative analyses using small or clinical samples to interpret these empirical patterns, these studies implicitly assume a pejorative stance toward adolescents’ multiracial self-identification. Building on the social psychological arguments underlying Park’s and Stonequist’s seminal discussions of the “marginal man,” we derive hypotheses indicating that self-identified multiracial adolescents may show more psychological difficulties, but are also likely to have more active social interaction and participation than monoracial groups. We also incorporate later elaborations of the marginal man theory to develop alternative hypotheses regarding multiracial youth’s school and behavioral outcomes. Based on a nationally representative sample of racially self-identified youth, the results suggest that patterns of multiracial-monoracial differences are generally consistent with the hypotheses derived closely from the marginal man theory or its subsequent elaborations. We examine the heterogeneities within these general patterns across different multiracial categories and discuss the implications of these findings.

Equity, Emotion, and Household Division of Labor Response:

Building upon insights generated by social psychological scholarship on equity, emotions, and identity, we use the General Social Survey (1996) Modules on Emotion and Gender and the National Survey of Family and Households (1992—1994) to investigate the relationship between perceived inequity in the household division of labor and emotion. These surveys enable us to assess the degree to which patterns identified in short-term laboratory studies of relative strangers are generalizable to enduring relationships among intimates. We move beyond existing studies that link inequity in the home with depression by incorporating a broader scope of emotions and further by distinguishing between underbenefiting and overbenefiting—i.e., doing what one considers more or less than one’s fair share—and by examining these processes for women and men. We find general support for principles of equity theory: That is, emotions are closely tied to perceived inequity in the division of household labor. Guided by insights from Kemper’s structural interactional theory of emotion and affect control theory, we show that this pattern differs by specific emotions, the direction of the inequity, and the sex of the perceiver. Implications for understanding emotion, equity theory, and family are then elaborated.

Emotional Segues and the Management of Emotion by Women and Men

Recent studies suggest that gender may be less influential on the experience of emotion than originally believed. Most of these studies, however, have focused almost exclusively on gender differences in discrete emotional experiences, paying less attention to the ways in which emotions may co-occur within a relatively short period. Using the General Surveys 1996 emotions module, I examine the correlational structure of nine latent emotion factors – tranquility, joy, hope, pride, self-reproach, anger, rage, fear and distress – by gender. Using the technique of shortest path analysis, I find womens most common emotional pathways are longer, more complex, and more likely to use more positive and less powerful emotions than those most common to men. Implications for emotion management, both personal and interpersonal, are discussed.

Emotions in the Workplace

Over 20 years have passed since sociologists interested in emotion have turned their attention to the workplace. Often hierarchically ordered, the workplace setting offers a natural laboratory, of sorts, for exploring the roles that power and status (Kemper 1978) and cultural (Simon et al. 1992; Clark 1997) and organizational norms (Hochschild 1983; Pierce 1995; Sutton 1991) play in both the experience and expression of emotion.

Identity and Illness

Over the last several decades, sociological interest in and research on the relationship between illness and identity has flourished. Unlike disease, which refers primarily to physical pathology, illness generally refers to lived experience (Kleinman et al. 1978). The foci of this research have been two-fold: an examination of the public self (an individual’s identity as perceived by others) and the private self (an individual’s identity as perceived by oneself) and how the two interact with and affect each other (Kelly and Millward 2004). Yet, the commonality among the majority of studies focusing on illness and identity is that researchers have usually treated identity as a function of illness – that is, how one’s identity forms or changes as a result of contracting a particular disease or condition. This approach has been represented most successfully by those sociologists who view illness as an identity disruption (e.g., see Charmaz 1993; Karp 1996) and those interested in the relationship among identity, stigma, and illness (e.g., see Link 1987; Link et al. 1991). Recent studies have focused on how individuals strive to maintain their sense of self in spite of illness. Hinojosa et al. (2008), for example, find that veterans who had suffered a stroke were able to maintain a continuous sense of self by drawing upon their religious beliefs and cultural expectations of aging. Likewise, Sanders et al. (2002) find that while people with osteoarthritis do talk about the disruptive effects of the condition on their daily lives, they still manage to view these symptoms as part of their normal lives.

Emotion Management: Sociological Insight into What, How, Why, and to What End?

In recounting some of the key sociological insights offered by over 30 years of research on emotion management, or emotion regulation, we orient our discussion around sociological answers to the following questions: What is emotion management? How does emotion management occur? Why does it occur? And what are its consequences or benefits? In this review, we argue that emotion and its management are profoundly social. Through daily interactions with others, individuals learn to differentiate which emotions are appropriate when, as well as the most effective ways to bring their feelings in line with culturally agreed-upon emotion norms. Emotion management is also functional, not only for the individuals who perform it, but also for the dyads, groups, institutions, and societies in which they are embedded. The social processes through which individuals learn to display culturally appropriate emotions have important implications on many levels, from interpersonal interactions to the development of social movements.