Emotions,

Everyday Life and Sociology

This volume explores the emotions that are intricately woven into the texture of everyday life and
experience. A contribution to the literature on the sociology of emotions, it focuses on the role of
emotions as being integral to daily life, broadening our understanding by examining both ‘core’
emotions and those that are often overlooked or omitted from more conventional studies. Bringing
together theoretical and empirical studies from scholars across a range of subjects, including sociology,
psychology, cultural studies, history, politics and cognitive science, this international collection centres
on the ‘everyday-ness’ of emotional experience.

Michael Hviid Jacobsen is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social Work,
Aalborg University, Denmark. His research is concerned with topics such as crime, utopia, ethics, death
and dying, palliative care, qualitative methods and social theory. His recent publications include Beyond
Bauman, Postmortal Society, The Interactionist Imagination and Liquid Criminology.
Classical and Contemporary Social Theory

Classical and Contemporary Social Theory publishes rigorous scholarly work that re-discovers the relevance of social
theory for contemporary times, demonstrating the enduring importance of theory for modern social issues. The series
covers social theory in a broad sense, inviting contributions on both ‘classical’ and modern theory, thus encompassing
sociology, without being confined to a single discipline. As such, work from across the social sciences is welcome,
provided that volumes address the social context of particular issues, subjects, or figures and offer new
understandings of social reality and the contribution of a theorist or school to our understanding of it.
The series considers significant new appraisals of established thinkers or schools, comparative works or
contributions that discuss a particular social issue or phenomenon in relation to the work of specific theorists
or theoretical approaches. Contributions are welcome that assess broad strands of thought within certain
schools or across the work of a number of thinkers, but always with an eye toward contributing to
contemporary understandings of social issues and contexts.

Series Editor
Stjepan G. Mestrovic, Texas A&M University, USA

Titles in this series

Lost in Perfection
Impacts of Optimisation on Culture and Psyche
Edited by Vera King, Benigna Gerisch and Hartmut Rosa

Critical Theory and the Classical World

Martyn Hudson

Emotions, Everyday Life and Sociology

Edited by Michael Hviid Jacobsen

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/sociology/series/ASHSER1383

Emotions, Everyday Life and Sociology

Edited by
Michael Hviid Jacobsen
First published 2019
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Michael Hviid Jacobsen; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Michael Hviid Jacobsen to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jacobsen, Michael Hviid, 1971- editor.
Title: Emotions, everyday life and sociology / edited by Michael Hviid Jacobsen.
Description: 1 Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Classical and contemporary social theory | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018009997| ISBN 9781138633339 (hbk) | ISBN 9781315207728 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Social sciences–Philosophy. | Emotions.
Classification: LCC H61 .E456 2018 | DDC 302–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009997

ISBN: 978-1-138-63333-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-20772-8 (ebk)
Contents

Foreword and acknowledgements

List of contributors

Introduction: Emotions, Emotions, Everywhere Emotions!

MICHAEL HVIID JACOBSEN

1 Trust: What is it and why do we need it?

PAUL R. WARD

2 Loyalty: The emotion of future expectation, felt now, based on the past
JAMES M. CONNOR

3 Dignity: An exploration of dignity’s role and meaning in daily life

BARBARA A. MISZTAL

4 Compassion: Conflicted social feeling and the calling to care

IAIN WILKINSON

5 Courage: It’s not all about overcoming fear

AMIR B. MARVASTI

6 Excitement: Risk and authentic emotion

STEPHEN LYNG

7 Embarrassment: Experiencing awkward self-awareness in everyday life

MICHAEL HVIID JACOBSEN AND SøREN KRISTIANSEN

8 Shyness: Self-consciously perceived relative social incompetence

SUSIE SCOTT

9 Envy: Hostility towards superiors

GORDON CLANTON

10 Guilt: What’s so good about feeling bad about yourself ?

VESSELA MISHEVA

11 Anger: An emotion of intent and of desire for change in relationships

KEITH OATLEY AND JENNIFER M. JENKINS

12 Grief: The painfulness of permanent human absence

ANDERS PETERSEN AND MICHAEL HVIID JACOBSEN

13 Boredom: Emptiness in the modern world

PATRICK GAMSBY

14 Laziness: From medieval sin to late modern social pathology

MICHAEL HVIID JACOBSEN

Index
Foreword and acknowledgements

It is sometimes said – and a famous song-line even states – that ‘love is all around’. Love, however, is not
the only emotion permeating human life (if this was indeed the case, then the world would probably be
a much better place to live than it currently is) – all other emotions are also all around: anger, fear,
trust, loyalty, envy, jealousy, cynicism, sadness, joy, misery, empathy, laziness, boredom, anger,
depression, happiness, embarrassment, shame, guilt, desire, excitement, pride, and so on. The list of
emotions is too long even to attempt to exhaust here. This testifies to the fact that human life – and with
it social life and everyday life – is saturated with emotions. This book is a sociological tribute to some of
these emotions.
We live in emotional times, and even though some claim that these are in fact ‘post-emotional times’
(just as they are apparently also ‘post-factual times’), emotions in an almost unprecedented manner
seem to capture the public imagination not only in politics and everyday life, but also in academia.
Today, torrents of literature dealing with, dissecting, describing and analysing emotions are being
published within various scientific disciplines and sub-fields, whereas half a century ago hardly anyone
wrote about or researched emotions in any detail. We now have the ‘sociology of emotions’, the
‘psychology of emotions’, the ‘social psychology of emotions’, the ‘anthropology of emotions’ and the
‘history of emotions’, just to mention a few of the areas having paid particular attention to studying
emotions. This goes to show that from previously being shunned or practiced primarily on the outskirts
of the social sciences, the study of emotions is now embraced as a topic worthy of academic attention
(either in its own right or as an integral part of other areas of research) even by high-profile
researchers.
In my experience, one of the most important yet nevertheless often disregarded emotions in everyday
life is thankfulness or gratitude. I would therefore like to extend my gratitude to the book’s many
contributors, who so willingly have shared their research-based knowledge on different emotions. I
would also like to take this opportunity, as always, to thank my two ‘partners in crime’, Alice Salt and
Neil Jordan at Routledge, for a professional collaboration on this volume. It has once again been a
pleasure working with you.

Aalborg University, Winter 2017/2018

Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Contributors

Gordon Clanton has taught Sociology at San Diego State University, United States, since 1975. The
author/editor of the book Jealousy (1977/1998), he is a pioneer in the sociological study of emotions
and a founding member of the Emotions Section of the American Sociological Association. Other
research interests include the sociology of religion and the sociology of knowledge.
James M. Connor holds a PhD and works at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia.
He specialises in emotions, organisational culture and behaviour. He has been funded by WADA to
research doping and governance in sport and the Australian Research Council to investigate cultures
of abuse in the military.
Patrick Gamsby is the Scholarly Communications Librarian at Memorial University of Newfoundland,
Canada. He received his doctorate from Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada with a
dissertation on Henri Lefebvre. His research interests include critical theory, continental philosophy,
the history of ideas, environmental thinking, everyday life and scholarly communication.
Michael Hviid Jacobsen is Professor of Sociology at Aalborg University, Denmark. He has published
extensively on topics such as death and dying, palliative care, emotions, utopia, critique, deviance,
interactionism, ethics, criminology, qualitative research and social theory.
Jennifer M. Jenkins is the Atkinson Chair of Early Child Development and Education at the University
of Toronto, Canada. She researches the role of family processes in children’s understanding of other
minds and their mental health.
Søren Kristiansen is Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean at the Faculty of the Social Sciences
at Aalborg University, Denmark. His current research projects focus on gambling with a special focus
on online simulated gambling and the relationships between gambling behaviour and the role of
social contexts. He has published widely on a range of issues, including deviance, research methods,
research ethics, social problems and social policy.
Stephen Lyng is a Professor of Sociology at Carthage College, United States. His major areas of
interest are the sociology of risk, sociology of the body and sociological theory. He is the author of
three books and numerous articles on a wide range of issues in these areas of study.
Amir B. Marvasti is Associate Professor of Sociology at Penn State University, Altoona, United States.
His research focuses on the social construction and management of identities in everyday life. He
also has an active publication record on the pedagogy of qualitative research.
Vessela Misheva is Professor of Sociology at Uppsala University, Sweden. She has published
extensively on macrosociological systems theory and the sociology of self-conscious emotions,
particularly shame and guilt, the sociology of knowledge, models of scientific development, the
emergence of sociology and the theory and tradition of classical symbolic interactionism.
Barbara A. Misztal is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, at the School of Media, Communication and
Sociology, University of Leicester, United Kingdom. She has published on the issues of trust, memory,
informality, vulnerability, multiple normalities, forgiveness and on the problems of political changes,
public intellectuals, democracy and solidarity.
Keith Oatley is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada. His
main research has been on emotions, and on the effects of reading and writing fiction.
Anders Petersen is Associate Professor of Sociology at Aalborg University, Denmark. He has published
extensively on topics such as diagnostic culture, social pathologies, social critique, qualitative
research and social theory.
Susie Scott is Professor of Sociology the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. She specialises in
symbolic interactionism and dramaturgical theory applied to aspects of self-identity and everyday
life. She has published on shyness, total institutions, mental disorder, performance art, swimming
and has created the sociology of nothing.
Paul R. Ward is Professor of Public Health at Flinders University, Australia. He has published
extensively on topics such as trust, risk, equity, ethics, childhood vaccinations, food systems, cancer
screening, lay expertise, HIV prevention, qualitative research and social theory.
Iain Wilkinson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. He has published
extensively on topics such as social suffering, modern humanitarianism, the cultural politics of
compassion, social care, risk, anxiety and social theory.
Introduction
Emotions, Emotions, Everywhere Emotions!
Michael Hviid Jacobsen

On Emotions, Everyday Life and Sociology

Take a moment to consider a day in your life, just any ordinary and average day that does not deviate
considerably from the rest. During such an ordinary and average day, you are destined to experience
and encounter multiple different emotions – some high, some low and some just somewhere in-between.
Emotions such as happiness, joy, trust, envy, pride, love, sadness, bravery, shame, laziness, boredom,
guilt, excitement, despair, fear, anxiety, nostalgia, depression, indignation, disgust, frustration, pity,
ecstasy, loneliness, hate, jealousy, humiliation, hope, relief and desire (even indifference and numbness
are in fact emotional experiences) will almost inevitably be part of such a normal day in your life. In
other words, they are some of the many different emotions we live by. As Robert C. Solomon so
emphatically has testified: ‘We live in and through our emotions. Our lives do not just include episodes
of anger, fear, love, grief, gratitude, happiness, humor, shame, guilt, embarrassment, envy, resentment
and vengeance. Our lives are defined by such emotions’ (Solomon 2007:10, italics in original). If this is
indeed true, then the entirely unemotional human being must be the invention of fiction. In real life as it
is lived, most people, most of the time – even though they might be unable discursively to describe or
articulate their specific feelings and emotions – will have and recognize different emotional sensations
and experiences running through body and mind. Emotionless individuals are something to be found
only in works of fiction or science fiction such as, for example, in the 2002 film Equilibrium that depicts
a future social order in which all emotions are deemed illegal and hence are something – however
unsuccessfully – to be entirely eradicated. Such a futuristic vision of a world without emotions is indeed
difficult to imagine, not least because to most people their own emotions as well as those of others are
such important – if not downright indispensable – dimensions of their lives, their relationships, their
actions and their identities. However, not only on the individual level are emotions important. They also
play a significant role in and constitute some of the most important building blocks of larger social
formations such as families, friendship groups, local communities, nation states, international alliances
and coalitions, groups of adversaries and archenemies, social movements and all the other more or less
stable, more or less close and more or less lasting ties that either bind individuals, groups, communities
or nations together or set them apart. Emotions, it thus seems, are everywhere. If we were to use
conventional sociological terminology, then we might be able convincingly to claim that emotions are
important factors on the micro, meso as well as the macro level of social life.
Even though emotions are seemingly everywhere, historically they have not occupied the position of a
central concern within disciplines such as sociology. Throughout large parts of the preceding century,
emotions were not something that seemed to interest most of the major social theorists or social
researchers. They were more concerned with studying themes such as inequality, social change, values,
rational action and social norms and only seldom did emotions enter into their work as a topic in its own
right. Although emotions were in fact there all along – quite often explicitly mentioned, but at other
times squeezed in between the lines or hiding in the dark – in and by themselves they were not seen as
a proper, natural or obvious subject matter for sociology. In recent decades, however, it seems that the
social sciences have gradually begun recognizing the importance of emotions in understanding many
different dimensions and aspects of social life. One might in fact claim that the past few decades have
witnessed nothing less than a revolution in the concern with emotions, which is evident in the torrential
amounts of research literature now being published on the topic. Emotions have now become a hot
topic, the talk of the town, a buzzword and by now also a career creator for so-called ‘sociologists of
emotion’ within the world of social research. This book is a contribution to this fast expanding
sociological literature on emotions. The main purpose of the volume is to present and discuss a
multitude of specific emotions that each in their way characterise our everyday life, the study of which
may also inform us about society and social changes in general. In this way, this book is intended as a
research resource for those wanting to understand emotions in general, for those wanting to delve into
specific (either well-researched or overlooked) emotions in particular and not least for those wanting to
do further research on any of these emotions.

Emotions and everyday life

Everyday life is something we normally take for granted and only seldom, unprovoked, start to question.
It is just there and is really nothing to make a great fuss about. This unquestioned nature of everyday
life also seems to extend to the realm of sociology that for a long time largely regarded everyday life as
unworthy of any serious academic attention. Politics, economics and power were much more important
to study than mundane matters and daily doings. Whereas everyday life as a theme in its own right was
thus conspicuous primarily by its absence in sociology during large parts of the twentieth century, the
interest in undertaking studies of the ‘everyday’ almost seemed to explode during the closing decades
of that century. This ‘turn to the everyday’ (Sztompka 2008), as it were, also seemed to spark an almost
simultaneous interest in the study of emotions during the late 1970s and early 1980s (see, e.g., Thoits
1989; Kemper 1978, 1990a). In fact, 1975 has been singled out as the ‘watershed’ year when the so-
called ‘sociology of emotions’ gradually began to take off and develop into a research niche (Kemper
1990b:4).
In admittedly general terms, everyday life can be described as ‘an emporium of experiences’
(Jacobsen 2008), some of which are decidedly physical/bodily, others are more psychological or
spiritual, others are social, and yet others emotional (even though it is, only in an analytical sense,
meaningful to separate these deeply interwoven domains of human life experience from each other).
Emotions are thus an integral part of our everyday encounters, experiences, engagements, relations
and interactions with other people. They are important when trying to understand how we feel about
others and ourselves and how our actions and interactions are often guided by different emotional
states, past emotional experiences or emotionally laden anticipations of the future. If fact, most of our
relations with others are somehow emotionally guided, because we relate to – or refrain from relating to
– other people based often on different types of emotional bonds and experiences (Burkitt 2014; Scheff
2000). Some of the emotions that characterise our everyday lives we would define as predominantly
negative (such as anger, hatred or envy), whereas others are of a more positive nature (such as
attraction, kindness and happiness). Such emotions both trigger, characterise, circumscribe and
constitute the outcome of actions, relations and interactions with other people. They are therefore
simultaneously some of the main pushes and pulls of human cohabitation and togetherness. In this way,
emotions are sources of human motivation as well as responses to different social and personal
experiences and interactional stimuli.
However, as mentioned above, not only on the individual, interactional or micro-group level are
emotions inherent features of everyday life experiences. They are also an important part of what could
be described as broader social currents or trends in social life in general that as historical and
macrosociological tendencies inform and influence the way we collectively act, think and feel. Whereas
Karl Marx believed that material and economic conditions constituted the all-important dimension of
historical development and Max Weber (with his predilection for explanations based on rationality)
regarded ideas as the main ‘historical switchmen’ (and thus only allotted affective actions relatively
sparse attention in his analyses), one might in fact also suggest that emotions play a significant role in
the shaping of human history. Seen in this light, one might claim that the so-called ‘rationalisation of
everyday life’ described so vividly by, for example, Weber and later by members of the Frankfurt School
as a characteristic feature and pathology of modern society is now matched or perhaps even
superseded by an increasing ‘emotionalisation of everyday life’ in contemporary late-modern,
postmodern or liquid modern society (see, e.g., Williams 2001). Today, we live in times of so-called
‘emotional politics’, ‘emotional marketing’, ‘emojis’ and ‘emoticons’, ‘expressive culture’, ‘affective
culture’, ‘emotional capital’ and many similar expressions and epithets that each in their way indicate
that feelings and emotions have become an important fulcrum in the way we organise and regulate
society and economy as well as in the way we communicate with each other and relate to the world
around us. In this way, everyday life, social life or even society as such – on the micro, meso and macro
levels – are perhaps best understood and analysed if we pay close attention to the presence, function
and effects of emotions. As Jack D. Douglas once so poignantly reminded us:

Love and hate, ecstasy and agony, pleasure and pain, lust and satiety, hope and despair, satisfaction and
frustration, excitement and boredom, sympathy and spite, full and hungry, tasty and foul, comfort and
discomfort. These and a vast number of other feelings, named and unnamed, are the core of our being, the
stuff of our everyday lives. They are the foundations of all society.
(Douglas 1977:51)

Despite this proposed spreading and interwovenness of emotions into almost every nook and cranny of
social and everyday life, the intricate connections between emotions and everyday life so far has
apparently not been sufficiently exposed or studied. As recently noted by some emotion researchers,
‘although research on emotions is abundant, knowledge about emotions in everyday life has been
particularly scarce’ (Trampe et al. 2015:13). There is perhaps some truth to this. Obviously, there is
already heaps of published research – qualitative as well as quantitative – on many different everyday
dimensions and facets of emotions. For example, the authors of the previous statement themselves
conducted a study trying to detect and document via mobile apps and questionnaires what specific
emotions were prevalent at what given time during an ordinary day and how much of everyday life they
each occupied. Prior to this study, there have been several such attempts at trying to measure – often
based on self-report or retrospective recollection – the exact amount, number, frequency or duration of
different emotional experiences during a single day either by the use of questionnaires, time use
studies, event sampling or sometimes also diary entries (see, e.g., Oatley and Duncan 1994; Scherer et
al. 2004; for comments, see also Averill 2004; Wilhelm et al. 2004). Even though there is undoubtedly a
lot to be learned from such survey-based and/or statistically elaborated studies that often, in different
ways, try to objectify and quantify emotions, they necessarily encounter the critique of being unable to
understand how emotions feel or how it really feels to be emotional in concrete everyday
circumstances. Moreover, by trying to reduce and squeeze often vaguely felt or multivalent experiences
of emotions into ironclad schemas or categories of emotional reactions, one as a researcher may run the
risk of missing out on something that is much more complex and unexpected than one’s predetermined
and predefined operationalisations. Perhaps Heinz Kohut was right when he once famously stated that
when the counting begins, understanding ceases. Sympathetic to such a view, Jack Katz – based on his
own extensive research on emotions and crime – insisted that ‘to sociologists the study of anything as it
exists in everyday life is likely to mean a move beyond survey methodology’ (Katz 2004:609). Besides
such attempts at documenting and/or quantifying emotions, the phenomenology of everyday life
emotions is by now also an already well-established line of research that instead relies on in-depth
descriptions, stories and personal narratives of emotional ups and downs over longer periods of time
due to specific social and individual circumstances, which thus tries to probe in more detail into the
thoroughly emotional character of human life as such. However, despite many such empirical studies of
emotions in everyday settings, we still need more research-based knowledge about the importance of
emotions in social life in general but also about how specific emotions characterise and influence
various everyday experiences of individuals and groups.

Emotions and sociology

Emotions are not just experienced, encountered, exchanged, negotiated or lived out in everyday life;
they are, as mentioned above, also contemplated, measured and made the object of intellectual scrutiny
and scientific study. Social science and social theory – whether of a sociological, psychological,
anthropological or other disciplinary observance – has increasingly been concerned with recording,
describing, dissecting, clarifying, analysing, classifying, categorising, explaining and understanding
different emotions that – like most other social phenomena – from the outset are experienced as a
pristine part and parcel of people’s everyday lives, mostly without any unnecessary need for theoretical
or analytical elaboration (see, e.g., Strongman 2003). So, whereas most of us just experience and
encounter a multitude of different – milder or stronger, positive or negative, fleeting or more lasting –
emotions every day without subjecting them to academic contemplation or definitional wordplay, social
scientists (and perhaps particularly sociologists) on the other hand with increasing intensity have
struggled to define, separate, classify, categorise, typologise and organise the various roots and origins,
processes and trajectories, consequences and repercussions of the emotions of their concern. However,
this has far from always been the case.
For a long period of time, the nature of emotions attracted the attention and has been at the centre of
controversy and discussion in philosophy regarding topics such as mind, body, cognition, reason,
rationality, irrationality, desire, passions, affects, instincts and so on. From the ancient Greek
philosophers through to German idealism and French rationalism to Anglo-American analytical
philosophy, emotions have remained a continuous concern for philosophy, albeit often at a proper and
safe distance from empirical evidence, concrete studies or lived emotions. Also, more recently,
prominent philosophers such as Martha C. Nussbaum (2001) and Robert C. Solomon (2007) have
written extensively and convincingly about the role and meaning of emotions in social life. From
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis to the ground-breaking and popular work of Daniel Goleman, the study
of emotions has also played a significant role in classic and contemporary psychology. Contrary to this
long-standing philosophical and psychological interest in emotions however, it was not until the mid-
1970s, as was hinted above, that emotions started to become a recognised topic of sociological research
and theorising. Prior to this period, emotions were actually mentioned and studied – just think of Karl
Marx’s text on ‘alienation’, Max Weber’s category of ‘affectual action’, Émile Durkheim’s theory of the
‘collective effervescence’ of religious feelings, Georg Simmel’s essay on the ‘blasé attitude’ in the
modern metropolis, Norbert Elias’s concern with the ‘threshold of shame’ in his theory of the civilising
process and his later essay on ‘the loneliness of the dying’ or Erving Goffman’s microsociological
interest in ‘embarrassment’ (see, e.g., Bo and Jacobsen 2017:55–140; Illouz 2007:1–2). Emotions were
most definitely mentioned, but most often as an appendage to studies of other matters deemed more
important. Using the terminology of the philosophy of science, one might say that in most theories
emotions were often regarded as the explanans rather than as the explanandum. Thus, as a topic in its
own right of systematic or genuine sociological interest, emotions were few and far between until the
mid-1970s. There are probably many reasons for this routine neglect of emotions within the discipline.
One of the main proponents of the early sociological interest in emotions, Arlie R. Hochschild, perhaps
captured two of the main reasons why sociologists and social theorists during the past century routinely
shied away from studying emotions:

Perhaps the main reason sociologists have neglected feeling is that, as sociologists, we are members of the
same society as the actors we study, and we share their feelings and values. Our society defines being
cognitive, intellectual, or rational dimensions of experience as superior to being emotional or sentimental.…
Another reason for sociologists’ neglect of emotions may be the discipline’s attempt to be recognized as a
‘real science’ and the consequent need to focus on the most objective and measurable features of social life.
(Hochschild 1975:281)

In an almost similar vein, but voiced specifically within the context of qualitative studies and fieldwork,
Marlene de Laine has stated that ‘emotions have been viewed as irrelevant or disruptive of the modern
academic agenda and generally relegated to the private or personal realm of the diary’ (de Laine
2000:151). Emotions were therefore neither something that sociologists should study nor admit to
having. From an anthropological perspective, Ruth Behar twenty years ago testified to the reason for
the relative absence of an interest in emotions at that time but also to the gradual rise of emotions as a
research topic by stating:

Throughout most of the twentieth century, in scholarly fields ranging from literary criticism to anthropology
to law, the reigning paradigms have traditionally called for distance, objectivity and abstraction. The worst
sin was to be ‘too personal’.… Emotion has only recently gotten a foot inside the academy and we still don’t
know whether we want to give it a seminar room, a lecture hall, or just a closet we can air out now and
then.
(Behar 1996:12–16)

It seems as if Behar’s concluding remark has since been emphatically answered – not just a stuffed
closet in the corner, a seminar room or an auditorium is now required to accommodate the growing
infatuation with emotions within the social sciences, but perhaps rather a fully seated stadium. The
reason is that emotions no longer are regarded as a no-go within social research. Whereas previously,
studying emotions was seen merely as a niche (alongside other, at the time, obscure niche topics such
as birth, death, the body and existential issues), it has now grown into a field of research in its own
right. In recent decades, emotions have risen to prominence within social research and social theory
from general sociologists taking up or referring to emotions in their general theories and diagnoses of
contemporary society to so-called ‘sociologists of emotions’ digging deep into the role, function and
effect of emotions in specific empirical contexts (see, e.g. Bericat 2016). From the ranks of
phenomenology, existentialism, psychoanalysis, feminist research and interactionist sociology, the
interest in emotions slowly but securely began to sprout and spread and throughout the 1980s and
1990s, and became a preoccupation also among many high-profile sociologists and social theorists such
as Norbert Elias, Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman and Jonathan H. Turner, just to
mention a few. So today, emotions have flooded the sociological territory and seems to be a relevant
concern, and whether one is studying inequality, culture, crime, marketing, deviance, power, sexuality,
the family, the body, social structure, social movements, interaction, health and illness or many other
specific topics, emotions seem to be of relevance. Sociology and related disciplines have thus sought to
conceptualise, frame and configure their understandings of emotions in many different ways (see, e.g.,
Lewis and Haviland-Jones 2000; Scherer and Ekman 1984; Stets and Turner 2007, 2014). Some have
claimed that two dominant positions prevail within emotion research: positivists and social
constructivists (Kemper 1981). Others have rather separated so-called ‘organismic’ from ‘interactional’
understandings of emotions (Hochschild 1983). Yet others have differentiated between emotions
understood respectively as ‘states’, ‘relations’ and ‘cultures’ (Bo and Jacobsen 2015). All of these
positions – rooted in different and at times even incommensurable ontological, epistemological and
methodological perspectives – provide us with rich sources for understanding and discussing, and not
least studying the complex nature, role and experience of emotions in everyday life.
Also, methodologically, the new gospel in sociology and related disciplines spells out the importance
of emotional introspection and affective reflexivity on behalf of the researcher (see, e.g., Ellis 1991;
Holmes 2015). The years dominated by the image of the cognitive, distanced, disembodied, anonymous,
amorphous and rational social researcher and the concomitant ‘view from nowhere’ are now being
challenged by very personalised and emotionally reflexive accounts of researchers and their encounters
with and feelings for informants and research subjects. The idea of the ‘emotional man/woman’ has thus
not only become a supplement but now more of a corrective to notions of the ‘rational man’ or the
‘normative man’ conventionally so predominant in much of sociological literature (Flam 1990). Such
images of the rational or normative man, in the famous words of Dennis H. Wrong, ignored ‘both the
highest and the lowest, both beast and angel, in [human] nature’ (Wrong 1961:191). Consequently,
images of ‘the emotional self’ (Lupton 1998), ‘the sentient self’ (Hochschild 2003) or ‘homo
sentimentalis’ (Illouz 2007) are no longer seen as strangers in sociology textbooks, but instead usher in
a new image of the emotional human being – and particularly the emotional researcher – that is now
widely recognised. This gradual shift from a decidedly dispassionate to a ‘passionate sociology’ paying
attention to and recognising many previously neglected or ostracized aspects of everyday life such as
magic, desire and deep emotions (Game and Metcalfe 1996) has thus also paved the way for the
development of a much-needed and more complex, nuanced, sympathetic and not least lifelike
understanding of the human being. Thus, both as objects of study as well as important dimensions of
the personal experiences of the researcher and his or her research subjects, emotions have now become
mainstream within contemporary sociology.

