Purpose The three explanations for cultural
Purpose
The three explanations for cultural emotions are constructivist, biology, and cognitive. (See Powerpoint Elements of Cultural emotions (week 1)) We have been using various content from the film Do the Right Thing to analyze various elements of cultural emotions. We shift our attention to another form of content, newsprint.
Task
- Choose an article from any source and write a one-page statement on the cultural emotion (s). The article should be on a contentious issue in society where cultural emotion (s) are aroused and can be identified as physiological/biological, cognitive, and constructivist.
- When analyzing the cultural emotion (s) in the article, focus on issues constraining (threatening) and challenging (inspiring) various individual and group identities and social relations in either class/social status, gender, racial and ethnic, sexuality, and social movements (e.g., family separation protest; Black Lives matter; the Alt-Right etc.).
- In your analysis, use approaches (biology, cognitive, constructivist), methods (elements of emotions, intensity of emotions, relations of emotions) and theories of cultural emotions to explain, understand and interpret the cultural emotion (s) present in the article.
- Select/choose various “texts” from the article to illuminate/highlight the cultural emotion (s) and how the cultural emotion (s) “fit” the theory, method and approach.
Cultural Emotions: Pain, Hate, Fear, Disgust, Shame, Love
Ted Manley, Jr. PhD
Cultural Emotion PAIN (Meriam Webster)
1 : punishment ·the pains and penalties of crime
2 a : usually localized physical suffering associated with bodily disorder (such as a disease or an injury) ·the pain of a twisted ankle
also : a basic bodily sensation induced by a noxious stimulus, received by naked nerve endings, characterized by physical discomfort (such as pricking, throbbing, or aching), and typically leading to evasive action ·the pain of bee stings
b : acute mental or emotional distress or suffering : grief
Sociology of Pain Pain: A Sociological Introduction, Elaine Denny (2016)
Intersection between biology and culture (Medical Model vs Sociology Model of managing pain)
Much pain is experienced as short lived, and self-limiting or easily treated, but for those individuals who live with long term and intractable pain it can cause disruption of life as it is currently lived and alter their expectations of the future.
Sociological research has, for example, shown how men and women approach and experience pain differently, seeking to explain why women more than men report more long term and disabling pain than men. A strength of a sociological understanding of pain is that it encompasses both the interpretive perspective of the person in pain and the structural factors that influence this, offering an explanation of the way that these intersect.
Cultural Emotion HATE (Meriam Webster)
Intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury.
b : extreme dislike or disgust : antipathy, loathing.
The Sociology of Hate
Stereotypes
Cognitive
Prejudice
Affective
Discrimination
Behavioral
Gordon Allport (1954?:1958; 1979): The Nature of Prejudice
“Open-mindedness is considered to be a virtue. But, strictly speaking, it cannot occur. A new experience must be redacted into old categories. We cannot handle each even freshly in its own right (Allport, 1954, p. 19)
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The Big Three
Three main topics in the psychology of racism: Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Stereotypes:
Stereotypes
Stereotypes categorize people according to social factors
Definition: “A cognitive structure that contains the perceiver’s knowledge, beliefs, and expectancies about some human group” (Hamilton & Trolier, 1986, p. 133).
Stereotypes are necessary
The content of stereotypes can be the problem
Outcome
Most insidious stereotypes = create, maintain, or strengthen social hierarchy
Outcomes of racial/ ethnic stereotypes
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Categorize based on age, gender, social role, physical appearance, or relation to self
Definition: “A cognitive structure that contains the perceiver’s knowledge, beliefs, and expectancies about some human group” (Hamilton & Trolier, 1986, p. 133).
We develop “Naïve theories” of social action (Tajfel & Forgas, 2000)
Used for complex social events that we can’t understand fully
Develop simplistic systems for understanding
Attribute generalized and supposed collective traits and intentions to social groups, and then use these attributions to explain complex phenomenon that we can’t otherwise understand
A social phenomenon, collective (ie., media)
Examples?
Lawyers
Professors
Psychologists
Athletes
Cognitive Perspective-
Stereotypes operate as schemas- cognitive frameworks for organizing interpreting, and recalling information
Literally process information differently based on schema
Information consistent with schema gets more attention, is rehearsed more frequently, and remembered more accurately than inconsistent information.
