The Politics of Emotion in Everyday Life: “Appropriate” Emotion and Claims on Identity

Abstract

Emotions have a political dimension in that judgments regarding when and how emotion should be felt and shown are interpreted in the interests of regulating the organization and functioning of social groups. This article argues that claims to authenticity and legitimacy of one's self-identity or group identity are at stake in the everyday politics of emotion. A brief discussion of the study of sex differences in the 19th century illustrates how emotion politics can saturate even scientific inquiry. Three ways in which there is a political dimension to socially appropriate emotion in contemporary life are then discussed: (a) Is the emotion the “wrong” emotion for the situation? (b) How are competing standards for emotional experience and expression managed? and (c) What constitutes the boundary between “too much” and “too little” emotion? The author concludes by considering the relevance of emotion politics to research on emotion.

The politics of emotion have been lurking in the background of emotions research since the formal scientific study of emotion began in psychology during the mid-19th century. In this article, I consider what it means that emotion politics lurk, that is, how the politics of emotion in everyday life create an unacknowledged setting for emotions study. The term “politics” is not a neutral word, and I do not use it lightly. Politics, according to Webster's New World Dictionary (1988), entail “factional scheming for power and status within a group; [involving] sometimes specifically crafty or unprincipled methods.” My emphasis is not on the “crafty or unprincipled” version of politics but, rather, on the notion of the political as fundamentally concerned with power and status: Whose emotion is valued, and whose is dismissed as overreaction? When is emotion claimed as a sign of the legitimacy and truth of an utterance, and when is it written off as merely emotion?

If there is a politics of emotion, there has to be something under contention. Reddy (2001, p. 114) pointed out that to exercise political power is to no effect unless something is at stake: “What is it that the individual loses by submitting to, embracing unreflectively, a collectively constructed emotional common sense?” In this article, I argue that what is at stake in the everyday politics of emotion is no less than the claim to authenticity and legitimacy of one's self-identity or group identity (Shields, 2002). Emotions are included in Western definitions of personhood (Fischer & Jansz, 1995). Emotion experience tells us we are human; believing that others honestly and authentically experience emotion persuades us of their humanity as well (Pizarro, 2000). Claims on emotional authenticity have long been asserted in public life, in arenas as trivial as reality television and as important as political campaigns. Since September 11, 2001, we have witnessed a very public and significant concern with the legitimacy and genuineness of emotion.

The politics of emotion are unavoidably enmeshed in the question of how we “know” appropriate and inappropriate emotion when we see it. Humans have the capacity to reflect on past emotion, to anticipate future emotion, to use language and other means to describe and label emotion, to attach moral and aesthetic values to emotion, and to link emotion to other social categories such as gender or race. “Meta-emotional processing” (Lundh, Johnsson, Sundqvist, & Olsson, 2002)—that is, thinking about one's own and others’ emotions—weaves a political thread into the fabric of nearly every instance of emotion. The “pure” emotion common to mammals is a rare luxury for adult humans, because our capacity for reflective self-awareness is an inevitable part of our mental equipment. By acknowledging the interplay between the “built-in” facet of emotion shared with other mammals and the “built” of meta-emotion, we may be able to explain some of the apparent contradictions found in the competing functions of emotion in human social life. Parrott (2001), for example, described how a broader definition of what “emotion” encompasses can help us understand how it is that emotions can be functional and adaptive yet dysfunctional under certain circumstances.

In this article, I address three ways in which there is a political dimension to contemporary thinking about “appropriate” emotion, that is, emotional behavior and experience conforming to norms of quality and quantity for the social context: (a) Is the emotion the “wrong” emotion for the situation? Is the individual deemed entitled to the emotion? (b) How are competing standards for emotional experience and expression managed? and (c) What constitutes the boundary between “too much” and “too little” expression of emotion? A concluding section addresses the implications for emotion research in psychology. In fields other than psychology, the politics of emotions have gained increasing attention in recent years. Sociologists (e.g., Clark, 1990, 1997; Illouz, 1997; Thoits, 2003) and historians (e.g., Corrigan, 2002; Stearns & Lewis, 1999) recognize that emotion has a political dimension that merits systematic study. Experimental psychologists have given less attention to the tactical and strategic uses of emotion. Most of this work has focused on managing facial expression so as to deceive or otherwise manipulate what others may know (e.g., DePaolo, Kashy, Kirkendol, Wyer, & Epstein, 1996; Saarni, 1993). Emotion politics as a direct negotiation of power relations is only recently visible on academic psychology's radar screen. My focus is on micropolitics, that is, the politics of emotion manifested in interpersonal relationships rather than in larger social or political structures (see, for example, Jenkins, 1991). Also, because my emphasis is on the politics of defining “correct” and “incorrect” emotion, I look at meta-emotion rather than the deployment of felt emotion as a function of political pressures (e.g., Reddy, 2001).

