Reconciling Emotions with Western Personhood

Conceptual questions about meaning: Divergence or complementarity between cultural-Historical positions?

Meaning was a core concept in the development of Lev Vygotsky’s cultural-historical approach. Considering the incompleteness of his work, other authors have adopted different directions in the seminal discussion on meaning as a unit of thought and language. Based on Rychlak’s ideas, this paper proposes dialogues between three culturally based authors—González Rey, Jaan Valsiner, and Jerome Bruner—reviewing relations of complementarity and synthesis to understand the concept of meaning. We call attention to the uniqueness of each theoretical approach, avoiding the simplification of their assumptions or the intention of reducing them as if they only dealt with the same concept with different words. The comparison between authors brings about a notion of cultural, historical, narrative meaning grounded on the singular-collective dialectic, endowed with an affective dimension, and the access to which implies the adoption of a qualitative and idiographic methodology. Based on common grounds, we coordinated different understandings, and attempted to devise a concept comprising inter-focus features, while meeting the criteria for a satisfactory theoretical formulation, such as its capacity of description, explanation, and prediction, its logical consistency, its perspective or possibility of generalization, its innovation, inventiveness or fruitful heuristic and, ultimately, its simplicity or parsimony.

Shameful "Victims" and Angry "Survivors": Emotion, Mental Health, and Labeling Sexual Assault

Decades of research demonstrate that women frequently avoid the label "rape" when reflecting on nonconsensual sexual experiences. The current study focuses on self-labels to further understand the relationship between assault characteristics, emotion, mental health, and women's labeling of sexual assault. We argue that emotions produced by various assault characteristics are important mechanisms for understanding self-labeling after a sexual assault. We draw from research on rape scripts and cultural discourses of victimhood, survivorhood, and emotion to examine labeling "rape" and self-labeling as a "victim" or "survivor" in an online survey of 138 undergraduate women at a southeastern university. Using a series of ordinal logistic regressions in which labels are regressed on emotions and measures of mental health, we find that the "victim" label is associated with shame and post-traumatic stress, while the "survivor" label is associated with anger and less depression.

Emotional Dissonance

Emotional dissonance is a feeling of unease that occurs when someone evaluates an emotional experience as a threat to his or her identity. The paper documents that the features ascribed to emotion in Western culture are likely to collide with the characteristics attributed to Western citizens. This collision results in a permanent evaluation of emotion. The paper concentrates on the level of individual experience where identity is used as a standard for evaluating emotional feelings. The argument is illustrated by some excerpts from an explorative study. The quotations indicate that the participants indeed experienced a feeling of unease when they assumed their identity was jeopardized. The last part of the paper discusses the ways in which emotional dissonance could be reduced. The interview excerpts illustrate here how the participants in our study talked about reducing the dissonant feeling.

Constructed Motives

Cultural models of motivation provide a public conception of motives that may cause individuals to act towards preferred goals. A cultural model does not determine the individual's motivational `make-up' in a one-sided way. Social interaction is a prerequisite for the translation of culturally constructed motives into a personal motivational narrative. In this process of internalization, motives from the cultural model are generally reconstructed, which may also result in the construction of new motives.

Gender Differences in Motives for Regulating Emotions

The present study was designed to test the assumption that gender differences in emotion expression are based on differences in the motives held by men and women in social interactions. Three hundred and fourteen students participated in this study by completing a questionnaire. Each questionnaire contained two vignettes that varied with respect to type of emotion (anger, disappointment, fear or sadness), sex of target, and object-target relationship. Dependent variables included measures of emotion expression and of motives for regulating one's emotions. The results support the general hypothesis that women are more concerned with relationships and less reluctant to express powerless emotions, whereas men are more motivated to stay in control and tend to express emotions that reflect their power.

Processes of Emotion Communication and Control

Emotional expression and experience are dynamic processes that vary within and between individuals of different cultural groups ( Kitayama, Mesquita, & Karasawa, 2006 ). The present study sought to compare self-reports of processes related to emotion communication and control in India and the United States. A total of 268 participants (United States: n = 160 and India: n = 108) completed a self-report measure depicting hypothetical vignettes and a series of questions assessing likely emotions elicited, likelihood of expression, motives guiding expression and control, and method of expression. Results showed that US participants primarily reported more self-focused emotions (i.e., happiness) and self- and other-focused motives for expressing or controlling felt emotion, while Indian participants primarily reported emotions that focused on others’ well-being as well as other- and relationship-focused motives. US participants more commonly reported direct verbal communication of the emotion, while Indian participants more frequently reported implicit and contextual methods of communication.

Women who kill: a comparison of the psychosocial background of female and male perpetrators

The purpose of this study was to compare the psychosocial background of female and male perpetrators convicted of homicide in Sweden between 1995-2001. All women (n=43) who were convicted for lethal violence during the period and a corresponding number of randomly chosen men (n=43) were examined. In total, information about 86 individuals was collected retrospectively. Areas of interest were psychosocial variables during childhood and at the time of the current crime. Results showed that both female and male perpetrators were psychosocially encumbered already at an early age. Homicidal women had more severe childhood circumstances, but less aggressive childhood behaviour than did their male counterparts. At the time of the crime, women had a more ordered social situation, had more often been exposed to violence and searched for help than had the men. These gender differences suggest that specific actions are needed for preventing women's homicidal behaviour.

Psychiatric nurses' response to suicidal psychiatric inpatients: struggling with self and sufferer

Research on nurses' responses to suicidal patients is sparse. The purpose of this secondary analysis of qualitative data from interviews with 19 nurses employed in Norway was to describe nurses' responses to suicidal psychiatric inpatients. Thematic analyses revealed four themes: 'struggling with discernment of self and sufferer'; 'reconciling inner dialogue'; 'opening up while envisioning self from sufferer'; and 'revisioning the meaning of life revealed over time'. The main theme was 'struggling with self and sufferer'. While these findings reveal existential issues and self reflections of psychiatric nurses' struggle with the suffering of suicidal patients, they also contribute to a methodological debate. Further research is needed to examine nurses' responses to suicidal patients in various settings and to develop secondary analysis of qualitative data.

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

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.