Becomes a closed cognitive loop
Stereotypes are necessary for cognitive functioning
Stereotypes are not inherently bad or negative
Used to understand people, objective, and stimuli in environment
Necessary to simplify the complex, confusing, social world. (Lippmann, 1922)
Gather just enough info to understand, predict, and structure the environment
Without Stereotypes: Have to evaluate every aspect of someone- appearance, mood, personality traits, s[eecj qualities, social setting, etc…
GUN EXAMPLE NEXT THREE SLIDES
Prejudice- Affective factors
Praejudicium
Definitions of Prejudice
Allport (2000): Antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization. It may be felt or expressed. It may be directed toward a group as a whole, or toward an individual because he is a member of that group.
Minimal Group Paradigm
The basic requirements for prejudice
Ingroup vs. outgroup
Stereotyped cognitions are not necessary
Social Categorization and Identity Theory
Social Categorization: Us vs. Them
Us = Good, Them = Bad
Why do we do this?
Self-Esteem
Social Competition
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Praejudicium- Latin noun
Ancient meaning = precedent- judgment based on previous decisions and experiences
English = judgment formed before an examination and consideration of facts
Hasty and premature judgment
Present = Emotional sense of favorabeleness or unfavorableness that acoompanies such a prior and unsupported judgment
Allport (2000) = Negative Ethnic Prejudice = Antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization. It may be felt or expressed. It may be directed toward a group as a whole, or toward an individual because he is a member of that group.
But can be positive or negative valence
Stereotypes are cognitive processes, prejudice is affective/ emotional
Cognitive and affective processes are connected, but not entirely overlapping
Feelings and cognitions can often be in conflict
Minimal Group Paradigm (Hogg & Abrams, 1988; Brewer & Brown, 1998)- the mere existence of social groups, even meaningless and arbitrary groups, leads to prejudice based on group membership.
In-group favoritism occurs automatically and unconsciously- they display bias towards ingroup without even knowing it
Evaluate ingroup more positively, provide more resources to them, and evaluate performance better.
Minimal requirements- divide group into us vs. them
Don’t need cognitions for the gut-level emotional reaction of prejudice
Racial prejudice – much more complex interaction of history and power to create prejudicial feelings
Much more than can be created in the laboratory
The universal tendency to favor the ingroup only provides a basis for racism
Societal variables turn it into a more systemic, insidious phenomenon
Discrimination
Types of Discrimination
Antilocution
Avoidance
Discrimination
Physical Attack
Extermination
Bark vs. Bite?
What about today?
Overt to the Covert
Conscious to Unconscious
Explicit to Implicit
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Behavior
Any negative attitude will likely express itself as a behavior in some way.
The more intense the attitude, the more likely to be hostile action
Types of Overt Discrimination (Allport, 2000)
Antilocution: Talk about prejudices with friends, sometimes strangers
Avoidance: Avoid members of disliked groups
Discrimination: actively excludes someone- housing, employment, rights, opportunities, churches, hospitals, social privileges.
Physical Attack: Under heightened emotion violence or semiviolence (property destruction)
Extermination: lynchings, pogroms, massacres, genocide
Stages can fed of each other: Hitler’s antilocution German avoidance of Jews enactment of Nurnberg discrimination laws burning of synagogues and attacks on jews genocide.
Bark is often worse than Bite:
La Piere (1934)- traveled US with Chinese couple, stopped at 66 sleeping places, 184 eating placed and were refused service only once.
Afterwords, in a questionnaire, 93% of restaurants and 92% of the hotels said they would not serve Chinese people (control group had similar responses).
Confirmed by Kutner, Wilkins, and Yarrow (1952).
Allport’s conclusion: “Where clear conflicts exists, with law and conscience on the one side, and with custom and prejudice on the other, discrimination is practiced chiefly in covert and indirect ways, and not primarily in face-to-face situations where embarassment would result.
Cultural Emotion FEAR (Meriam Webster)
1 a : an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger
b (1) : an instance of this emotion
(2) : a state marked by this emotion
2 : anxious concern : solicitude
3 : profound reverence and awe especially toward God
4 : reason for alarm : danger
Sociology of Fear: Chapman University Study
Survey on American Fears, Chapman University has tried to identify what Americans fear the most.