Before turning to the question of appropriate emotion and its political dimension, it is helpful to illustrate how emotions research can coexist with yet be unmindful of the existence of emotion's political dimension and unaware of the ways in which those politics might impinge on the conduct of research. A brief look at emotions research in the 19th century shows how the burgeoning science of emotion was insulated from its sociocultural context, yet simultaneously saturated with prevailing beliefs about emotion.

Nineteenth-Century Psychology: Emotion and Sex Differences

Human emotion was one of the premier issues during the early years of formal psychology. Charles Darwin and William James were two of the more prominent figures, but many other scientific men representing a variety of views were similarly concerned with emotion, including Wilhelm Wundt, G. Stanley Hall, and John Dewey, to name but a few (Gardiner, Metcalf, & Beebe-Center, 1937). A second topic, sex differences in social, psychological, and cognitive domains, also received attention, primarily through interest in the application of evolutionary theory to explaining, and in some cases justifying, existing social relations.

A striking feature of these discussions of human emotion and sex differences is the role played by one topic when the other was considered (Shields, 2002). When emotion was the topic, sex differences did not figure in the discussion. Emotion theorists did not draw distinctions between the emotional capacities of each sex, and the ostensible topic was human emotion, broadly speaking. Nor were other individual differences, such as age or race, generally considered. The project was the description and explanation of emotion in the adult human. When scientists turned to the topic of sex differences, however, emotion, in the form of female emotionality, was a predominant theme. The difference in focus in these two streams of theorizing can be related to the different objectives of each. The goal of emotions research was to discover processes common to emotion. A focus on individual differences would undermine that goal. In contrast, the goal of sex difference research was to explain group “differences” rather than processes.

Some of the same philosophers, psychologists, and evolutionary biologists who wrote on emotion also wrote on human sex differences. Discussion of sex differences was prompted by the growing influence of evolutionary theory on experimental psychology. Evolutionary theory enabled the explanation, and thereby justification, of existing gender roles and status by way of evolutionary-based, built-in sex-specific traits (Shields, 1982). Evolutionary theory in the 19th century, however, was offered not only as a vehicle for explaining the origin of sex differences in abilities, behavior, and constitution of the central nervous system but also as a rationale for existing social organization in the case of gender as well as race and class (Richards, 1997). One of the main psychological defining features of difference was the quality of emotion and emotionality thought to be normal, natural, and typical of each sex.

He is Passionate; She is Simply Emotional

By the latter part of the 19th century, scientific claims regarding females’ general inferiority had been replaced by an assertion of complementarity (Shields, 1982). That is, the weaknesses in one sex were purportedly compensated for by corresponding strengths in the other sex. For example, males were credited with the capacity to see things in objective and rational terms. This strength, however, came with less interest in attending to the immediate and subjectively driven needs of those close by, an attribute believed to be more characteristic of females. Thus, his objectivity complemented her feeling-oriented view of the world, and vice versa. Complementarity, as many have pointed out (e.g., Bacchi, 1990), signals neither equality nor equity. In any comparison, one side is the standard and the other, by virtue of the comparison, is deficient or deviant.

Females’ reproductive physiology was presumed to account for their cognitive and emotional character (Shields, 1975; Vertinsky, 1988), but it was only the middle- and upper-class White woman who was further described in terms of the resulting traits: gentility, perceptiveness, and emotionality. Without fully developed mental capacity, women were believed unable to have a true appreciation of the moral order, the ability to administer justice objectively, or the capacity for deep faith (as opposed to simple religiosity). Emotion, when described as an attribute of females, was construed as lacking a kind of potency. It was construed as sentimentality, a second-rate emotion (Reddy, 2001).

Males, however, did not lack emotion. Instead, they were characterized as having strong, passionate emotion, which was regarded as unambiguously masculine emotion. The concept of decisive action invested with, and so made stronger by, powerful feeling was the essential quality of idealized male emotion in the mid- to late 19th century. Though passion could overwhelm reasoned behavior, well-controlled masculine passion is energy focused on “the battle of life.” Passion was not identified simply as sexual drive, but all strong feeling that powered creative thinking, social action, and physical prowess.

Whereas conventional historiography has characterized the 19th century as one in which male/masculine was equated with reason and female/feminine was equated with emotion, more recent research has revealed that the reason-emotion dichotomy is an oversimplification. In fact, strong emotion was viewed as “manly,” whereas “mere emotionality” was viewed as feminine (e.g., Corrigan, 2002; Ellison, 1999). The identification of emotion with manliness centered on males’ purportedly better capacity to harness the power of emotion in the service of reason; feminine emotion was portrayed as something of an inferior and ineffectual emotionality.

