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A Test of Symbolic Interactionist Predictions About Emotions in Imagined Situations
Author(s) -
Heise David R.,
Weir Brian
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1525/si.1999.22.2.139
Subject(s) - symbolic interactionism , attribution , psychology , negotiation , social psychology , perspective (graphical) , identity (music) , affect (linguistics) , the symbolic , test (biology) , cognitive psychology , sociology , aesthetics , psychoanalysis , communication , social science , philosophy , paleontology , artificial intelligence , computer science , biology
From the perspective of symbolic interactionism, inner experiences—including emotions—are shaped culturally as individuals formulate events in words, and individual experiences are shaped socially as others contribute to the verbal formulation of one's experiences. Understanding cultural shaping and social negotiation of emotions requires understanding how emotion attributions arise from linguistic framings of events, and Affect Control Theory (ACT) offers a model of emotions that addresses this issue. We report tests of ACT predictions of emotions in 128 events against self‐reported emotions of respondents imagining themselves in such situations. ACT predictions are found to correlate with self‐reported emotions. Thus, empirical results validate ACT's postulate that emotions emerge from the personal impression that is generated in an event, along with the difference between that impression and the person's identity. In the conclusion, we discuss how the ACT formulation can enlighten interpretations of social negotiations regarding emotions.