Interpersonal Chapter 7

Speaking in Generalities

"I feel bad." "I'm happy." "I'm sad." Statements such as these do express emotional states, but they do so ineffectively. Why? Because they are so general and abstract that they don't clearly communicate what the speaker feels. Does "I feel bad" mean the person feels depressed, angry, guilty, ashamed, or anxious? Does "I'm happy" mean the speaker is in love, pleased with a grade, satisfied at having received a promotion, delighted to be eating chocolate, or thrilled about an upcoming vacation? When we use general, abstract emotional language, we aren't communicating effectively about what we feel. A limited emotional vocabulary restricts our ability to communicate clearly with others.

Respond Sensitively When Others Communicate Emotions

A final guideline is to respond sensitively when others express their feelings to you. Learning to communicate your emotions effectively is only half the process of communicating about emotions. You also want to become skilled in listening and responding to others when they share feelings with you. This skill is important not only in personal relationships but also in workplace relationships

Social and Professional Roles

A final reason we may not express some feelings is that our roles make it inappropriate. An attorney or judge who cries when hearing a sad story from a witness might be perceived as unprofessional. A doctor or nurse who expresses anger toward a patient might be regarded as unprofessional. Police officers and social workers might be judged to be out of line if they express animosity instead of objective detachment when investigating a crime.

Monitor Your Self-Talk

A fourth guideline is to monitor your self-talk. You'll recall from Chapter 2 that the ways we communicate with ourselves affect how we feel and act. Self-talk is communication with ourselves. We engage in self-talk when we do emotion work. We might say, "I shouldn't feel angry" or "I don't want to come across as a wimp by showing how much that hurt." Thus, we may talk ourselves out of or into feelings and out of or into ways of expressing feelings.

The ineffective expression of emotions

We don't always deny or repress our emotions. Sometimes, we are aware of having a particular feeling, and we try to express it, but our effort isn't very successful

Cultural and Social Expectations

As we have noted, what we feel and how we express it are influenced by the culture and social groups to which we belong. Gender socialization seems particularly important in shaping feelings and the expression of them. In the United States, men are expected to be more restrained than women in expressing most emotions. Men are allowed to express anger, which is often disapproved of in women. Women are generally taught that anger is unattractive and undesirable in women. Another feeling rule that is learned by many Western women is to care about others. Women may also squelch feelings of jealousy toward friends and feelings of competitiveness in personal and professional relationships

Emotions

Emotions are our experience and interpretation of internal sensations as they are shaped by physiology, perceptions, language, and social experiences. Although researchers vary in the degree to which they emphasize each of these influences, most people who have studied emotions agree that physiology, perceptions, social experience, and language all play parts in our emotional lives.

Choose whether and how to express emotions

Once you know what you feel, you can consider choices about expressing your emotions. The first choice is whether you want to communicate your emotions to particular people We may also decide not to communicate emotions because we prefer to keep some of our feelings private. Four guidelines can help you decide how to express emotions. First, evaluate your current state. The second step is to decide to whom you want to express your feelings. Next, select an appropriate time to discuss feelings. Finally, select an appropriate setting for discussing feelings.

Own Your Feelings

Owning your feelings is so important to effective communication that the guideline bears repeating: Using I language to express feelings reminds us that we—not anyone else—have responsibility for our feelings. When we rely on you language ("You hurt me"), we risk misleading ourselves about our accountability for our emotions.

Deep acting

Some parents encourage children to control their inner feelings through deep acting, which involves learning what they should and should not feel. For instance, children may be taught that they should feel grateful when given a gift even if they don't like the gift. Many children are taught that they should not feel angry when a friend takes a toy. Deep acting requires changing how we perceive and label events and phenomena.

Self-Protection

A second reason we may not express our feelings is that we don't want to give others information that could affect how they perceive or act toward us.

Interactive view of emotions

which proposes that cultural rules and understandings shape what people feel and how they do or don't express their feelings. The interactive view of emotions rests on three key culturally influenced concepts: framing rules, feeling rules, and emotion work.

Counterfeit Emotional Language

A third ineffective form of emotional communication is relying on counterfeit emotional language. This is language that seems to express emotions but does not actually describe what a person is feeling. For example, shouting "Why can't you leave me alone?" certainly indicates that the speaker is feeling something, but it doesn't describe what she or he is feeling. Is it anger at a particular person, frustration at being interrupted, stress at having to meet a deadline, or the need for time alone? We can't tell what feeling the speaker is experiencing from what he or she said. Effective communicators provide clear descriptions of their feelings and the connection between their feelings and others' behaviors. "I feel frustrated because when I'm working and you walk in, I lose my train of thought" is a more constructive statement than "Why can't you leave me alone?" It's also unproductive not to explain feelings. "That's just how I feel" doesn't tell a person how her or his behavior is related to your feelings or what you would like her or him to do. Another form of counterfeit emotional language uses feeling words but really expresses thoughts: "I feel this discussion is getting sidetracked." The perception that a discussion is going off on a tangent is a thought, not a feeling.

