THE EXPERIENCE OF EMOTION: SITUATIONAL INFLUENCES ON THE ELICITATION AND EXPERIENCE OF EMOTIONS

The experience of emotions and affects is a pervasive aspect of our life. We all feel well or moody on a particular day, are impatient or pleased with something we are doing and experience happiness at a compliment or anger at a slight. The present paper discusses the social context influences on the elicitation and experience of emotions from the point of view of appraisal theories. Appraisal theories of emotions posit cognitive evaluations of such aspects of the emotion eliciting event as its novelty and pleasantness, the degree to which it helps or hinders ongoing plans and goals, the degree to which the individuals believes to be able to cope with the event, the degree to which what happened appears just and unjust, etc that can be considered to underlie the emotion process. Yet, the outcome of these appraisals as well as the behavioral consequences of the outcomes are not the same for everyone and a number of situational influences have been found to be of importance in this context. In this paper I argue that these factors not only exert influence the display and labeling of emotions but also modulate the appraisal process. 1. Introduction The present paper discusses situational influences on the elicitation and experience of emotions. Specifically, such influences as cultural emotion norms and roles as well as the relationship between interaction partners in terms of power or gender are considered. These situational aspects may influence the emotion process at different points. First, they may influence the perception of the situation and thus act as a filter for those elements of the situation that enter the appraisal process. Second, they may influence the appraisal process as such. Third, they may influence the emotion display and the labeling of the subjective feeling state. The former two are influences on the elicitation of emotions, whereas the latter refer to the experience of emotions. This definition presupposes a specific view of emotions, which should be stated explicitly first. I will then briefly discuss functions of emotions and in particular the interpersonal functions of emotions. Following this, I will address the question of whether emotions are social constructs before going on to discuss