Theodore D. Kemper

Predicting emotions from social relations.

There is little agreement about how to characterize the social environnement productively in order to predict emotions. The article reviews several approaches, selecting a model of social relations in two dimensions, called here power and status. Predictive hypotheses about power-status outcome of social relations on four emotions - fear, anger, sadness, and joy - are supported in two studies.

Power and Status and the Power-Status Theory of Emotions

Power and status theory has an ancient provenance, extending back as far as pre-Socratic Greek philosophy. The power-status theory of emotions, a somewhat different matter, is modern, but depends, of course, on the earlier theory.

Predicting emotions in groups: some lessons from September 11

First, this chapter examines the emotional responses of 10 different publics to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Through the application of power/status theory (Kemper, 1978), different publics are hypothesized to have different emotions. In all, six emotions—anger, sadness, fear, joy, guilt and shame—are differentially attributed to the ten publics. Second, this chapter inquires into the efficacy of predicting emotions for both individuals and groups. Predictions for individuals may have somewhat greater utility, given that they provide for enlightenment and control, but for both individuals and groups, emotions may be seen as intervening variables of relatively low sociological value. It would be more important sociologically to know the coping responses the emotions lead to. Here theory is relatively scant. Four structural conditions are proposed that may advance understanding of how, under certain conditions, emotions may lead to sociologically relevant coping. Finally, this chapter considers some differences between individual emotions and what may be called ‘group’ emotions. The principle difference is that individuals, even when emotionally conflicted, experience emotions in their entirety, while groups usually experience a division of labour of the emotion, with different members differentially invested in what can be seen as the dominant emotion of the group. Unlike in individuals, where conflicting emotions are likely to be resolved by a coping response that attempts to accommodate the competing emotions, group coping responses unfold in a social process that is sometimes violent, as different factions compete to establish their emotions and preferred coping responses as conclusive for the entire group.

Work Integration, Marital Satisfaction, and Conjugal Power

Information was gathered on several aspects of the work integration of a sample of husbands and on the marital satisfaction and power relations of the husbands and their wives. These data were separately factor analyzed, producing three factors of work integration: Job Satisfaction, Power Relations, and Mobility Aspirations; and two factors of marital integration: Marital Satisfaction and Conjugal Power. The items loading these factors were intercorrelated with the following results: items dealing with the intrinsic satisfactions of work, such as meaningfulness of work, liking for it, control over pace of work, correlated significantly with items indicating satisfaction of both husband and wife; items indicating extrinsic satisfactions of work, such as income, recognition, and job prestige, were not related to items of marital satisfaction. Additionally, there was little relationship between work integration and conjugal power. Finally, mobility aspirations appeared to be determined by wifes dominance and dissatisfaction. This, however, was found to be explained by social class.

Predicting the Divorce Rate: Down?

Although the divorce rate is relatively high at present, it has reached what appears to be a plateau and there are some reasons for thinking that it will begin to decrease in the near future. Ten grounds for such a conclusion are cited here: decline in marriage rate; older age at marriage; higher proportion of single persons; mental health improvement in the population; upper limit on women in the labor force; slowdown in geographic mobility; end of the “cultural revolution”; end of “anomie of affluence”; exhaustion of latency effect of no-fault divorce laws; and a growing fear of the consequences of divorce. As with all predictions, the underlying assumption is that these causal conditions will continue for some time.

The ideal love object: Structural and family sources

We obtained preferences from 227 college students about the characteristics of their ideal love objects. We factor analyzed these separately for males and females and obtained both common and sex-specific factors. We then examined the relative contributions of a set of structural and family factors to the explanation of variance in each of the characteristics of the ideal love object. Results show that about one-third of the 58 characteristics have significant, though not high, amounts of variance explained by the predictors. The most important predictors were sex, religion, mothers marital happiness, and fathers education.

Fantasy, females, sexuality, and testosterone

(1) Mazur & Booth do not explain precontest rise in testosterone. Anticipatory T rise may result from fantasized dominance scenarios. (2) Mazur & Booth conclude that females do not experience the dominance–T rise effect. The data are insufficient for this judgment. (3) Mazur & Booth misstate my position on T and sexuality. I offer an emendation and correction.

Status, Power and Felicity

Status and power are the main concepts of a general theory of social relations in which a large class of emotions results from outcomes of social interaction as described in status and power terms. Here the theory is elaborated to account for feelings of felicity or happiness in each of four possible relational outcomes: (1) Obtaining status; (2) According status to another; (3) Gaining power; and (4) Other’s power declining. Each of these relational outcomes provides a basis for feelings of happiness. Status-power theory also affords an understanding of meaningfulness, a frequently sought goal for life undertakings.