The purpose and structure of the book

As a contribution to the aforementioned growing sociological literature on emotions, this book
introduces a wide range of different emotions and specific emotional experiences. It is inspired by two
recent volumes published in Danish on the sociology of emotions, and everyday life and emotions that
were edited with a colleague of mine (Bo and Jacobsen 2015, 2017). This book aspires to present a
cornucopia of concepts, theories and studies of different emotions from various social science
disciplines (predominantly but not exclusively sociology) and relating them to concrete everyday
experiences. In this way, the book seeks to bridge the gap between abstract scientific understandings
and the all-too mundane aspects of human emotions. Obviously, the book cannot cover all possible
human emotions – there are simply too many to mention (for an accessible overview, see Smith 2015).
However, the book contains introductions to some of the ‘usual suspects’ in emotion research such as
trust, guilt and grief but also to some often overlooked and neglected emotions such as courage,
excitement and laziness. Although there is neither any natural nor analytical or logical order to the
sequence in which the different emotions in this book are presented, we start out with a few of what
Jack M. Barbalet (1996) once called ‘social emotions’ such as trust, loyalty and confidence, and even
though many other emotions are indeed also ‘social’, what is so characteristic about these emotions is
the fact that they aim at creating or maintaining bonds of sociality and that they secure cooperation
between people. Moving on from these emotions, we shall then explore a variety of different emotions
that within emotion research are sometimes called primary or secondary, basic or derivative, positive or
negative, intensive and extensive emotions and so on.
Chapter 1 by Paul R. Ward introduces to the emotion of trust and shows how trust is a fundamental
aspect of many of our different interpersonal and institutional dealings with other people in daily life. In
Chapter 2 by James Connor, we encounter the emotion of loyalty and the author argues that even
though this emotion is felt now, it is in fact based on past experiences and future expectations. Chapter
3 by Barbara A. Misztal is concerned with human dignity and how this emotion informs not only
philosophical debates but also everyday interactions based, among other things, on ideas of rights,
resources and institutional support. In Chapter 4, Iain Wilkinson introduces compassion as an everyday
emotion by looking into the social and cultural history of compassion in western modernity and
connecting this to the anxieties of a contemporary ‘compassion fatigue’. Courage is the topic of Chapter
5 by Amir B. Marvasti, and based on a review of research on courage in philosophy and psychology, the
author shows how courage is practiced particularly in micro or interactional contexts. Chapter 6 by
Stephen Lyng invites us to consider how our quest for excitement and voluntary risk-taking has evolved
historically and then relates this to different contemporary sporting activities. In Chapter 7, Michael
Hviid Jacobsen and Søren Kristiansen introduce the many different facets of the unpleasant and
awkward feeling of embarrassment that from time to time arises among participants in interactional
settings. Following this, Chapter 8 by Susie Scott explores another so-called ‘self-conscious emotion’,
namely that of shyness, and she shows how shyness is sparked by the perception of relative social
incompetence in social situations. Chapter 9 by Gordon Clanton introduces to the feeling of envy by
claiming that this emotion is particularly associated with a feeling of hostility towards superiors. In
Chapter 10, Vessela Misheva discusses the emotion of guilt, compares it with that of shame and shows
how guilt comes in many different guises and has many different dimensions and functions at a micro-
social level. Chapter 11 is devoted to anger, and here Keith Oatley and Jennifer M. Jenkins present
findings and ideas from a variety of classic and contemporary studies showing both the roots and the
processes of anger as well as the importance of anger management in personal relationships. In
Chapter 12, Anders Petersen and Michael Hviid Jacobsen take a closer look at grief and argue that the
feelings associated with this particular emotional response should be reserved primarily for
descriptions of experiences of permanent human absence. Chapter 13 is written by Patrick Gamsby and
is concerned with the experience of boredom that the author, through theoretical readings, relates to
different aspects of modern society such as, for example, the rise of a blasé personality, the absence of
style and the impact of the culture industry. Finallly, Chapter 14 by Michael Hviid Jacobsen explores the
often overlooked emotion of laziness and its implications in social and everyday life. We – me and my co-
contributors – hope that this book’s sociological exploration of a variety of different emotions will
inspire future thinking about, discussions of and not least research among students and scholars into
these and many other emotions that are all such an integral part of the fabric of everyday lives.

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1 Trust
What is it and why do we need it?
Paul R. Ward

Introduction
Part of me communicating to you, through writing this chapter, involves trust. You have not met me, you
will probably have very little, if any, knowledge about me. I have not worked with you in order to
develop a sense of trust. However, I will present all sorts of arguments throughout this chapter, often
from literature sources that you may not know. I will draw on my personal experiences as a ‘person in
the world’, and I will draw on numerous research studies that I have undertaken. As I would say to all
the students that I have taught and worked with in research, I would expect you to impose ‘critical
doubt’ when reading my work, and the work of all others. In other words, you can make a decision
about whether (or not) to trust me. The times when we were simply (some say blindly) expected to trust
people because they were in positions of power has gone. This is not to say that people in power should
not be trusted, but simply that people are expected to question such authority, access other sources of
information and perform the role of the ‘informed citizen’. It is not very long ago that school teachers
were not questioned by students or parents, University professors held almost unquestioned status,
doctors told patients what to do (and they did it without questioning) and religious leaders were looked
upon for answers. Across many countries and cultures, this unquestioning of power has been somewhat
eroded, and in some cases broken (Ward et al. 2016; Ward, Mamerow et al. 2014).
When I go to my doctor, either for myself or my children, I am engaged in a very different relationship
than I know my parents were at my age. Rather than simply telling me what to do, my doctor provides
potential alternatives, talks about different ways of dealing with the issue at hand, opens up to
uncertainties and conflicting medical information. Although the literature on doctor-patient
relationships shows this shift to be generalizable (Barry et al. 2001; Bissell et al. 2004), my personal
experiences may also reflect my socio-demographic characteristics – a white, male, middle-class,
middle-aged Professor. It may well be that the doctor behaves in this particular way because he expects
me to want him to behave like that – Niklas Luhmann calls this the ‘expectation of expectations’
(Luhmann 1995). Nevertheless, there has been a discernible shift in doctor-patient relationships –
Anthony Giddens argues that in so-called pre-modern times, doctors expected patients to simply ‘trust’
them and patients reciprocated by trusting them (Giddens 1990, 1994). The power and expertise
resided with the doctor – they had been to medical school, they had earned their place in one of the
Colleges, they were employed by some type of medical organisation (depending on country of practice)
and thus they had the expertise to diagnose and treat illness. The medical system has recently started
to put the patient (aka client, consumer, sometimes even human) at the centre of the encounter. This
recognises that patients have some expertise in their own bodies, their illnesses, their therapeutic
regimen and can therefore contribute to a discussion or negotiation with their doctor. The patient-
centred movement also recognises a cultural shift, variously conceptualised as neoliberalism,
individualism and/or freedom of the subject (Kaufman 2010; Navarro 2007). Whichever terms are used,
they generally include elements of increased individual responsibility, decreased responsibility of the
State for things regarded as ‘individual’ or family issues, and the centrality of choice. So, faced with a
particular problem, individuals have somewhat of a moral imperative to search around for information
(Google and Facebook seem to be fairly well used for this search) in order to make a choice (and trust
or not), potentially utilising the previously defined ‘experts’ (doctors, teachers, professors, priests) as
one of the information sources required in order to make their decision. In fact, it has been argued that
doctors have shifted from a position of ‘legislator’ to ‘negotiator’ or even ‘mediator’ (Scambler and
Britten 2001). You may be asking, ‘what does this have to do with trust’?
The key purpose of this chapter is to outline why trust is a key emotion and social process in
contemporary society. I firstly outline the ‘need’ for trust – why can’t we just make decisions and get on
with them? Why do we need to invest trust in other people? I then go on to provide a conceptual map of
trust – what is it and what are the various concepts that surround it? Finally, I outline the emerging
literature on trust as an emotion and in so doing, paint a broad-brush picture of the sociology of the
emotions, within which trust sits. Within and throughout the chapter, I use lots over everyday examples
to illustrate the often theoretically dense ideas and also provide examples from my diverse research on
the sociology of trust, including trust in food systems (Henderson et al. 2012; Ward et al. 2012),
colorectal cancer screening (Ward et al. 2015b; Ward et al. 2015a), health services (Attwell et al. 2017;
Gidman et al. 2012; Januraga et al. 2014; Ward and Coates 2006) and broader institutions of
government (Meyer et al. 2012c; Ward et al. 2014; Ward et al. 2016).

Definition and conceptualisation of trust

Trust has been variously defined and conceptualised elsewhere (Gambetta 1988; Gilson 2003; Gilson et
al. 2005; Gilson 2006; Luhmann 1988; Misztal 1996, 2001; Mollering 2001), which creates a problem
in/of itself. This problem is similar to the notion of ‘emotions’, which similarly almost defy definition. So,
in this chapter, I have a double whammy – both trust and emotions have multiple and varied meanings
within both academic literature and lay parlance.
Sociologists typically identify two types of trust: institutional and interpersonal trust. Interpersonal
trust is regarded as an outcome of interpersonal interactions that people can learn in order to make
decisions about future interactions (an individual uses past experiences of similar interactions to
predict whether or not to trust someone in the future) (Giddens 1990; Luhmann 1988; Mollering 2006)
and institutional trust is ‘the expected utility of institutions performing satisfactorily’ (Mishler and Rose
2001:31). In terms of defining overall trust, I use the definition by Jack M. Barbalet (2011) because it
links trust and emotions, ‘trust is a means of overcoming the absence of evidence concerning the future
behaviour of a partner or partners in cooperative activity’ (Barbalet 2011: 41). There are all sorts of
uncertainties and contingencies built into the decision to trust (or not), and Barbalet argues that trust is
ultimately based on cooperation – if we trust, we believe that the other person will do their best for us,
and we will cooperate in a social relationship on that basis. A positive outcome is linked to other
positive emotions in addition to trust. For Barbalet, trusting involves both emotional apprehension and
emotional engagement, because the outcome cannot be known when trust is ‘given’, linking trust to
various other emotions such as hope, confidence, obligation and dependence (Brown 2011; Meyer and
Ward 2013; Ward et al. 2015a).
One of the first hallmarks of trust is its embeddedness in social relationships, and it can either make
or break them. It has been argued that trust is both the glue that holds social relationships together but
also the lubricant that helps social relationships to flourish (Mollering 2001, 2006). Most of social life
could not happen without trust – as humans, we cannot personally perform every function ourselves,
and therefore we need other humans to perform those functions for us. I cannot grow all of the
vegetables my family eats, and therefore I need to purchase them. In making a purchase from a
particular place, I am ultimately trusting them, and all of the links in the chain that got the vegetables
from the farmer. If those vegetables are sold as certified organic, or pesticide free, or non-genetically
modified, then I need to be able to trust that what I purchase and then cook can be trusted. In doing
that, I am not trusting the vegetable per se, but I am trusting the farmers to grow organically, the
organisation performing organic certification to test and check before and after certification, and the
place of purchase (supermarket, farmers market, online store, etc.) to keep them in appropriate
conditions. This example shows the inter-related issues of interpersonal trust and institutional trust. My
own research on trust in food systems highlights the inter-related nature of trust in farmers (Henderson
et al. 2011), local food systems (Meyer et al. 2012b), food certification (Nath 2013), supermarkets (Julie
Henderson et al. 2012), the media (Ward et al. 2012) and food regulation (Henderson et al. 2013) in
decisions about what/who to trust, and therefore what to eat. Similarly, my research on trust in
colorectal cancer (CRC) screening (Ward et al. 2015b; Ward et al. 2015a) highlighted the nuances and
complexities involved in the trustworthiness of the CRC screening program in Australia, which included
trust considerations of different levels: interpersonal relationships with people perceived as linked to
the CRC screening program (e.g. GP, Aboriginal Health Worker), local area issues that impacted on the
programme (e.g. trustworthiness of postal system or local health centre) and national political issues
(e.g. trustworthiness of the government and particular politicians seen to ‘represent’ the government).
Interpersonal and institutional trust depend on one another. For example, you may see a doctor for
the first time, you do not know them personally (not your usual doctor) and therefore it is very difficult
to have inter-personal trust (built on a history of interactions, not breaking trust over time, reciprocity,
etc.). This was the case in some of my earlier research whereby people living in a marginalised,
deprived community in the United Kingdom could not get regular GPs and therefore consulted with
locum GPs with whom they could not develop a longer-term trusting relationship (Ward and Coates
2006). This lack of trust meant that they were ambivalent about treatment recommendations and less
likely to follow the advice of the locum GPs. However, you may trust the various systems that have
trained the doctor and continue to regulate their skills and register them. In this way, trust in the
education system to train them, the medical system to build their skills and give them experience, the
political system to make sure there is regulatory and professional surveillance to keep a check on their
current skills and practice and the moral system to make them know right from wrong. Trust in these
various systems or institutions may help you to overcome the lack of interpersonal trust that you have
in the individual doctor. This was the case in my research on trust in public and private hospitals in
Australia (Ward et al. 2015c). Patients in public hospitals had no choice in their hospital and/or doctor,
since they had been referred (often from their general practitioner) and saw whichever doctor was on
duty at that time. The patients in public hospitals often did not know their doctor and in order to place
their trust, patients stated that doctors in public hospitals would try to ‘do their best’, thereby being
trustworthy. This level of trust goes back to the definition of trust which is about trusting someone
because you think they will do their best for you and assuming they will not try to do harm – I regard
this as a kind of ‘resigned trust’.
Institutional trust is also linked to functional trust. Imagine consulting a doctor with a pretty bad
bedside manner – not good interpersonal skills, not very patient-focussed, quite domineering and rather
patronising. Due to the institutional trust, you may ‘trust’ the doctor to perform a medical procedure,
even without necessarily having interpersonal trust. However, you are trusting the doctor to perform
specific functions prescribed by their role in that context. You may not trust them to be a friend, you
may not trust them to help you with your emotional health. You may trust a butcher (skilled in
butchering animals) to produce good cuts of meat, but not necessarily perform surgery on you. My own
research on trust in different public health services found that it is possible to have trust in one level
but not necessarily the other. For example, in my study of trust in hospitals, patients in public hospitals
trusted the individual doctors but not necessarily the government funding the hospitals (Ward et al.
2015c). In the study of trust in CRC screening, some cultural groups trusted and some distrusted the
government funding the screening, and some groups trusted and others distrusted the healthcare
professionals involved in the screening (Ward et al. 2015b; Ward et al. 2015a). In terms of childhood
vaccinations, we found parents may trust some types of healthcare professionals but not the
pharmaceutical industry or even ‘science’ as an institution (Attwell et al. 2017).
An example more befitting this book relates to love, an emotion which has many meanings in different
contexts, and which has been dealt with admirably elsewhere (Burkitt 2014; Hochschild 1979, 1998;
Wouters 1998). For a person to ‘give’ their love to another, it would be appropriate in my eyes for them
to expect certain social and emotional things in response. The detail of these would be negotiated and
agreed between the people involved, but the ‘emotional contract’ set up between them would involve an
expectation of that not being broken. Ultimately, this involves trust – the expectation from the truster,
that the trustee will do the things they agreed to do. These ‘things’ could be practical, social, emotional
and/or spiritual, but the truster will expect that whatever was agreed will be actioned. One such ‘thing’
may be that neither person has sexual relations with another – that by declaring their love for each
other which may involve co-habiting, financial relations, children, ideas about a future – an expectation
is developed and agreed to about monogamy. The two people are unlikely to be within each other’s
company 24 hours a day, and therefore they need to trust each other. However, if one or both of the
people display infidelity, this would likely lead to a break in trust and will probably impact the
conditions required for trust in the future. I use these examples to show both the different issues that
might be involved in deciding whether someone or something is trustworthy, and the different
implications (or risks) of making a decision to trust.
The notion of risk has similarly shared a long history in sociology and psychology, again having
varying definitions and conceptual landscapes (Beck 1992, 2005, 2009; Crawford 2004; Douglas 1992;
Luhmann 2005; Slovic 2010; Slovic et al. 2004; Taylor-Gooby and Zinn 2006). I do not plan to cover this
terrain here. The importance of talking about risk is that it goes hand-in-hand with trust. The conditions
underpinning and implications of trust hinge on the risk involved in the decision. For example, making a
decision on whether to buy apples from a supermarket or a farmer’s market will involve considerations
of trust (in addition to cost, location, quality, availability, etc.), but for me the risk is not huge. I may buy
them from the supermarket and find out I don’t like them. I may then buy some from the farmer’s
market and like them much better. I initially put my trust in the supermarket, but they did not deliver
on taste (my primary motive when choosing food), so my trust in other fruits and vegetables from the
supermarket might be questioned, whereas my trust in farmer’s markets might be heightened. Having
said this, the risk to me of initially trusting the supermarket was pretty small – I spent some time and
money buying the apples, but not a great deal. Compare this with a decision about which surgeon you
trust to perform heart surgery (Meyer et al. 2012a; Meyer and Ward 2013). In countries and healthcare
systems where patients have some choice in their surgeon, the risk of making the ‘wrong choice’ is far
greater than buying apples. In making a ‘loving’ commitment and choosing to trust a partner, the risks
are very different than with the surgeon. A surgeon not doing their job properly might lead to severe
medical and health problems, a partner displaying infidelity may lead to social, emotional and financial
problems. These should not be compared on the basis of ‘which one would be worse’, simply that the
decision to trust involves risk, and heightened risks lead to trust being even more important.
Part of the information gathering process used to make a decision on trustworthiness relates to our
socialised expectations of people and things. We are more likely to trust a person or thing if they fit with
what we ‘expect’ them to look and act like. For example, we have historically and culturally defined
expectations of doctors, and if they do not look or act as we expect, this may well impact our likelihood
of trusting them. Giddens argues that there are social/cultural norms underpinning the decision to trust
(outside of actual experience), often based on a stylised idea of the institution (Govier 1998). Indeed,
Francis Fukuyama (1996:153) argues that ‘trust arises when a community shares a set of moral values
in such a way as to create expectations of regular and honest behaviour’. I acknowledge that this may
reflect stereotypes that serve to reinforce current inequality and discrimination, on the basis of gender,
age, ethnicity, disability, sexuality and so on. If a particular social group expect ‘good’ (thereby
trustworthy) doctors to be white, middle class, male and middle aged, then suspicion may be placed on
doctors who do not conform to this stereotype. If the doctor wore a clown suit and was unusually chirpy,
this would not fit socialised expectations that thus may raise concerns about their trustworthiness. On a
similar, but less theatrical line, I do wonder about the impact of doctors wearing ‘civilian clothes’ on
trust and trustworthiness. Whilst these clothes may well reduce the ‘social distance’ between doctors
and patients and lead patients to think that doctors are ‘a bit more like us’, this more laid back identity
may not fit within social expectations for some groups, and thus question the trustworthiness of those
particular doctors. In this way, making a decision about whether or not to trust a doctor is not just
about how good they are, but about whether or not they meet expectations for appearance and
behaviour.
Trust as an emotion
In writing a chapter on ‘trust as an everyday emotion’, I need to be clear on firstly, how emotions are
conceptualised, and secondly, in what way trust is an emotion. I will not cover the broad literature on
the emotions, since they have been covered elsewhere. There are numerous texts, which outline the
general sociology of the emotions (Burkitt 2014; Denzin 1984; Turner 2007, 2009), the historical
development of ideas about emotions (Frevert et al. 2014), the ways in which emotions impact on and
are impacted by social structure (Barbalet 1998; Bendelow and Williams 1998; von Scheve 2013).
However, there has been less specific attention given to trust as an emotion (Barbalet 1996, 2011),
partly an aim of this chapter. The bedrock of the increasing literature on the sociology of emotions is
that emotions are significant in the constitution of social relationships, social processes and institutions
(Barbalet 1998), thereby making emotions a valid unit of analysis within sociology.
An early example of an attempt to develop a theory of the emotions was Jean-Paul Sartre, and
although his work is embedded broadly within phenomenological psychology (as distinct from my field
of sociology), his notion of ‘magic’ and ‘magic means’ is useful in terms of understanding trust (Sartre
1971:11). In talking about magic as part of emotions, Sartre refers to emotions as often non-rational
responses based on non-rational perceptions of an issue, whereby emotions represent, ‘a different way
of eluding a difficulty, a particular way of escape, a special trick’ (Sartre 1971:41). More recent
sociological analyses of emotions such as Christian von Scheve (2013:5) regard emotions as ‘bi-
directional mediators between action and structure’ – the meat in the sandwich that facilitate both
action and structure. There is a long history of scholarship across numerous disciplines which has
attempted to both define emotions and then develop a set of core components (Frevert et al. 2014),
although it seems that these can be broadly conceptualised as: a physiological arousal; motor
expression; subjective feelings; cognitive appraisal; and action tendency (von Scheve 2013). Emotions
are generally regarded as episodic, being triggered by a particular event and relatively short lasting
(von Scheve 2013:14).
Emotions have often been categorised as being either primary emotions (Kemper 1978; Turner 2009)
– similarly conceptualised as ‘reflex emotions’ (Jasper 2011) and ‘foreground emotions’ (Barbalet 2011)
or secondary emotions (Turner 2009) or ‘background emotions’ (Barbalet 2011). Primary emotions tend
to be thought of as ‘fight or flight’ responses to particular cues for action, such as fear, anger, sadness
or happiness (Turner 2009). Secondary emotions are seen as less visceral, acute responses, and more
likely to be reflective and mediated by and through social and cultural milieu. Trust, as an emotion, fits
more closely with these secondary, or background, emotions. Barbalet (2011:42) argues that trust is
one of a suite of emotions which are ‘less amenable to strategic or explicit regulation, not only because
they have low expressivity, but also because they are unlikely to be consciously experienced by the
emoter’.
In terms of Sartre’s argument that emotions in general are non-rational responses to particular cues,
I and others (Barbalet 1996, 2009, 2011; Luhmann 1979, 1988), disagree that trust (as an emotion) is
non-rational. Here I make a distinction between the basis of trust and the need for trust. I have already
articulated the need for trust – it is essential if humans want to function in a social world, with Barbalet
(1996) arguing that trust ‘overcomes the problem of an unknown future by emotionally committing
persons to the risk of cooperative action. It is rational to trust, then, because trust serves the necessary
purpose of individual transactions in a social world’ (Barbalet 1996:90). In this way, the need for trust is
rational, even if the basis for trust may be ‘magical’, based as it is on a ‘leap of faith’ and things which
may or may not happen in the future (hence the need for trust). As an emotion that is based in the
future – trust is based on something that has not happened yet, we are placing trust in an unknown –
placing trust in someone or something to fulfil its function, but we do not know whether or not it will
happen. Indeed, we cannot know (unless we can prove that crystal balls work) and therefore no amount
of information and socialised experiences can make us certain that something will or will not happen.
Jonathan H. Turner (2007:121) identifies particular trust need-states which relate to the idea that
humans have a set of needs that subsequently generate a sense of trust in other people, and in so doing,
create a rationality. On this basis, it is rational that people attempt to invest trust in others. The key
trust need-states are: (1) people look for a predictability in the behaviour of others which means that
the behaviours can be understood and predicted; (2) people look for a ‘rhythmic synchronization of talk
and body language’ (Turner 2007:121), which allows them to ‘see and hear’ the predictability they are
seeking and begin to think that the other person can be trusted; and (3) people need to think that
others are both sincere and honest which then enables trust to be invested. Turner argues that if these
trust need-states are met within an encounter, a series of positive emotions will be generated such as
happiness, gratitude and trust. However, if the encounter does not meet the trust need-states, distrust
will occur, leading to a number of negative emotions such as anger, distrust and betrayal. Within the
context of doctor-patient relationships in healthcare, a trusting relationship will allow patients to allow
themselves to be cared for (and allow doctors to see and touch sacred body parts, witness sensitive
bodily functions and communicate about sensitive issues), which will evoke positive emotions such as
comfort and reassurance, although a distrusting relationship may lead to a withdrawal or rejection by
the patient, generating negative emotions such anxiety, regret and fear (Lupton 1996).
Barbalet (1996) argues that trust is the emotional basis for cooperation, and in a later paper, takes
this further by linking trust and emotional regulation (Barbalet 2011) which shows how ‘the problem of
absent information in an action decision is overcome by emotional commitment to a course of action
that realizes an expectation or produces a future it anticipates’ (Barbalet 1996:41). This is based on
people needing to ‘rely’ on each other to ‘do as they say’ and ‘keep up their side of the bargain’. In this
way, trust is not a rational decision using empirical information, because there is always a risk that we
will be wrong in our decision to trust. The apple might taste bad from the supermarket, the surgeon
might make a mistake or our partner might have an affair. Because we cannot have knowledge about
the future, but we need to make a decision, we need to ‘bridge the gap’ by trust.
Turner (2009) argues that the reciprocal trust relationship requires both parties to take part in a
‘trust exchange’ in a micro-economy of trust, whereby the ‘the emotion given to another carries with it
the expectation that the other emotions will be given back so that both parties can realize the psychic
profit’ (Turner 2009:347). In order for an individual to have ‘trust’ in a person, their decision is a
combination of ‘good reason’ (i.e. past experience of trusting relationships and good outcomes) and a
‘leap of faith’ (Mollering 2001; Simmel 1990) that hopefully plugs the gap in their ‘partial
understanding’ (Giddens 1991). In this way, trust is a pledge, under conditions of uncertainty, to more
than simply cognitive understanding (Giddens 1991). The smaller the ‘good reason’ and the larger the
‘leap of faith’, the higher the risk of trusting.
The problem with cooperation between humans is that neither party can really control each other’s
actions, thereby requiring this ‘leap of faith’ in the form of trust. This is akin to an emotional
dependence on others (Luhmann 1979). Obviously, a problem occurs if there is a breakdown of trust
which may result in anger at the trust-breaker and self-blame for deciding to trust them in the first
place. Luhmann (1990) argues a person who places trust in another which is then broken may regret
their decision and even blame themselves, a process he calls ‘internal attribution’ (Luhmann 1990:98) –
since trust is a judgement as opposed to purely rational, broken trust may lead to a self-questioning of
their judgement and even their capacity to make a good judgement.
In this way, trust is a judgement, not a decision based on facts. We gather as much information as we
need (often based on the risk involved in deciding to trust someone or something) and then use that as
our guide, but it is not fail-safe. Neither is it based on full information, mainly because we are trusting
something which has not happened yet. If we had full information, we would not actually need to trust –
it would simply be a logical and rational decision, as outlined by Diego Gambetta (1990:233), ‘if
evidence could solve the problem of trust, then trust would not be a problem at all’. Barbalet (1996:88)
argues that for this reason, trust is an emotional rather than logic choice or commitment because it is
‘taken in the absence of sufficient evidence for the correctness of one course of action against another’.
Luhmann (1979:25) neatly summarises the way in which trust allows people to make decisions about
things which have yet to happen, ‘the problem of time is bridged by trust, paid ahead of time as an
advance on success’. Barbalet (1996:91) explains trust as an ‘emotional commitment’, which ‘cannot be
based on formal rationality of calculative reason, but which [is] essential in the substantive rationality
of social agency’ and that ‘only an emotional apprehension of circumstances can do this; thought and
reason cannot’ (Barbalet 1996:82). In this way, trust is an emotion which is based on an expectation
about the future – if you trust a doctor to diagnose an illness, you expect that s/he will be able to do this
properly. In addition, trust allows people to apprehend ‘future-time’ and ‘give order to what would
otherwise be paralysing indecision’ (Barbalet 1996:84).