Nobody has ever cracked the code of human emotions. Our feelings are rooted within the depths of our physiology, but our cheers and screams are also products of our environment. Put in sociological terms, “fearfulness in varying degrees is part of the very fabric of everyday social relations”.
The survey explored four categories of fear: personal fears, natural disasters, paranormal fears, and drivers of fear behavior. The top American domains of fear averaged to be man-made disasters, technology, and government. Given the political transformations and technological developments taking place today, the results seem spot on.
Sociology of Fear
Do the right thing: What’s the Cultural Emotion in this scene—define and discuss intersections
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbA1YOueC_A
Work in small groups around your class seat/table and do the following:
Describe the cultural emotions for each character in the scene: Sal, Buggin’-out, Vito, Pino, Mookie.
Explain how the cultural emotions captured in this scene go from low, moderate to high intensity?
Analytical Framework
| Elements of an Emotion | Sal | Buggin-Out | Pino | Mookie | Vito |
| Physiological Changes—Emotion arousal | |||||
| Expressive Gestures | |||||
| Emotion Label | |||||
| Situational Cues |
Intensity of Cultural Emotions
| Identity and Social Relations | Low | Moderate | High |
| Sal | |||
| Buggin-out |
Identity and Social Relations
| Identity/Social Relations | Sal | Buggin-out |
| Class/Social Status | ||
| Racial/Ethnic | ||
| Gender/Transgender | ||
| Sexuality | ||
| Social Movement |
Cultural Emotion DISGUST (Meriam Webster)
1: a strong feeling of dislike for something that has a very unpleasant appearance, taste, smell, etc.
2 : annoyance and anger that you feel toward something because it is not good, fair, appropriate, etc.
Sociology of Disgust—The Disgust Scale
Disgust is a fascinating emotion. Its elicitors are a puzzle: it makes sense that we are disgusted by things that can contaminate our food, but why does this food-related emotion extend itself so deeply into our social world, so that people feel disgusted by certain ethnic groups (or by racism), by homosexuality (or by homophobia), and by a variety of social and moral violations that don't involve anything physically contaminating?
Disgust appears to play a role in moral judgment, moral conflict, and ethno-political violence. (For the best work on disgust and politics, see David Pizarro.) Disgust has clinical ramifications, for it seems to be involved in obsessive-compulsive disorder and in a variety of phobias. (For the best work on clinical implications, see Bunmi Olatunji.) Disgust even has religious ramifications, for it appears to be part of the psychological foundation of culturally widespread ideas of purity and pollution. Many religions (e.g., Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism) have extensive rules for regulating human bodily processes and keeping them separated from sacred objects and practices. Disgust appears to provide part of the structure of these rules and practices.
The Disgust Scale is a self-report personality scale that was developed by Jonathan Haidt, Clark McCauley, and Paul Rozin as a general tool for the study of disgust. It is used to measure individual differences in sensitivity to disgust, and to examine the relationships among different kinds of disgust.
To take the disgust scale online and see your score and how it compares to others, please go to www.YourMorals.org and register. Then, on the "explore your morals" page, take the "disgust scale"
Cultural Emotion SHAME (Meriam Webster)
1 a : a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety
b : the susceptibility to such emotion have you no shame?
2 : a condition of humiliating disgrace or disrepute : ignominy the shame of being arrested
3 a : something that brings censure or reproach; also : something to be regretted : pity it's a shame you can't go
Sociology of Shame: The Overdose of Shame: A Sociological and Historical Self-Exploration Haing Kao (2004)
Shame is best defined through its contrast and comparison with guilt, an emotion that is often confused with shame. This is detailed in a paper entitled, “Shame and Guilt and Their Relationship to Positive Expectations and Anger Expressiveness”:
In contrast, shame typically involves an acutely painful experience that is overwhelmingly self-focused and more diffuse than guilt … Individuals experiencing shame might feel a sense of worthlessness, incompetence, or a generalized feeling of contempt for themselves, thereby demonstrating a reflection of overly harsh self-evaluations.
