Emotion Management : A Sociological Perspective

The ability to identify emotion and carry it out into one’s daily life is what defines an individual as human; if one lacks emotion, then the individual will become a robot of society. Emotion is defined as a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others

Controlling my emotions is vital to my success in building a working therapeutic relationship with a patient. A patient who feels that I may be judging them will become defensive, argumentative and will not want to communicate. Relationship management also helps me to handle situations with family members of patients. Actions of others and events which may have occurred prior to the patient arriving in my care may have upset the patient and family members, which requires me to manage conflicts, improve communications and build a new positive relationship. Additionally, being able to control my reactions to a situation can provide coworkers, patients and family members with a sense of direction and help them to remain calm in tense

Emotions are states of feeling.  Emotions set actions “into motion”.  They change and transform.  Feelings are facts, not right or wrong, they just exist.  Individuals experience emotions in conflict.  Self protective emotions are associated with the right hemispheres of the brain while pro-social are left brain ruled; conflict resolution depends on overcoming raw emotion and developing left-brain functions.  Relationships are defined by the kinds of emotions expressed.  One emotion regulates other emotions.  People develop emotion-behavior patterns early in life and build on them.

Emotions are used in our everyday lives help us understand and comprehend a situation. The way we feel can affect the way we think through a situation and the situation that we make. Our emotions are expressed when we play sports, when a loved one dies, or when we see our newly born baby for the first time. Emotions are a state of consciousness like joy, sorrow, fear, hate, and love. Whenever we are presented with a situation, our brain responds in feelings, and our feeling determine what will happen next.

Interaction is an important concept in sociology, and it has been studied from multiple different perspectives. Both Erving Goffman and Arlie Hochschild have made notable contributions to the sociological study of interaction. According to Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, interaction can be explained through a dramaturgical model. Within the dramaturgical model, interactions are portrayed as performances, as if a particular social environment is a stage, and the people in that social environment are actors (Goffman). Erving Goffman’s sociological interpretation of interaction is extended by Arlie Hochschild in her piece Feelings Management. Hochschild focuses specifically on performances that are put on in the workplace. Acting in the workplace has become a necessity in the service industry because in many cases, people must act warm and welcoming in order to keep their jobs. This method of acting happy and upbeat in the service industry is called emotional labor. However, as Hochschild explains, emotional labor can cause a strain on service workers, especially when they must act cheerful, even when they feel upset and distressed. The discrepancy between a person’s true emotions and their feigned emotional state is known as emotive dissonance. Continued emotive dissonance can lead to spillover, in which a person’s true emotions come out because they can no longer hold back these emotions. Though emotional labor began in the workplace, Hochschild

Attempts to define “emotion” have proved to be rather difficult. Instead of searching for a comprehensive definition, Gross (2011) describes the three core features of emotions. First, emotions occur when an individual decides that a situation is relevant to his or her goals. Second, emotions are multi-faceted, and involve both subjective and physiological experiences, as well as behaviors. The third feature involves the authoritative nature of emotions. They have the powerful ability to interrupt ongoing processes, assert their priority over other activities, and force their way into awareness. For example, some traditions describe emotions as “disorganized interruptions of mental activity” (Salovey & Mayer, 1989). Emotions are such an

Emotions are like tools that let you know where you are in life and if you need to make changes. In “Brave New World”, emotions are eliminated so that their society can enter a chain of dehumanization in order to control their society. With the World States decision to eliminate emotions from humanity has made their society worse. Emotions are the most basic and important characteristics that make up a human being. Though they could be positive or either negative, they can cause you to take important or necessary actions in your life.

Emotions are often thought to be personal. One may say “I am sad.” or “I am mad.” or I am scared.” and frequently we believe those emotions are inhabiting just the body in which they were created.

This book is divided into three parts. The first, 'Emotional Strategies: An Existentialist Perspective ' observes in some detail the ways in which we engage the world through sixteen different emotions, with several of their permutations. Following Heidegger; who believes that emotions tunes us to the world and Sartre; who reasons that emotions have a purpose, Solomon claims that we are responsible for our emotions. This coincides with the fundamental Stoic insight that we “are” our emotions. Aristotle discussed certain emotions at length, notably anger, which he described in remarkably modern terms. Commonly classified as a basic negative and destructive emotion, emotional reactions can usefully be read as, and ultimately even identified with, strategies we adopt as a way of dealing with the challenges of our lives- for example, prompting us to fight for justice and protecting our rights. Thus even

Emotions are used in everyday life, whether it be just a simple smile that makes happiness disperse in your brain, or a death of a loved one that causes sadness. The basic emotions are joy, interest, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame, and guilt. The way we see emotion in ourselves and others can be very complex because we sometimes assume they feel a certain way just based on their actions or even facial expressions. When emotion is discussed in psychological terms, it is not based on one thing, instead it’s a mix of bodily arousal, expressive behaviors, conscious experience. Many theories try to explain how emotion works.

Emotions are a necessary part of our whole humanity. They may be more than we have learned to be comfortable with, but they are not too much.

Besides, her achievements and successes, Russel’s work have had a profound influence on sociological thought and theory. Her work surrounding the sociology of emotion helps to understand how emotions, “offer a special vision of how we experience and appraise social settings, and (…) how [they] partly constitute what we think of as social settings” (Kemper 117). In essence, Russel uses her notions surrounding the development and action of emotions towards everyday contexts and issues. More specifically, drawing inspiration from other commonly used sociological models (The Organismic Model and The Interactional Model) Russel develops a third perspective which she coins as the “Emotional-Management Model.” To elucidate, this model highlights how emotions are used as “attempts to reconcile our expectations with the actuality of situations in which we find ourselves” (Appelrouth &Edles). As a side note, Russel also explains how emotions are innate at birth, as our senses. Similarly, to the development of “self,” though, they also have the ability adjust or change depending on the social setting or context as a form or type of signal functioning. They also can be influenced culturally and socially. In a similar fashion, emotions also can adjust their intensity in what Russel terms as “emotion work.” In this notion, she explains how the “self” can exaggerate or lessen the type of

People are shaped into individuals through many defining attributes – from the way we communicate and the way we express ourselves to a person’s morals and ethics. Coincidentally, these are all linked through one major omniscient trait – emotions. Emotions contain a wide spectrum of subcategories, but these can basically be broken down into the two elementary divisions: happiness and sadness. These ups and downs are crucial for people to be themselves; to have their own stories and experiences to tell.

In the Matsumoto et al. (2009) article they conducted a study in which they wanted to see if one’s emotions can be changed over time by displaying it in both a cultural and universal way. They used Olympic athletes to see how their emotions were displayed over time by putting their emotional reactions into different categories and seeing the number of times they are used in that athlete’s country (Matsumoto et al., 2009). A photographer was used to take pictures of the athletes when their match was over and when the winner was announced (Matsumoto et al., 2009). The researchers discovered that emotions were culturally influenced and shown that population density played a key part within these events (Matsumoto et al., 2009). Also the results

During my time at the soup kitchen, I had to utilize emotion management when dealing with people and situations in which it would have been inappropriate for me to react in the way that I would otherwise have wanted to. Emotion management is the act of obeying “feeling rules” and responding appropriately to situations (Brym and Lie 2012:77). For example, when a homeless man came into the soup kitchen and started to dance and shout instead of calmly sitting down and eating his meal, I courteously asked him to sit down and to try not to disturb the other guests of the establishment. Regardless of any initial emotions of fear, annoyance, or confusion, I had to respond appropriately to the situation by controlling my emotions and engaging in acceptable behavior. I especially had to utilize emotion labor, which is distinguished