Cultural Influences on Emotions

As we learned in Chapter 3, perception is influenced by the culture and the social groups to which we belong. Historian Barbara Rosenwein (1998) calls the groups we identify with "emotional communities" because they teach us how to understand and express emotions. Examples of emotional communities are families, neighborhoods, gangs, monasteries, and friends. The society and communities in which we live influence our beliefs about which emotions are good or bad, which emotions we should express or repress, and with whom we can appropriately communicate which emotions.

Identify Your Emotions

Before you can communicate emotions effectively, you must be able to identify what you feel. To become aware of your emotions, give mindful attention to your inner self Sometimes identifying our emotions requires us to sort out complex mixtures of feelings

Emotional intelligence consists of the following qualities:

Being aware of your feelings Dealing with emotions without being overcome by them Not letting setbacks and disappointments derail you Channeling your feelings to assist you in achieving your goals Being able to understand how others feel without their spelling it out Listening to your feelings and those of others so you can learn from them Recognizing social norms for expression of emotions Having a strong yet realistic sense of optimism

Physiological Influences on Emotions

Early theorists believed that we experience emotion when external stimuli cause physiological changes in us. This is the organismic view of emotions. Stimulus-Physiological Response-Emotion This perspective assumes that emotions are reflexes that follow from physiological actions. The organismic view regards emotions as instinctual responses to physiological arousal caused by external stimuli. James's view of the relationship between bodily states and feelings is no longer widely accepted. Today, most researchers think the physiological influences are less important than other factors in shaping emotions.

Feeling Rules

Feeling rules tell us what we have a right to feel or what we are expected to feel in particular situations. Feeling rules reflect and perpetuate the values of cultures and social groups. All social communities have rules that specify acceptable and unacceptable ways to feel. Feeling rules are sometimes explicated in terms of rights and duties. There is a strong connection between feeling rules and social order. A key way that a society attempts to control people is through feeling rules that uphold broad social values and structures. A second way in which feeling rules uphold social structure is by linking the right to express feelings to social status and power.

Social Media and Emotions

First, the reasons we may not express emotions in f2f interaction may also operate when we use social media.Yet we may be more likely to express emotions, including ones that are socially inappropriate, when we are communicating with people we don't know personally. The anonymity of social media emboldens some people to post rants, hate speech, and other offensive comments that they would probably never say f2f. In other words, we may be less inhibited by social norms when we are communicating online and digitally. Second, social media may help us experience and express feelings. When something sad or shocking happens, we like to connect with people who are likely to share our feelings about what happened. Third, social media can become substitutes for emotional involvement with people in our f2f relationships. It can be easier to turn to an online acquaintance than your real-life friends or partners when you need emotional connection.

Framing Rules

Framing rules define the emotional meaning of situations. For instance, Western culture defines funerals as sad and respectful occasions. Within any single culture, however, there are multiple social groups and resulting ways of framing events.

Interactive view of emotion interrelated

In the interactive view of emotions, framing rules, feeling rules, and emotion work are interrelated (see Figure 7.4). Framing rules that define the emotional meaning of situations lead to feeling rules that tell us what we should feel or have a right to feel in a given context. If we don't feel what our feeling rules designate we should, we may engage in emotion work to squelch inappropriate feelings or to bring about feelings that we think suit the circumstances. We then express our feelings by following rules for appropriate expression of particular emotions in specific contexts. If you agree with the organismic view of emotions, then you will assume that feelings cannot be managed. Whatever you feel, you feel. That's it. On the other hand, if you accept the interactive view of emotions, you are more likely to think you can analyze your feelings and perhaps change them and your expression of them through emotion work. The interactive view assumes you have some power over what you feel and how you act. If you agree with this perspective, you are more likely to monitor your feelings and to make choices about how to communicate them.

Surface Acting

Other parents emphasize surface acting, which involves controlling the outward expression of emotions rather than controlling feelings. Parents who emphasize surface acting teach children to control their outward behaviors, not necessarily their inner feelings. For example, children learn that they should say "thank you" when they receive a gift and that they should not hit a friend who takes a toy. Expressing gratitude is emphasized more than feeling grateful, and refraining from hitting someone who takes a toy is stressed more than feeling good about sharing toys.