Conclusion
Hopefully when you have finished reading this chapter, you will have developed a level of trust in me (or
if you distrust me, you will be able to articulate your reasoning). Hopefully too, you will have a deeper
understanding for the basis of trust (or distrust) that you place in me and in other people in your life.
Humans have an in-built need for trust – we need trust to fulfil our roles/functions in life that we cannot
do ourselves and we need it for emotional engagement and cooperation. Trust, on this analysis, is
therefore rational – we need it. However, trust is placed in something which has not yet happened,
something that we do not have enough information about, and therefore something which is risky and
contingent on others. On this analysis, the basis of trust is non-rational, since it is based on a ‘leap of
faith’. This is the distinction I make between the need for trust and the basis of trust. The basis for trust
is therefore a unit of analysis within the sociology of the emotions, as opposed to a logical, rational
‘choice’.
The size of the leap we need to make when trusting is related to the risk involved in the decision.
Trusting a surgeon to do major surgery involves a much greater risk (and therefore leap of faith) than
trusting a supermarket to sell nice tasting apples. Given the relative size of the risk involved, we
attempt to gain more information in order to have more confidence in our decision to trust. However, in
many circumstances, we do not have enough information to allow us to make decisions purely on the
basis of inter-personal trust, which assumes a longer inter-personal relationship, a history of positive
interactions and therefore greater confidence that they can be trusted. In these circumstances, we may
rely more on institutional trust, which in the case of the surgeon, may include trust considerations such
as them having a university degree in medicine, gaining entry to a medical college, being employed by a
particular hospital, and being registered with a national medical association. None of these are
specifically related to the person doing the surgery (inter-personal trust) but in many cases are more
important as the basis of trust.
The move to (post)modernity means that we can no longer just assume that people will ‘trust’ – it
needs to be won and kept. However, once it has been lost, it is very difficult to regain, ‘trust comes on
foot and goes away on horseback’ (Kampen et al. 2006:389). A key point is that cultural and social shifts
have meant that trust, and trustworthiness, have taken on an increased level of importance within
social relationships, and thus for the social fabric of society. In pre-modern times, most people would
base their behaviours on what people in power told them to do – they just ‘had to’ trust them. However,
in contemporary times, the essence of being a ‘good citizen’ is to take on more responsibility for
ourselves and our families, and in so doing, to use the vast amount of information sources in order to
make choices – and these choices are based on who or what we trust more. One example I used within
this chapter comes from my research on parental trust in childhood vaccinations (Attwell et al. 2017).
Some parents think about whether or not to vaccinate their children against a particular disease, and
need to think about, among other things, what kinds of information sources to trust (e.g. scientific
literature, social media, websites of anti-vaccination or pro-vaccination groups) and which experts to
trust (e.g. medical doctors, naturopaths, homeopaths). Although governments want as many people as
possible to vaccinate their children against vaccine preventable diseases, it is still a human right to
refuse; there are multiple issues of distrust, which mean that some parents decide not to vaccinate their
children. Therefore, social relationships, based on cooperation, need to be built on meaningful,
reciprocal and honest engagement in a trustworthy fashion in order to build and maintain trust and the
concomitant positive emotions related to trust.

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2 Loyalty
The emotion of future expectation, felt now, based on the past
James M. Connor

Introduction
Our connections with others frame who we are and how we act. Loyalty is a key emotion in this mix as it embeds us in
social life. Our loyalties help define who we are via our connections to, and interactions with others. This can include
people, animals, concepts/ideologies and institutions. This identity-forming aspect of our loyalties is also a source of
conflict – as we can be compelled to choose between these competing layers of loyalty. Indeed, the great works of literature
are stories of loyalties challenged, heeded and betrayed and the social consequences that follow from this. William
Shakespeare’s King Lear is the tragedy of loyalties contested and family destroyed. Loyalty simmers within our daily mix of
emotions as it helps us navigate our interactions every day, based on what has occurred in the past and our hopes for the
future.
Loyalty is more than a contractual type connection between social actors – it is a deeply embedded feeling that drives us
to ‘do’ things in everyday interaction. We act because of our loyalties and make choices informed by our feelings constantly,
pitting them against each other (Haidt 2001). This may be as mundane as defending a brother from the comments of
others, to spending time and money on your sports fandom, to the extremes of sacrificing yourself for country. The
reciprocity of loyalty is an expectation of some form of return in the future, an emotional banking of feeling and support.
When this fails to materialise – we react to the disloyalty and betrayal. Loyalty is about connection and expectation – we
feel it and enact it as a way of maintaining current relationships, which allows us to predict future feelings and actions.
Fundamental to loyalty is that it is an emotion of threat and conflict (Connor 2007). We cannot have a loyalty if it costs us
nothing to feel it. There must always be the possibility (even if only existentially) of our loyalty being betrayed – the object
of our loyalty failing to reciprocate, or worse, actively betraying us by choosing someone, or something else over our
assumed loyalty. As Simon Keller (2007) notes, loyalty is about taking a side because of the perception of a special
relationship. The ever-present threat of disloyalty, betrayal and treason are the ‘dark’ sides to loyalty. These are the
feelings that threaten to erupt when our loyalties are not reciprocated, indeed loyalty scripts these counter-reactions as
part of its sense-making in our everyday lives. Strongly re-enforced via popular culture, the trope of betrayal is deep,
enduring and emotionally distressing. The traitor is one of the worst social labels that exists.
This chapter explores how we ‘do’ loyalty daily, from the mundane to the extraordinary and how it is a forward feeling –
allowing us the illusion of future expectations based on the actions of the present and past. In this chapter, I explore the
role loyalty plays in lubricating our social existence. We begin with a review of what loyalty is and deal with the vexed
question of if it is even an emotion. Then we move to an exploration of the key components of loyalty: reciprocity, layering,
identity formation, motivation and conflict. The everyday of loyalty is exemplified by a review of different types of loyalty:
familial (including pets) loyalty, sporting loyalties, commercialised loyalty and nationalism. I also consider just how and why
loyalty and disloyalty or betrayal are so tightly intertwined. Fundamentally, loyalty is an everyday emotional experience
that guides us through our relationships with people, groups and wider collectivities. Our loyalties are brought forth,
challenged and reinforced daily via our interactions. Thus, it is essential we understand how our emotional existence is
framed daily by our loyalty.

Is loyalty even an emotion?

This is the first question we must resolve and it is a matter of importance, can we analyse loyalty as an emotion, or is it
better served by a different perspective? Emotions researchers from a number of fields and disciplinary schools, many
featured in this book, have developed a range of tools and methodologies to allow us to explain how emotions work.
Establishing that loyalty is indeed an emotion like love, jealousy and fear then allows us to explore it as an emotional
phenomenon and consequently take advantage of the rich theorising on what emotions are and how we live them
(Hochschild 1998). Loyalty can be considered an emotion as it shares a likeness with all the other classes of feeling,
emotion or passion that we have. First, it is embodied. We feel our loyalties, such as the anxious stomach churn when we
wait to see if we will be betrayed, our loyalty returned or abandoned. That comfortable dependence that comes with
knowing people are loyal to you and will follow you anywhere. Second, loyalty serves all the same social functions that
other, more academically established emotions do – it lubricates social interaction by allowing us to understand our
connections and obligations to others, it frames who we are and gives us identity. Lastly, loyalty motivates us, like other
emotions, to feel, think and act in particular ways – it is a schema of interaction. Consequently, given the similarities, we
can apply the tools developed for studying emotion to loyalty and gain further insight into what it is.
The counter to the idea of loyalty being an emotion is that is just a contractual process, a quid pro quo, an exchange. This
is indeed true – loyalty is about reciprocity and the expectation of return in the future. But it is beyond being just a contract
– if that is all it was we would not have the great literature that explores it. It would lack the meaning we assign loyalty. We
do sometimes incorporate components of a contract into our loyalties, such as oaths of allegiance – but these serve to
enhance the loyalty, not reduce it to a legal exchange. Robert Wolff (1968) is one of the exemplars of this position with his
categorisation of loyalty into natural and contractual types. Natural deriving from human connections, such as being born
into a family, where as contractual occurs as a result of pledges or oaths. However, this distinction is arbitrary and does not
mean contractually enhanced loyalties, via a pledge for example, are in some way weakened. The oath sworn by a soldier is
one of the strongest loyalty affirmations we can make and it has a real and profound impact on the passions and
subsequent actions of the soldier (Ceulemans and van Damme 2002; Connor 2010).
The next claim is that loyalty is not a feeling in and of itself, but an amalgam of other emotions. Notwithstanding the very
real conceptual and empirical difficulties we have in identifying a single emotional feeling and studying it, all emotions as
we describe them have aspects of other feelings. While I am not reducing this to a building blocks approach to emotion
(Evans 2001), we must acknowledge that seeking a ‘pure’ emotion is difficult, if not impossible. Even the so-called base or
basic emotions, have components of other feeling to them – hate, fear, sadness, affection are not pure. In their classic,
Character and Social Structure, Hans H. Gerth and C Wright Mills (1964) note the importance of the embodied experience
of emotion and how external observer labelling of feelings is problematic, as we can never be truly sure what another
person feels. Our embodied self, mediated via our socialisation means emotions are always going to be messy amalgams
that shift and morph. Despite claims to the contrary, loyalty is not a sub-set of trust (Barbalet 1992). As Paul R. Ward shows
elsewhere in this volume, trust fills a different emotional niche. Again, this does not mean that trust and loyalty do not
occur together, in varying intensities. Our trust in a person can be based upon their loyalty in the past, conversely, it would
be risky to be loyal to a person that has breached your trust previously. I can also be loyal to but not trust another person –
such as with familial loyalty, where I am loyal to my brother but do not trust him. Loyalty is often called upon when trust
falters.
All emotions flux, morph and transform into other feelings – the very experience of emoting modifies our feelings and
understanding of the world (Barbalet 2003). The classic is the lover betrayed, with love becoming rage then hate. Loyalty is
curious as it has a distinct opposite – disloyalty or betrayal. Like love, our fear of losing loyalty is what gives it such
motivation. The ever-present threat that we may be wrong, that the other person or entity does not share our loyalty is
what gives the feeling its power and force – if there was no threat of betrayal there could be no loyalty, we require loyalty
to protect us against the angst of potential loss and betrayal. But of course, its existence creates the pre-conditions for
what we fear most – being betrayed.
There are two key reasons why loyalty is an emotion. First, we can apply the tools and methods of emotions theory to the
phenomenon and gain a better insight into the feeling, just as we do with love, hate, jealousy and trust. Second, and more
fittingly with our everyday lived experience of the world and our feelings, loyalty is present in our daily interactions. Our
loyalties guide our actions – how and with whom we engage and on what terms. These interactions are by necessity
emotional or passionate, as we are embodied actors who feel our existence.

Just what is loyalty?

Each interaction we have with others is a discrete emotive experience rich with possibility, yet constrained within cultural
rules and histories of interaction (see Collins 1984; Luhmann 1990; Hendry and Seidl 2003). One of these permanent, yet
permeable, components is the emotionality of the interaction (Collins 2004). A feeling state is enacted with every
interaction, some feelings drive immediate action – e.g. sadness, anger or rage, limiting the interaction potential to only a
few outcomes. Others presage longer interactions and outcomes, such as loyalty. All emotions frame the interaction and
how it is played out, but this does not mean that emotions do not shift. Indeed, the framing is what allows for the
transfiguration of the feelings: love becoming jealousy, morphing to rage being a classic of the literature of passion. Loyalty
frames interactions in specific ways. First it helps us understand our pre-existing connection with others in the field, which
sets our perceptions and expectations of them – the loyalty of a parent is meant to be (and mostly will be) stronger then the
loyalty of a friend. This meta-emotional frame then sets the conditions of interaction and we emote and act based on the set
structure/emotional criteria we bring to those interactions. Loyalty has a particular framing mix, it denotes the past and
hoped for future support, affection and duty – an assumption based on past action that bring us into the present in the hope
that it continues in the future. It frames hierarchies of importance for us. This is how we choose between loyalties and why
acknowledging the levels/layers of loyalty is relevant to how we live the emotion.
Our identity is an on-going social process, bound within and to our engagement with other people. Norbert Elias (1994)
notes that we are enmeshed with this via affective bonds – how we feel the interaction. This is a continuous process,
requiring individual activity, but limited via structural constraints. Loyalty is a binding emotion – it links us to the other –
people, groups, ideologies, beliefs, nations. Thus enacting our loyalty adds to the process need of identity formation,
maintenance and change. Elias posits the self as a social process, of which our feelings are central as emotion orients us in
the present. Our self is a product of interacting with others. Elias sees emotion bonds as a binding between actors that
allows for the self to exist in a process basis. In Eliasian terms, this valency, or bonding to others is crucial to our sense of
self. Losing part of that – such as via the shock of disloyalty removing an aspect of the self – changes our existence
(Roseneil and Ketokivi 2016). The ritual nature of loyalty engagements is well illustrated by national holidays and military
days of remembrance. We engage with these activities: sing the anthem, recite a pledge of allegiance, and wear a flag as
signals of our loyalty to country. Being with others affirms our membership – we are together, all citizens of the nation.
Loyalty is a bonding emotion that maintains connection, allowing for the self-project to continue. If we are to analyse the
interdependencies that frame our existence, emotions that denote connections are key to this endeavour. Loyalty has
particular interdependency connotations – it requires an other, a threat, no matter how unrealistic, for it to define against.
A person cannot be loyal without the presence of at least an existential disloyalty (Connor 2007). This implies that the
connection two people have at one moment, denoted by their loyalty, can always be lost, threatened or over-taken by
another loyalty. Thus, the interdependence we have with others via loyalty is one of precarious trust, assumption and hope.
I trust my loyalty will be returned by you within the interactional spaces we inhabit when I require it at some point in the
future.
Affective bonds become integral parts of the self via on-going interactions. We are effectively pre-socialised into some of
these loyalty bonds – your country of birth and the assumption that you will be loyal to it, your parents and other key early
belief systems, such as religion. We come into and evolve other loyalties – friends, sport teams (though sometimes our
parents will choose these for us with a baby sized jersey), romantic partners, our own children. Is there a difference
between the pre-social loyalties and the evolved loyalties? Our inability to change them, the enduring, early or first
loyalties are foundational to our being, hard to escape and core framings of interactions. The opprobrium reserved for
disloyalty of the core framed loyalties is stronger – treason to one’s country is considered one of the worst disloyalties
possible versus betrayal of a long-held friend. It follows then that the core loyalties are also the essential scripts or frames
for all other loyalties – thus constraining our loyalty interactions to two core processes/likes. These are the familial and the
national loyalty (in previous times, pre Westphalian, we would substitute national loyalties for fealties to clan, region, duke
and king). One is small scale, rooted in on-going processes of ever-present interactions – family. The other is abstracted and
imagined (Anderson 1991), framed via ritual and performing one’s place in the order, such as flag waving and anthem
singing. The latter type is more often macro, large and anonymous, such as communion in church or a national holiday
celebration – these public displays of loyalty acts allow the actor to demonstrate their connection. I am loyal to my country:
I cheered for our national sports team, wore the colours, waved the flag. This places the actor in a particular identity
position, that cannot be policed except by others who also claim that position (hence the ‘where do you come from’
question sometimes levelled at citizens who don’t ‘fit’ an ideal type – a discursive act of loyalty interaction framed to
challenge your assumed loyalty (Ang 1998)). The familial type of loyalty is not as dependant on public, large macro displays
and is very micro interactional – we keep these loyalties through interactions that are ongoing, immediate and common.
This is one of the peculiarities of loyalty as an emotion – how it transcends social levels of interaction far more readily then
similar emotions (love) and more than the fleeting emotions (rage). The essential aspects of loyalty manifest across the
layers/hierarchies.
Loyalty from the actor to more amorphous entities – country, religion, workplace, sporting team – is also to lesser and
greater extents mediated through human interaction with representatives of those loyalty domains. For example, national
loyalty is to the imagined ideal of a nation state, what it stands for and what we gain in return for our fealty – broadly
covered via the concept of ‘citizenship’. However, our experience of loyalty is also bound within the interactional processes
of contact with recognised representatives of the loyalty. Staying with the nation state, our experience of national holidays,
celebrations and remembrances all affirm loyalty and are mediated via interactions at the micro scale – marching in, or
watching a military remembrance parade, for example Armistice day, provides us with immediate contact with others
engaged in loyalty interactions. Such a parade also creates meso and macro loyalty events – the gathering of many people
in one place and the wider national significance given to the parade day via the ruling elites – media, politicians and
relevant expert commentators. The loyalty that is fostered via such rituals within these large events is effervescent loyalty
(that loyalty feeling that is supported by large gatherings or people and/or events of significance), and tight interactional
loyalty via a shared sense of belonging and activity. For example, purchasing and wearing a poppy, conversing with other
former military about their uniformed experience, or drinking and gambling – as is the Australian tradition of beer and two-
up (a gambling game) on ANZAC Day.
Loyalty connects us with others, the feeling is hierarchical or layered with different loyalties having stronger or weaker
pulls on our connection. We draw on those connections to gain a sense of who we are and these loyalties guide us in
conflicts, helping us ‘choose’ who or what to support when loyalties clash. This is exemplified by family loyalty – the core
construction of the emotion we experience.

Family, pets and sports – close and personal loyalty

Josiah Royce captured the importance of family loyalty long ago when he argued that the ‘first natural opportunity for
loyalty is furnished by family ties’ (Royce 1908:220) and that ‘family ties, so far as they are natural, are opportunities for
loyalty … after all, fidelity and family devotion are amongst the most precious opportunities and instances of loyalty’ (Royce
1908:221). Family loyalty is the archetype of loyalty. By virtue of being born into a family it is assumed and required that
we will be loyal to family members. The positives for this are clear: a support network ready when you need it and a strong
sense of belonging and embeddedness. Conversely, the darker side to familial loyalty shows how we can maintain our
loyalty beyond the point we should. Loyalty can be a last resort passion, the final thread of connection when other feelings
have evaporated. It is the tug of obligation, of ‘I must’, the call of the Sirens. Our family loyalty defines us, our connections
to others and place in the world. It is truly directive of our existence – which is why turning your back on family is seen as
so dastardly.
The bitter metallic twang of compulsive loyalty is exemplified strikingly by the child survivors of familial abuse feeling
that they must still engage with their dying parent. Emily Yoffe (2013) writing in Slate and drawing on her years of advice
as Dear Prudence columnist argues that ‘sometimes the best thing to do is just close the door’. This illustrates the way
loyalty can trap us into patterns of reciprocity that are problematic. Curiously, we see this need for unfaltering loyalty to
family often enforced by other family members. A Dear Prudence letter demonstrates this: ‘My mother was an abusive
woman…. One of the happiest moments in my life was when my parents divorced … and she moved far away’. The letter
writer explains that she is now dying, slowly, but he feels no regret, however: ‘My father and my younger brother have
been browbeating me since then to call my mother to try to patch things up ….She is fundamentally dead to me already’
(Dear Prudence 2009). No doubt a burden shared is a way for other family to justify their engagement with the abusive
member.
Richard Friedman (2009), writing in the New York Times on his experiences of counselling patients over their abusive
parental relationships commented on one experience:

Now that her mother was approaching death, she was torn about yet another effort at reconciliation. ‘I feel I should try’, my
patient told me, ‘but I know she’ll be awful to me’. Should she visit and perhaps forgive her mother, or protect herself and live
with a sense of guilt, however unjustified? Tough call, and clearly not mine to make.

This familial guilt over loyalty lost illustrates how strong the call to family loyalty is. If the hurt a family member commits is
against others it becomes even more difficult, as family loyalty is meant to trump loyalty to other people. Theodore
Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, killed three and maimed twenty-three with his mail bombs over an 18-year spree. It
was only because of the suspicions of his own brother, who alerted the FBI, that he was eventually caught (Blauner 2009).
Ethically and legally this was of course the correct thing to do, but emotionally it was difficult to ‘betray’ a brother.
Pets are undoubtedly considered part of the family, and consequently the way we feel about their loyalty illustrates the
emotion. Our relationship with animals is complex, fraught and currently under-theorized – though expanding (see Franklin
1999; Haraway 2008). What is becoming clear is that we need to consider the role animals, or non-human species, play in
our emotional lives. As Nickie Charles (2014:725) notes, reporting on a large research project into people’s experience of
pets: ‘Animals were sometimes found to be better at being family than were human animals; they were “more family than
family” and the emotional bond was experienced as stronger and more enduring than that with some human family
members’. It is hard to clinically engage the question of animals and loyalty. Does a dog really experience something akin
to what we feel on seeing their owner return after a break? Is it a pack membership mentality that compels dogs to defend
their owners, a deep genetic need to be part of the group? Or can we understand a dog’s, and indeed some other animals,
behaviour as loyalty? Despite posing these questions, I am not going to attempt to answer them. What is relevant to our
experience of companion animals is the belief we have that they share our emotional bonds, and consequently their impact
on our lives.
The ‘loyal hound’ is a trope of literature and popular culture. Bobby of Greyfriars Churchyard in Edinburgh was reputed
to have guarded his master’s grave for 14 years, Fido of Borgo San Lorenzo, Italy, went to and from a bus stop for 15 years
waiting for a dead owner to return. Waghya was the hound of warrior King Shivaji Bhonsle (1630–1680), credited with
founding the Maratha Empire, and upon the King’s death, was reputed to have thrown himself upon the funeral pyre – the
ultimate self-sacrifice. Hachikō would return to the Shibuya train station in Japan for a decade, waiting for his owner
(examples drawn from Brottman 2014). All of these dogs have statues in their honour, and they are not alone – with statues
to loyal dogs standing across the globe. However, perhaps these deeds are more about the food, affection and attention the
animals received – training them into patterns of behaviour that we interpreted as loyal, but in reality, merely meet Ivan
Pavlov’s criteria. What matters is our interpretation of the animals’ actions, and our ascription of emotionality to them, as
Clinton Sanders (1993:211) notes, owners ‘routinely used their day-to-day experience with their dogs to define their
animals as minded social actors’. The succour we draw from a pet’s affection, love and indeed loyalty is what matters here.
Our projection of loyalty onto animals gives an insight into the meaning of the emotion for us.
Our view that animals reciprocate our loyalty is fundamental to the sense that they belong with us and can be part of our
family. We ascribe the same loyalty to companion animals that we have with family members. It is telling that the species-
barrier is no barrier to emotional interaction. The loyal and faithful dog – we know the animal will be there for us, follow
our commands and react with a set of behaviours we feel are loyalty. It is of course not loyalty that the animal returns – but
we need to imagine that it is. Consequently, this shows how our internal experience of emotion does not need to be
matched. We feel the loyalty, the animal does not. Our embedded, repeated interactions with our companion animals
affirms our emotional life with them, as Charles points out ‘connectedness was created rather than given; it was
constructed through interaction with a particular animal and was often attributed to the actions of that animal’ (Charles
2014:723). This imagined shared feeling is a neat passionate trick that serves our needs for connection. We feel better from
that belief that our dog shares our loyalty.
Broadening our discussion of loyalty to connections we have at the meso level, these loyalties are typically to
organisations or groups, some we can choose, but more often we are socialised into these groupings from early on.
Sporting loyalty provides a rich example of how loyalty inheres to an institution or non-human entity whilst being mediated
via interactions with representatives of that loyalty (e.g. players) and other people who share the loyalty – the fan
base/supporters. Our loyalty to a team is connected to its colours, jersey and history. We attend games, debate the merits of
performance on Monday mornings, engage in social media fan groups and reminisce about great games lost and won. The
identification with the team provides a sense of who we are and how we should act, especially in the domain of sport and
interaction with other fans – be it my team supporters or supporters of our oldest foes. The legendary rivalry between
Glasgow football teams Rangers and Celtic shows how sporting loyalty, especially when bound with religious connections
drives conflict (Wilson 2012). Thus, our sense of loyalty comes about via the team we support engaging in actions, playing
the game, signing the autograph, celebrating the wins and apologising for the defeats. Our interactions, based on our team
loyalty, then affirm our connection to the team. Debating the minutiae of the cut and thrust of Arsenal defeating
Manchester United 1–0 with an opposing supporter provides that sense of belonging – and of the ‘other’ that loyalty
requires, a competing claimant upon our connection and fealty. Sport loyalty shows how we hope that there will be a
reciprocity in the future, a return upon our commitment to supporting a team. This manifests via the anticipation of success
– a championship win and the consequent emotional catharsis the fan receives after the roller coaster of feelings during the
key games of a season or campaign.
The discussion of close loyalties illustrates how emotion is about the actor’s feelings projected onto the world, especially
when it came to pets. Our family connections are hard to escape, and provide the prototypical loyalty – that construction of
the emotion that all other types or layers of loyalty are measured against. Family is a source of loyalty conflict, with
betrayal being the ever-present risk. Sporting loyalty highlights how we gain a sense of connection from our feelings and
can share that loyalty – but only when there is a competitor to that loyalty.