Spencer's Views on Emotion and Sex Differences

One striking example of how emotion and sex differences were treated can be found in Herbert Spencer's (1897, 1902) extensive writings on each of these subjects. A noted philosopher and social theorist, Spencer is most widely known today as the originator of the “survival of the fittest” doctrine. Intending to apply his theory of evolution to major fields of study in a series of 10 books, Spencer completed his monumental task over 36 years. What makes his perspective an especially good example of 19th-century double vision on emotion and sex differences is the sheer volume of pages he devoted to the subject.

Spencer's version of sex differences agreed with the prevailing view that females, because they reached maturity earlier than males, were disadvantaged relative to males. For Spencer, the outcome was obvious: “The mental manifestations [of females] have somewhat less of general power or massiveness; and beyond this there is a perceptible falling-short in those two faculties, intellectual and emotional, which are the latest products of human evolution” (Spencer, 1902, p. 341). Much of his discussion of sex differences centered on the comparative emotional and intellectual weakness of females and the consequences of comparative female deficiency for social relationships and society more generally. In contrast, Spencer's account of emotion—like other evolution-based accounts of the time—was ostensibly sex neutral. He did not compare males and females in his analysis of emotion; still, he noticeably placed masculine competition at the center of emotion theory. Male emotional attributes were asserted to have evolved in response to men's competition with other men:

Those tribes survived in which the men were not only powerful and courageous, but aggressive, unscrupulous, intensely egoistic. Necessarily, then, the men of the conquering races which gave origin to the civilized races, were men in whom the brutal characteristics were dominant. (Spencer, 1902, p. 342)

In Spencer's view, passion, even brute passion, when under the control of reason, makes advances in civilization and thought possible.

Psychological science was concerned with generating explanations of the generalized adult human mind. Apparently, the generalized adult human mind was male. Emotion theories explained a nominally de-sexed passion that was, nevertheless, identified with the natural, typical, and ideal masculine. Furthermore, ideal masculinity was northern European masculinity. The racial and social class limits of ideal masculinity were rendered explicit only when there was pressure at the boundaries of these social categories, as during periods of colonialist expansion (Bhatia, 2002).

The Politics of Emotion and Then and Now

During the 19th century, emotion politics lurked in writings about sex differences and in references to racial, ethnic, and class differences. Today, emotion politics lurk in the features of emotion that are considered cultural products or concerns and therefore outside the boundaries of psychology. Emotion politics are visible in lay theories of emotion and the everyday language of emotion, but researchers in psychology tend to view these topics as something separable and different from the object of basic emotions research.

In both the 19th century and today, “real” emotion is reserved for that dimension of emotion that can be explained without reference to the social context in which it operates. This is not to say that social context is disregarded; rather, it is viewed as unnecessary to explaining the emotion process. Two examples, one from each era, illustrate this. William James's theory was fundamentally concerned with explaining emotion consciousness, the “experienced” emotion that dominates consciousness as it occurs (Mandler, 1990). James, heavily influenced by evolutionary theory, proposed that emotion was reflexively elicited and not a product of learned associations between specific “exciting objects” and specific emotional responses. To illustrate his line of reasoning, James (1884) pointed out the innate tendency toward self-consciousness in front of others: “The most important part of my environment is my fellow-man. The consciousness of his attitude towards me is the perception that normally unlocks most of my shames and indignations and fears” (p. 195). James (1884), in this instance as in others, openly acknowledged the peculiarities of social context that characterize particular historical periods and cultures, but his gaze was fixed on what does not vary:

What the action itself may be is quite insignificant, so long as I can perceive in its intent or animus. That is the emotion-arousing perception; and may give rise to as strong bodily convulsions in me, a civilized man experiencing the treatment of an artificial society, as any savage prisoner of war, learning whether his captors are about to eat him or to make him a member of their tribe. (p. 196)

The wide range of contemporary appraisal theories likewise acknowledges the cultural and local contexts that foster emotion-evoking appraisals. Their primary goal, however, remains the identification of transsituational cognitive processes and contents (Parkinson & Manstead, 1992). For example, Roseman and his colleagues (e.g., Roseman, Antoniou, & Jose, 1996) identified dimensions of appraisal, such as unexpectedness and control potential, that they hypothesized are determinants of specific emotional states. Individual differences are of interest insofar as they can be linked to differences in motivational or appraisal propensities (e.g., Griner & Smith, 2000).

