Feeling rules are socially shared norms that influence how we want to try to feel emotions in given social relations. This concept was introduced by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in 1979.
Feelings are not simply emotional reactions that are privately experienced by the individual. Feelings are social expressions of the emotional state of the
individual. Feeling rules are emotional guides that are socially specific. We know feeling rules are present when we question our own emotions, when we are asked to give an account of our feelings by another, or when we are chastised by another. Feeling rules are differentially distributed by social status, class, and most importantly by gender—there are different feeling expectations based on group membership. Women in particular are required to do more emotional work, including commercialized emotion work.
Sources: Wikipedia; Hochschild, A. (1979). Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure; Hochschild, A. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling.
According to Hochschild (1979), there are a variety of ways we do emotion work:
- One method is cognitive: we can try and change our ideas or thoughts in
order to change the way we feel about something.
- Another approach involves the body. We can use the body to try and lead our emotions in a desirable direction. For example, we will breathe deeply in order to calm our nerves when speaking in front of a crowd.
- A third way of managing emotion involves using expressive gestures. Sometimes we’ll smile in order to make ourselves feel happy. But the most important way that we manage our emotions is through deep acting.
Managing “Real” Feelings
Hochschild draws on the work of Konstantin Stanislavski to make the distinction
between surface and deep acting. Stanislavski is the father of “method acting.” Method acting requires the performer to get into character to such a degree that they don’t act; they react just as the character would. In surface acting, the performer pretends to be the character for the benefit of the audience. The performance is always done with the audience in mind, their reactions and their involvement. In method acting, or deep acting, the performer becomes the character to such an extent that the audience is almost secondary; the performer exists as the character for the duration of the play.
According to Hochschild, in deep acting a feeling or emotional response is self-induced and the feeling provides the basis of “acting” or impression management. There are two primary ways we can invoke emotions. The first involves exhortation, which are direct efforts made to induce or prevent a feeling. For instance, at Christmas you may receive a present that you don’t like, but you know that you have to be appreciative.
This idea of Hochschild’s presents us with an amazing new backstage—this backstage is inside of us rather then in a setting. But, because we are coming at the emotion directly, exhortation isn’t true deep acting. With exhortation the emotion becomes something that we directly manipulate. As such, we might feel that it is fake or we might feel guilt for not feeling properly in the first place.
The second method of emotion management uses the imagination and approaches emotion indirectly. In other words, through imaginative work we can present certain cues to our self, cues that are emotionally laden. So, rather than trying to directly manipulate our emotions through exhortation, thus producing an action, we “fool ourselves” into reacting to an emotional stimulus. This imaginative approach uses emotion-memory. We evoke or call to mind the memory of an incident where we felt the emotion that we are after. By the time we reach adulthood, we have a backlog of emotional experiences. Sometimes those emotional experiences get triggered inadvertently. There are certain smells and sights that take us back to high school or our first love. In deep acting we intentionally bring those memories back, but in very specific ways. We use those memories to stimulate ourselves emotionally, to legitimately feel those emotions in order to present a specific kind of self.
The next thing we have to do when we use imagination is give ourselves “as if
suppositions.” As if suppositions are used in conjunction with emotion memory to
imagine that emotion as if it were true right now.
Another indirect method we use to manage emotion through deep acting is
personal props. These personal props can be things like friends and acquaintances or
actual physical items. Hochschild points out that physical settings can also call out to our emotions and thus be part of our emotion management. Some obvious examples of
settings that evoke different emotions are churches and sports arenas.
We intentionally use furnishings and pictures and colors to influence our emotions, and the emotions of others coming into our space. Friends can act as feeling props as well. Hochschild gives us the example of a woman who is trying not to love a man. She might intentionally tell her friends that the man is horrible and mean. Her friends, then, could act as a check on her emotions.