Commercialised loyalty – feeling the money

Perhaps the oddest loyalties we maintain are those to our workplace. Our employer seeks to extract the most labour from
us and developing a strong sense of loyalty is seen as a key means of emotional manipulation to achieve this. The business,
management and leadership popular literature advises how to build this feeling by providing a sense of belonging,
importance and perks to make the employee feel special and embedded (e.g. Ng and Feldman, 2009 and see also Masakure
2016 for a review of loyalty and employment). From the employer this is a financial equation – provide some sense that the
organisation cares for staff, then extract that loyalty as required through commitments such as overtime, unpaid work and
extra duty (Drizin and Schneider 2004; Brown et al. 2011). The trappings of connections, uniforms, team/group names,
construed performance competitions – all these are geared to creating a feeling of belonging – and consequently loyalty. A
tribal workforce is seen as a positive one. Conversely, the cynical, or perhaps realistic, employee can feign a loyalty to the
organisation (Carbone 1997). Mimicking the contractual agreement of a certain level of work offered for commensurate
remuneration. Of all motivators that employers use, the manipulation of emotion is the most nefarious. While all work is
emotional work (Hochschild 1983), drawing on our vulnerabilities of identity and connection and creating workplace loyalty
can be problematic. Loyalty denotes the expectation of a future connection and recompense. Employers desire the greatest
output now, with little real thought to the future. Organisations take advantage of the identity affirming components of
work and our loyalty to the job to garner further commitment.
The stock lamentation of some is that worker loyalty is ‘dead’ in our current age. This critique typically argues that
workers now no longer have a commitment to a workplace, switch jobs too quickly, refuse to put in the ‘hard time’ in a job
and demand promotion or better benefits too soon. Those that promulgate the view that occupational loyalty is declining
usually point to the changing nature of the workplace as an explanation, Richard Sennett (1997:170–171) argued that ‘in
the emerging political economy, as people increasingly do shifting, task-centered jobs, loyalties to institutions diminish’.
Global consulting firm Deloitte offers advice to employers saying that: ‘It’s not too late to earn Millennials’ loyalty’ (Deloitte
2016). It is not coincidental that these attacks tend to overlap with problematic gross generalisations based on
generational cohort effects. Often it is the so called millennial or Y generation being compared unfavourably with the
boomer generation (e.g. Finn and Donovan for PWC 2013). Not surprisingly those levelling such attacks are more likely to
be boomer employers. However, the very idea of the Halcyon days of worker loyalty are myth. There was a small cohort of
typically white, male, working class, unionised employees in the western industrialised nations that this idea applied to. It
had little relevance to marginalised, casualised workers who did not fit that mould. Thus we can interrogate this myth and
its purpose as a construed ideal type of loyalty, created by the class of employers and designed to create guilt within
workers to then prompt greater attachment. Secondly, the trope of ‘dis-loyal’ worker serves to allow employers to reduce
their own commitment to staff, in terms of salary, benefits and the assumption of long term employment and progression.
In effect, the employer is admitting that the reciprocity component of loyalty is no longer there. If a future return cannot be
relied upon, then it is inevitable that work loyalty will wane – with both parties being foolish if they rely on loyalty.
One approach to creating staff loyalty is epitomised by the way Silicon Valley companies work with ‘campuses’ that
provide exercise, leisure and sustenance, all enclosed within architecturally designed areas to promote wellbeing,
creativity and collaboration (Steiber and Alänge 2016). Some employers, typically highly demanding, white collar,
intellectual/creative work domains, have attempted to renew the loyalty agreement with staff by creating an environment
that maintains their physical presence, and consequently mental and emotional energy. On the surface, these appear to
offer that loyalty reciprocity to staff, that sense of being cared for, of mattering to the firm. Of course, the corporate
strategy is also about extracting the most productivity from staff – and staff who rarely need to leave their workplace
(perhaps only for sleep, but even then, not always) are seen to be more productive. For the worker in such an environment,
it’s all encompassing nature is reminiscent of Erving Goffman’s (1961/1991) classic total institution (an institutional
structure highly efficient at stripping then rebuilding identity and therefore commensurate loyalties (Connor 2010)). This
structure is more effective because the worker chooses to be part of the institutionalisation process as they see such value
in being an employee of the organisation. As Susie Scott (2010) notes, building on Goffman, this refashioning institution is
very effective because of the willingness of the employee to undergo the transformation. The construction of workspaces
that explicitly blur the home-work-leisure trio of Goffman (1961/1991) is an attempt by these firms to provide a conducive
environment to over-identification and loyalty.
Albert O. Hirschman’s (1970) classic argument in Exit, Voice and Loyalty offers us an explanation for the value of loyalty
to an employer. Hirschman posits that loyalty promotes voice over exit. That is, an employee who is loyal is more likely to
speak up and try and achieve change then they are to exit. Thus, loyalty acts as a break on quitting an organisation
because of trouble. Indeed, it makes sense that an employee who cares and has a sense of meaning and identification with
an organisation has more invested and will attempt to remedy a circumstance before just quitting (Sweetman 2001).
However, when is that loyalty to an organisation a detriment to it and the person? James Krantz (2006:222) makes a bold
claim: ‘My central hypothesis is that betrayal is an essential element of leadership and organizational change’ – thus the
key ability of a good leader is to manufacture loyalty, so that you can maintain worker engagement until the moment they
are no longer required – and thus betrayed. The apocryphal human resource manager making themselves redundant, last,
after firing everyone else in the company illustrates this type of loyalty.
Professional loyalty is different from generic work loyalty because of the ‘club’ membership component with the difficulty
of entry making our feeling of loyalty stronger. Those professions such as a medical doctor, pharmacist or astrophysicist,
provide a strong identity formation and maintenance aspect, that loyalty mimics. It is fair to posit that the difficulty, cost
and length of time you must commit to achieving membership creates a comparable level of loyalty for most professionals
(MacDonald 1995). Power, encapsulated in the control of knowledge, combined with secondary social and legislated
privilege cements the role particular professions have with society. The loyalty we have to a profession must, as a
component, have the reward of power and influence in it.

Conclusion
As we continue to engage with the everyday, lived components of our social life – work, sporting fandom, religion and
family – interactional rituals serve as emotional energy to maintain our connections. We are embedded via the ritual of on-
going doing and feeling. Loyalty scripts these interactions for us at all levels, from micro to macro interactions. Our
loyalties direct how we make choices – or to phrase it another way, loyalty scaffolds the choices we can make during
particular interactions. The examples of national loyalty illustrate this. We have particular rituals associated with our
national loyalty, we uphold these during specific events (such as remembrance or independence days) by engaging in those
practices such as anthems, parades and flag waving. Thus our loyalty to a particular thing, frames how we should act and
feel in certain circumstances. It is the same for sporting loyalties – if you wish to be a loyal fan you need to interact in
particular ways with the team, other supporters and foes to affirm your connection, belonging and consequently identity as
a fan. Loyalty is an emotion of interaction that gives us a sense of who we are. These interactions are based on our past
activities and loyalty – thus we re-enact the patriotic loyalty script each time we attend a memorial day. The suite of
emotions we felt then are pre-scripted into the current interaction. Thus, loyalty frames current feelings based on past
feeling.
We are also forced to choose between loyalties at times, with a clear hierarchy of choice imposed upon us, with an
increasing personal cost to defying loyalty. The family is our first loyalty, and betraying that loyalty is a deeply difficult
thing for many, even though we had no initial choice about that connection. The architecture of family life, parents,
siblings, partners and children inevitably means that at times our loyalty to one member will be pitted against another. This
is the primal loyalty conflict and one that is almost inescapable because of the social obligations wrapped around the
concept of ‘family’. Our daily existence is tied to our family, thus familial loyalty is the most common and on-going
simmering loyalty we have – always poised to guide our actions. The next most compelling layer is national loyalty, with our
country calling on us, right or wrong, to support it. The conflict component of loyalty emerges here when we are forced to
choose between loyalties – do you submit to conscription for war against the wishes of your family? As loyalty is a feeling
that we rely on for future interaction, having it betrayed at a later point is a constant risk – we cannot be sure it will be
returned. That betrayal, inevitably leads to conflict.
Curiously, we gain a particular insight into our emotional existence and loyalty in particular by exploring how we
understand the ‘loyalty’ of our pets. While animals cannot experience loyalty as we understand it, we ascribe loyalty to
their actions. This illustrates the connection and interactive components of loyalty and our expectation of a return on our
feeling. Undoubtedly, we feel better imagining that a companion animal feels loyalty to us. The loyalty we build with
companion animals shows how we feel the emotion – one of interaction, assumed returned feelings and reciprocity. We
must imagine, and indeed fool ourselves, that the other person or animal does indeed return the passion we feel.
The loyalties of choice, such as sporting fandom and workplaces, illustrate how we engage in activities that provide
identity-forming interactions, mediated via our feelings. By being loyal we gain membership of a group that affirms our
existence and gives us meaning and reason for action – such as debating how the referee cost our beloved football team the
game on the weekend. The manufactured loyalties of work, and the vexed question of how ‘real’ the feeling is when we
engage in it via a commercial process (such as an employment contract), shows that feeling, even ‘created’ has real effects.
Workplace loyalty does motivate an employee, but not always in predictable ways, as that loyalty may be to the ‘old guard’
of how things used to be. Further, that loyalty is always at risk of betrayal as an organisation never feels, it only needs to
exploit.
The most fascinating component of our loyalties is how we use them to make us feel better about the future based on our
past interactions. Loyalty is an emotion enacted in the present with a hope of a future return on that activity – hence the
expectation that a family member will ‘have your back’ if you ever need it. The betrayal and consequent disloyalty we fear
arises because loyalty is not reciprocated at some point in the future. This leads to the conflict that arises from loyalty
betrayed. The sting in the tail of loyalty as a passion is that we need that risk of disloyalty, for without a threat to our
loyalty, however unrealistic, we cannot be loyal.

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3 Dignity
An exploration of dignity’s role and meaning in daily life
Barbara A. Misztal

Introduction
The notion of human dignity is a wide-ranging, difficult and elusive concept, which has a long history,
broad cross-cultural resonance and intuitive power. Its growing prominence within legal, philosophical,
ethical, religious, moral and public discourses has established dignity as the fundamental feature of
democratic society and hence as one of ‘the principal achievements of modern man’ (Berger 1970:346).
The notion of dignity, as a normative force behind our rights to equal treatment, thus as something that
can be assaulted and lost and therefore requiring legal or state protection, can be found in many
international documents, charters and declarations, from the UN Universal Declaration of Human
Rights to the agenda of health and social care. The universal and unconditional meaning of the term can
also be found in debates in political science and forums on justice, social movements and
democratization, all of which provide a space for the condemnation of any threat to and abuse of dignity
as well as for protests against dignity violations and reports on people’s experiences of the loss of
dignity as a result of terrible humiliation.
Apart from this dominant use of the notion of dignity as the ground for human rights, there is also the
view of dignity as ‘tranquillity in suffering’ (Schiller quoted in Rosen 2012:11). In this stoical notion of
dignity, human dignity is seen as rested on an inviolable independence from the world. Therefore, one’s
dignity cannot be violated even by inhumane treatment. For example, while telling tragic stories of
leaving Aleppo, the city ruined by years of bombardment, many people reported that they ‘couldn’t take
anything except dignity’ (Graham-Harrison 2016). In this approach, the inherent dignity and worth of
human persons capable of independence from the external world is seen as the value that we cannot be
deprived of, even in horrific circumstances.
While these two uses of the concept of dignity are the main ones, for the sake of completeness, we
must mention that dignity had different meanings in antiquity, the Roman and Renaissance traditions,
and in theological texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Kateb 2011). For example, in contrast to the
restrictive Roman meaning associating dignity to office, status and rank, in the Enlightenment period a
universal and unconditional meaning of the notion was prominent (Iglesias 2001). However, while the
Enlightenment defined dignity in universal terms, Romantics interpreted dignity in particularistic terms
(as that property accompanying individuals in their guest for their own original way of being). The
continuous debates on the meaning of the term and enquiries whether the idea of dignity is inferior to
such notions as autonomy, rights, respect and equality are still part of changing interpretations of ways
of defining this phenomenon in recent philosophical and legal works (Dworkin 2006; Habermas 2010;
Kateb 2011; Waldron 2007). However, even these recent attempts have been incapable of establishing a
common understanding of this idea, which still remains an ‘intuitive notion that is by no means utterly
clear’ (Nussbaum 2011:29). What is more, the works concerned with the concept of dignity as the
general notion to ground human rights do not pose any questions about the role of dignity in daily life,
or about the nature of emotions connected with respect for or abuse of human dignity in everyday life.
This absence of any interest in the connection between the idea of dignity and emotions in daily life
can be explained to some degree by the fact that despite its prominence in the legal rights discourse
and despite claims that dignity is something that is familiar and intimately felt, something we all ‘yearn
for’ (Hicks 2011:5), dignity is not a word that comes up frequently in the context of daily conversations.
On rare occasions when the word dignity is used in daily language, it tends to be employed in vague,
intuitive ways (Nussbaum 2008). Moreover, if it is referred to, it is rather not at all by itself but mainly
by its close association with related notions such as respect, status, worth and fairness. The appeal to
dignity in the everyday context, with its talks about dignity in terms of ‘being dignified’ and suggestions
of bearing yourself in a socially respectable way, is different than the ethical emphasis on the fact it is
morally wrong to treat that person in certain ways. Since dignity can have many appeals, meanings and
can be used in so many contexts, the notion of dignity cannot be employed ‘as if it were an intuitively
self-evident and solid foundation for a theory that would then be built upon it’ (Nussbaum 2011: 29).
Thus, to make analysis of dignity at all manageable, I shall not refer to dignity as a general concept
underlying all human conditions or capabilities. Instead of debating the content of human dignity, the
conceptual status of human dignity in its relationship to human rights and the tensions between the
legal and moral dimensions and the question of morality and ethics as substantive issues, I shall focus
here on the role of dignity as a principle which describes worth of human beings that forms the basis
for the respect of others in everyday life.
In this chapter, I will be concerned with the usage of human dignity as a principle in everyday daily
life to indicate a certain type of treatment. In the first part I shall debate the legacy of Immanuel Kant’s
idea that possessing reason makes human beings equal and that reason, not emotion, is the ground for
our moral respect for humans as moral agents. Then, after discussing the contribution of Martha
Nussbaum’s (2011) capabilities-based approach to the debate about whether dignity can rest on reason
alone, I shall turn to sociological input to analyse the usage of dignity as emotion implicated in
encounters with others and in our self-respect in daily life. In the final part of this chapter, since not
much of sociological insight is available on this topic, I will be relying on works of fiction as an
indispensable starting point to help us intuitively grasp what gives dignity the emotionally unique
status.

Can dignity rest solely on rational power of mind?

Since the ‘dignity’ term’s conceptual history and its numerous meanings have been already discussed in
details by many authors (see, e.g., Duwell et al. 2014; Misztal 2012; Rosen 2012; Kateb 2011;
Habermas 2010; Waldron 2007), I will limit myself here to a presentation of the most relevant duality in
the usage of the notion of human dignity in the context of emotions in daily life. It is vital that we bring
both emotions and reason within ambit of dignity as these two variables are not only critical to the
essence of being human, but they are crucial within the remit and terms of references to the question of
the location of human dignity. The tension between reason and passion in ethical life was addressed by
Immanuel Kant (1991), the major theorist of dignity, who denied that emotions can play any positive
role in moral agency and saw them as intruding on rationality. He located dignity in humanity’s common
capacity for conferring value on things by rational choice.
Influenced by the Stoics’ idea of the dignity of human persons as based on humanity’s rational
perspective, Kant rooted dignity in the faculty of reason and viewed it as a sign of end in oneself. In
contrast to David Hume’s view that reason is always subordinate to feelings, Kant’s doctrine of dignity
rests on respect for the rational powers of human beings (Rosen 2012). Dignity, as Kant’s categorical
imperative, is ‘the intrinsic, non-negotiable non-fungible worth that inheres in very human being’
(Waldron 2007:209), who all universally possess and are ends in themselves. For Kant dignity is
different from emotions such as love, sympathy or compassion as these feelings are moral sentiments
that draw us closer to some people than others, while ‘the reason we must respect the dignity of
persons has nothing to do with anything particular about them’ (Sandel 2009:123). Moreover, emotions
connected with caring about others have to do with who they are in particular, while the Kantian
principle of dignity calls for respect for humanity as such, for universal and rational capacity that
resides in all of us.
From the point of view of Kant’s categorical imperative, which demands that we always treat people
as an end in themselves, and which views dignity as an absolute inner value all human beings possess,
rationality and morality are closely connected: the fact of possessing reason justifies treatment as an
end-in-itself, not as a mere instrument to the purposes of others (Nussbaum 2013). Thus, for example, it
is not right to follow our feeling of compassion as such because our concern for other person’s feelings
might lead us to use her as a means to her own contentment rather than to recognition of her as a
rational being worthy of respect (Sandel 2009). For Kant, ‘justice requires itself to uphold the human
rights of all persons, regardless of where they live or how well we know them, simply because they are
human beings, capable of reason, and therefore of respect’ (Sandel 2009:123). It explains why the
Kantian principle of dignity ‘lends itself to doctrines of universal human rights’ (Sandel 2009:123).
Seeing reason as the foundation of dignity, Kant (1991:255) asserts that ‘humanity itself is a dignity; for
a man cannot be used merely as a means by any man … but must be used at the same time as an end’.
There is a general consensus that Kant’s approach offers the understanding of the notion of dignity
that is essential for the universalization of human rights. For example, both Jeremy Waldron (2007) and
Jürgen Habermas (2010) recognize the role of Kant’s approach in the discourse of human rights and in
the rational construction of morality. However, they do not assume that it was solely reason that has
brought the universalization of rights and this allows them to recognize dignity in terms of both our
universality and our singularity. Dignity is the most important value that stipulates that when a person’s
dignity is not respected, what is challenged is the universal rights and also the reality of his or her
existence for others (Waldron 2007:213). Thus, the idea of dignity refers both to ‘the individual right to
personality’ (Flechter quoted in Cotterrell 2011:9) and to ‘the importance of others’ lives’ (Sweet and
Masciulli 2011:9). The term dignity brings to our attention that others ‘ought to recognize’ the value of
the person and that we cannot ignore the significance of conveying worth and respect to others (Sweet
and Masciulli 2011:9, italics in original). Such a definition of dignity in terms of universality and
singularity adds to the rationally constructed universalist moral order an element of concern for the
plight of others, which itself is the ‘essential and valuable reminders of our common humanity’
(Nussbaum 2004:7).
Martha Nussbaum (2006:53), who places the notion of dignity in the centre of her capability theory
and argues that ‘all human beings ought to acknowledge and respect the entitlement of others to live
lives commensurate with human dignity’, accepts the legacy of Kant’s idea of dignity. However, while
drawing on the Stoic-Kantian notion of dignity, she moves beyond ascribing dignity on the basis of
rationality. Nussbaum (2013:395) observes that reason alone cannot provide the foundation of dignity
and as emotions, such as compassion, pity, grief and anger, are ‘in that sense essential and valuable
reminders of our common humanity’. Thus, in order to adequately ground dignity, we need to
understand the role of emotions in shaping morals, seen as making a real difference to the nature of
society, as well as to recognize the importance of material life and resources in the creation of the basis
for moral discourse. By pointing out that the focus on rational capacities as the ground for being
ascribed dignity leaves some of the most vulnerable people without rights protection and excludes non-
humans, Nussbaum employs the notion of dignity to extend capability entitlements to people with
disabilities and to animals. What matters for us here is that Nussbaum brings to our attention the role
of emotions and therefore moves away from Kant’s idea of dignity founded on universal reason. As
reason and emotions are not opposed and values and emotions go to make up knowledge, Nussbaum
(2011) suggests that the notion of dignity cannot be grounded solely in rationality and that the value of
dignity of human life does not only spring from the faculty of reason, but it also invokes emotions.
For Nussbaum (2013), emotions, such as compassion for loss, anger at injustice, forgiveness and
inclusive sympathy, play an essential role in determining the quality and stability of political culture.
According to her, any society that aspires to justice and equal opportunity for all needs to cultivate
emotions that engender and sustain strong commitment to worthy projects that require effort and
sacrifice. As we are all emotionally vulnerable, we should protect ourselves against humiliation,
unfairness and disrespectful treatment by encouraging sentiments of sympathy and love (Nussbaum
2013). In this context, the idea of dignity is ‘a right idea because it suggests equal intrinsic worth and
being objects of equal respect – but we should be aware of using dignity as if it were an intuitively self-
evident notion’ (Nussbaum 2011:29). Dignity is connected with respect, which – if ‘it is nourished by
imaginative engagement with the lives of others and by an inner grasp of their full and equal humanity’
– ensures the inclusion of all citizens on terms of equality (Nussbaum 2013:380).
Nussbaum (2013) suggests that dignity gets its full clarity only from the whole system of which it is a
part, thus the importance of emotions. For example, the motivational role of emotions can be seen in
the context of a horrific disaster, as surviving a great tragedy requires love and compassion. In such a
situation, if people are being asked to heal one another’s wounds caused by traumatic and tragic
events, respect for human dignity is important, but they also need stronger motivation which can be
only provided by such emotions as love, compassion and other fellow feelings (Nussbaum 2013:281).
These essential healing bonds of trust, loving, and caring about people who are in particular situations
or because there is something singular about them are unlike Kantian notion of dignity which is respect
for humanity as such, ‘for rational capacity that resides, undifferentiated in all of us’ (Sandel 2009:123).
To sum up so far, Nussbaum’s position differs from the Kantian view that ultimately grounds dignity in
rationality as it suggests that reason alone cannot suffice as the foundation of dignity. Thus, her
capability approach, in the centre of which is the idea of dignity as a principle to respect human beings
in their possibility to live appropriately, opens a gate to debates of connections between dignity and
emotions. What’s more, Nussbaum not only selects which emotions are appropriate, that is, on which
emotions dignity should rest. Additionally, in her normative argument emotions play a double role as the
basis of dignity-ascriptions and as the guarantor of dignity: first she grounds our dignity in our common
emotional vulnerability, and then she concludes that some emotions should protect us from any violation
of our dignity.

How does dignity invoke emotions?

The current research on the relationship between morality and emotions is dominated by psychology,
neuroscience and philosophy, while sociological input is not visible. Yet the founders of sociology had a
deep interest in the problems of morality and ethics. It was classical sociology’s view of the notion of
dignity as the underlying essence of what constitutes ‘the moral’ which made the notion of dignity ‘to
appear more rounded, more substantive and more relevant to the human condition in all its historical
specificity’ (Hodgkiss 2013:417). In contrast to the philosophers who perceived dignity as an innate
ability of human begins, the classical sociologists were interested in the fate of the individual in an
industrial society and in dignity as the moral foundation of such a society. Their idea of dignity as the
essential vehicle of morality in modern society was informed by historical and cultural specificity. They
have also brought to our attention the role of the economic nature of society in determining people’s
freedom, autonomy, and thus, also dignity. For instance, Karl Marx stressed that human dignity is
undermined by capitalism and bourgeois morality and that the protection of dignity, or respect for this
right that we possess by virtue of being human, requires the supersession of capitalist social relations
(Cotterrell 2011:6–10).
Classical sociology’s interpretation of dignity as an essential element of moral cohesion and its
emphasis on autonomy and freedom as well as material and institutional conditions as the prerequisites
of dignity, have established the importance of this phenomenon for the process of change. Yet, despite
the recognition of the importance of dignity in all types of struggles against injustice, social
disintegration and domination, the only empirical study of dignity in modern sociology are ones which
focused on dignity at work. Such investigations, while recognizing the role of both subjective and
objective conditions for dignity at various work places, explore how people establish self-worth and
show how threats to dignity invoke emotions of self-depreciation, feelings of indignity and humiliation.
For example, both Randy Hodson’s (1996) Dignity at Work and Michelle Lamont’s (2000) The Dignity of
Working Men show how workers establish their sense of self and how they earn dignity through their
actions. Hodson’s (1996) idea of dignity, as the ability to gain a sense of self-respect and to enjoy the
respect of others, refers to the inherent worth as well as to the dignity that people achieve through
their actions. Lamont’s (2000:248) comparative study focuses on ‘the preservation of dignity, that is, of
a space for expressing one’s competence and identity’. In The Hidden Injuries of Class, Richard Sennett
and Jonathan Cobb (1972) came very close to viewing the harm to workers’ dignity, which was felt a
very shameful feeling, as hidden injuries suffered by the workers. Sennett, in his later book Respect
(Sennett 2003), says that the recognition of dignity in others grants dignity to us and autonomy to both
parties. Since granting autonomy is ‘accepting in the other what you do not understand’ (Sennett
2003:124), the provision of autonomy not only ‘dignifies the weak or the outsider’, but it also – in turn –
‘strengthens one’s own character’ (Sennett 2003:162).