The de facto exclusion of emotion's political dimension from the domain of “real” emotion can mask the social uses of emotion. Opening up emotions research to incorporate acknowledgment of emotion politics can usefully broaden how we might approach questions regarding appraisal processes. For example, politics suggest competing values. When and how do values contribute to the formation of appraisal tendencies? How might values affect appraisals’ susceptibility or resistance to change? Do values create situations in which certain appraisals of a situation are accorded greater legitimacy than others, as in differing emotional responses of in-group members and out-group members to specific emotion-evoking situations?

A series of recent studies on in-groups’ perspectives on their own and on out-groups’ emotions illustrates how beliefs about emotion may create the conditions for understanding and valuing in-group emotional responses differently from those of an out-group (Leyens et al., 2000, 2001; Paladino et al., 2002). Leyens et al. (2000) began with a distinction between primary and secondary emotions. They identified primary emotions (including joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise) as those commonly believed to be universal across both animals and humans and to appear early in life. Secondary emotions, such as admiration, pride, nostalgia, and remorse, are social emotions that a number of researchers consider solely human characteristics. In a series of studies, this group has examined attributions of primary and secondary emotions made by in-group and out-group members both toward themselves and toward the other group. Across several in-group-out-group combinations and employing several different methods of obtaining emotion attributions, they have found a consistent pattern. In one study, for example, they compared two groups in Spain with a history of intergroup tension. Although there was no difference in the number of primary emotions attributed to each group, both groups selected more secondary emotions for their in-group than for the out-group. By assigning more secondary emotions to themselves, the members of the in-group imply that they are somehow more developed than the out-group, that they are humans of a higher order.

“Appropriate” Emotion as Emotion Politics

The politics of emotion are evident in defining “appropriate” emotion. “Appropriate” emotion is nothing more or less than emotion that is correct for the situation and in correct proportion to the evoking circumstances. At the extremes of emotional expression, there tends to be a good degree of cultural consensus both concerning which emotions (if any) are desirable and on how (quantity, quality, and duration) these emotions ought to be felt and shown (e.g., Fischer & Manstead, 2000; Heise & Calhan, 1995). Indeed, the social importance of emotion appropriateness is the basis for the concepts of “display rules” (Ekman, 1993) and “feeling rules” (Hochschild, 1983). Researchers who study display rules, the often tacit social rules directing when, how much, and which emotions should be expressed to others, emphasize the importance of regulating emotional expression for successful social interaction (e.g., Saarni, 1999). The link between appropriateness and politics concerns who determines what can be thought of as emotion “policy,” namely, the agenda that sets the norms of what one can get emotional about, who has the right to be emotional, and when emotions are regarded as legitimate. Appropriateness prioritizes whose interests are promoted.

In the following, I argue that judgments about appropriateness represent tactics for influencing others to achieve one's own goals, as, for example, in creating conditions for viewing the legitimacy of others’ authority or the validity of their reasoning. This section describes three ways in which appropriateness is at stake. The first concerns the kind of emotion experienced, specifically whether it is the “wrong” emotion for the situation in that it deviates from the normative or positively sanctioned range of emotions. A second concerns navigation of emotional double binds, situations in which competing emotional standards may make it difficult or impossible to fulfill the requirements of correctness. A third way in which appropriateness is at stake is in the quantity of emotion experienced or expressed: what could be called emotion borderlands, a sometimes murky territory between “the right amount” of emotion and “too much” (or “too little”) of it. My examples are largely drawn from the way in which beliefs about appropriateness relate to gender, but any axis along which groups or social identities may be in unequal positions or vie for status would serve as well.

The Wrong Kind of Emotion

Authentic emotions—felt or shown—may not conform to the norm for a given situation. Hochschild (1983) has described “misfitting feelings” as emotions that one experiences as a mismatch with the situation, that is, as incorrect in kind or amount from what is to be expected in the situation. Misfitting feelings stand in violation to one's understanding of social norms, and so can be thought of as reflecting one's awareness of the degree of one's own socialization. Misfitting feelings, in Hochschild's original sense of the term, tell us that we are not being the kind of person we believe ourselves to be. Misfitting feelings may be an indicator of something else as well. Misfitting feelings can signal that something is wrong with the situation, not the self. The experience of mismatch between felt emotion and the evoking situation alerts us to the possibility of a discrepancy between our values and the prevailing values that are the foundation for a conflicting interpretation of the situation. In terms of emotion politics, the mismatch may be a sign that something is at stake.