Reasons We May Not Express Emotions

Researchers have identified four common reasons people don't communicate their emotions.

Obstacles to Communicating Emotions Effectively

Skill in recognizing and expressing emotions is important to interpersonal competence, yet many of us repress feelings or express them inappropriately.

Understanding Emotions

Some researchers assert that humans experience two kinds of emotions: some that are based in biology and thus instinctual and universal, and others that we learn in social interaction. Yet scholars don't agree on which emotions are basic. Also, many scholars don't find it useful to distinguish between basic emotions and learned emotions . Many scholars think that most or all emotions are socially constructed to a substantial degree. In many instances, what we feel is not a single emotion but several mingled together.

Not Owning Feelings

Stating feelings in a way that disowns personal responsibility is one of the most common obstacles to effective expression of emotions. Our discussion of I language and you language in Chapter 4 is relevant to learning to express emotions effectively. But we—not anyone else—decide what their actions mean, and we—not anyone else—are responsible for our feelings.

"emotional competence"

The concept of emotional intelligence builds on Carol Saarni's (1990) work on "emotional competence," which involves awareness of our own emotions, including multiple emotions experienced simultaneously, the ability to recognize and empathize with others' emotions, awareness of the impact of our expression of emotions on others, and sensitivity to cultural rules for expressing emotions. Emotional intelligence is linked to well-being.

Emotion Work

The final concept is emotion work, which is the effort to generate what we think are appropriate feelings in particular situations. Notice that emotion work concerns the process of trying to shape how we feel, not necessarily our success in doing so. This is known as "the pinch," which is a discrepancy between what we feel and what we think we should feel. Typically, what we think we should feel is based on what we've learned from our social groups and the larger culture. Social groups teach us what feelings are appropriate in particular situations. People who have been socialized in multiple cultures or social communities with different values may be especially vulnerable to feeling "the pinch."

Cognitive labeling view of emotions

The perceptual view of emotions does not clearly identify the mechanism by which we interpret emotions. This problem is corrected in the cognitive labeling view of emotions, which is similar to the perceptual view but offers better explanation of how we move from experience to interpretation. According to the cognitive labeling view of emotions, the mechanism that allows this is language. This view claims that our labels for our physiological responses influence how we interpret those responses. Phrased another way, what we feel may be shaped by how we label our physiological responses. External event-physiological response-label for response-emotion

Perceptual Influences on Emotions

The perceptual view of emotions, which is also called appraisal theory, asserts that subjective perceptions shape what external phenomena mean to us. External objects and events, as well as physiological reactions, have no intrinsic meaning. Instead, they gain meaning only as we attribute significance to them. These different interpretations would lead us to define our emotions distinctly. That's the key to the perceptual view of emotions: We act on the basis of our interpretation of phenomena, not the tangible phenomena. External event- perception of event-interpreted emotion-response

Adopt a Rational-Emotive Approach to Feelings

The rational-emotive approach to feelings uses rational thinking and self-talk to challenge the debilitating thoughts about emotions that undermine healthy self-concepts and relationships. The rational-emotive approach to feelings proceeds through four steps. The first step is to monitor your emotional reactions to events and experiences that distress you. The second step is to identify the events and situations to which you have unpleasant responses. The third step is to tune in to your self-talk

Emotional Intelligence

They named it emotional intelligence, or EQ, which is the ability to recognize feelings, to judge which feelings are appropriate in which situations, and to communicate those feelings effectively. Emotional intelligence includes more than being in touch with your feelings. You also need skill in expressing them constructively and an ability to recognize how others feel. Because humans are connected to each other, how one person expresses emotions to another affects the other person

Protecting Others

We fear we could hurt or upset others or cause them to lose face. Sometimes we make an ethical choice not to express emotions that would hurt another person and not achieve any positive outcome. Choosing not to express emotions in some situations or to some people can be constructive and generous. The tendency to restrain emotional expression to protect others is particularly strong in many Asian cultures because they view hurting others as shameful. If someone we care about is already overburdened with anxiety or emotional problems, we may choose not to express our emotions so that the other person doesn't have to respond to our feelings at the moment. Avoiding the expression of feelings can be harmful if those feelings directly affect our relationships with others or if doing so may threaten our own health.

Chilling Affect (Apart of self-protection)

We may also restrain expression of feelings, particularly negative ones, because of what is known as the chilling effect. When we have a relationship with someone whom we perceive as more powerful than us, we may suppress complaints and expressions of dissatisfaction or anger because we fear that the more powerful person could punish us.

Guidelines for Communicating Emotions Effectively

six guidelines for effective communication of emotions