Dignity and emotions in everyday life

These studies of dignity at work, while pointing to the importance of respect, autonomy and freedom,
show us the fundamental role of resources and institutions for the construction of conditions for
recognition of human dignity. At the same time, these types of investigations illustrate the difficulties in
distinguishing between the idea of dignity and the notion of respect, thus their concept of dignity is
rather too vague to specify this phenomenon’s relation to emotions. Therefore, to bring to our attention
that dignity involves emotions in ways that human rights do not, there is a need to study dignity also in
the context of everyday life. Although in daily usage dignity tends be seen as the background condition
or atmosphere rather than the principle referred to as an inherent value of human beings, nonetheless,
‘yearning for a dignified lifestyle’ is a part of the everyday experience (Lefebvre 1984:29). Because of
the lack of sociological investigation of experiences of dignity in daily encounters with others, I shall
refer to works of fiction which can offer examples of people’s reliance on dignity to live a meaningful
life and provide illustrations of dignified lifestyles as well as abusive to dignity types of behaviour.
While in sociological and philosophical studies dignity gets its importance mainly by being related to
such notions as respect, recognition and human rights, works of fiction seem to suggest that the
importance of dignity is connected with the fact that it is in the centre of our ability for self-growth. For
example, a painter, the protagonist in Gabriel Josipovici’s (1988) novel Contre-Jour, explains what it
means for him living by art: ‘it’s to do with dignity. With making the most of what you are given, this is
the only kind of dignity’. He adds that for him, dignity does not mean ‘being dignified’, but it ‘has to do
with growth’. The perspective which associates dignity with our self-growth and its importance for our
sense of what we are up to, comes close to Nussbaum’s (2000:88) grounding of her capability list in the
notion of dignity. Placing dignity in the core of capabilities, seen as freedoms to achieve something,
offers, however, only a very vague criteria for selection of goals, principles for achievement, satisfaction
or meaningful action.
This vagueness is well reflected in the novels discussed below, which all suggest that dignity is
important, but it cannot count for everything and that in everyday life it is sometimes exchanged for, or
at least compared with, other values. In these works of fiction, dignity’s ambivalences are pointed out
by presenting dignity as being both a significant factor for making a life respectable and as a barrier for
impulses, desires, pleasures and emotions. These novels, while portraying their protagonists in the
process of making less or more dignified choices, depict dignity in everyday life as being negotiated and
exchanged for other values and feelings. After less than dignified action, their heroes, as for example,
one of the main characters in Kinsley Amis’s (1987) The Old Devils, ‘acknowledged that there was not
much dignity about any of this, again it was hard to see a remedy’.
The awareness that dignified life demands appropriate decisions is well illustrated in Anita
Brookner’s (2002) novel The Next Big Thing, in which the word dignity appears more than thirty times.
Its hero, Julius, is a retired, lonely man whose life ‘has failed to yield the ultimate satisfaction’. Despite
being ruled by habits and passive conformism, Julius unexpectedly falls in love with a new young
neighbour. His love leads him ‘down some undignified paths: he entertains notions that were almost
“ludicrous”’. Julius, confronted by a choice to follow the compelling impulse or to stick to his ‘more or
less dignified path’, realizes that any ‘decision will be dearly bought’ (Brookner 2002). When accidently
his love became known to and rejected by his young neighbour, he accepted his defeat as ‘honourable’
but ‘felt sadness, even shame, certainly regret but also felt as if his part had been written for him’
(Brookner 2002). At the same time, he wondered how ‘much honour he had wrested from his
experiences’. Being unable to retrieve some dignity from the experience, Julius ‘tried to revive the
anger he had felt’ (Brookner 2002).
The awareness, that it is impossible to find balance between costs of the renunciation of numbing
routines and gains from an uncertain prospect of new emotional experience, comes also with the
realization that emotions and dignity do not proceed easily together. The protagonist of Brookner’s
(2002) novel is aware that feelings and dignified behaviour rarely come together, thus he recognizes
that pursuing love is ‘ludicrous’ and remarks that ‘the dignified and untroubled woman’ is one who is
‘unfamiliar with emotions’. Yet, Julius is not willing to accept that ‘pleasure’ or ‘desires’ are not
important as he – ‘even now, at this late stage’ – finds them liberating. ‘Now he was conscious of one
thing, and one thing only: “pleasure”, and its lack’ (Brookner 2002). In other words, he not only defends
his right to make his own choice about whether to behave with dignity or not, but he also emphasizes
the importance of emotions in such a decision.
Unsurprisingly, when Josie, his ex-wife, to preserve dignity decided not to follow her desire for love,
Julius thinks: ‘Her decision was heroic, but I think wrong’ (Brookner 2002). Josie thinks that she
protected herself from: ‘Humiliation, perhaps’, as she ‘still has her dignity’ (Brookner 2002). Julius
admires her courage to reject uncertainty of love and her opting for her dignity, the kind of dignity that
had recently ‘deserted him and left him an uncertain prospect of gain’. At the same time, he confesses:
‘I know how unwelcome one’s dignity can be’ (Brookner 2002).
The idea of ‘dignified life’ as standing for ‘most simple and most ordinary, and therefore most terrible’
life can also be found in Lev Tolstoy’s (1886/2013) The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Ilyich’s life had been
dignified one as ‘he behaved with dignity both to his superiors and inferiors, and performed the duties
entrusted to him’. Yet, although Ivan’s ‘attitude of rather dignified aloofness’ with which he climbed the
social ladder did not cause much harm to others, it did not connect him with others and marked his life
as being non-authentic (Tolstoy 1886/2013). Also, Julius, a hero of Brookner’s (2002) novel, feels that
demands of ‘dignified life’ means subsuming his needs to the requirements of others and experiencing
servitude and loneliness. As Julius’s life ‘had been an obscure life, dignified by a sort of loyalty’, he feels
threatened by the emptiness of his ‘dignified life’. His conformism and unselfishness, as he is always
‘trying to make things better’, resembles the character of the butler in Kazuo Ishiguro’s (2010) novel
The Remains of the Day, who – like Julius – is assigned as his life’s work ‘making things better for
others’ (Brookner 2002, italics in original). The demands to lead a ‘dignified life’, to behave ‘impeccably
and always in a dignified manner’ and to pay ‘bills on time and in full, tips well, looking out for others’
(Brookner 2002) are much stronger experienced in later life. Moreover, ‘as marriage, even a defunct
marriage, conferred a certain dignity on a woman’, the pressure for conformity affects especially older
single women, for example, Julius’s ex-wife ‘was of an age when dignity counted: the single state,
despite all propaganda’ (Brookner 2002).
Dignity, as a type of manners in relations with others, separates us from other people not only
because of one’s rejection of emotions, but also because one’s dignified behaviour could prevent others
from sharing with us their emotions, such as love, pity, compassion or empathy. For example,
Frankenstein, a titled hero of Mary Shelley’s (1818/1994) novel, looking at a picture of his mother
grieving for her dead father, says that ‘there was an air of dignity and beauty that hardly permitted the
sentiment of pity’. Similarly, in Tolstoy’s (1886/2013) novel, dying Ivan ‘wished most of all (though he
would have been ashamed to confess it) for someone to pity him as a sick child is pitied’. He ‘longed to
be petted and comforted’, he ‘wanted to weep, wanted to be petted and cried over,’ but as he ‘knew he
was an important functionary’, he recognized ‘that therefore what he long for was impossible, but still
he longed for it’. Thus, instead he ‘would assume a serious, severe, and profound air, and by force of
habit’ would ‘stubbornly insist on his dignified status’ (Tolstoy 1886/2013).
After years of dutiful obedience, Julius, saddened by his life without emotions, remarks that ‘by dint of
good behaviour, by attention to duty and entirely in the interests of conformity, he had ended up
respectable, but not respected’ (Brookner 2002). The lesson he had learned was that dignity is a mixed
blessing as ‘dignity was important. But so was the impulse to get rid of it, as he knew from recent
awakening’ (Brookner 2002). Dignity is a double-edged sword because – although it is important – it
does not necessary add up to a meaningful life. Dignity’s mixed blessing status is also a result of the
fact that the accomplishment of its demands can lead to loneliness, while ‘a pagan world’ without
dignity could be ‘both liberating and disturbing’ (Brookner 2002). As the maintaining of dignity imposes
limitations on behaviour and ‘keeping one’s dignity is a lonely business’ Julius realizes: ‘how one longs
to let it go’ (Brookner 2002). As ‘dignity has little to do with the affections’ (Brookner 2002), the
preservation of dignity could result in a timid life without love.
In short, dignity is a mixed blessing as it can offer some protections, but it can also impose obstacles
to action and restrictions to emotions and contacts. Dignity, seen as behaving impeccably, confers a
certain status and establishes expectations of well-rehearsed habits which provide one with a feeling
that she lived rightly, however, it also separates one from more authentic feelings and connection with
others. Dignity, viewed as the principle behind self-growth and respect for others, demands courage,
striving for excellence, heroism and willingness to assume responsibilities for others. Probably in both
cases, one has sometimes to give up the joy of impulse, but maintaining dignity by preserving routines,
although ‘attracts respect if only of the kind that could be adequately remunerated’ (Brookner 2002),
can be seen as more restricted on freedom and one’s chance of ‘experiences that would confer fullness’
(Brookner 2002). Such an understanding, as Nick Jenkins, a hero of Anthony Powell’s (1975) A Dance to
the Music of Time, observes, comes: ‘Later in life’ as we ‘learnt that many things one may require have
to be weighed against one’s dignity, which can be an insuperable barrier against advancement in almost
any direction’.

Emotional responses to abuse of dignity

The idea that dignity is a mixed blessing is hidden in the philosophical perspective, where dignity is a
value which is ‘not to be traded off against other values’ (Waldron 2007:213). It is also obscured in
sociological studies in which dignity, defined by its connection with respect and recognition, is not seen
as limiting but rather as enhancing our choices. Social theorists, such as Axel Honneth (1995) and
Avishai Margalit (1996), who realize that ‘what love is in its own, narrowly circumscribed sphere,
respect is in the larger domain of human affairs’ (Arendt 1958:243), tend to define dignity by its
relations with respect and recognition. Yet their studies also show the connection between people’s
moral and emotional reactions to denial of the dignity of human life and suggest that in the public
sphere dignity is interpreted in negative terms as the avoidance of humiliation. According to Honneth
(1995:138), a struggle for equal respect, the key mode of recognition, is motivated by the experience of
being disrespected and can lead to progressive social change. Our dependence is always shaped by the
particular manner in which the mutual granting of recognition is institutionalized within a society, and
the fact that institutional and more informal standards of what constitutes due recognition have always
been subject to interpretation and even contestation (Honneth 1995). Since our capacity for self-respect
depends on how we experience being regarded by others, disrespect, which refers to a lack of respect
for the right of others to arrange their lives according to their own convictions and values, results in
feeling harm or injustice and can lead to social struggles, which may change demeaning social
standards of evaluation of people. The negative emotional reactions accompanying the experience of
disrespect represent, according to Honneth (1995:135) ‘precisely the affective motivational basis in
which the struggle for recognition is anchored’. For example, disrespect caused by the downgrading
person’s social esteem, injures people’s self-respect and entails negative emotions and consequences of
a process of historical change.
Honneth’s notion of disrespect shares some characteristics with Margalit’s (1996:143) idea of
humiliation, seen as the denial of respect by rejecting ‘the way a person expresses herself’. As we are
all entitled to respect and we all have a moral obligation to respect ‘other human beings as human’,
Margalit (2002:114) calls for the ‘politics of dignity’ to stop humiliation and to recognize people as
bearers of human dignity, which ‘unlike social hour, is not positional good’ and which ‘is supposed to be
accorded to everyone, even to the one who is nobody, by virtue of the most universal common
denominator of being human’. In other words, a lack of respect for human dignity implies the assault on
people’s reality and signifies a failure to see others as human beings. The above arguments, by
grounding humiliation, disrespect and experiences of abuse or threats to dignity in the recognition of
human dignity as an emotion implicated in basic rights, grant emotions some power to transform the
world.
How the painful experience of humiliation can lead to change tends to be conceptualized in two
different ways. Firstly, there is Bryan S. Turner’s (2006:9) argument that since our ‘misery is common
and uniform’, we share compassion, and it is this compassion that offers an ontological foundation for
human rights. Secondly, there is Jack Barbalet’s (1998:133) explanation of how emotions are implicated
in basic rights that stresses the role of strong negative emotions in the realization of human rights.
While Turner (2006) emphasizes that the capacity for suffering unites people and creates a significant
basis for universalism, Barbalet (1998) rejects Turner’s linking collective compassion with the universal
human emotional fragility and notes that not only sympathy but also other emotions, such as
resentment or anger, are motivating factors for social change.
The argument that emotional responses to abuses of dignity, from resentment to vengefulness, are
important factors leading to social change, has had many supporters through the whole history of
human thought. The persistent power of what Friedrich Nietzsche called ‘ressentiment’, has been
illustrated by Peter Sloterdijk (2010), according to whom the most global emancipatory projects are
motivated by ressentiment, rage, revenge and anger. Recently, the transformative potential of these
‘disagreeable passions of resentment’ (Adam Smith quoted in Barbalet 1998: 133) has been brought to
the surface by the emergence of populism around the globe. Today’s populist revolt could be viewed as
providing evidence that people’s ressentiment, seen as caused by ‘an intense mix of envy, humiliation
and powerlessness’ (Mishra 2016), brings political and social change. However, while maybe it is true
that there is some instrumental usefulness of anger and that anger is sometimes functional as a signal,
motivation and deterrent, we need to remember – as Nussbaum (2016) reminds us – that anger is not a
normatively appropriate emotion when we deal with harm to dignity. We need to keep in mind that with
anger comes the idea that it would be good if the wrongdoer be somehow punished, that ressentiment
is a central category of Nietzsche’s ‘slave morality’, and that anger does offer any projects for
constructive change. Thus, we should not rely on anger, ressentiment, or rage as answers to abuse of
dignity, as such emotions could threaten social solidarity and political liberties.

Conclusion
This chapter, while recognizing the relevance of the notion of dignity for human rights discourse and
many current dilemmas connected with bioethics, such as cell research, embryo protection, human
cloning, euthanasia as well as with the animal rights (Misztal 2012), has been concerned with the usage
of this idea within an everyday life context. By focusing on human dignity as a principle which
prescribes respect for oneself and others as fellow human beings and studying how in everyday life the
principle of dignity translates itself to emotions, it has tried to overcome this concept’s lack of
conceptual clarity, its ambivalences and openness to misinterpretation. The exploration of dignity as
emotion implicated in encounters with others and in our self-respect, exposes the tensions between
reason and feelings at the roots of the notion of dignity. The chapter has addressed these tensions by
questioning the power of a Kantian reason as the foundation of dignity. After agreeing with Martha
Nussbaum’s (2011) proposal for a move away from Kant’s idea of dignity being founded on universal
reason, the chapter has argued for the prominence of emotions in the context of ordinary life where the
principle of dignity is understood in terms of socially respectable ways in which others recognize us,
ways of treating others and ways of bearing yourself. By identifying, with the help of novels, cases
where love, desires or compassion were pointed one way and respect for dignity another, we showed
emotional bases of dignity as well as this notion’s ambivalences.
Investigations of the ways in which the dignity of human life and the moral impulse to be for the other
are practiced in ordinary life can enrich our understanding of the links between dignity and emotions.
Although sociology still lacks studies allowing us to fully grasp the importance of dignity and to
understand how people determine the defined standards of dignified behaviour, there is the growing
recognition of the importance of this phenomenon and the consensus that dignity demands institutions
devote to enhancing connections between dignity, rights, justice and democracy. Sociology, by shedding
lights on implications of people’s emotional encounters with others and on the enabling nature of the
institutional framework under in which individuals can cultivate respect for dignity in its universal and
singular meanings, could enrich our understanding of dignity.

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4 Compassion
Conflicted social feeling and the calling to care
Iain Wilkinson

Introduction
In real life settings and in the everyday flow of moral experience it is often difficult to pin down the
substance of our feelings. It might be argued, however, that compassion leaves us in no doubt of its
cause and motive. It is widely held to involve individuals in some distressing sensations that are derived
from a strong moral identification with an other’s pain. It is, moreover, often depicted not only as
particularly fiery and intense, but also, and more so as when compared to pity, sympathy and empathy,
as a feeling that motivates beneficent actions. It is a profoundly moral emotion. When gripped by
sentiments of compassion people are motivated to take actions to combat the pains borne through
suffering. In this respect, it has a prosocial orientation. Compassion has the effect of making individuals
deeply concerned to take actions on behalf of the safety, well-being and good of others. It is a motive
force in the basic acts of kindness and care that create and sustain human social life.
Compassion is a natural part of our most intimate relationships. It is experienced in the bonds of love
and affection of good family relationships. It takes root in the ties of friendship whereby we are made
duty bound to take care of one another. Compassion is also advanced as a public virtue, and there are a
range of institutional settings where it is actively cultivated on behalf of the good of society as a whole.
For example, it is championed as a desired attribute of health care professionals. Compassion is an
essential part of good nursing and of constructive physician-patient relationships. In the contexts of
health care, it is even considered to be an important part of the ‘emotional work’ that promotes healing
and recovery (Neff 2003). Compassion is also identified as a vital part of teaching practices that aim to
equip children with the self-confidence, courage and social skills to engage in effective learning. By
taking steps to create compassionate classrooms, teachers aim to provide pupils with environments that
nurture their social adaptability and personal resilience as well as conditions that equip them with life
skills to operate as good citizens (Markinek et al. 2006).
Beyond this, compassion is encountered in everyday life as a potent force in our politics, and
especially where these are concerned with matters of humanitarian social justice. An appeal to
compassion features large in campaigns for human and animal rights. Indeed, it is often heralded as the
primary motive for movements of progressive social change. For a long time now it has been widely
recognised that a cultural politics of compassion is a vital part of the arsenal deployed to convince
people to lend their support to humanitarian causes. Arguably the existence and influence of
organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières and
Oxfam bears testimony to the strength of its appeal (Berlant 2004). Indeed, such organisations operate
as a direct means for people to channel the moral feelings aroused in response to mediatized imagery of
the suffering of distant strangers into political action. Moreover, in taking note of the role played by
mass communication media in rendering the social world and its problems immediately visible to us on
a grand scale, commentators note that our political leaders frequently take great care to appear
compassionate when out in public. We are living in a time where many political debates appear to be
shaped more by the quality of people’s feelings towards others than by matters of sheer calculation or
rational principle (Ure and Frost 2014). In this context, individuals operating in the public domain must
be adept at displaying compassion whenever this is required from them. Plays on, and displays of,
compassion are now a routine part of the exercise of political power.
Compassion is also a hot topic of scholarly debate. This is connected to a widespread understanding
that it holds the potential to reveal some of the most elemental truths about human nature and the
moral character of human society (Nussbaum 1996). Questioning how individuals are liable to feel
compassion for others is taken as a means to engage in the attempt to understand both the moral
conditions that make for human well-being and those of society at large. It is further recognized as an
emotional disposition and form of experience that holds the potential to provide us with insights into
processes of human civilization that are the signature tune of modern identity and consciousness (King
2000). It is generally recognized, moreover, that in the twenty-first century we are witnessing a
significant heightening of many controversies associated with how we might denote the role of
compassion in social life and how we should assess its human value (Olasky 2000; Woodward 2002).
There are many contrasting points of view on how we should understand the conditions that either
heighten or attenuate compassionate sentiments. There is no agreement on what role compassion
should play in human affairs or on what this emotional experience does to us. Much dispute surrounds
the extent to which the active cultivation of compassion is desirable, or on how, if at all, this should take
place (Zembylas 2013).
In part this is connected to the ways in which emotions such as pity, sympathy and compassion are
understood to operate as enactments of power relations in which weaker and more vulnerable members
of society are dominated by institutionally over-privileged individuals. Here the ‘ideology of compassion’
is condemned on the grounds that it frequently operates as a form of class condescension or as a force
of Nietzschean ressentiment (Paley 2002). Some argue, moreover, that sentiments of compassion have a
tendency to short-circuit people’s capacity to think critically about the best ways to actively respond to
people’s suffering to a point that endangers democracy (Arendt 1963).
The controversies surrounding compassion are further connected to the ways in which it is now often
perceived to be left diminished or reduced to a state of exhaustion. It has become commonplace to
associate compassion with the possibility that some are particularly prone to experience ‘compassion
fatigue’ (Sprang et al. 2007). On this account, it should be studied with a focus brought to institutional
arrangements and forms of social interaction that are set to harden people’s sensibilities to a point
where they have little capacity to feel for the suffering of others (Hooper et al. 2010). It is also
approached as a matter that requires us to attend to the ways in which traumatic encounters with
sensationalized portrayals of human suffering, and especially those we regularly come across through
our interactions with modern communication media, are serving to render compassion ever more
strained and elusive (Moeller 1999). Here it is generally assumed that we are living amidst social and
cultural conditions that operate to erode human kindness and the disposition to care, and that these are
now being experienced in ever-more intensifying forms.
This chapter reviews the cultural and social history of compassion. It highlights the involvement of
compassion in the creation and maintenance of conditions of everyday life in western modernity. It is
designed to equip readers with some resources to think critically about the range of moral, political and
social interests that are featured in favoured accounts of compassion and its consequences. In later
sections, it provides some analytical reflections on contemporary forms of ‘compassion fatigue’. While a
repeated emphasis is brought to the fact that compassion always courts controversy, it also aims to
underline the potential for this to marshal critical debate towards the institutional configuration and
moral character of society.