This latter type of misfitting feeling is what Allison Jaggar (1992) refers to as “outlaw emotion.” To take one example, the lone woman at the board meeting who is embarrassed or angry when the others around the table laugh at a sexual innuendo is experiencing an outlaw emotion. The woman's appraisal of the situation and the emotion generated by the appraisal process does not make sense from the perspective of the others’ prevailing version of how the situation is to be understood. If her reaction is visible, it is puzzling or comical or irritating to others around the table because it does not fit their conception of an appropriate reaction. Her marginal status exacerbates the situation. Although the majority opinion in that situation may be that the innuendo is (or ought to be) funny or should simply be ignored, the emotion outlaw experiences emotion that does not fit within this normative framework. The emotion outlaw is placed in a position of questioning her or his own feelings or may even doubt the reliability of the emotion. Outlaw emotions are not misfitting simply in the sense of degree or shading of the felt emotion but are experienced as contrary and wholly outside of what the “expected” or sanctioned reaction is to be. Outlaw emotions are not deliberate acts of resistance; however, by their occurrence, they do raise questions regarding what constitutes the “right way” when the “wrong way” is experienced as authentic and the “right way” as false or untrue.

This “emotion of-a-different-kind” needs external verification of its legitimacy. As with other misfitting feelings, the individual may attempt to manage or mask expression of the felt emotion to conform to the social requirements of the situation, as she or he would in other situations in which emotion is “wrong” (Oatley & Jenkins, 1996). But there is a difference between the man who hides his disappointment when told he will not receive a raise and the moral claim that underlies outlaw emotion. Outlaw emotions are experienced as authentic and legitimate even as one may question whether the emotion is worth the risk. Outlaw emotion makes a moral claim that extends beyond the individual and the particulars of the evoking situation and, by its existence and acceptance, challenges the political position of the majority/normative understanding of the evoking situation.

One question that can be raised is why those in the normative emotional majority even take notice of the minority response. In situations in which there is a prevailing vision of what constitutes the majority and therefore “normal” emotional experience and display, the majority view marks the minority emotional response as one of questionable validity. A local version of the false consensus effect (S. R. Gross & Miller, 1997), the tendency to exaggerate how common one's own characteristics and opinions are in the general population, could account for this. The majority see their own reaction validated by the participation of others and made more striking by the minority response that—as counter to the majority—is inappropriately different.

In a somewhat different context, that of explaining emotions labeled as deviant, Thoits (1985) has suggested that emotions that are discrepant from those considered ideal or appropriate for the situation are more likely to arise when structural conditions are complex, multifaceted, or highly demanding but the emotion norms applied in that situation are simple and clear. There is little empirical work on the consequences of emotional deviance, but there is some evidence that, in more persistent cases of expressed emotion deviating from situational norms, individuals will be labeled by others as emotionally disturbed, label themselves as emotionally disturbed, or seek out similar others to confirm the validity of their feelings (Thoits, 2003). My concern in this article is the range of emotion experience and expression characteristic of everyday life experiences rather than traumatic experiences or those dramatically out of the ordinary: life at the office rather than life on Jerry Springer. Thoits's analysis, however, is also applicable to these more pedestrian circumstances, particularly the consequences of expressing emotions labeled as deviant. The difference resides in how great a risk one takes of having one's emotion pathologized.

Kennedy-Moore and Watson (2001) discussed the paradox of expressing distress. Although expressing distress may exacerbate painful feelings and make one more vulnerable to others, it offers a possible means of coping. Although expression of distressful outlaw emotion carries risk, it may be worthwhile to the extent that this expression leads to some resolution involving the source or significance of distress. Research on coping with traumatic events shows that expression does have positive outcomes. Even expression through writing is of value; both writing about the negative aspects of an experience and writing about the perceived benefits of having undergone the experience are linked to positive health outcomes (King & Miner, 2000). Other researchers have shown that increased motivations for social sharing triggered by the disclosure account for the increases in reported well-being (Rimé, Finkenauer, Luminet, Zech, & Philippot, 1998). We could speculate then, that a similar mechanism might work with respect to managing outlaw emotions. Discussion of one's own experiences of outlaw emotion with potentially sympathetic others may alleviate the distress of the outlaw emotion without actually eliminating it, whereas the process of social sharing provides a basis for understanding the political dimension of such “invalid” emotion beyond the micropolitics of the instigating moment. That is, social sharing reveals the broader principle that distinguishes the “correct” emotion of the dominant in-group from the outlaw emotion of the out-group. Outlaw emotion becomes the nexus around which a publicly defined political identity may develop.

The potential for outlaw emotions depends on one's position in the situation and is not inherent to social identities. The would-be emotion outlaw in one setting may be a member of the normative majority in another. That said, some outlaws may be more at risk than others for having the legitimacy of their emotion claims questioned. Multiple dimensions of minority status may increase the likelihood that one will encounter situations in which one stands out as an interloper in emotional territory defined by the norms of the privileged dominant group. For example, when members of the dominant group discuss issues concerning groups considered minority or “special interest” groups, the question of “Why are they always so angry?” almost invariably arises. The answer depends on who is in a position to write the rules as to what counts as a legitimate appraisal.

