Studyspark Study Document

Analyzing Social Context Essay

Related Topics: Behavior Power Identity Covid 19

Pages:6 (1806 words)

Sources:4

Subject:Health

Topic:Stress

Document Type:Essay

Document:#34168546


How Emotional Experiences are Influenced by One s Sense of Self

The interviewee was a mother, age 55, employee of a mortgage servicing company. Because of COVID 19, she has been stuck working from home, which is very challenging and frustrating for her as none of the conveniences of her office are at her disposal and it makes her work more difficult and time consuming. The primary emotion she feels is anger: she is physically pained by working 12 hour days sitting in a dining room chair that is hard on her back and hands, since she had spinal surgery a year ago; she misses her comfortable office chair. Her computer and wi-fi are slower than the system at work, where she has two computer screens that she can use at once to help speed up her work. With everyone working from home, the tasks are more slowly accomplished and she is often frustrated by her co-workers who, also overwhelmed, move more slowly than normal and who also call out for help, which adds to her work and frustration. By the end of her day, she is mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted.

The ways in which the mother expressed her emotions were appropriate within the context of Hochschild’s notion of “feeling rules.” She said that she would call her boss to vent, which is a commonly accepted practice, and she noted that her boss is okay with it and is very personable and would usually talk her down from her high stress attack, but that at the end of the day she would still feel stressed and wiped out. This all could be an example of what Hochschild calls “deep acting” (35). This is where the person expresses spontaneously a real feeling that “has been self-induced” (Hochschild 35). It is possible the mother is self-inducing her own anger in an effort to get the attention of her boss so that he knows how much time and work and effort and energy she is putting into her work to help the company. Her sense of self, however, is negatively affected by this because she is convinced that she is overwhelmed by the work that she is doing and that the absence of the little conveniences really do add up to create a very difficult situation for her so that it comes across like her job is now 10x harder or even impossible to do now that she is working at home, does not have her comfortable office chair, has only one computer screen instead of two, has a slower Internet connection, and has to rely on colleagues who are also working from home and who, she suspects are not really working but are rather faking being online.

There does not appear to be any misfit in terms of how the feeling rules are in play, for it could easily be shown that the mother is believing so deeply in her own misfortunate circumstance that she really does feel overwhelmed and angry about her situation. She knows that she has a boss that she can vent to and make her frustrations heard and that this will ensure that her suffering is not going unnoticed and that in the future it might be something that she can fall back on, for instance, to show how much she personally sacrificed for the company.

But as Katz indicates expressing these emotions could also be a way to “resolve emotional tension” (19). Thus, the deep acting conjures up the emotions, so that the need to vent them becomes real, and like the…

Some parts of this document are missing

Click here to view full document

…far from shore she is or how long she will be at sea—so she must continuously send out distress signals to her boss to let him know that she is still out there and will need to be picked up and rescued at some point. At any rate, she does not want to be forgotten and she feels insecure in this new working environment because there is no “there” there—she is not in a workplace that she can call her own and that has a working group with a working hierarchy: everyone is adrift and on their own and it is very much like being lost in a forest or at sea—one does not know whether the others are closer to the hierarchy or further away, whether the others are gaining in power over her or whether they are losing in power. She cannot see what relationship they are cultivating with their superiors during the lockdown and cannot see how that might be affecting her own status and position. There is a great deal of job insecurity that she is probably experiencing where her emotions are looked at from this perspective and that could help to explain why she feels the need to call her boss to vent—it is a way to let him know that she exists and that she is still with them.

In conclusion, there are numerous ways to examine the emotional experience of the mother interviewed here. She could be said to be deep acting, or it could be that her “Me” and “I” are at work in creating a sense of self that is self-reinforcing. It could be that she is merely attempting to signal her own value and status through a tie sign. Or it could be a front or effect of her sense…


Sample Source(s) Used

Works Cited

Goffman, Erving. “Tie Signs.”

Hochschild, Arlie. Managed Heart. University of California Press, 2012.

Katz, Jack. How Emotions Work. University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Cite this Document

Join thousands of other students and "spark your studies."

Sign Up for FREE
Related Documents

Studyspark Study Document

Analyzing Social Justice and Theology

Pages: 15 (4694 words) Sources: 10 Subject: Theology Document: #73813074

Social Justice and Theology Black Liberation theology offers a much needed critic of classical theology, and the various ways in which it favors, and even fosters the racially oppressive behavior and attitudes that many white people have towards marginalized people. However, while Black Liberation has adequately pushed back against the issue of white supremacy, it has done so without giving a sufficient attention to the issue of patriarchy, which has an

Studyspark Study Document

Analyzing Social and Leadership

Pages: 11 (3279 words) Subject: Terrorism Document: #60261845

Social Media Leadership This study is designed to understand evolution of leaders' behavior and approach to leadership because of social media's pervasive influence on employees and followers. The study also investigates the effectiveness of leadership by analyzing flexible and adaptable authority styles and designating leadership methods based on circumstances encountered in organizations. The study attempted to demonstrate how leadership adaptability and effectiveness can be achieved simultaneously through the use of social

Studyspark Study Document

Social Construction of Technology SCOT

Pages: 10 (3250 words) Sources: 10 Subject: Engineering Document: #95589759

Social Construction of Technology Technology …almost everything is negotiable: what is certain and what is not: who is a scientist and who is a technologist; what is technological and what is social; and who can participate in the controversy. (Pinch & Bijker, 1984) The Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) is a theory within several areas including philosophy of technology, sociology of science, and science & technology studies. The theory was developed in the

Studyspark Study Document

Social Influences on Behavior Human Behavior Depends

Pages: 4 (1180 words) Sources: 3 Subject: Psychology Document: #40811058

Social Influences on Behavior Human behavior depends on feedback from the environment consisting of climatic, material and human factors. Feedback from individuals in the environment is a crucial factor in determining human behavior. The extent to which behavior is shaped by the presence or feedback of others varies from person to person. Certain individuals, such as those living in collectivistic societies, tend to be more sensitive to social influences, whereas others

Studyspark Study Document

Social Psychology Examining the Principles of Persuasion Influencing Group Behavior...

Pages: 9 (3075 words) Sources: 6 Subject: Psychology Document: #43654034

Social Psychology: Examining the Principles of Persuasion Influencing Group Behavior Introduction & Outline of the Research Evaluation Concepts of Social Psychology Attitudes and Persuasion Social Identity Theory Social Influences Cultural and Gender Influences Social Psychology: Examining the Principles of Persuasion Influencing Group Behavior Introduction & Outline of the Essay Social psychology deals with different aspects of social life and social behavior. People not only have feelings and opinions about nearly everything they come into contact with, but the argument has

Studyspark Study Document

Social Change and Development

Pages: 5 (1300 words) Sources: 3 Subject: Teaching Document: #8482715

Social change refers to the significant alteration of social structure and cultural patterns through time. Social structure is the routine interaction among persons or groups and cultural patterns refer to the shared way of thinking, knowledge, beliefs, etc. When a social change occurs, it affects both social structure and culture. The first kind is the change in personnel and it denotes the process of new people, with personal histories and experiences,

Join thousands of other students and

"spark your studies".