A turbulent history
There is a long tradition of philosophical debate over how to understand the moral psychology of
compassion, and over how it should be depicted as a human virtue. Its moral character has often been
questioned on the grounds that, while compassion may inspire acts of kindness and care, it can also be
appropriated on behalf of self-serving interests, or even as a means to carry out an abuse of power. In
classical antiquity compassion attracted a considerable amount of debate in connection with its
involvement in the cultivation of human decency and sound polity (Konstan 2006; Sternberg 2005). It
was taken by ancient Greek tragedians along with Stoic and Socratic philosophers as a component of
moral reason and as an attribute of human moral ‘intelligence’ (Nussbaum 2001). Right from the start,
however, it was also recognized as involving us in the difficulty of interpreting the moral motives that
lie behind an individual’s capacity to feel for the pains of others, and especially insofar as such
sentiment was perceived to have an ‘egoistic dimension’ that was more concerned with self-gratification
than with the condition of those suffering (Konstan 2014:180). It was also brought into controversy in
connection with the problem of determining the kinds of actions that could be justified on the grounds
of a compassionate identification with others. As David Konstan notes, such a high state of emotion was
understood by the Roman historian Polybius to be accompanied by the danger that it could serve as the
pretext for maniacal behaviours. The virtue of compassion was questioned in light of the fact that there
are occasions where, in the heat of the moment, people are so overcome by the urge to vent their
feelings that they are rendered incapable of operating with moral restraint (Konstan 2014:181).
Such debates have accompanied literary accounts of compassion throughout Western history (Paster
et al. 2004). It is generally recognized, however, that these are further complicated and intensified
when popular understandings and practices of compassion come under the influence of Christianity.
Here compassion is attached to a theological concern with redemptive suffering and is praised as a
saintly virtue that warrants careful cultivation. The culture of compassion holds a special place for
those seeking an affective identification with Jesus’s humanity, his redemptive suffering and his
example of charitable care for the sick and poor. It is also especially valued in devotional practices
concerned with the compassionate grief of his mother, Mary. Within the writings of the early church
fathers through the patristic period (c.100–450 CE) repeated attempts were made to instruct Christians
on the appropriate ways to display compassion both in feeling and action (Perkins 1995). Through the
middle ages and up to the early modern period many devotional practices were developed that
employed literature, art and music as a means to arouse and intensify emotional reactions to the
passion of Christ (Lazikani 2015; McNamer 2010). Many of these are now understood to have had
lasting impacts on the Western iconography of human suffering and the aesthetics of pain. In this
respect, moreover, some identify the cultural politics of modern humanitarianism as operating to adapt
these traditions for the promotion of human welfare and projects of social reform (Dromi 2016).
It is important to note, however, that through most of the history of Christendom compassionate
almsgiving and charitable care for the sick and dying existed alongside practices that most modern
people would now disassociate from acts of kindness and care. More often than not the charitable and
devotional compassion of the Christian church has operated with little concern to combat the violent
persecution of heretics. From a modern perspective, it may be particularly disturbing to note the extent
to which compassion has been implicated in acts of torture and execution. In efforts to save sinners
from mortal damnation or to protect communities from the wrath of a vengeful God, an appeal to
compassion has often been used to justify the punishments meted out to those breaking established
moral codes or flouting religious custom. The period of the European Reformations is particularly
noteworthy for the extent to which the pursuit of religious orthodoxy and uniformity of belief was
accompanied by what Alexandra Walsham labels as a ‘charitable hatred’ that resulted in unprecedented
numbers of people being scourged, pilloried or burnt at the stake while standing accused of theological
dissent, idolatry, sexual immorality or witchcraft (Walsham 2006).
It is against this history that some of the more radical attributions of modern compassion are brought
to light. It is widely acknowledged that through the second half of the eighteenth century, early modern
societies witnessed a ‘humanitarian revolution’ and that this has had many lasting and profound
impacts on the ways people now negotiate with the problem of suffering and the ethics of care (Pinker
2011). In this context, and partly in reaction against age-old practices of religious intolerance and
violence, compassion was heralded as an attribute of a new culture of ‘enlightenment’ and ‘civil society’
(Frazer 2010; Mullan 1988). It appears that the dawning of the so-called age of modernity was
accompanied by what the historian Keith Thomas refers to as an outbreak of ‘spontaneous tender
heartedness’ (Thomas 1983:173–175). At this point, compassion came to be ever more strongly
identified with heightened humanitarian convictions and forms of politics motivated by a pronounced
moral revulsion towards a great deal of suffering that was henceforth deemed ‘excessive’,
‘unnecessary’, ‘without moral purpose’ and ‘unjust’ (Wilkinson and Kleinman 2016:25–54).
Here moral sentiments of compassion fuelled campaigns to abolish slavery, movements to oppose the
use of torture in criminal proceedings, new-found concerns for animal welfare and crusades for the
promotion of women’s and children’s rights (Sznaider 2001). It became commonplace to identify
compassion as the wellspring of human care and as the source from which the stream of human
kindness flows. In many quarters of ‘polite society’ considerable efforts were taken to craft moral
manners and sensibilities whereby one might stand out as a man or woman ‘of feeling’ motivated to set
the good of others as his or her prime concern (Barker-Benfield 1992).
At the same time, it is important to recognize that this newly invigorated cult of sensibility was
accompanied by a vociferous culture of critical debate. The critical interrogation of compassion was
taken to new ground by philosophers such as David Hume and Adam Smith, who surpassed their
classical forbearers in their devotion to questioning the moral psychology of compassionate feelings and
the extent to which they could be allied, it if at all, with principled reason (Hume 1739–1740/1969,
1751/1987; Smith 1759/2006). Compassion was further held morally suspect by essayists such as Henry
Mackenzie for the extent to which it gave reign to an ‘enthusiasm’ in which people were liable to
indulge feelings to the cost of conscience (Mackenzie 1785/2001). Indeed, in this regard many
understood it to operate as a succour to promiscuous voyeurism (Halttunen 1995). Mary Wollstonecraft,
moreover, was particularly worried by those who used the popular portrayal of women as particularly
prone to compassion as a pretext to claim that they were also intellectually limited and had no serious
part to play in reasoned public debate (Wollstonecraft 1792/1994).
Following the French Revolution of 1789 and the ferocious retributions of the ‘reign of terror’ (1793–
1794), public debates over the virtue of compassion were characterized by more deeply entrenched
conflicts of moral opinion (Jones 1993). Some held ever more strongly to the view that, as Hannah
Arendt puts it, the ‘passion of compassion’ was the ‘driving force of revolutionaries’ who feel justified to
use extreme acts of violence as the means to achieve their aims (Arendt 1963). From this perspective,
compassion was exposed as excessively dangerous, and in light of its potential to operate as the
motivation for fanatical and barbarous actions, it was increasingly advised that steps should be taken to
limit its influence over the domains of civil politics and rational policy debate. Indeed, this period of
history is now looked back upon as initiating the view that, as far as serious academic inquiry is
concerned, moral sentiment should be regarded more as an intellectual pollutant than as an aid to
reasoned judgement (Reddy 2000).
At the same time, however, whilst not shying away from the fact that compassion is an inherently
unstable emotion that may drive some to adopt violence as the means to express their moral feelings,
others continued to celebrate its humanitarian potential. During the nineteenth century, authors of so-
called ‘social novels’ such as Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe continued to work at
cultivating their readers’ compassion as a means to draw the brutalizing poverty of the new industrial
labouring classes and the horrors of slavery into public debate. Indeed, as far as Stowe is concerned,
Greg Crane reports that she took ‘the eruption of moral sympathetic feeling’ evoked by graphic
accounts of the cruelty done to slaves as a ‘sure signal’ that all human beings were entitled to
‘fundamental human rights’ (Crane 1996:177–186). Along with many other campaigners for
humanitarian social reform, Stowe could not be moved from the conviction that it was only insofar as
people were made preoccupied by the ‘moral-emotional dissonance’ of sentiments of compassion that
they could be equipped with the political zeal to oppose social institutions that deliver harm to human
life (Crane 1996:177–186).
Such strongly opposed points of view on the virtue of compassion continue through to the present
day, and on many accounts these still hold far-reaching consequences for the conduct of contemporary
law and politics (Wilkinson 2017). Indeed, it might be argued that in the twenty-first century we are
living amidst cultural processes, with political arrangements and within social conditions in which the
controversy of compassion is set to intensify. In recognition of this fact, moreover, it is increasingly
being taken up as a matter for sociological inquiry, where it is treated as an issue that draws the
historical peculiarity of our social character and cultural circumstance into sharp relief.
Problems for sociology
A great deal of cross-disciplinary inquiry is now taking place across the humanities and social sciences
into how compassionate sentiments are acquired and intensified. The history and sociology of emotions
have been developed into highly elaborated fields of study. For as long as compassion has been drawn
into debate it has also been recognized that its relative qualities and intensities are subject to processes
of acculturation and cultivation. In contemporary scholarship, however, there is no agreement on how
we should venture to understand the social conditions under which individuals are set to make this a
shared concern. Furthermore, much dispute surrounds how these should be assessed. A considerable
conflict of interpretations presides over the attempt to relate the history of compassion to generalized
accounts of people’s social character and to the dynamics governing processes of social change. This is
due to the fact that it not only involves us in the difficulty of charting the inter-relationships between
material conditions, social arrangements and cultural outlooks, but also, in brokering with divergent
political and moral points of view on their human value and consequences.
It is widely observed that the moral dispensation to respond with compassion towards the grievances
and hardships of others is moderated by the material circumstances in which we are made to live. It is
frequently noted that compassionate feelings are an indulgence for those who are removed from a great
deal of suffering and who occupy a materially privileged position from which it is possible to extend
care and kindness to others (McCloskey 2004). It is only where people can afford the time and space to
both nurture and give reign to their feelings that they are made preoccupied by compassion. In this
regard, the heightened moral sensibility of modern people from the late eighteenth century onwards
can be attributed to the fact that here we find increasing numbers experiencing levels of economic
prosperity in which the age-old tooth and nail struggle for survival was no longer a condition of
everyday life. A considerable amount of scholarly inquiry is devoted to the role played by modern
capitalism and the rise of a commercial society in the promotion of compassion as a human virtue and
aid to civility (Davis and Taithe 2011; Haskell 1985a, 1985b). Certainly, it is the case that, at least in the
early period of its history, the extension of capitalist social relations across societies and national
boundaries, was perceived to be accompanied by a distinct ‘softening’ of manners and conduct (Herman
2001:91–99). It is argued that people realized that it was to their commercial benefit to offer a hand of
friendship to strangers, and thereby, that a capitalist market did much to ‘extend the scope of public
compassion … however unintentionally’ (Sznaider 2001:11).
Of course, this begs many more questions about the conditions under which capitalism can be allied
with civility. It also invites debate to be brought to the extent to which the moral economy of
compassion is liable to be disciplined by class interests or left tailored for largely commercial
considerations (Manfredi 2013). Others rightly point out that there are contrasting forms of capitalism
and market relations and that many of these are designed to operate, as Max Weber puts it, ‘without
regard for persons’ (Weber 1948). Indeed, even Thomas Haskell, who is perhaps most heavily
associated with the claim that capitalism has a propensity to create social connections between people
that create space for the extension of compassion, is keen to underline the fact that ‘complex
institutions like the market have multiple and contradictory effects’, and that many of these are
virulently, and perhaps violently, committed to promote forms of social interaction that occlude
compassion (Haskell 1987:859).
In the work of Émile Durkheim we have an early acknowledgement of this complexity, as he attempts
to expose the contrasting psychological and moral effects of the processes of individualization that
accompany modern capitalist divisions of labour. Durkheim aims to have us understand that at the same
time as we might be subject to the pains and confusions of anomie and the selfish impulse of egoism, we
also have a propensity to be much affected by a ‘moral individualism’ that is possessed by ‘sympathy for
all that is human, a wider pity for all sufferings, for all human miseries, a more ardent desire to combat
and alleviate them [and] a greater thirst of social justice’ (Durkheim 1898/1973:48–49). Arguably,
however, Durkheim’s service to us here lies more in drawing a light to the inherent complexity and
frustrations of modern individualism, than in providing us with an adequately refined account of how to
advance cultural conditions and institutional arrangements that enable the maturation of our
compassionate propensities.
In pursuit of this goal, many now look to the work of Norbert Elias as a guide to charting the social
arrangements, cultural proclivities and political formations that make individuals more or less disposed
towards compassion. Here conditions of modernity are perceived to result from long-term ‘civilizing’
processes that have delivered individuals into forms of society in which they are made to acquire a
shared concern to inhibit violent impulses as well as heightened dispensations to relate to one another
with sympathy (Elias 1994). The vicissitudes of the compassionate temperament of modern times are
construed as the product of a culture of manners that is also tied to the development and spread of
state institutions that regulate society to the rule of calculation. In addition to this, they are also
understood to be a part of the creation of social connections between people in which they encouraged
to form relationships of mutual self-regard. Elias argues that these are all mutually complimentary
processes. From this perspective there is an intimate connection between, on the one hand, the
advancement of cold-calculating forces of rationalization, and on the other hand, an enhanced
principled preoccupation with moral sentiments of compassion. It is possible, moreover, to identify
modern campaigns for humanitarian social reform as operating with both these concerns set to the
fore. At the same time as they aim to marshal the appeal of compassion as a moral standard for human
conduct they are also involved in efforts to extend the disciplinary force of ‘civilization’ upon society.
Indeed, from an Eliasian perspective it is argued that these concerns are mutually reinforcing and
reciprocally enhancing, even while immersing people in quite contradictory and conflictual experiences
of everyday life (Linklater 2010; Sznaider 1997; Vaughan 2000).
Elias also encourages us to reflect on the potential for civilizing processes to be accompanied by de-
civilizing trends, and raises the prospect that there may be periods where such trends reshape people’s
mentalities and moral sensibilities so that they are more disposed to behave with cruelty and violence.
In his later study of the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany, he explains how it is possible for de-
civilising trends rise to dominate the ‘habitus’ of some sectors of society so that ‘civilizing’ processes
are undermined and fall into decline (Elias 1997). Indeed, this is how he accounts for the violence of the
German National Socialist movement, the popular appeal of its racist ideology and the events that led to
‘the final solution’ (Dunning and Mennell 1998). Accordingly, even within processes where long-term
civilizing trends work to encourage the cultivation of compassionate sensibilities there may be sudden
and dramatic shifts in people’s moral proclivities so that, as Elias puts it, ‘the armour of civilized
conduct’ can very rapidly ‘crumble’ (Elias 1994:253n).
Cas Wouters has seized on this insight in order to argue that existing alongside processes that
operate to ‘formalise’ our manners and conduct there are also movements towards ‘informalisation’. On
this account, through the twentieth century it is possible to chart significant shifts in the balance
between the formalising and informalising processes of our times (Wouters 2007). Wouters claims that,
from around the 1960s onwards, and particularly following the rise of mass consumerism, the
‘expressive revolution’ that accompanied movements towards people’s sexual liberation and the fuller
realization of human rights for women, people of colour and the working classes, we can chart the
increasing prevalence of forms of emotional conduct that lack restraint. He contends that we are living
through a period where, when compared to most other times and places, individuals are much more at
ease with, and more open about, discussing their feelings. Wouters argues that we are living in an age
of ‘emotional emancipation’, but that this is also accompanied by ever more pronounced problems
relating to how emotions should be appropriately managed and interpreted. People are faced with
increasing social and cultural demands to become ‘reflexively’ oriented towards their emotional
conduct as well as that of others. On this characterization of our times, as the bounds of emotional
freedoms are extended, we are also set to encounter more elevated anxieties connected to how these
should be expressed and understood.

Anxieties of ‘compassion fatigue’

It is only in the second half of the twentieth century that ‘compassion fatigue’ acquired popular
currency as a term to express concerns that we are living amidst processes and in the face of events
that are liable to exhaust people’s capacity to feel compassion for others. What is particularly unusual
here is the normative assumption that individuals are disposed to be compassionate and that we should
be worried by evidence to the contrary. A mere cursory review of our history would alert us to the fact
that in most other times and places it is by no means common for people to regard compassion as an
innate propensity or as a desirable public good (Arendt 1963). Historically speaking, moreover, to
openly worry over the condition of compassion fatigue and its prevalence is quite exceptional.
Compassion fatigue first appears in the late 1960s as a term of reference in debates over the forms of
developmental aid and assistance that are provided by rich countries to less developed nations, and
especially to sections of populations designated as ‘refugees’ (Bennett 1969). It was initially used to
refer to the apparent waning of public and political support for programmes of humanitarian assistance.
Through the 1990s, however, it came to be increasingly associated with a move to blame modern media
of communication, and especially those involved in the production and transmission of sensationalized
images of suffering, for normalizing people’s awareness of human tragedy, atrocity and disaster to a
point where they can no longer summon the energy to react to this with compassion (Moeller 1999). In
the 1990s it was further adopted as a term to denote experiences of ‘burnout’ among health care
practitioners struggling to cope with the stress borne through the effort to empathize with other
people’s suffering (Figley 1995). In these domains, moreover, there has been an increasing tendency to
designate compassion fatigue as a ‘secondary traumatic stress disorder’, so that it is now treated as a
distinct form of mental illness (Figley 2002).
From the perspective taken in this chapter, one of the more important things to note here is the
involvement of worries over the waning or wearing down of compassion in wider anxieties connected to
the social reconfiguration of people’s relationships with others. For example, in some of the more
sophisticated analytical renderings of the involvement of modern communication media in elevated
states of compassion fatigue it is argued that the moral and political contradictions that arise for people
in connection with the experience of being positioned as remote witnesses of other people’s suffering
are without precedent. Luc Boltanski contends that the now widely shared experience of being a
‘detached observer’ of human affliction operates to intensify a shared sense of political powerlessness
and moral inadequacy, for we routinely find that we have no morally adequate means to answer the
imperative of action – to do something, anything to respond – that the brute facts of suffering impress
upon us (Boltanski 1999). Indeed, the observation that this is now a normal part of our moral
experience of everyday life is used to argue that the mass dissemination of the imagery of suffering via
commercial forms of cultural reproduction and exchange is effecting a major transformation in the
experience of social subjectivity. It is likely that we have scarcely begun to piece together an adequate
understanding of what this implies for our terms of self-understanding or those by which we relate to
others. Some hold that we may now be witnessing the creation of global interconnections and
globalized moral consciousness that make possible new ‘empathic’ forms of civilization (Rifkin 2009).
Others are more inclined to draw a focus to a potential for the ‘cultural appropriation’ of people’s
suffering as a commercial news ‘infotainment’ to unhinge moral sensibility from longstanding ties of
human responsibility (Kleinman and Kleinman 1996). Certainly, one might argue that whatever has
taken place in the past is no longer a useful guide to instructing how we should navigate a course
through the moral landscapes of the possible futures that lie ahead (Höijer 2004).
Similarly, those involved in analysing the treatment of compassion fatigue experienced by health care
professionals tend to operate with an open recognition of the fact that they are dealing with new
conceptualisations of human health and with new conditions for health care in practice. Most
discussions acknowledge that discourses of compassion fatigue are a relatively recent invention, and
that these coincide not only with a greater concern to refine diagnostic accounts of traumatic forms of
experience, but also, with more widespread worries among health professionals relating to work
pressures in environments governed by neo-liberal cost-cutting initiatives. At one level compassion
fatigue is taken as a component of the affective worries and distresses borne under the experience of
ever intensifying forces of rationalization and control. At another, it is approached as a new ‘risk’ that,
once recognized as such, should involve health care professionals in ever more concerted movements to
advance ‘compassionate care’ as a vocational concern (Dewar and Nolan 2013).
In both these instances ‘compassion fatigue’ is connected to more pronounced anxieties relating to
the moral condition of people’s emotional experience of everyday life. It is further taken as a conduit for
debates over the moral significance of new frontiers of social and cultural experience. The inherent
difficulties involved in taking compassion as a guide to action are compounded by further difficulties
connected to how we should interpret and respond to patently new social arrangements and cultural
conditions. Here the substance and meaning of compassion are set to be ever more hotly contested
matters for political contest and moral debate.

Conclusion
As this chapter has shown, compassion is a ‘social emotion’. It alerts us to the quality of our moral
attachments to others and calls on us to attend to how we bear a moral responsibility to relate to people
with care. It may well be, as Martha Nussbaum puts it, ‘the basic social emotion’, for it is often the case
that compassion is implicated in the acquisition of the cultural disposition to relate to ourselves and
others as inherently social beings (Nussbaum 1996). In this regard, moreover, the assorted
controversies of compassion are tied to many contested and conflicting points of view on how we should
relate to the conditions that govern our social lives, and especially in connection to how we interpret
and respond to instances where these result in human suffering.
In this chapter, I have sought to provide readers with insights into the genealogy of our modern
culture of compassion. I have further underlined the ways in which compassion and its controversies
hold the potential to provoke a questioning of the values enacted through practices of care in society,
and especially in contexts where care for humanity is set as a prime concern. I have argued that
anxieties over contemporary forms of ‘compassion fatigue’ represent a new stage in a long history of
debate over the bounds and meaning of compassion, and that here it increasingly appears that our lives
are being socially and cultural reconfigured so that the moral and political economy of our emotions are
made ever more pressing matters of concern. By participating in debates over the controversies of
compassion we are also made to question the moral meaning of social life and its purpose.
Sociologists committed to understanding the role played by compassion in contexts of everyday life
are frequently, and perhaps unavoidably, involved in assessing its involvement in enactments of power
relations. It is important to recognise, however, that the study of compassion involves far more than a
commitment to exposing its potential to operate in the service of various political and social ideologies.
There are wider issues at stake here that concern the potential for individuals to create humane forms
of society. When studying compassion, we are made to attend to how individuals are more or less
equipped with the motivation to care for one another. In this regard, moreover, it is often the case that
it involves us documenting how the boundaries of social recognition are drawn and how the bounds of
moral responsibility are set in place. When studying the language, imagery and forms of communication
that cultivate compassionate sentiments we are dealing with expressions and representations of
substantive human values. These are fundamentally preoccupied with our response to people’s social
suffering and with the actions we take to promote forms of social organisation to protect people from
harm’s way. Under conditions of modernity, sentiments of compassion are vital elements within the
moral configuration of society as a whole.

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5 Courage
It’s not all about overcoming fear
Amir B. Marvasti

Introduction
Courage is universally valued and widely experienced. A quick word search on Amazon.com produces
over 100,000 hits. The hits include everything from hair products (‘Anchors Hair Company Courage
Clay’), to jewellery (pendants with the word ‘courage’ imprinted on them), to video games (PlayStation’s
Commandos 2: Men of Courage), to television shows, movies, and books. Despite its social significance
and ubiquity, it is not entirely clear what constitutes courage. What is certain is that courage is much
more complex than other ‘basic emotions’ (Ekman 1999). Like the abstract emotion of love, scholars,
philosophers, and literary writers have tried to define courage for centuries and produced a wealth of
knowledge regarding its variations and sources – though a consensus is very much out of reach. As
William Miller has put it:

No one seems very successful at devising a definition or a theory of courage that doesn’t raise as many
problems as it solves. Some impose so rigorous a standard that Homeric heroes have a hard time qualifying;
others are so absurdly soft on admission to the club that just about anyone who sticks to a diet qualifies.
(Miller 2009:5)

The definitional and theoretical quandaries notwithstanding, courage is referenced by virtually every
individual and every organisation for endless purposes. In this chapter, I examine courage with a focus
on how it is used, particularly in micro or interactional contexts. I begin with a brief overview of the
concept within the fields of philosophy and psychology. I then move on to a more sociologically-oriented
examination of the topic in the context of narrative constructive practices, learning and socialization,
and structured gender and racial interactions.

Courage as a philosophical consideration

Courage and its essence have been debated for thousands of years (Putman 2010; Schmid 1985). For
example, among Western philosophers, Socrates suggested that courage has many dimensions, such as
‘knowledge of what is to be dreaded and dared’ (cited in Schmid 1985:115). In addition to this type of
‘wisdom’, the Socratic view of courage also emphasized that it is a ‘virtue’ expressed in the form of
pursuing ‘noble ends or motives’ in the face of danger, as exemplified by a soldier in the conditions of
the battlefield (Tampio 2012:32). Similarly, Aristotle developed a typology of courage that echoes the
theme of overcoming fear for a great cause. Interestingly, Aristotle hinted at the contextual meaning of
courage by stating that: ‘The person who endures and fears what one should for the sake of what one
should, as and when one should, and is bold in the same way, is courageous’ (Aristotle 2006:28). It
should be noted that in classical Greek philosophy, courage was discussed primarily as a male attribute.
As William Miller explains:

So bound up is courage with manhood that it is nearly impossible to speak of it without invoking male body
parts or the word for man itself. Greek andreia (courage, literally manliness) is derived from the stem andr-
(adult male).
(Miller 2009:233)

Among modern Western philosophers, Immanuel Kant’s work on the significance of courage is most
noteworthy. According to Nicholas Tampio (2012), for Kant courage was largely about the pursuit of
reason and advancement of knowledge: ‘Kant insists that enlightenment can only transpire if
individuals exercise the courage to challenge entrenched dogmatic ways of thinking’ (Tampio 2012:35).
In interactional terms, Kant saw courage not just as a way of proving one’s self-worth to others, as in a
public display of militaristic courage, but as the ability to resist the social pressures to conform to
dominant ideologies:

If, in doing something worthy of honor, we do not allow ourselves to be intimidated by taunts and derisive
ridicule of it, which is all the more dangerous when sharpened by wit, but instead pursue our own course
steadfastly, we display a moral courage which many who show themselves as brave figures on the
battlefield or in a duel do not possess.
(Kant in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, cited in Tampio 2012:38)

In the same vein, in one of his aphorisms Friedrich Nietzsche supported the courage to pursue
knowledge, even at the risk of being perceived as boring: ‘Courage for Tedium – He who has not the
courage to allow himself and his work to be considered tedious, is certainly no intellect of the first rank,
whether in the arts or in the sciences’ (Nietzsche 2013:141).
Another important figure in Western philosophy concerned with the meaning of courage is G. W. F.
Hegel, who both acknowledged the complexity of the concept and defined its ideal type. According to
Shlomo Avineri (1972), for Hegel, the ultimate courage was to sacrifice one’s own life for the common
good as represented by the state. Avineri offers this quote from Hegel:

Courage to be sure is multiform. The mettle of an animal or a brigand, courage for the sake of honour, the
courage of a knight, these are not true forms of courage. The true courage of civilized nations is readiness
to sacrifice in the service of the state, so that the individual counts as only one amongst many. The
important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal.
(Hegel in Philosophy of Right, cited in Avineri 1972:199)

Western philosophy is not alone in its contemplation of courage. In Asian philosophy, for example,
Confucius stated: ‘Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage’ (cited in Jiang
2012:47). According to Xinyan Jiang (2012), for Confucius courage was not a prime virtue in and of
itself, but it had to be reined in or governed by other virtues: ‘To love courage without loving learning is
liable to lead to insubordination’ (Confucius cited in Jiang 2012:47).
As a whole, ancient philosophers saw courage as a critical component of good citizenship and a way
of preserving social order against both external military threats and internal moral decay. The common
emphasis in these philosophical views of courage is that courage is a virtue and a responsibility for
fulfilling one’s obligations to higher ideals and a common good. The philosophical view of courage
seems centered on the broad theme of morality. The acknowledgement of the interactional components
of courage materializes mostly in the form of an internal dialogue or self-reflection about one’s duties to
higher ideals and other members of society. By the turn of the twentieth century, philosophical
considerations of courage gave way to more scientific and empirical examinations, particularly in the
nascent discipline of psychology.

The psychology of courage

One of the earliest treatments of courage in the field of psychology is Herbert Gardiner Lord’s The
Psychology of Courage, published in 1918. The book is a fascinating treatment of the topic at a time
where the field of psychology was in its infancy and the issue of courage was of special relevance in the
context of World War I. Lord began with the premise that human nature is basically ‘plastic’ (Lord
1918:4–5). Consequently, Lord rejected the notion that courage is innate and argues that it is instead
something that can be ‘habituated’ or learned: ‘Men are not born brave or cowardly as fixed unalterable
facts. They may be made either. A man is not born made; he is to be made’ (Lord 1918:5).
Lord did acknowledge the existence of certain innate ‘mechanisms’ or traits such as fear, curiosity,
imitation and sympathy (Lord 1918:17–20), but he saw courage as belonging to a distinct and separate
category. As he put it: ‘In fact, courage is not in itself an instinct. It comes into being in and through the
action of structures that are inborn or acquired. It is the name for the action of these structures or
mechanisms under certain conditions’ (Lord 1918:23). In this sense, Lord mirrored a constructionist
view of courage as a ‘name’ or a label assigned to other underlying actions. For Lord, there was no such
emotion as courage per say; rather, courage is simply the behavioural manifestation of other internal
conflicts. So, for example, one acts courageously by going on a hunger strike for the love of one’s
country. In this case, the conflicting ‘inborn or acquired structures’ are the need to feed set against the
love of an object or ideal.
Lord identified three types of courage: (a) ‘push to overcome outside difficulties’ (Lord 1918:24) as in
taking on a task that ‘is felt to be beyond … [one’s] abilities’, such as reorganizing ‘a bankrupt railway
system’ (Lord 1918:25); (b) ‘when the inborn or acquired structures are thwarted by resistances either
from outside circumstances or interfering activities’ (Lord 1918:25–26), such as the case of someone
who is ‘greatly handicapped and yet lives valiantly’ (Lord 1918:26); and (c) when ‘the instinct of fear is
overridden by some other instinct acting more vigorously’, as in the example of ‘the brave boy … whose
instinct of curiosity is more vigorous in its action than his instinct of fear’ (Lord 1918:27).
Lord’s model of courage was founded on the important claim that fear is not the only ‘aversion’ that is
overcome in the context of courageous acts:

In our usual way of using language very loosely, we are wont to call all these aversions fear. We say we are
afraid of going hungry, losing sleep, being cold. We call all our aversions to petty as well as to greater
discomforts fears. But in none of them may there appear any of the characteristics of emotion and bodily
reaction which belong to fear proper.
(Lord 1918:28)

In other words, the simple act of overcoming fear in pursuit of some other goal is not in and of itself
courageous and nor is every courageous act about overcoming fear.
Given the backdrop of World War I when the book was published, Lord’s discussion predictably turned
to distinctions between American courage versus Prussian courage, both in a military sense and
otherwise. For Lord, American courage and patriotism was of a higher order because it was based on
nobler sentiments and ideals:

A courage it is not only to do battle in war, but to undertake vast, complicated reforms, and go forth in holy
 crusade, with no other hope of gain than in Lincoln’s immortal phrase that ‘Government of the people, by
the people, for the people might not perish from the earth’.
(Lord 1918:82)

Higher order of courage, Lord argued, rests on justice, humanity, and faith, all of which, he contended,
Americans possess and Prussians do not. Lord went on to discuss how one can teach courage to soldiers
through drills and a heavy dose of propaganda with this ultimate goal: ‘It is preparation to keep
democracy safe by trained skill in upholding the rule of equal right by strength of arms, against misrule
at home, or attack of ambition of power from abroad’ (Lord 1918:104).
A contemporary reformulation of Lord’s psychology of courage can be found in an Adlerian approach
that emphasizes overall mental health and wellbeing. Specifically, in their book The Psychology of
Courage: An Adlerian Handbook for Healthy Social Living, Julia Yang and colleagues define courage as

the creative life force from within and without that moves us forward in the interest of self and other in the
presence of difficulties. Specifically, courage and acts of courage are best expressed by the individual’s
willingness to contribute and/or cooperate in socially useful ways via the tasks of living (i.e., work, love,
friendship/family/community, harmony with self, and harmony with the universe).
(Yang et al. 2010:14)

Like Lord, who receives a brief mention in the book (on page 12), Yang and colleagues link courage with
higher ideals.
In recent years, more systematic and empirical psychological conceptualizations of courage have
been developed in the subfield of ‘positive psychology’, which ‘focuses on wellbeing, happiness, flow,
personal strengths, wisdom, creativity, imagination and characteristics of positive groups and
institutions’ (Hefferon and Boniwell 2017:2). For example, through content analysis of published texts,
Christopher Rate (2007) identified several features of courage, such as ‘volition’ or ‘an exercise of one’s
will’ and ‘motivation toward excellence’. In a subsequent study, Rate and his colleagues (Rate el al.
2007) further confirmed the findings by asking 300 Air Force officers and officer candidates to rate
vignettes that incorporated the features of courage revealed through their earlier content analysis. The
follow-up study confirmed that exercise of free will, the pursuit of higher ideals, and incurring personal
risk are key dimensions of courage. In a related study, Cynthia Pury and Charles Starkey (2010)
distinguish mundane everyday acts of courage from ‘accolade’ courage referring to acts that are
ceremonially and publicly recognized.
Similarly, in a comprehensive study of the concept, Shane J. Lopez et al. (2010) used a mixed-methods
approach to examine ‘folk conceptualizations’ or ‘implicit theories’ of courage (Lopez et al. 2010:26). In
a sense, the researchers were interested in how ordinary people define and experience courage in
everyday life. Lopez and colleagues employed four different methods of data collection: (1) surveys with
both open-ended and closed questions, (2) focused group interviews, (3) having participants rate
definitions of courage in terms of their similarities and dissimilarities, and (4) a ‘scaling project’ where
participants were asked to rate certain acts or traits on a scale ranging from ‘not at all’ courageous to
‘very much’ courageous. The findings showed that respondents distinguished between three types of
courage: ‘physical courage’ (e.g., acts of bravery), ‘moral courage’ (e.g., being true to one’s principles),
and ‘vital courage’ (enduring or overcoming adversity) (Lopez et al. 2010:23–26; see also Rate
2010:48).
Lopez et al. emphasize the need for examining the contextual or environmental factors that lead to
the recognition and/or display of courage. In their words: ‘[W]hat sets the stage for courage to emerge
or to flourish needs to be explored. There are possibly conditions that are conducive to displaying
courage or that liberate a person to demonstrate courage’ (Lopez et al. 2010:43). Another prominent
researcher in this area, Christopher Rate, stresses the need for a greater clarity of the concept: ‘The
priority of establishing a consensus definition of courage is not merely a humanistic or intellectual
exercise. A concise, operational definition is necessary to proceed with developing or training this
construct and its underlying features in individuals and organizations’ (Rate 2010:54).
Such concerns regarding the fluid meaning of courage as well as its application across social
situations and organizations could be addressed by approaching the topic as a linguistic construct that
is situationally variable and emergent in the course of social interaction. This approach has been
applied to the study of other emotions. For example, using data from interactions between
psychotherapists and their patients, Rold Wynn and Michael Wynn (2006) show how different types of
empathy are ‘interactionally achieved’ through talk or turn-taking in conversation. In the remainder of
this chapter, I consider courage within a similar analytical framework.