Competing Emotional Styles and Standards: Emotion Double Binds

I have elsewhere described two emotional “styles” that are linked to gender in the United States (Shields, 2002). Both are required of women and men, but each is more associated with and expected of one sex than the other. Extravagant expressiveness is an open style of experiencing and communicating emotion. It is demonstrative without subtlety. Extravagant expressiveness is evident in nurturing behavior and is the form of emotion linked in the United States to expressions of intimacy. It is the emotion expected and believed in caregiving and close relationships. (Indeed, the expectation of extravagant expressiveness drives the common refrain “Don't just tell me that you love me, say it like you really mean it.”) Manly emotion, the second emotional style, is characterized by a telegraphed or subtle expression of intense emotion under control. This emotional style is celebrated in popular culture and exemplified in dramatic movie heroes such as Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan or Russell Crowe in Gladiator.

Each of the two styles communicates something different about the interpersonal aspect of emotion (Shields, 2002). Manly emotion, in aiming to show controlled, yet strongly felt, emotion, conveys something about the individual's relation to his or her own emotion: “I can control my emotion (i.e., my Self), and I can harness my emotion to control the situation.” The message of extravagant expressiveness, in contrast, is one that places the interpersonal relationship at the center of the emotional encounter: “My emotion (i.e., my Self) is at your service.”

Manly emotion is not simply men's emotion, and studying manly emotion is not simply studying men's emotion. Both masculinity and femininity are “ideologies and representations of gender” (Bordo, 1997, p. 149). That is, as ideologies, masculinity and femininity serve as standards for behavior. Manly emotion derives its value, and defines and is defined, by its connection to a particular version of White, heterosexual masculinity. Greater cultural value is placed on manly emotional standards because of their intimate connection to the expression of rationality and self-control. Feminine-identified emotional standards, as expressed in extravagant expressiveness, foster many socially desirable behaviors, such as tenderness and selflessness, but are culturally tainted because of their association with emotion that is out of control or threatening to become so. Gender ideologies, of course, show some striking differences across culture and historical time. Furthermore, how fully any individual incorporates that cultural sense of masculine ideal into his or her self-understanding varies with individual learning histories.

People are affected by these standards to the degree to which they expect themselves (or others expect them) to conform to the standards or to resist them. In comparison with stereotypes of other groups, gender stereotypes tend to have both a descriptive and a prescriptive dimension (Swim & Campbell, 2001). Stereotypes describe not only what people think is typical for one sex or the other but also what attributes each sex ought to have or not have. Prentice and Carranza (2002) proposed that gender stereotypes are composed of both traits that are high in general social desirability (prescriptive) and traits that are low in social desirability (proscriptive). They distinguished between “intensified” norms (strongly required/prohibited) and “relaxed” norms (some degree of latitude for adherence). Gender-intensified prescriptions are qualities that each sex is supposed to have by virtue of gender; gender-relaxed prescriptions are desirable qualities, but a standard to which one gender is only weakly held. In contrast, gender-intensified proscriptions are low in general desirability and even lower in desirability for the target gender; gender-relaxed proscriptions are low in general desirability but are allowable flaws for the target gender. Prentice and Carranza's scheme would identify extravagant expressiveness as a gender-intensified prescription for women and manly emotion as a gender-intensified prescription for men. For movie heroes, righteous anger or a “stiff upper lip” in fear-evoking situations may be the manly emotion that most readily comes to mind, but any emotion may take the form of a manly emotion, even subtle tears and weeping (Cornelius & Labott, 2000; Vingerhoets, Cornelius, Van Heck, & Becht, 2000; Warner & Shields, in press).

Both emotion styles are expected of women and men, but the demands of each style are such that it is difficult or impossible to meet their standards simultaneously. Competing forms of gendered emotion require reconciliation between emotional standards in such a way that emotion can be experienced as consistent with (or at least not undermining) one's sense of a coherent and authentic identity. The challenges of reconciling the competing dictates of extravagant expressiveness and manly emotion work out differently for each sex. Complicating things, particularly for women, is the leftover notion from the 19th century that he has emotions, but she is emotional (or, rather, is merely emotional).

