The Complexity of Feeling
Suppose you are walking into a distant relatives’ funeral. Just as you approach the doors to enter you get a notification. You’ve been waiting on news and this message confirms that you earned a big promotion you’ve been working towards. You feel a rush of excitement, relief, joy, and yet, you inherently know to temper your excitement as you walk through those doors. This isn’t the place. Or maybe, you find that you’ve had an immensely stressful day. As you prepare for the long awaited birthday party of a dear friend you know to temper your fatigue as you enter, reminding yourself — smile, we are celebrating. Or maybe you have ever observed someone who wasn’t quite “reading the room” as they carried on? As individuals part of a society, we learn to both consciously and unconsciously acquiesce ourselves to certain conventions.
Let’s circle back to one of the examples above. Imagine if for a moment that you let some of your excitement about your promotion slip out during that funeral. Others are likely to notice the behavioral inconsistencies. They are way too happy for a funeral. Why are they smiling so much?
From a sociological standpoint, Hochschild (1979) suggests, “we all use unexamined means of arriving at a determination about just “which” circumstances warrant “that much” feeling of “that sort”.” These conventions become internalized benchmarks by which we measure any diversion. What to you is the gold standard for acceptable, for others may be completely dissonant.
What rules did you learn about feeling conventions? Who taught you those? How were they reinforced?
Our respective social systems create these containers for social norms. Those whose norms match those of the container tend to achieve harmony regardless, of the perceived appropriateness of the norms. Consider the second example at the opening. You have the conscious awareness that you are expected to behave a certain way at the party of a close friend, despite the day you may have had. You have particular definitions of what being a good friend means, how to engage at parties, the importance of the gesture of your presence. These rules influence your decision and you make the choice to exert the effort in support of meeting your perceived expectations.
Consider your social systems and the containers therein. Are the unwritten rules of feeling conventions (norms) the same across systems? How are they different?
The reality is that we all engage in an active exertion of effort to abide the feeling norms; it is a perpetual internal force that shapes the way we socialize with those around us. Hochschild (1979) refers to this process as emotions work or emotions management.
So why do we need to pay attention to emotions management? What are the implications for organizations? What impacts on inclusion can we derive from this awareness?
In this series, The Complexity of Feeling, I am exploring each of those questions about emotions, feelings, emotional intelligence, and their impact on organizations. I hope you’ll join me.
Hochschild, A. R. (1979). Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure. American journal of sociology, 85(3), 551–575.