Interactionist conceptualizations of courage

The philosophical and psychological approaches presented thus far regard courage as a quality
associated within the self or the individual. But courage can also be treated as a social category that is
contextual and highly dependent on interactional dynamics. The early stages of a social interactionist
view of courage can be found in Erving Goffman’s Interaction Ritual:

There are various forms of courage, namely, the capacity to envisage immediate danger and yet proceed
with the course of action ….The variations are established by the nature of the risk, for example, whether
physical, financial, social or spiritual.
 (Goffman 1967:281)

Note that Goffman associated courage primarily with the willingness to take a risk, setting aside the
type of motives and nobler aspirations that was the focus of earlier philosophers discussed in this
chapter. Specifically, using the example of a gambler who risks losing a good deal of money, Goffman
stated that ‘the interests served by courageous actions may be quite selfish, the issue is the actor’s
readiness to face great risk’ (Goffman 1967:218). Goffman is also credited with linking the concepts of
‘gameness’ and ‘toughness’ with courage, particularly in the context of sports (Peterson 2015).
Accordingly, athletes display courage by continuing ‘to play despite injuries sustained during the
athletic contest’ (Peterson 2015:380).
As an interactionist, Goffman was keenly aware of the gendered nature of courage and its relationship
with social action. Specifically, he considers how women are excluded from courageous actions and
instead used by men as objects of courageous acts, or as ‘field of play’:

Action in our Western culture seems to belong to the cult of masculinity – in spite of lady bullfighters,
female aerialists, and preponderance of females in the slot machine pits of casinos. There are records of a
few duels fought by European women, but these encounters seem to be held up as perversions of the fair
sex, not its ornament. Of course, females are involved in one kind of action in a special way; they are field of
play for sexual courtship action.
(Goffman 1967:209–210)

Beyond Goffman’s dramaturgical approach, the interactionist view of courage can be linked with the
social constructionist conceptualization of emotions as products of human activity rather than
reflections of internal mental states. Two dimensions of emotions become particularly relevant in this
context: (1) the language of emotions and (2) the culture, socialization, and social structuring of
emotions (Loseke and Kusenbach 2008). These dimensions will be considered next.

The language and narratives of courage

Perusing titles of books that contain the word, it is apparent that ‘courage’ can be used linguistically to
promote a wide range of behaviours. Specifically, in the phrase ‘courage to …’ the blank can be filled
with essentially any desired behaviour. For example, books have been written on ‘the courage to
change’ (Wholey and Bauman 1984), ‘the courage to grow’ (Servais and Sanders 2012), ‘the courage to
teach’ (Palmer 2007), ‘the courage to be vulnerable’ (Brown 2015), and so on. A wonderful illustrated
children’s book titled Courage (Waber 2002) is a perfect example of the versatility of the concept. The
book begins with: ‘There are many kinds of courage’ (Waber 2002:3). It then goes on to list the many
ways of being courageous. Some descriptions are poetic, like ‘Courage is a blade of grass breaking
through the icy snow’ (Waber 2002:27). Others are more concrete, from ‘Courage is deciding to have
your hair cut’ (Waber 2002:22) to ‘Courage is being a firefighter or a police officer’ (Waber 2002:31).
In everyday language, courage is sometimes used so generically that it has no essential quality or
meaning of its own. It is only in connection with something else that courage becomes meaningful. As
William Miller puts it: ‘There is a courage of dishing it out and a courage of taking it. Not all that
infrequently the same action can with justice be described as an example of courage or of cowardice’
(Miller 2009:7). One way to understand this conceptualization of courage as a linguistic device is
through C. Wright Mills’s seminal work ‘Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive’ (1939). Here Mills
challenged the notion that motives predict behaviour or somehow are inherently meaningful or
universal. For Mills, ‘motives are words’ and ‘strategies of action’ (Mills 1939:905–907), which both
explain and prescribe human behaviour. Applying Mills’s framework to courage, it is a word that
signifies, or justifies, that an action is (or was) worth pursuing despite the difficulties. The particular
course of desirable action and the degree and type of difficulty is not universal. For one person, it might
be ‘the courage to speak’ for another in a different circumstance, it might be the ‘courage to be silent’.
In my own research with undergraduate students about the meaning of courage (Marvasti 2018), it
was not uncommon to hear them speak about how conflicted they felt about whether or not a particular
course of action was ‘courageous’. For example, a young man who attempted to stop a robbery at a
convenience store told the story of how his parents initially were very angry with him for putting his life
at risk but subsequently stated that they were proud of him. This story highlights another notable
feature of courage that is consistent with Mills’s conceptualization of motives as descriptive resources.
Often for my respondents, a particular action initially, or in retrospect, could have seemed ‘stupid’ or
even ‘tragic’. However, if the outcome was reasonable or safe, the act was likely to be labelled as
‘courageous’. For example, some students told the story of jumping off cliffs into a river and reflected
that it was at once a courageous and a potentially reckless act that could have resulted in serious injury
and even death. The point is that from an interactionist perspective, neither the act nor its motives are
certain and fixed in time and place, but they are interpreted and framed as ‘courageous’ subsequently
in a particular situation and time. To borrow from Aristotle, they become interactionally defined as
courageous ‘for the sake of what one should, as and when one should’ (Aristotle 2006:28).
Another way to highlight the linguistic dimensions of courage is to examine it as a component of
cultural discourses and narratives. This work has been done with other emotions. For example, Robert
Sternberg (1996) argues that ‘the story of love’ has profound implications for how people experience
the emotion, but there is no single story of love. On the contrary, there are many (e.g., love as an
‘addiction,’ ‘mystery,’ ‘war’, etc.). According to Sternberg, the stories vary across different cultures with
profound consequences:

We are under continual, although usually subtle, pressure to create only those stories that are
socioculturally acceptable. People would be executed in one time or place for a story – about a second lover
in an adulterous affair, for example – that in another time or place would scarcely raise an eyebrow.
(Sternberg 1996:74)

Similarly, one can think of the way stories of courage are scripted. For example, in my research on the
topic, a common narrative form was the courage to save a life (Marvasti 2017). While the particulars
varied, the main plot of the story involved someone who came to the aid of a victim who needed
immediate help or faced a life-threatening situation. Whether it was rescuing someone from a burning
building, the scene of an accident, or helping someone get help for a medical emergency, the basic
narrative form was: (1) the narrator and victims (a stranger, a friend, or a family member) cross paths,
sometimes by coincidence, and (2) the narrator, typically ‘instinctively’, rescues the other from a fatal
outcome. In some cases, particularly with male narrators, the description of the rescue was remarkably
similar to superhero stories from comic books. For example, a respondent described how he helped
rescue a woman in a dark alley. Reportedly, the woman was surrounded by a group of young men who
appeared to be gang members and were threatening her. This story is reminiscent of a typical scene in
a Batman or other superhero films. The tendency toward rescuing others from harm is documented
elsewhere by Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues (cited in Biswas-Diener 2012:17), who showed that
among the 20 per cent in a sample of Americans who acted courageously, 55 per cent had helped
someone during an emergency. One reading of this observation is that this type of heroism is evidence
of everyday acts of courage, or in Robert Biswas-Diener’s words: ‘Zimbardo’s study suggests that true
heroism isn’t reserved for action heroes in Hollywood blockbusters or for soldiers fighting in foreign
wars’ (Biswas-Diener 2012:17). For my purposes in this section, what is significant is the prevalence of
the narrative form and its similarity to a larger cinematic discourse.
In line with the fluidity of the concept of courage, its narrative forms are varied and flexible. For
example, while some of my respondents told the stories of the courage to remain in a relationship,
others spoke of the courage to leave a relationship. Similar to the culturally patterned or scripted
stories of love, what is important is the regularity of the narrative forms, which seem to serve as moulds
for telling the amorphous and complex experience of courage.

Culture and socialization of courage

The idea that the expression, content and very meaning of emotions are embedded in a cultural context
is well established in sociological literature. Most notably, Arlie R. Hochschild in her book The Managed
Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (1983) argued that local cultures and organizations provide
contexts, resources, and rewards for expressing appropriate emotions. In particular, Hochschild
highlighted the importance of ‘emotional labour’ in modern life using the example of flight attendants,
who were required to suppress some emotions and express others in their job-related duties and
interactions with their passengers.
In The Courage Quotient: How Science Can Make You Braver, Robert Biswas-Diener (2012) presents
an interesting cultural classification of the concept of courage. Borrowing from previous literature, he
begins by noting that global cultures can be divided into three categories: ‘cultures of dignity’ with a
focus on individual rights, ‘cultures of honour’ with a focus on sacrifices for the good of one’s family and
community, and ‘cultures of face’ with a focus on preserving one’s status in the eyes of others (Biswas-
Diener 2012:32–36). Correspondingly, acts of courage are motivated and framed by one’s broader
cultural orientation. In this way, it is possible for a courageous act in one setting to be viewed
differently in another. Biswas-Diener cites the example of the famed soccer player, Zinedine Zidane,
who felt he was acting courageously when he assaulted another player for making derogatory remarks
about his mother (Biswas-Diener 2012:32). According to Biswas-Diener:

From boardrooms to rural villages, cultures differ in the ways they support courage and this reinforces the
central ideas of this book that courage is in part a learned skill and that we can put external structures in
place to encourage bravery.
(Biswas-Diener 2012:36).

On an institutional level, courage is perhaps most important to military organizations where rewards
are granted for acts of bravery and where its absence becomes a punishable offense (Olsthoorn 2007).
The process of awarding ‘medals of valour’ essentially reveals the internal organization and policies
that help mediate the meaning of courage for very specific purposes. Interestingly, even within the
military, the meaning of courage is far from settled. This is evident in two ways. First, what was once
regarded as the absence of courage is being revisited. For example, Peter Olsthoorn notes how formerly
designated acts of cowardice in battle are being recognized as symptoms of a psychiatric disorder: ‘It
was, for instance, as a result of this more merciful view that 306 British soldiers executed for desertion
in World War I were posthumously acquitted in August 2006 because they had supposedly suffered from
PTSD’ (Olsthoorn 2007:272). Second, Olsthoorn points out that the military as an institution is
changing. In his words: ‘For most of the militaries in the Western world, peacekeeping and
humanitarian missions are becoming their core business’ (Olsthoorn 2007:277). With this shift,
according to Olsthoorn, there is a greater need in military organizations to praise and institutionalize a
wider range of normative acts that reflect both physical and moral courage.
The promotion of courage as a virtuous and useful trait for organisational purposes is not limited to
the military and law enforcement agencies. As Christopher R. Rate (2010:63) notes, courage has
become a significant concern in health care and management. In a study aimed at developing a scale
for measuring courage in organizational settings, Olga Chapa and Donna Stringer state:

The attempt to select courageous/morally courageous individuals in an organization is not unlike trying to
select psychologically stable police officers or FBI agents. Depending on the industry, the needs vary (high
moral courage versus not necessary).
(Chapa and Stringer 2013:23)

Analogously, in an article regarding the significance of moral courage for health care professionals,
John Murray notes: ‘When nurses are mentored in developing moral courage, they come to learn and
take hold of new behaviours, such as taking action when unethical behaviours are observed’ (Murray
2010:4).
Educational institutions have also taken on the promotion of courage, especially as a sign of good
citizenship among students. For example, students may be awarded ‘certificates of courage’ in
elementary schools to acknowledge their willingness to ask questions and help their classmates. What
makes courage a particularly useful tool in institutional settings in general is its fluidity – it can be
linked with any desired behaviour. For example, an employee can be praised for having the courage to
follow company policies on one occasion, and on another she may be rewarded for ‘blowing the whistle’
on her superiors for unjust policies and practices. So, both conformity and non-conformity can be
acknowledged as being courageous depending on the particular institutional purpose at hand. This is
not to echo Susan Sontag’s (2001) controversial statement that courage is a ‘morally neutral virtue’. On
the contrary, as suggested in this section, courage is very much a normative virtue that is embedded in
institutional cultures and practices. However, the specific content of the norm is not a universal
constant but varies across cultures and institutions. This observation is consistent with C. Wright Mills’s
position that ‘working vocabularies of motives have careers that are woven through changing
institutional fabrics’ (Mills 1939:909).
The teaching of courage also happens in everyday interactions, or in micro contexts. For example, in a
study of how courage is learned in interaction with others, Joan Hasse (1987) interviewed nine
chronically ill adolescents to explore the ‘structure of courage’. Through content analysis of interview
transcripts, Hasse showed that courage for her respondents tended to involve the ability to transcend
one’s immediate situation through hope, creativity, and humour. Hasse further argued that the
adolescent patients were able to transform the meaning of their illness into one of courage with help
from friends, relatives, and health care providers. In other words, Hasse showed that the meaning of
courage may be socially constructed in interaction with significant others.
Lastly, courage is a topic of much interest in popular culture. Particularly in the category of self-help
books, courage is presented as a panacea. For example, it can be used to improve a particular skill set
(Courage: The Backbone of Leadership by Gus Lee and Diane Elliot-Lee 2006), facilitate the process of
recovery or overcoming a deficiency (Courage: Overcoming Fear and Igniting Self-Confidence by Debbi
Ford 2012), or pursued as a general positive virtue (The Courage Quotient by Robert Biswas-Diener
2012 and Moral Courage by Rushworth Kidder 2005). In terms of cinematic productions, perhaps the
most notable example is the character of the ‘Cowardly Lion’ from the The Wizard of Oz:

COWARDLY LION: Courage! What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast
to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk?
… What have they got that I ain’t got?
DOROTHY, SCARECROW, TIN WOODSMAN: Courage!
COWARDLY LION: You can say that again! Huh?
(LeRoy and Fleming 1939).

The Lion’s search for courage ends with the realization that it was a quality he possessed all along.
Nonetheless, the Lion is awarded a medal from the Wizard to confirm his courage, a medal which he
displayed proudly: ‘Read what my medal says: “Courage”. Ain’t it the truth? Ain’t it the truth?’ (LeRoy
and Fleming 1939).

Structured interactions and courage

The manifestation of courage and its public recognition take place in existing and obdurate social
conditions. Gender socialization, in particular, seems to be closely connected with varying conceptions
of courage among men and women. In a study of the gendered nature of ‘heroism,’ Selwyn Becker and
Alice Eagly (2004) examined the degree of recognition men and women received for heroic acts across
five categories:

(1) The recipients of the Carnegie Hero Medal, individuals honoured for risking their lives by rescuing
others in situations such as fires and potential drownings … (2) the Righteous Among the Nations, non-
Jewish individuals designated as having helped Jews avoid being killed by the Nazis during World War II …
(3) living kidney donors, (4) Peace Corps volunteers, and (5) Doctors of the World overseas volunteers.
(Becker and Eagly 2004:167)
The researchers discovered that in certain categories men outnumbered women and in others the
pattern was reversed. Specifically, as of 2003, only 8.9 per cent of Carnegie medal recipients were
women (Becker and Eagly 2004:167). However, in the categories of Righteous Among Nations and
living kidney donations women outnumbered men. More recent trends (mid-1980s onward) for Peace
Corps volunteers also showed a higher rate of women. Women also outnumbered men in the category of
Doctors of the World volunteers. The researchers interpreted these results using a number of different
theories, but gave special attention to the fact that men tend to be associated with the type of heroic
behaviour that receives public attention. This is especially true in the context of high-visibility
professional roles that have not been open to women. As Becker and Eagly put it:

This analysis helps solve the remaining puzzle of the cultural association of heroism with men and
masculinity, despite the substantial delivery of heroic behaviour by women that we have documented. At the
proximal level, the highly public nature of much of men’s prosocial risk taking is one source of this cultural
emphasis. More profoundly, women have traditionally been excluded from male-dominated protective roles.
(Becker and Eagly 2004:175)

In a related study, Lindsay Rankin and Alice Eagly (2006) further demonstrate that perceptions of
‘heroism’ reflect gender stereotypes. Specifically, when research participants were asked to name
‘public heroes,’ they were more likely to name male figures. However, when asked to name heroes with
whom they were personally familiar, respondents named male and female figures equally.
The social structure of race can also mediate public perceptions of courage. For example, in an article
titled ‘(Racial) Profiles in Courage, or Can We be Heroes Too?’, Robert Chang (2002) considers how war
monuments tend to display white heroes. To illustrate this point, Chang discusses how a proposed 9/11
monument in New York City became controversial because it was to depict men of three races (white,
Hispanic, and black) raising an American flag, despite the fact the original photo it was based on
showed only white men. While it is true that 93 per cent of the firefighters lost as a result of this tragic
event were in fact white, Chang explains that:

This 93% white statistic is actually quite close to the demographic background of the New York City Fire
Department – in which black firefighters constitute 2.7% and Hispanic firefighters constitute 3.2% of the
force. It is, however, nowhere near the actual population in New York City in 2000, which consisted of 35%
white, 24.5 black, 27% Hispanic, 9.8% Asian American, and 0.2% Native Americans.
(Chang 2002:369)

This statement about the racialization of courage seems consistent with Becker and Eagly’s (2004)
argument, discussed earlier, regarding the disproportionate coverage of male acts of courage, or the
gendered aspect of courage. In both cases, a dominant group is more likely to be associated with
courage because its members are more visible and have greater access to public displays of courage
through their professional roles.
The area of sexual orientation is another setting in which courage becomes significant, especially in
connection with the decision to disclose one’s gay or lesbian identity (i.e., ‘coming out’). For example, in
a study of a small group of male writers, William Berry (2012) describes how their decision to disclose
their gay identity was a morally courageous act. In Berry’s words: ‘The participants demonstrated
courage through the ways in which they chose to express and negotiate their sexual identity in their
writing. The risk of doing so was very real for them’ (Berry 2012:68). Speaking about the danger of
revealing his sexual identity, one research participant stated: ‘When I first started writing, I would have
taken that experience as almost a death threat because I was so concerned about people knowing who I
am, and I was afraid of being abused or beaten up’ (Berry 2012:168).
Lastly, there may be social class differences in the way stories of courage are told and heard. In
Everyday Courage: The Lives and Stories of Urban Teenagers (what appears to be a rare book in this
genre since most psychological studies of courage do not seem explicitly concerned about social class
differences), Niobe Way (1998) highlights the courageous acts of urban youth, a group she contends is
often falsely perceived as hopeless and pathological. She writes:

They told stories of becoming parents and being more determined to go to college as a consequence; of
dropping out of school and finding their voice because they dropped out. These urban poor or working-class
adolescents also told stories of going to the prom and the movies, of hanging out with their friends,
watching videos, and going to school. Their stories were quite ordinary and every-day and also courageous.
(Way 1998:260)

In the same vein, ethnographic research on the impoverished (e.g., the homeless) tends to represent
their daily struggles as courageous acts of survival (see, for example, Eliot Liebow’s Tell Them Who I
Am, 1993 or Gwendolyn Dordick’s Something Left to Lose, 1998).

Conclusion
This chapter began with a review of the philosophical and psychological conceptualizations of courage.
Building on the insights of both disciplines, I then examined the interactional dynamics and social
forces that mediate the public recognition as well as the individual experience and expression of
courage. Using a sociological approach, I showed how the meaning of courage is embedded in
narratives, culture, socialization and various social structures such as gender, race, sexual orientation,
and social class.
Among other questions, this chapter considered: (1) how and under what conditions are actions and
actors labelled as courageous, and (2) how do definitions of courage vary across cultures and social
institutions? Such questions orient us toward both the substance of courage (behavioural components)
as well as its underlying rhetorical constructions in a specific context and for a specific purpose – a
simultaneous attention to what Jaber F. Gubrium and James A. Holstein (2000) call the ‘whats’ and
‘hows’ of interactional or constructive practices.
As was shown throughout this chapter, courage is used in many settings for a variety of purposes. The
approach outlined in this chapter could help researchers systematically examine the interactional work
of doing courage. Everyone, from Aristotle to modern social science researchers, has acknowledged
that courage is highly context-dependent and situationally variable. A sociological approach based on
social construction of emotions (Loseke and Kusenbach 2008) directs our attention away from the
fugitive goal of a universal definition of this immensely complex topic to a more systematic examination
of the variable work of accomplishing courage and the consequences of labelling an experience as
courageous.

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6 Excitement
Risk and authentic emotion
Stephen Lyng

Introduction
Among the many emotions that influence our experience as human beings and challenge our powers of
interpretation, excitement is one that we especially value as modern individuals. We live in an era rife
with expressions of excitement, as many individuals feel almost compelled to demonstrate excitement in
public interactions with clients, customers, or new acquaintances and media surround us with images of
people excited about their favourite sports teams, their beliefs and politics and even certain brands of
laundry detergent. Members of modern society also look for exciting experiences in a broad range of
different social locations and activities, including sports participation and spectatorship, gaming and
gambling, high-risk leisure pursuits and dangerous occupations, political campaigns and social
movements, high-stakes financial and entrepreneurial schemes, extramarital and illicit sexual
encounters, and ‘adventure’ possibilities of unlimited variety. Without a doubt, our hopes for living an
exciting life have steadily expanded in the modern age.
In this cultural environment of pervasive excitement, it is tempting to conclude that human beings are
simply ‘wired’ to seek out exciting activities and situations and assume that the desire for excitement is
a universal human trait present in all human social environments. In this chapter, I challenge this
commonly held viewpoint by asserting that the valorisation of excitement as a basic human emotion is a
distinctly modern phenomenon. While it may be true that human beings have always possessed a
capacity for excitement, I will argue that the value we place on excitement in the present era reflects
the unique emotional orientation of modern individuals.
My analysis of excitement is informed by the general proposition that emotions and most other human
characteristics are shaped by the broader system of social structures and relations that exist in a
particular place and time. In this view, excitement and other human emotions, are experienced,
interpreted, and evaluated in different ways in different social-historical contexts. In keeping with this
perspective, my primary goal in this chapter will be to connect the lived experience of excitement in
everyday life (at the micro level) with the broader social and cultural structures of the emerging late
modern social world (at the macro level).
Accordingly, I will begin with a brief discussion of the most widely-accepted (and, to my knowledge,
the only) theory of excitement that employs a social-historical perspective. This is the theory developed
by Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning in a volume entitled Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the
Civilizing Process (1986). Next, I review recent efforts to apply Elias and Dunning’s theory of
excitement to certain contemporary sporting activities. I criticize this work for its predominant focus on
the violent nature of many of these new sports and argue that attention should be directed instead to
the importance of risk and uncertainty as a source of excitement. By shifting the focus to voluntary risk
taking as the well-spring of exciting experience in late modern society, it will be possible to broaden
Elias and Dunning’s framework beyond the domain of sport to include exciting activities in other social
domains. This is achieved by incorporating the concepts of ‘action’ (Goffman 1967) and ‘edgework’
(Lyng 2005) into the analysis of late modern excitement.
Finally, the chapter addresses one of the most intriguing aspects of exciting experience today by
discussing what could be considered as a ‘paradox of excitement’ that is endemic to the modernization
process. There is a surprising irony about modern excitement: although excitement acquires its special
status among human emotions only in the modern context, it also possesses a vanishing character in
this social universe. As we will see, the same modernizing forces that have produced the privileged
status of excitement among human emotions have also worked to diminish opportunities to experience
‘true’ excitement. This opposition between the intense desire for excitement and the increasing
difficulty of finding authentic expressions of this emotion has become even more pronounced in recent
decades as excitement has been transformed into a valuable commodity that can be bought and sold in
the marketplace. In pursuing the analytical goals of this chapter, we will traverse domains of social life
transformed by the search for excitement, exemplified by recent transitions from traditional to
‘extreme’ sports, simple thrill-seeking to life-threatening leisure pursuits, and ‘mass’ to ‘adventure’
tourism.

