Anger and Aggression: An Essay on Emotion by James R.

Averill
Review by: Peter Lyman
Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Mar., 1984), pp. 202-203
Published by: American Sociological Association
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BOOK REVIEWS

202

"Households Headed by Women and Urban

Poverty in Brazil," in Buvinic, Lycette, and
McGreevey, Women and Poverty in the Third

World, 1983). Treatment of regional inequalities, rural-urbandifferences, and an unsatisfactory definition of changes in lowerclass status are other problemswith this book.
Nevertheless-approached with caution-this
study offers new insights concerningmobility
in a highly inequitableand generallyimmobile
society.
Measures of Socioeconomic Status: Current
Issues, edited by MARY G. POWERS. Boulder:

Westview, 1982. 205 pp. $21.00 cloth.

REEVE VANNEMAN

University of Maryland

the samples, their !ower incomes pull down

the clerical status scores. Instead of clericals
having higher status than skilled workers, as
in the SEI, they have roughlythe same status
or lower in the revised scales. Second, because predominantlyfemale occupations receive lower scores on the revised indexes, the
women's mean status score is lower than
men's on the revised indexes-a change from
the much-criticizedearlier indexes by which
men and women were reported as having
equal occupational status despite their vast
income differences.
These two results are entirely predictable,
and we hardly needed the empiricalresearch
to confirm them. More interestingis whether
the process of status attainment (i.e., the
coefficients in the regression equations) are
much affected by the revision of the malebased scales. On these mattersthere is almost
no agreement. Boyd and McRoberts report
only slight differences based on the scales
used. Feathermanand Stevens find important
differences; for instance, the usual Wisconsin
result that women's occupationsdepend more
on educationand less on pastjobs while men's
depend more on past jobs and less on education is true only when the male-based scales
are used-the revised scales reverse this interaction. The research by Cooney and coworkers also finds that choice of scales matters in the gender-educationinteraction, but
their interaction is the exact opposite of the
Feathermanand Stevens finding.
Is there a way out of this quantitative
jungle? The book. sorely needs an integrative
essay. The best introductioncan be found in
the Boyd and McRoberts paper (chapter 6).
Readers are well advised to begin their reading there. We will hear more on these
matters-the male bias of the old scales is too
blatantto be ignored. But any future research
will have to contend with the contradictory
welter of results reported in this volume.

Two decades after the publication of the

Duncan Socioeconomic Index (SEI), the
status measurementestablishmenthas discovered gender. One hopes it won't take them so
long to notice class, industry, and the other
dimensions of work that are ignored by the
SET.
Nevertheless, this collection of papers, if
overdue, represents a step in the right direction. Most of the seven studies includedin this
volume focus on incorporating gender differences into the measurementof occupational
status. Their main concern is that the usual
occupational status scales are based on the
average education and income of the men in
each occupation and that these male-based
scores are then assigned to both men and
women. What would happen if status scores
were recomputed,includingwomen in the average education and income of each occupation?
Unfortunately, this unity of purpose,
matched by a similar conformity in research
methods, is not rewarded by any clarity of
conclusions. The most importantresults are
distressingly contradictory. After all the resources that have been poured into socioeco- Intimacy, Emotions,Human Sexuality
nomic indexes, David Feathermanand Gillian
Stevens can only tell us that "the estimation Anger and Aggression: An Essay on Emotion,
of socioeconomic status scores for occu- by JAMES R. AVERILL. New York: SpringerVerlag, 1982. 402 pp. $29.90 cloth.
pations should remain experimental"(110).
On simple mattersthere is some agreement.
First, the male-basedSEI inflates the status of PETER LYMAN
predominantly female occupations such as Michigan State University
clericalworkers.Male clerical workersare not
James R. Averill argues that emotions are
typical of the category-they make much
higherincomes-so when women are addedto better understood as social relations than as
ContemporarySociology, March 1984, Volume 13, Number 2

