The Construction of Emotion in Interactions, Relationships, and Cultures

Emotions are engagements with a continuously changing world of social relationships. In the present article, we propose that emotions are therefore best conceived as ongoing, dynamic, and interactive processes that are socially constructed. We review evidence for three social contexts of emotion construction that are embedded in each other: The unfolding of emotion within interactions, the mutual constitution of emotion and relationships, and the shaping of emotion at the level of the larger cultural context. Finally, we point to interdependencies amongst these contexts of construction and discuss future directions of a constructionist perspective.