Consequently, repeated experiences of shame have been found to be associated with a number of negative cognitive behavioral experiences, including depression, selfderogation, shyness, interpersonal anxiety, perfectionism, and a diffuse-oriented identity (Lutwak et al., 2001)
Social Relations of Shame
FAMILY AND CULTURAL SHAME
INTERGENERATIONAL VARIANCES, AND CYCLES OF SHAME
CLASS, RACE, GENDER, COMPARATIVE HISTORIES, AND SHAME
SHAME AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Do the right thing: What’s the Cultural Emotion in this scene—define and discuss intersections
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=467jwrMlWNc
Work in small groups around your class seat/table and do the following:
Describe the cultural emotions for each character in the scene: De Mayor and the Male Youth
Explain how the cultural emotions captured in this scene go from low, moderate to high intensity?
Analytical Framework
| Element of an Emotion | De Mayor | Male Youth #1 | Male Youth #2 | Female Youth | Male Youth #3 |
| Physiological Changes—Emotion arousal | |||||
| Expressive Gestures | |||||
| Emotion Label | |||||
| Situational Cues |
Intensity of Cultural Emotions
| Identity and Social Relations | Low | Moderate | High |
| De Mayor | |||
| Male Youth #1 |
Identity and Social Relations
| Identity/Social Relations | De Mayor | Male Youth #1 |
| Class/Social Status | ||
| Racial/Ethnic | ||
| Gender/Transgender | ||
| Sexuality | ||
| Social Movement |
Cultural Emotion LOVE (Meriam Webster)
1 a (1) : strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties maternal love for a child (2) : attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers After all these years, they are still very much in love. (3) : affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests love for his old schoolmates b : an assurance of affection give her my love
2 : warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion love of the sea
3 a : the object of attachment, devotion, or admiration baseball was his first love b (1) : a beloved person : darling —often used as a term of endearment (2) British —used as an informal term of address
4 a : unselfish loyal and benevolent (see benevolent 1a) concern for the good of another: such as (1) : the fatherly concern of God for humankind (2) : brotherly concern for others b : a person's adoration of God
5 : a god (such as Cupid or Eros) or personification of love
6 : an amorous episode : love affair
7 : the sexual embrace : copulation
8 : a score of zero (as in tennis)
9 capitalized, Christian Science : god
Sociology of Love
Love and intimacy go hand in hand. Love is the physical, emotional, sexual, intellectual, or social affection one person holds for another. Concepts related to love include: adore, desire, prefer, possess, care for, serve, and even worship.
Intimacy, on the other hand, is a close relationship where mutual acceptance, nurturance, and trust are shared at some level. In order to understand love in human relationships, you must first understand how the socialized self either enhances or inhibits your capacity to love.
Your socialized self develops under the supervision of your caregiver or parent(s). When you were a newborn, you were totally dependent upon the adults in your life to take care of your needs and raise you in a safe environment. You had to be fed and clothed, bathed and held, and loved and appreciated. Your caregivers provided these basic needs in your early development, and during this time, attachments were formed.
An attachment is an emotional and social bond that forms between one person and another. Humans are considered highly motivated to form attachments throughout their lives.
Zones of Vulnerability: White Heteronormative Example
Some Conceptual Types of Love
Unconditional love is the sincere love that does not vary regardless of the actions of the person who is loved.
Romantic love is based on continual courtship and physical intimacy.
Infatuation is a temporary state of love where the other person is overly idealized and seen in narrow and extremely positive terms.
Committed love is a love that is loyal and devoted.
Altruism is a selfless type of love that serves others while not serving the one who is altruistic.
Sexual or passionate lovers are focused on the intensely sensual pleasures that are found with the senses of taste, smell, touch, feel, hear, and sight.
Friendship love includes intimacy and trust among close friends.
Criteria or realistic love is the love feelings you have when your list of a potential mate’s personal traits is met in the other person.
Obsessive love is an unhealthy love type where conflict and dramatic extremes in the relationship are both the goal and the theme of the couple’s love.
Deceptive love is formed when one or both partners either consciously or unconsciously mislead the other in an effort to dishonestly establish trust and intimacy
Catch and release mode one partner lures the other in by pretending to experience all the romance and trappings of falling in love when in reality he or she is tricking the other person.
Black widow/widower mode there is calculated and precise deception designed to lure the other into a relationship for ulterior motives.