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS
biological facts, and thus are governed by
culturalnorms which guide our interpretation
of our own feelings and their expression to
others. Thus, "The person who says, 'I am
angry with you' or 'I love you' is not simply
labelinga state of physiologicalarousal; he is
entering into a complex relationshipwith another person. The meaningof the relationship,
not only for the individualsinvolved but also
for the larger society, is embedded in the
feeling rules (social norms) for that emotion"
(25). This "social constructivist" perspective
is applied to the problem of understanding
anger by exploringliteraturefrom biology and
psychology to law, anthropology, and
philosophy. This prepares the way for constructingquestionnairesto identify the feeling
rules which govern our anger.
In five studies Averill reconstructs angry
relationships:anger as it is subjectivelyexperienced; as experienced by its target; the difference between angerand annoyance;the duration of anger; and sex differences in the
experience of anger. The sample included
college students in a small town, thus the
study does not encompass possible class,
ethnic, or racial differences in feeling rules.
Following are some of his findings:
A friend or loved one is more likely to be
the target of anger than is a stranger.Averill
explains that we have more opportunityto be
angry at those we care for, and this in turn
means that our anger is more likely to be
constructive than malevolent. Psychoanalytic
theory might point to the ambivalence of
emotions and the aggressive content of sexuality here, but Averill is focusing upon everyday anger, not aggression or sexuality.
Anger is likely to be self-centered,intended
to assert our authorityor improve our image
in order to achieve personal control and
status. Yet angeris not necessarilyaggressive.
While 93 percent felt like engaging in aggressive conduct, and 83 percent actually did so,
nonaggressiveresponses were also very common; 73 percent chose to talk over the incident with the instigatoror a third party. Averill argues that anger can be a form of
problem-solving,pointing to the constructive
uses of rule-governedanger.
Averill challenges the feminist view "that
women do not experience angeras frequently,
intensely and/or in the same manneras men"
(287), concludingthat there are no majordifferences between the sexes in everyday anger.
This conclusion is curious given his findings.
Womenratedtheir angera more intense expe-

203

rience than men rated their anger; women

were more likely to view their anger and that
of others as inappropriate;women were more
likely to feel like talkingthe incidentover, and
more likely to do so; women were more likely
to respond to anger with crying or a shaking
voice; and women were more likely to react to
being a target of anger with hurt feelings,
whereas men were more likely to be defiant.
The feminist point is that anger is a resource
for social control unequallygiven to men and
women by the feeling rules embedded in gender; Averill's findingsseem to lend supportto
this argument.
Anger is the emotion with which we protest
and seek redress against unfair treatment
when ordinary means are unavailable. Although Averill views anger as a social relation, except for sex differences he does not
attemptto investigatethe way the feeling rules
he defines are implicated in domination. He
has accomplished the task he set himself,
however: to define a social theory of emotion
againstthe claims of sociobiology and to use it
to investigate the norms which govern anger
in everyday life.
Loneliness: A Sourcebook of Current Theory,
Research and Therapy, edited by LETITIA
ANNE PEPLAU and DANIEL PERLMAN. New

York: John Wiley and Sons, 1982. 430 pp.

$37.95 cloth.
HOWARD M. BAHR

Brigham Young University

I rarely envy someone the editorial work

involved in an anthology or handbook,but as
I imagined Peplau and Perlman's six-year
journey, from a coffee-break conversation in
1976 through the 1979 UCLA Loneliness
Conference, to the transmutationof the conference proceedingsand other papers into this
invaluablesourcebook, I envied them the trip.
While producing this admirablevolume they
built a national network of researchers and
theorists of loneliness.
The unevenness in style and quality that
shows up in many anthologies is not evident
here. That achievement reflects the editors'
personal contributions; they are themselves
authorsor co-authorsof five chapters and are
explicitly credited by other authors with assistance in five others. The 22 chapters cover
aloneness, conceptual and methodologicalissues in studying loneliness, theoretical ap-

ContemporarySociology, March 1984, Volume 13, Number 2

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