For men, the bind is how to approximate the elusive ideal of manly emotion when interpersonal relationships demand something more. In the United States, for example, men are expected to be good friends, good lovers, and good fathers. In close relationships, extravagant expressiveness signals authenticity and involvement in the interpersonal connection. But extravagant expressiveness also entails the risk of being perceived as “feminine.” Further, manly emotion is not emotional inexpressivity. Heesacker et al. (1999) found that mental health professionals as well as college students endorsed the belief that women are too emotional (or hyperemotional) and men not emotional enough (or hypoemotional). They also reported that counselors who endorse the hypoemotionality stereotype approach couples therapy with different preconceptions about responsibility for the couple's difficulties than counselors who do not.

For women, the expectation is that they will be appropriately nurturant (as shown in part through extravagant expressiveness), yet also conform to the “higher” standard of manly emotion. Extravagant expressiveness is a prescriptive feature of what contemporary U.S. society deems good maternal behavior. “The ideology of intensive mothering” (Hays, 1996) is a gendered, child-centered model of child rearing in which women are encouraged to devote their time, energy, and resources to child rearing. This cultural ideal of motherhood contains strong prescriptions about the “correct” way to be a good mother, even at the same time as women are told there is no single correct way (Marshall, 1991). At the same time that it is required, it is also regarded with some suspicion. For example, research on representations of mothers’ and fathers’ emotion in late-20th-century U.S. advice manuals has shown that fathers’ emotion is described as a specific response to a provocation, a state; mothers’ emotion is represented as a problematic manifestation of her emotional nature, a trait (Anderson, George, & Nease, 2002; Shields & Koster, 1989; Shields, Steinke, & Koster, 1995).

Given the realities of work and personal life, the double bind may be difficult to manage because of the many and hurried daily transitions between emotion modes as one moves between personal and family responsibilities and those of work. More important, however, is the ever-present identification of female/feminine with the “merely emotional.” In most workplaces the economical expressiveness of manly emotion is the standard, but women are valued when they conform to expectations of feminine warmth and nurturance (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Eagly, Mladinic, & Otto, 1991). In other words, women are valued when they embody a caring style that entails an emotionally open form of expressiveness. The competing demands of extravagant expressiveness and manly emotion are just one example of a pervasive emotional double bind. Individuals who participate both in a minority social group with its own established norms for experience and expressing emotion and the majority culture also often must reconcile the conflicting demands of different reference groups.

Emotion Borderlands

In addition to having to navigate emotional double binds, people still run the risk that their emotional expression may be deemed inappropriate because it lies within the murky emotional borderlands. One example of contested emotional appropriateness that was played out publicly occurred when Halle Berry received the Academy Award for Best Actress in March 2002 for her performance in Monster's Ball. She was the first woman of color ever to receive this award. Her 527-word acceptance speech was impassioned and tearful and generated much discussion as to whether her emotional display was over the top. Strong opinions were expressed on both sides, ranging from irritation and questions of its sincerity to praise for her genuine expression of emotion (e.g., Harris, 2002). There is, of course, agreement within broad limits as to what constitute the margins of too much and too little emotion. For example, people in the United States would agree that a person should be happy and show happiness when given a gift. But if I give you a candy bar and your happy reaction lasts for days, most observers would agree that there is something “off” about your emotional response.

Those who are deemed emotionally inappropriate are labeled deviant because they fail to follow or understand social norms as they pertain to emotion. We would expect to see greater consensus in what constitutes inappropriate degrees of emotion the greater the departure from the norm. Kelly and Hutson-Comeaux (Hutson-Comeaux & Kelly, in press; Kelly & Hutson-Comeaux, 1999, 2000) have suggested that stereotype-based gender expectations are one determinant of the quantitative limits of appropriate emotional behavior. In one study (Kelly & Hutson-Comeaux, 1999) of marked overreaction and underreaction to emotion-evoking events, participants read scenarios depicting “Person X” as markedly overreacting or underreacting to happy, sad, and angry events in either an interpersonal or achievement context. Participants then judged how characteristic the reaction would be of a man and of a woman. With regard to the interpersonal context, overreactions to happy or sad scenarios were judged as more characteristic of women than men. However, in the achievement context, participants considered it more characteristic for men to overreact than women. Further, men were more likely to be judged as overreacting to angry situations in both contexts. The work of these authors suggests that overreactions to gender-stereotype-consistent emotional events are judged as less appropriate than overreactions to gender-inconsistent events, at least in situations in which raters use their imagination to fill in the details of a described extreme reaction.

