Social and Cultural Norms Determine Emotions that Are Used in Certain Situations - Essay Example

? SOCIAL AND CULTURAL NORMS DETERMINE EMOTIONS THAT ARE USED IN CERTAIN SITUATIONS. By of the School 27th April 2013 Introduction Norms are the expected behavior in a given situation within a group or an entire culture. Through the execution or conduct of members of a society in a defined way, the norms present an anticipated conduct of every individual. As such, it is mandated to ensure harmonious interaction of various members of the society. Harmony is very essential in the attainment of ones’ success as it provides an ample environment (Barbalet, 2002, p.12-58). Despite this, some persons are found not to uphold the doctrines of the norms, in specified cultural setting, which degrades their status. In this regard, they are supposed to partake specified rituals in a bid to make them acceptable to the society. The norms that are present in different cultural settings differ and thus, one should acknowledge the diversity in order to interact effectively. In this regard, there are various categories of norm namely social and cultural norms, and different types of norms as outlined by various scholars. This paper seeks to present an in-depth analysis of social and cultural norms. Moreover, since the emotion used by different parties differ depending on the situation, an analysis of emotions that are used in certain situations will be presented Social versus cultural norms Social norms are the customary rules of behavior that coordinate our interactions with others. Rules are very necessary in ensuring that the conduct of an individual does not interfere with other persons operation. As such, from the cultural perspective, norms acts as laws, which each member of the society must adhere to, failure to which, consequences might prevail. Whereas cultural norms are behavior pattern that are typical of specific groups, such behaviors are learned from parents, teachers, peers, and many others whose values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors take place in the context of their own organizational culture. Cultural norms are often so strongly ingrained in an individual’s daily life that the individual may be unaware of certain behaviors, that s/he depicts while undertaking his/her duties. Types of Norms Hochschild (1983, p. 62-98) has elaborated the concept of “feeling rules” and “display rules” respectively. Feeling rules or emotion norms specify the emotions that an individuals present as may be decided by the situation at hand (e.g. sadness at a funeral). In this regard, they are observed to govern the intensity of the emotion, the direction of the emotion and the duration of the emotion (e.g. funeral of a close relative or a business partner).On the other hand, display rules or expression norms specify when and how to express emotions in various situations (e.g. crying at funerals). Emotions Different people define emotions in a number of varying ways. Some try to differentiate between emotions and feelings by stating that, a feeling is a response part of the emotion and that an emotion includes the situation or experience, interpretation, perception, and response or feeling related to the experience of a particular situation. Flow of emotions a) Structural emotions – aroused by individual’s relative power and status within social structures b) Situational emotions – aroused by changes in individual’s power and status during the course of interaction c) Anticipatory emotions – aroused by people’s expectations for power and status Society and emotions Societies reveal an emotion culture is manifested in complexity of ideas about what people are supposed to feel in various types of situations, a culture founded on emotion ideologies about appropriate attitudes, feelings, and emotional responses in basic spheres of activity. According to Hochschild (1983, p. 102-137), emotions are primarily dependent on definitions of the situation, emotion vocabularies, and emotional beliefs, which vary across time and location, whereas Kemper (1978, p. 12-85), argues that emotions are invariant, automatic, patterned responses to particular classes if social stimuli appears. The dramaturgical approach emphasizes that persons are indulged in theatrical performances and premeditated activities, which are directed by a cultural script. The cultural script guiding actions include ideologies, norms and rules, logics, vocabularies, and implicit stocks of knowledge about which feelings should be experienced and expressed in episodes on face -to-face interactions. However, Kemper’s positivist approach rejects the view that cultural norms determine emotions, looking instead to the social structure and to the outcomes of social relation in which individuals possess relative power (authority) or the ability to tell others what to do, and status (prestige) giving and receiving of unforced deference honour and respect. In addition, changes in relative power and status of individuals have large effects on the arousal of negative and positive emotions. In the dramaturgical theories, when individuals break cultural rules of how they should feel and display according to the cultural norms, they tend to experience negative emotions, which makes them inspired to make amendments in their conduct, in a bid to uphold the cultural doctrines. To avoid going against cultural prescriptions, individuals use the appropriate emotional vocabularies and syntax so as to convince themselves and others that indeed they abide by the rules of feeling and display. In the positivist (those who view emotion as more or less jointly determined by social structure and biology) approach, when individuals have or gain power and status within social relationships, they experience positive emotions. These positive emotions include satisfaction, security and confidence where as when individuals lose power or status in a situation, they experience negative emotions such as anxiety, fear and loss of confidence. The symbolic interactionists to which group Hochschild is categorized, recognize the influences of basic emotions in human action and thus, they generally assume that the bodily changes accompanying emotions are not specific; that is, environmental event elicit generalized arousal. In this regard, emotions are presented to be entangled in both generalized arousal and explicit sociocultural aspects (i.e. definitions of the situation and cultural labels). Because situational explanations and expressive labels vary based on cultural inclination and time, according to both symbolic interactionists and constructionist, emotional experiences do vary; thus, main elements of expressive experience are not physiological but sociocultural. On the other hand, positivists accept the ‘specificity’ and hence argue that one-to-one correspondence exist among the components constituting emotion. Positivists also might accept the assertion that situational events are the key determinants of emotion (Kemper, 1991, 330-342). However, they also accept that certain categories of situational events (e.g. decrement