Feeling Rules
Hochschild argues that feeling is a kind of pre-script to action. It is internal behavior that we engage in that prepares us to act externally. Thus, there is a clear link between how we feel and how we act. We’ve seen this emotion-action connection in the
concept of deep acting—deep acting allows us to manipulate our emotions in order to
produce an “authentic” response. But there is more involved than this sense of inner
authenticity. Our emotions and actions must be aligned with the norms and expectations that are found in every social setting. Each setting, each definition of the situation, will require different kinds of emotional responses and thus feeling management. Hochschild (1983) calls these scripts for emotions feeling rules: “Feeling rules are what guide emotion work by establishing the sense of entitlement or obligation that governs emotional exchanges” (p. 56). These feeling rules are social norms that tell us what to feel, when to feel, where to feel, how long to feel, and how strong our emotions can be.
How do can we know if a feeling rule is operating in the situation? The answer is quite simple: if we are evaluating our feelings or emotional state, then a feeling rule is active. Some feeling rules are easy to recognize because we’ve actually formalized them in some fashion. For example, we know about how long it is “normal” to grieve for a loved one who has died. In the United States, the norm is 18 to 24 months.
These norms are culturally driven and vary through different societies and ages.
But quite a few feeling rules are less noticeable. We want to believe that feelings
are spontaneous. In fact, we put a lot of importance on that spontaneity: the things that feel most real to us are the ones that we emotionally respond to without thinking.
Spontaneity is how we gauge the genuineness of love—if it came up unprompted, if I
“fell” in love, then it is genuine (this itself is a feeling rule). However, the desire to see emotion as spontaneous tends to make us not see or pay attention to the times that we inspect and evaluate our emotional state or unprompted feelings. But, Hochschild tells us, anytime we ask “what am I feeling?” or “what should I feel?” or “why am I feeling this way?” we are in the presence of a feeling rule. Asking those kinds of questions means that we are standing outside our feeling, rather than directly experiencing it, and evaluating it from a particular and objective point of view. Both the desire and ability to evaluate and understand our emotions comes from societal feeling rules. We are prompted by the rules and the rules themselves give us a place to stand outside of the emotional experience to evaluate it.
We can also know that a feeling rule is present by the rule reminders that others give us. Rule reminders usually come in two forms. The first kind of reminder is when we are asked to give an account of our feelings. The behavior is unexpected because of the expectations that go along with any social role—so, we don’t expect those behaviors from the person as a student or as a professor or as a woman. If a man acts feminine, it calls into question his claim to be a man. An account is offered that explains why the behavior occurred and allows the person to still claim the role. Reminders of feeling rules act the same way: they are requests for an account of unexpected or inappropriate emotions. These reactions might take the form of chastisement: “You should be ashamed” or “You have no right to be depressed; after all, this was your decision.” or “I’m really sad that Steve didn’t make the team, and I know you are too.”
These rule reminders, whether requests for accounts or the actions of others, all
point to the existence of feeling rules. Hochschild also argues that these feeling rules are differentially distributed according to social status, religion, and class.
However, some of the clearest differences in feeling rules have to do with gender. The feeling rules surrounding masculinity are much stricter than those for femininity. Men are socialized into the pain principle (no pain, no gain; no blood, no foul) and women are socialized to value and express their feelings.
Gender & Emotion Work
Another consequence, one of particularly importance to Hochschild, is that women are more often employed commercially for emotion work. Women are more often the nurses who support rather than the doctors that diagnose. Hochschild’s main concern is with this commercialization of feeling. All of us manage emotion, it’s part of our impression management. But Hochschild argues that when emotion becomes a commodity, when feelings are bought and sold in the market for emotional labor, the consequences are much different. All positions dealing with the public require emotion management as part of the job description.
When rules about how to feel and how to express feeling are set by management, and when private capacities for empathy and warmth are put to corporate uses, what happens to the way a person relates to her feelings or to her face? When worked-up warmth becomes an instrument of service work, what can a person learn about herself from her feelings? And when a worker abandons her work smile, what kind of tie remains between her smile and her self? (p. 89)
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