Judgment of inappropriate degree of emotion (felt or shown, or both) may be easy enough beyond certain quantitative limits. At extremes, there may be less ambiguity in the emotion expressed (the “message”) and a greater likelihood of consensus in “reading” the quantity and quality of emotion. Much, if not most, of everyday life is not lived at the extremes of emotional experience or expressivity but somewhere in the indeterminate middle. In this “middle,” complexity, ambiguity, and changeability characterize both the individual's expressive behavior and the situation (e.g., Bavelas & Chovil, 1997; Fernández-Dols & Ruiz-Belda, 1997; J. J. Gross, John, & Richards, 2000; LaFrance & Hecht, 2000). Judgments about another's emotional “appropriateness” have a political dimension insofar as they reflect concerns with establishing or maintaining status vis-à-vis others. Given the potential for complex and ambiguous behaviors and situations to be open to different interpretations by different observers, we can ask what variables may influence the judgments that people make about the “appropriateness” of emotional reactions. “Inappropriate” emotion can be the wrong emotion, but it may also be some perceived deviation from the correct or desirable quantity. How do we know the “right amount” when we see it?

What increases or decreases the likelihood that an individual's emotional display will be evaluated positively or negatively, be considered of value or not to be trusted? Gasper (2003) found that perspective-taking instructions and feelings of similarity reduce the degree to which others’ emotions are judged as inappropriate. That is, people often judge what is correct and desirable by asking themselves whether they would act that way, in effect putting themselves in the other's shoes. If they do not understand the other person's perspective, they deem those emotions to be inappropriate to the situation. Thus, one way to enhance the likelihood of emotional understanding may be through encouraging perspective-taking goals (Gasper, 2003).

To return to the Halle Berry story, the public discussion generated by her speech had little to do with what Berry said, or even what she felt, but about the appropriateness of the degree of her emotion itself.¹ In that debate, Berry lost the claim to having emotion and became “merely” emotional. Emotion labels are particularly potent vehicles for deploying emotion's political application, and care is taken to distinguish between emotionality as a trait and as a state, with the latter more likely applied to oneself and the former to others (Parrott, 1995). Explicit labeling of one's own or another's emotion occurs with low frequency in ordinary conversation (e.g., Anderson & Leaper, 1998), and there is great interindividual variability in frequency in both adults and children (e.g., Cervantes & Callanan, 1998). “Being emotional” can refer to a state or a trait, thus distinguishing between someone who has an emotion in a particular situation and someone who is emotional across situations. The latter interpretation is viewed more negatively. Having one's emotion labeled as too much (or too little) is to risk one's emotional response being interpreted as dispositional. The “too emotional” response is read as the response of someone who is “merely” emotional; the “not emotional enough” response is read as the response of someone who is not genuinely engaged with others. When emotionality—rather than emotion—is noted, the audience ceases to register the message or the legitimacy of the message. Instead, the focus becomes the individual's emotion, which, when viewed as emotionality, is flawed by definition.

Summary and Conclusion

In this article, I have argued that emotions have a political dimension. Beliefs about what emotion is, how it operates, and when and how it should be manifested are interpreted in the interests of regulating the organization and functioning of social groups. Emotion politics, in the sense of seeking or affirming power and status (or maneuvering to avoid losing them), are evident at the micro level of emotion's operation, as in the meanings assigned to the tiniest change in the appearance of a smile or an individual's own understanding of experience, and on through to increasingly complex levels of social interaction. I have traced three dimensions along which one's own or another's emotional behavior or experience can be thought of as varying in how appropriate it is to a situation. Specifically, emotion can be judged as qualitatively fitting the situation, quantitatively fitting the situation, or reflecting tensions between competing demands made by incompatible emotion standards.

Discussion of politics reveals the interplay between academic psychology's study of emotions, which aims for objectivity in revealing the true core of emotion, and the everyday meanings attached to emotion that shape how emotion is used as interpersonal tactic and strategy. Emotion's everyday meanings are political in the sense that they are concerned with the exercise of emotion as responsibility, right, and privilege (Averill, 1991; Zammuner, 2000). Whether in office politics or the politics of governance, those who hold power determine which issues and groups are favored. Similarly, emotion politics entail competing for the privilege of arbitrating emotional legitimacy: Whose emotion and which emotion are “appropriate”? Whose emotion and which emotion are not? Emotion politics are embedded in the structure of lay theories of emotion. Research on lay theories has shown that common understandings of emotional behavior (e.g., Cornelius & Labott, 2000), emotion labels (e.g., Parrott, 1995), and emotion values have a political dimension. By “appropriate,” I mean emotional behavior and experience that conforms to norms of quality and quantity for the social context areas in which identification of appropriate and inappropriate emotion can be influenced by the perspective afforded by unequal group status or competing goals and values.

Footnotes

1

Berry's behavior during her acceptance speech was the subject of vigorous debate in print and at online film review sites, including ifilm.com and the entertainment section of . BBC online (bbc.co.uk) ran a readers’ poll concerning the question “Did Halle Berry go over the top in her Oscars speech?” and the British consensus was a resounding “yes.”

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