in power and status) unswervingly and universally lead to similar emotions as event-emotion association are physiologically grounded, while symbolic interactionists argue that despite situation events falling in the same category, their interpretation may vary. The dramaturgical approach further continues to argue that emotions have personal meaning for individuals. In this regard, emotions are very useful in the understanding of the conduct of various persons, and how their conduct relates to the set cultural norms. Due to the prevalence of discontinuity in the way people conduct and express themselves, dramaturgical theories argue that persons should be responsible and control emotional displays, when presented to such occurrences. Thoits (1991, p. 337-342) approaches all stress that individuals are often caught in a conflict between the emotion ideologies, feelings rules and display rules on the one side and the actual emotional experiences on the other. Due to the diversity in mankind, and different interpretation of the situation at hand, conformity between the anticipated emotion response for a specified situation might not always be attained. In this regard, the presence of a conflict raises negative arousal. Therefore, when a person is expected to express a specific emotion centrally to what s/he is experiencing, s/he is not pleased with the situation and has to go an extra mile in attaining the cultural expectation. In contrast, the power and status approach says that when changes are presented in social edifices, characters retort emotionally and collectively to their new conditions, especially the restructuring of cherished resources such as power, honor and material well-being. When they perceive that others have gained power, and other resources in violation of norms and cultural beliefs, they experience resentment sometimes, consciously but often subliminally, and resentment increases dramatically when one subpopulation sees others as gaining at its expense; this brings negative emotions such as fear and vengefulness. The generalization of the positivist (power and status) approach is that, when individuals have power or gain power, they experience satisfaction, confidence and security whereas when they lose power, they experience anxiety, fear and loss of confidence. Thus, when persons experiences advances in prestige, gratification and well-being are stimulated, and they express encouraging sentiments, thereby increasing flow of positive emotions and bonds of solidarity among givers and receivers of deference. Dramaturgical approach generalizes that persons are not tightly programmed by culture. It goes further to stress that, several approaches are used by individuals in expressive manipulations; for example, Clark’s conceptualization of sympathy argues that individuals offer sympathy to others in exchange of another valued emotional resource, such as gratitude. She goes on to argue that the offer of sympathy, for instance, is often used to establish superiority over those who receive sympathy. It is therefore evident that different emotions can be used in a similar manner to present satisfaction or dissatisfaction. This is attained as persons have the capability for expressive control of their emotions, using the exhibition of feelings on stage to gain resource advantages over others (Scheff, 1988, p. 375-406). Due to errors being common in various human undertakings, persons do fail to uphold expressive control and thus go against the cultural script. Under such circumstances, making rituals as a way of cleansing is necessary to ensure that they retain their position in the social structure. Both the dramaturgical approach and the positivist approach have some basic simplifications that monitor their theorizing and exploration. Dramaturgical generalizations: a) The strength of the emotion culture determines the extent to which persons must engage in impression management. b) The more that individuals engage in impression management of emotions, the greater is (a) the potential for strategic use of emotional displays in games of confidence, microeconomics, and micro politics and (b) the potential that individuals’ true feelings will be at odds with at least some elements of the emotion culture. c) The more the efforts of impression management violate the ideology and customs of the emotion culture, higher arousal of negative emotions is evident in all the parties involved. Moreover, this demands for much engagement of the offender in a bid to repair rituals with the audience and reaffirm the emotion culture and his or her commitment to the tenets of his culture. The positivist theories converge on some basic generalizations: a) The more unequal the distribution of power (authority), status (prestige), and material well-being (money), the more likely that this distribution will generate expectations and beliefs about the competence and abilities of those at different ranks in this distribution level. b) The more the individuals interact, the more likely the emotion expectations will emerge; and the more congruent these emotion expectation states are with expectations states arising from the distribution of power and prestige, the more compelling all the expectations states will be on individuals. c) The more that individuals and collective actors hold power, prestige, and other resources or gain these resources, the more likely they are to experience such positive emotions as satisfaction, happiness, pride, well-being, and confidence and the likely they are to give off positive emotions to others. d) When individual are denied access to power and other privileges such as prestige, they have a higher probability of falling victims of negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, sadness and fear.. In summary, dramaturgical theories presents an indepth analysis of the close relation between culture and the emotions prevalent in different persons depending on the situation at hand. The emotion culture restrict and controls the way people conduct themselves while in the presence of others as they have to uphold the doctrines of the culture. In both Kemper’s and Thamm’s power status theories, expectations (for gains or losses of power and status) are central to making predictions about the particular emotions that will be experienced by individuals. Expectations about the characteristics of individuals and their performance arise in all interactions, particularly in task groups. List of References Barbalet, J .ed., (2002) Emotions and Sociology, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Hochschild, A.R., 1983, the managed heart: commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: Univ.calif.press. Kemper, T.D. (1991) Predicting Emotions from Social Relations, Social Psychology Quarterly, 54(4), pp. 330-342 Kemper,T.D., 1978. A social interactional theory of emotions, New York: Wiley Scheff, T.J., 1988.American sociological review, Shame and conformity: The deference-Emotion system 53(3) pp. 395-406 Thoits, P.A., 1989, The Sociology of Emotions, Annual Review of Sociology. Vol 15pp. 317-342 Read More