Technique 20: Emotion Management, Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, Emotional Socialization, Work, Gender

Teaching Objectives/Student Learning Outcomes: To show students how the social world shapes emotional responses. Everyday beliefs about emotions suggest that they simply arise from biology, individual psychology, or a core self. Thus, the guiding question for that day would be: What do emotions tell us sociologically? To demonstrate that emotions also reveal something about a social situation (what Hochschild identifies as the signal function of emotions). To promote discussion about how all people manage emotions in interaction, how emotion work can have long-term, de-sensitizing consequences, and how managing emotions have different consequences for different people. The instructor can discuss how emotion work is related to social power and is raced, classed, and gendered.