Conclusion: Cultural Emotions
Fluid
Flexible
Dynamic
Interactional
Relational
Intersectional
Table One. —Matrix of Cultural Emotions by Identities and Relations of Selected Sociological DOMAINS
| Cultural Emotions | Class/Social Status (SES) | Gendered/ Transgendered | Race and Ethnicity Racialization | Sexuality/ Queer/Bi-sexual/Gay/Lesbian | Social Movements |
| Pain | |||||
| Hate | |||||
| Fear | |||||
| Disgust | |||||
| Shame | |||||
| Love |
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Elements of Cultural Emotions
Theodoric Manley, Jr. PhD
Explanations for Cultural Emotions
Constructionist
What people feel is conditioned by socialization
Emotions are constrained and channeled by sociocultural contexts
Biology
Emotions are the outcome of physiological changes in the body expressed through the sympathetic nervous system channeled by our brain
Hearing, seeing, touching, feeling, tasteing go through thalamus subcortical region of brian. AMYDGALA–CENTER OF FEAR RESPONSES IN THE SUBCORTEX
Cognition
Emotions are not formed until there is an appraisal of the objects or events in the situation. Once arousal has occurred perception and thought are implicated in the process
When biological cues are activated these biological can be subject to thought and reflection which alter the flow of emotional experience
Biological Emotion and Social Sentiments—Steven Gordon (1981)
Biological emotion (a physiological concept) is a configuration of bodily sensations and gestures in response to stimuli.
Social Sentiment involves “combinations of bodily sensations, gestures, and cultural meanings that we learn in enduring relationships (Gordon, 1981: p. 563).
Gordon argues that biological emotions such as anger and fear, become, shortly after childhood, transformed into cultural meanings that are organized around a relationship to a social object, often another person or group.
Theist's Elements of an Emotion: “Emotional Deviance: Research Agendas” (1990) by P. A. Thoits in Research Agenda’s in the Sociology of Emotions (pp. 180-203)
Interaction of Five Senses with Sixth Sense (Emotions)
Universal
Pain
Hate
Fear
Disgust
Shame
Love
Triggers
Class/Social
Status
Race/Ethnic
Gender
Sexuality
Social
Movements
Sociology of Cultural Emotions (Turner and Stets, 2005: p. 9)
Emotions involve certain elements.
The biological activation of key body systems;
Socially constructed cultural definitions and constraints on what emotions should be experienced and expressed in a situation;
The application of linguistic labels provided by culture to internal sensations;
The overt expression of emotions through facial, voice, and paralinguistic moves; and
Perceptions and appraisals of situational objects or events
Turner and Stets (2005) Intensity of Primary Emotions “On the Origins of Human Emotions” (p. 73),
| Primary Emotions–Universal | Low-Intensity | Moderate Intensity | High Intensity |
| Happiness— Satisfaction | Content, sanguine, serenity, gratified | Cheerful, buoyant, friendly, amiable, enjoyment | Joy, bliss, rapture, jubilant, gaiety, elation, delight, thrilled, exhilarated |
| Fear—Aversion | Concern, hesitant, reluctance, shyness | Misgivings, trepidations, anxiety, scared, alarmed, unnerved, panic | Terror, horror, high anxiety |
| Anger—Assertion | Annoyed, agitated, irritated, vexed, perturbed, nettled, rankled, piqued | Displeased, frustrated, belligerent, contentious, hostility, ire, animosity, offended, consternation | Dislike, loathing, disgust, hate, despise, detest, hatred, seething, wrath, furious, inflamed, incensed, outrage |
| Sadness–Disappointment | Discouraged, downcast, dispirited | Dismayed, disheartened, glum, resigned, gloomy | Sorrow, woeful, heartsick, pained, despondent, anguished, dejected, crestfallen |
Plutchik’s Model of Emotions—acceptance, surprise, fear, sorrow, disgust, expectancy, anger, and joy
Robert Plutchik (1962 and 1980) reasons that in the same way that colors are primary, and others are a mix of primary colors, some emotions are primary and other emotions are derived from them, and therefore secondary. He visualizes primary emotions as operating much like a color wheel, with “mixtures” of these primary emotions generating new and varied types of emotions in humans.
Physiological Changes
Expressive Gestures
Emotion Label
Situational Cues
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