Excitement and the civilizing process

As noted above, one of the most highly influential sociological analyses of excitement is Norbert Elias
and Eric Dunning’s study of the Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process. As
the subtitle of this book indicates, Elias and Dunning’s theory of excitement draws on Elias’s more
general sociological perspective, a framework that focuses on a key structural (‘figurational’)
imperative he termed the ‘civilizing process’, which he regarded as the driving force in the rise of
modern Western societies. While Elias’s thesis of the civilizing process and its application to the study
of emotions and sport has been criticized on several levels in recent years (see Giulianotti 2004), his
general framework and his collaboration with Dunning on the study of sport and leisure serves as a
useful point of departure for exploring the significance of excitement in modern social life.
Consequently, I will provide a brief overview of Elias’s conception of the civilizing process and discuss
its connection with the quest for excitement in everyday life.
Elias’s masterpiece The Civilizing Process (1978) is an ambitious effort to explain the emergence of
modern social institutions and nation-states, a meta-narrative of modernity comparable in scope to the
theories proffered by the ‘classical’ social theorists Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim and Max Weber.
Reflecting his ‘figurational’ or processual perspective on the nature of social reality, Elias asserts that
the modernist project was propelled most fundamentally by changing standards of personal conduct
emerging within English and French court society beginning in the sixteenth century. While violence
and lack of restraint in emotional expression and bodily practices were commonplace in Dark-Age
European populations and even in classical Greek and Roman societies, Middle-Age court society
emphasized a new set of predispositions focused on self-control: individuals were expected to exercise
restraint in the display of emotion, obey standards of etiquette in their eating practices, privatize sexual
behavior, and suppress violent behavior. These practices align somewhat with Max Weber’s
‘rationalization’ process and Elias did connect the shift to higher standards of civility to structural
transformations leading to rationalized economic relations, state functions, and human relations in
general. In contrast to Weber, however, Elias’s analytical focus extends from the level of macro social
structures like economy and the division of labor, to the micro dimension of habitus, or deep-seated
predispositions with affective and corporeal resonances. Thus, he understands that civility is reflected
not only in privileging of rational conduct, but also in the heightened ‘thresholds of repugnance’ and
revulsion towards violations of bodily etiquette.
Although the civilizing process originated historically in English and French court society and the new
standards of civility and etiquette were promoted most enthusiastically by members of upper classes in
succeeding centuries, Elias describes a pattern of ‘functional democracy’ in the progression of civil
standards throughout society as a whole. As a consequence of either (or both) ‘pressures from below’
and/or ‘seepage from above’ (Maguire 1999:43), the new standards of conduct took root in the lower
classes (initially the rising bourgeoisie and eventually the industrial working class) as aristocratic
dominance gave way to state power and parliamentary rule. For our purposes, what is most important
about the ‘parlimentarization’ process is its close link to a related process that Elias labels as the
‘sportization’ of games. The functional significance of these two intertwined processes is that both serve
to diminish everyday violence by providing procedural rules for the non-violent resolution of conflict
between competing groups. In the case of sport, competition between opposing teams must adhere to
explicitly defined rules, usually recorded in written form and subjected to revision and refinement to
achieve greater efficiency in rule-observance. The rules ensure fairness and minimize violence, but they
also transform sport into a highly controlled, rationalized enterprise.
The emergence of sport is an important part of the civilizing process, but Elias also identifies an
alterity in sporting activities that accounts for its special significance in modern social life. Richard
Giulianotti points out that Elias’s rejection of dualistic thinking about basic ontological distinctions led
him to focus special attention on the ‘interplay between natural and social processes for individuals’
(Giulianotti 2004:151). The interpenetration of the natural and the social dimensions is revealed most
clearly in sport’s special role as a social outlet for ‘instinctual, affective and emotional impulses’. In a
social environment that has been transformed by the civilizing process, the normative constraints of
everyday life produce a deficit in opportunities for emotional experience, especially excitement. Thus,
sport and other leisure activities such the performing arts and tourist holidays, function as a form of
mimesis by arousing emotions involved in ‘real life’ situations ‘only transposed in a different key and
blended with a kind of delight’ (Elias and Dunning 1986:80). While ‘mimetic excitement is socially and
personally without danger and can have a cathartic effect’, many modern sports move participants and
spectators beyond mere catharsis to a more heighten state of emotional arousal (Giulianotti 2004:151).
As Gretchen Peterson (2014:496) notes:

The arousal of excitement comes from the tensions involved in sporting activities … feeling hope for success
and fear of failure or defeat. This arousal of excitement is enhanced by the collective effervescence of an
entire group focused on a single event.

As sports enthusiasts of all varieties can attest, there is little that compares with the intense feelings
that spectators of collegiate or professional sports experience during important sporting events. The
‘collective effervescence’ expressed in fans taking to the court or field at the game’s end, doing the
‘wave’ in a stadium occupied by thousands of spectators or performing as a group of costumed or body-
painted supporters is rarely experienced in any other social domain today.
Thus, what we find in Elias’s (and his co-author Dunning’s) work on the civilizing process and
sportization is the theory underpinning my earlier assertion that the high value we give to the
experience of excitement is a uniquely modern phenomenon. As Elias argues, the importance we assign
to sport and other leisure activities as sources of excitement is proportional to the degree of constraint
and control that we experience in everyday life as members of a rational culture that emphasizes self-
control and strict standards of conduct. In this social-historical context, sport functions as an important
institutional domain because of its unique internal contradiction: it represents an expression of the
broader civilizing process at the same time that it offers an escape from the prevailing standards of
civility by providing an outlet for embodied experience and the expression of strong emotion.

Professionalization and desportization

Having explained the emergence of ‘mimetic excitement’ in the modern institutional domains of sport
and leisure, Elias and Dunning incorporate greater complexity and nuance into their theory by also
conceptualizing the forces that impede the general sportization processes of modernizing societies.
First, it is important to note that in initially formulating the theory of the civilizing process, Elias was
careful to avoid any claim of unidirectionality in the evolving standards of civility. The general pattern of
expanding civility throughout the class structure is accompanied by unpredictable reversals that Elias
described as ‘decivilizing spurts’ initiated by certain social groups or even nation states (as exemplified
by Nazi Germany). Variations in socialization experiences even within social strata characterized by
high levels of civility can serve as a countervailing force and produce periods of barbarity that disrupt
long spans of civilizing transformation.
Second, Elias and Dunning also offer important insights about the unanticipated consequences of the
‘functional democratization’ trend that accompanies the civilizing process. Guided by notions of
‘fairness’ and ‘equality of opportunity’, upper-class sports enthusiasts recruit members of the lower
classes (‘uncivilized outsiders’) into sports organized around codes of civilized conduct, which leads to
the commercialization and professionalization of many sports. Developing outside of the realm of
leisure, professional sports are now a part of the work world where they are subjected to the
rationalizing forces that dominate economy and work in general. Thus, we see in these trends one
expression of the ‘paradox of excitement’ referenced above: the modernizing/civilizing force that
accounts for the development of sport as a realm of highly valued mimetic excitement is the same force
that ultimately contributes to its erosion as an authentic source of excitement for increasing numbers of
people. Consequently, the professionalization of sport provokes a response consisting of ‘a rear-guard
action by some groups to preserved the “play forms” of games, one upshot of which was a new social
exclusiveness for certain forms of amateur sport’ (Jary 1987:565–566). However, another possible
reaction is the emergence of sporting activities that reflect the ‘decivilizing spurts’ Elias described in
his general theory – sports that include levels of unregulated violence not tolerated in traditional sports.
This trend, termed as ‘desportization’ (Bottenburg and Heilbron 2006), has been the focus of an
expanding body of empirical research in recent years.
The interest among empirical researchers in the desportization thesis is valuable because it
represents one of the few efforts to move beyond theoretical abstractions and actually generate
evidence relating to Elias and Dunning’s ideas on excitement and sport. This research has been inspired
by the development of new sports in recent decades that seem to reflect a decivilizing trend. Sports like
Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), No Holds Barred (NHB) fighting and underground ‘sport fighting’
incorporate levels of violence that have not been seen in pugilistic sports in a hundred years. Moreover,
the new fighting sports have many characteristics in common with a broader sports movement
commonly labelled as ‘extreme sports’, which do not necessarily involve violence but are similar to the
new fighting sports in the levels of risk and danger intentionally embraced by participants. These new
sports are a source of excitement for both participants and spectators, which may help to explain the
attraction they hold for expanding numbers of people. Consequently, academic researchers who have
addressed the desportization thesis have been primarily interested in understanding the complex
processes involved in sustaining the excitement of alternative fighting sports.
One illustration of such an approach is the work of John J. Brent and Peter B. Kraska (2013) on the
recent rise of a subculture of ‘alternative, and generally illegal, fighting events’ consisting of the
production and exchange of video-recorded school yard beatdowns, ‘happy slapping’ DVD compilations,
recently-released convicts engaged in no-rules fighting for pay (the Internet series Felony Fights), and
similar forms of elicit fighting. Brent and Kraska’s ethnographic data on this subculture of alternative
fighters generally supports the desportization thesis and provides fascinating empirical detail on how
this process has actually unfolded in the world of sport fighting. These researchers assert that the
subculture of elicit fighting emerged as a direct response to the civilizing efforts of public officials who
succeeded in imposing controls on another violent fighting sport – Mixed Martial Arts. After early forms
of MMA were barred in many U.S. states, the sport was brought under greater managerial control of
the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) organization and reformed to enhance fighter safety. The
immediate result of this ‘resportization’ effort was the emergence of alternative fighting: ‘With MMA
undergoing state regulation, the pleasures, excitements, and thrills of the more informal dimension of
sport fighting has increasingly shifted outside of state control’ (Brent and Kraska 2013:363). Thus,
Brent and Kraska demonstrate the relationship between excitement and the ‘civilization/barbarism
dialectic’: in order for sport to continue functioning as a primary source of excitement in modern life,
sporting practices must undergo periods of decivilizing change, which inevitably generates pressures
for recivilizing the barbaric turn in these sports. The result is continuing cycles of desportization and
resportization.
Other motivational and emotive qualities intertwine with excitement when a sport enters the
decivilizing phase. In addition to emphasizing the excitement of elicit fighting, many of Brent and
Kraska’s subjects reported that they valued the ‘authentic’ nature of the experience and feelings of self-
actualization that accompany the unconstrained violence of fighting events. These are important
findings because they reveal the special significance of ‘authenticity’ to individuals deeply influenced by
the civilizing and rationalizing forces of modernity. While the over-riding experience of many people
living with the constraints of the routinized, predictable world of work and daily life may be of a sense
of triviality and inauthenticity, sport fighters describe their violent encounters as ‘real’ and ‘the truth’
(Brent and Kraska 2013:367). Similarly, they contrast the artificial sense of self-identity experienced in
everyday life with the ‘real me’ experienced in fighting episodes (Brent and Kraska 2013:368). In a
social world suffused with signifiers of excitement, many individuals clearly doubt the authenticity of
these emotional expressions or the identities of people who project them. Making the distinction
between the real and the fake is unquestionably a major challenge for (late) modern individuals.
Brent and Kraska’s subjects also described strong feelings of power and control in their violent
encounters with opponents (Brent and Kraska 2013:368–369). The over-riding sensation in fighting is
that one’s destiny resides in one’s own hands and is ultimately determined by the ability to marshal the
power to completely dominate an opponent. This sense of personal control over uncertain
circumstances and the power to impose one’s will stands in direct contrast to the lack of control and
absence of power that most social actors experience in the everyday world of work and public life. As
one respondent stated: ‘What I do in the ring I can’t do anywhere else’ (Brent and Kraska 2013:369).
Thus, Brent and Kraska’s study provides a more complex understanding of the desportization process
by revealing the complicated mix of motivations and emotions involved in sports that appear to move in
a decivilizing direction: these sports certainly offer levels of excitement to participants and spectators
not attainable in more traditional, professionalized sports, but these feelings of excitement cannot be
clearly separated from other sensations such as authenticity, power, and control. More importantly, this
entire complex of emotions and sensations emerges in specific social-historical conditions of everyday
life that provide minimal access to such emotional experiences.

Excitement and voluntary risk taking: ‘action’ and ‘edgework’

As demonstrated in the preceding paragraphs, the work of Elias and Dunning offers a useful framework
for pursuing the initial goals of this chapter. Elias’s general sociological theory of the civilizing process
and his collaboration with Dunning to apply this theory to the study of emotions in sports yielded a
powerful social-historical explanation of contemporary orientations and attitudes towards excitement.
This explanatory framework provides answers to some important questions about the ascendancy of
excitement over other human emotions in modern Western societies and the value we give to sports as
both participants and spectators. As we have seen, other researchers referencing the Eliasian concepts
of ‘civilizing/decivilizing’ and ‘sportization/desportization’ have also offered plausible explanations of
recent trends in fighting sports characterized by higher levels of unregulated violence. The Eliasian
framework is an important source of core theoretical concepts for addressing the concerns of the
present study, but I now want to expand this framework by introducing some additional concepts
relating to the experience of excitement in late modernity.
This effort is motivated in part by some important omissions and limitations in the original theory and
recent work inspired by this theory. Although the subtitle of Elias and Dunning’s ground-breaking book
appears to give equal weight to sport and leisure, the substantive foci of the individual chapters reveal
an overemphasis on sports in the elaboration of their ideas. Of the ten chapters included in the book,
only one focuses entirely on the topic of leisure. The relative weights of text devoted to sport and
leisure seem to suggest that sports participation is the primary vehicle for experiencing excitement in
the modern world, which seems counterintuitive since relatively few adults today are consistently
involved in sports training and competition. Consequently, it may be more useful to orient our analysis
of excitement to leisure activities more broadly conceived rather than leisure time devoted only to
sport.
If Elias and Dunning’s theory of excitement can be criticized for being too narrowly focused on sports,
a similar criticism can be directed to the derivative work on the desportization thesis. As noted above,
almost all of the research on decivilizing trends in sports consists of empirical studies of the new
fighting sports – MMA, cage fighting, underground sport fighting and the like. The apparent
justification for the empirical attention to these particular sports is the fact that they all incorporate
higher levels of violence than more traditional fighting sports (boxing, wrestling, etc.), lending support
to the claim that these sports represent a return to less civilized (more barbaric) conflict between
opponents. Once again, I would suggest that the focus in this empirical work is too narrow, especially
considering that these new fighting sports are part of a much broader trend in sport and leisure
activities characterized by the active embrace of risk and the courting of ‘danger’ in the broad sense
(not just physical danger, but emotional, psychological, social, and perhaps even ‘spiritual’ as well).
Rather than restrict the empirical analysis of ‘decivilizing spurts’ to the dangers of violence in fighting
sports, this notion can be more effectively employed as a theoretical construct for exploring voluntary
risk taking in a wide range of sports and leisure activities.
While the topic of voluntary risk taking has not been a major focus of academic study in the past,
sociological interest in this phenomenon has greatly expanded in the last two decades. This research
has been guided primarily by two sociological theories of voluntary risk taking – Erving Goffman’s
‘action’ theory, articulated in his famous essay ‘Where the Action Is’ (1967), and the present author’s
theory of ‘edgework’ (Lyng 1990, 2005). A true pioneer among sociologists in recognizing the
importance of risk and uncertainty in social life, Goffman’s intellectual interest in voluntary risk taking
was stimulated by his personal connection to the world of gaming and gambling, both as a leisure-time
gambling enthusiast and apparently as a Las Vegas professional card dealer conducting ethnographic
research on gambling (see Shalin 2016). Although it appears that Goffman had hoped to write a book on
gambling and other forms of risk taking, this ambition was never realised and the primary product of
his research efforts was the lengthy essay ‘Where the Action Is’ (Goffman 1967).
In conceptualizing voluntary risk taking, Goffman borrowed a term from American popular culture
that seemed to capture the excitement generated by the risk-taking activities he wished to explain. In
the American commercial media and popular literature of the 1960s, the term ‘action’ referred to risky
endeavours that became a source of fascination for increasing numbers of young adults. Goffman’s goal
was to use this term for analytical purposes, to capture the defining characteristics of a wide range of
risky activities and to understand the social structuring of ‘action’. What Goffman saw as the classifying
features of activities such as gaming and gambling, chance-taking in criminal activities, physically
dangerous occupations, ‘hustling’ enterprises, professional soldiering and police work, and high-risk
sports is that all of these pursuits are both problematic and consequential. They are problematic
because they involve uncertain outcomes, and consequential because these outcomes resonate beyond
the bounds of the occasion in which action occurs, affecting the later life of risk taker (Goffman
1967:159–160).
Apart from problematic and consequential outcomes, action can be distinguished from other risk
activities because it is ‘undertaken for what is felt to be [its] own sake’ (Goffman 1967:185). That is,
one’s risk taking is entirely voluntary – one ‘knowingly takes consequential chances perceived as
avoidable’ (Goffman 1967:194). Goffman’s illustrations of action activities highlight the voluntary
nature of these pursuits: while some working-class individuals may take up dangerous occupations
because they offer the best opportunities they have for gainful employment (engaging in behaviour
Goffman defined as ‘practical gambles’), most participants in high-risk sports, dangerous drug use,
high-stakes casino gambling, risky sexual behaviour, or recreational street fighting do not pursue these
activities out of economic necessity.
Goffman’s work on voluntary risk taking inspired some noteworthy applications of his action concept
(see especially Katz 1988), but his important theoretical contribution did not stimulate a significant
body of empirical research devoted to this topic. The development of a distinct subfield of research on
volitional risk taking did not occur until the introduction of a new concept (and related theoretical
framework) more than twenty years later. Like Goffman’s theory of action, the new perspective
appropriated a term from the popular literature – Hunter S. Thompson’s notion of ‘edgework’ – to
designate the core analytical concept for a sociological theory of voluntary risk taking. Edgework theory
(Lyng 1990) offers a different explanation of the motivations for high-risk leisure pursuits, although it is
an explanation that complements rather than contradicts Goffman’s approach (see Lyng 2016). The
most important consequence of the edgework perspective, however, is its impact on the development of
a distinct subfield of empirical research on a large number of risk taking activities.
One source of complementarity between the action and edgework perspectives is the common criteria
used to designate the defining features of the activities subsumed by each of the organizing concepts.
Edgework, like action, consists of behaviour that is problematic, consequential, and autotelic
(undertaken for its own sake). However, while edgework shares these basic characteristics with action,
what the former concept highlights is the special significance of critical ‘edges’ or boundary lines
negotiated in the risk-taking endeavour. At the most abstract level, the ‘edge’ is best understood as the
boundary between order and disorder, form and formlessness (Lyng 1990:858), involving more
concretely the lines separating life and death, full functionality and permanent disability, consciousness
and unconsciousness, or sanity and insanity. Crossing any of these lines clearly represents an
‘observable threat to one’s physical or mental well-being or one’s sense of an ordered existence’ (Lyng
1990:857).
The experience that edgeworkers value the most is confronting and managing challenges that are
entirely unpredictable. The sensation of ‘being able to control the seemingly uncontrollable’ (Langer
1975:323) propels them to get as close as possible to the edge without actually crossing it. The focus on
decisive boundary lines reflects the corporeal nature of the ‘edges’ often negotiated in this form of risk-
taking. Thus, the archetype of edgework involves boundary conditions imposed by the capabilities of the
body, where the boundary line is clear-cut: if one passes over the edge, there is no possibility of return
(as a return from death), or a full return (as a return to a pre-disability state), or an intentional return
(as a willed return to consciousness). However, edgework is also undertaken in other ways, involving
boundary conditions and dangers defined in more emotional, psychological, or spiritual terms (see
Bromley 2007). For example, the edgework concept has been employed in analysing participation in
sado-masochistic sexual encounters that involve little risk of death or serious injury but expose
participants to significant emotional and psychological challenges (Newmahr 2011). So, edgework is
defined not by the kind of dangers confronted, but by the extreme nature of these dangers.
With this brief review of the ‘action’ and ‘edgework’ concepts, it is now possible to expand Elias and
Dunning’s framework beyond its predominate focus on sports as the primary source of exciting
experiences in the modern world and consider a broader range of leisure activities that generate this
emotion. As the preceding review indicates, action and edgework are complementary concepts. While
they share basic assumptions about the essential nature of voluntary risk taking, i.e., the risks
undertaken in these activities have significant consequences for the later lives of the risk takers and the
activities possess an autotelic character, it is clear that the concept of edgework refers to a narrower
range of risk-taking pursuits than activities designated as action. Since edgework involves more
extreme risk taking (experiences that produce a sense of ‘controlling the uncontrollable’), it may
represent a distinct subset of action activities. The key point is that these two concepts offer a more
refined understanding of the experiential elements that generate a sense of excitement in modern
individuals. In order to stimulate the ‘cathartic effect’ that Elias and Dunning view as the foundation of
exciting experience, activities must expose individuals to uncertain circumstances that force them to
formulate responses with consequential outcomes for their lives – or at least a perception of
consequentiality. Thus, activities that lack uncertainty and perceived consequentiality cannot generate
a sense of authentic excitement.
Making the connection between exciting experience and voluntary risk taking (action and edgework)
leads us to a more empirically-satisfying understanding of excitement. It is possible now to take account
of the many different ways that individuals satisfy their quest for excitement in the world of everyday
life. Participation in sports is certainly one way that modern social actors bring excitement into their
lives, which explains why both the action and edgework theories rely on illustrative material from the
domain of sports (traditional ‘spectator’ sports for Goffman; ‘extreme’ sports for Lyng). But it should be
obvious to any observer of social life that people also look for excitement in activities that have no
connection to sport. This observation is reflected in many of the empirical illustrations that appear in
the initial formulations of the action and edgework theories. Goffman identifies one form of action as
‘fancy milling’ – people strolling in public spaces in search of uncertain and consequential interactions
with strangers. Later in his essay, he devotes extensive attention to the phenomenon of ‘character
contests’, consisting of aggressive encounters between people involved in ‘baiting’, ‘ranking’,
‘sounding’ or ‘getting a rise’ (Goffman 1967:249) that allow individuals to match their capacities for
self-control. Illustrative material employed in the edgework formulation is just as wide-ranging, with
references to deviant sexual practices, illegal drug use, street crime, stock market investing and many
other high-risk activities. These forms of volitional risk taking are a source of serious excitement for
many individuals, even though they have no connection to sport.
One important consequence of this modification of Elias and Dunning’s theory is a more
comprehensive perspective on the ‘decivilizing’ trends underway in the late modern era. As discussed
above, recent empirical studies that draw on this aspect of Eliasian theory tend to equate decivilization
with desportization. Consequently, almost all existing studies of contemporary ‘deciviling spurts’ focus
on increasing levels of violence in fighting sports such as MMA. However, if the basic ingredients of
excitement are risk and consequentiality, then it is clear that heightened levels of violence in pugilistic
sports represent just one expression of the recent movement toward increased risk taking in leisure
activities as a whole. As we have seen, the emergence of many new varieties of ‘extreme’ sports has
been accompanied by other leisure pursuits that share most of the defining qualities of these sports –
the positive evaluation of risk and uncertainty, the desire for intense sensation and emotion, the
avoidance of rules and regulation – qualities that contrast dramatically with the civilizing and
rationalizing forces that dominate most other areas of social life. Thus, the concepts of action and
edgework enrich the theorization of the decivilizing process by calling attention to the special status of
leisure as a domain of cultivated uncertainty and by defining a continuum of risk taking extending from
the moderate dangers of action (‘fancy milling’, ‘character contests’, etc.) to the extreme dangers of
edgework (hallucinogenic drug use, high-speed motorcycling, etc.). This continuum is a particularly
important theoretical reference for exploring the spirals of civilizing and decivilizing movements in the
leisure realm.

Commodification and excitement

As a final consideration in this chapter, I will now turn to the link between excitement and one of the
most powerful structural influences on human experience and social relations in the late modern era –
the impact of the consumer economy. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the market capitalist
system that has dominated Western societies in the last two centuries is the commodification of almost
everything that human beings produce and consume. As Karl Marx pointed out, the commodification
process creates a new kind of economic value that supersedes value based on how objects are actually
used by human beings (‘use value’). This new form of value – ‘exchange value’ – is measured in terms of
the pricing of commodities in a competitive market shaped by varying levels of supply and demand.
Market capitalism is also characterized by a key imperative that has been the driving force in the
transformation of this economic system over time – the requirement for an ever-expanding market for
goods and services. The importance of this requirement is reflected in the extraordinary changes taking
place in the spatial ordering of markets across history, from the local markets of early capitalism, to
national markets in later historical periods, and eventually the global market system of today. More
germane to the present analysis is another form of market expansion that has been underway for
centuries – the increasing commodification of anything that can possibly satisfy human needs and
desires. Although there is a lack of consensus among social analysts on the historical significance of this
aspect of capitalism, many have suggested that ‘hyperconsumption’ is one of the defining features of
the ‘late’ or ‘post’ modern era (see Ritzer 2005). Thus, a full account of the various ways that social
actors experience excitement in their everyday lives requires that we examine how this emotion has
been packaged and sold as a commodity. This is a complex phenomenon that could be the focus of an
entire chapter or volume itself, so I will restrict the discussion to a single form of commodified
excitement that has become a major leisure industry in the post-war era. I will describe the changing
character of tourism as a form of commodified excitement.
 The rise of commercial tourism as an important sector of the world economy today is clearly
connected to its historical status as a primary source of commodified excitement. When people leave
home to visit unseen lands, they expect to be exposed to the uncertainties of an unfamiliar environment
and they often hope that this experience will be life changing. Thus, commercial tours are typically
purchased for the exciting experiences they promise. However, in the same way that counterforces are
at work in sports that often lead to the erosion of the exciting aspects of these activities, the logic of
commodification also diminishes the very qualities that attract consumers to tourism in the first place.
The uncertainties of foreign places are a source of excitement, but dealing with unfamiliar
environments can also generate considerable anxiety for tourists. Consequently, a key incentive for
tourism providers is to maximize the pleasurable nature of the experience by not only enhancing the
excitement but also by removing sources of anxiety, which paradoxically means incorporating elements
of the familiar (in the consumer’s experience) into the foreign space of the unfamiliar. Typically, this
involves efforts by tourism operators to include arrangements for ‘comfortable’ travel and
accommodations, and familiar cuisine in their tour packages. Thus, a tourist on safari in some remote
area of the African continent may expect to sleep in a king-size bed at night, be served five-star meals,
and travel in the comfort of expensive vehicles during their stay in the ‘exotic’ environment of a game
reserve.
The tourism industry has always confronted strong economic pressures to reduce the uncertainties of
the tourist experience, which also undermines its capacity to deliver its primary product. This problem
is exacerbated by broader structural trends tied to the rise of global consumer capitalism. As any visitor
to foreign lands knows today, the familiar brands of the major U.S. service companies are visible in
almost every corner of the world. One can purchase a Big Mac or a Starbuck’s Frappuccino in distant
foreign cities unknown to many Americans or Europeans. Thus, the unfamiliarity and uncertainty of
foreign settings that induce both excitement and anxiety in tourists have been altered by the colonizing
force of the global service economy. This creates an important dilemma for the tourism industry – the
need to develop innovative strategies for ‘re-exciting’ the tourist experience.
Understanding this dilemma and the dynamic it has set in motion for the tourism industry gives us a
way to account for the latest major development in this economic sector. I refer here to the emergence
of a new kind of tourism in recent decades, most often labelled as ‘adventure tourism’. As this term
implies, providers of this form of travel offer not only the excitement of visiting a foreign environment –
which, as we have seen, has been greatly attenuated over time – but also the possibility of engaging in
an ‘adventure’ activity during one’s stay. Typically, the adventure activities included in these tours
incorporate some form of risk taking, involving dangers either real or perceived. As an example of the
latter, one can visit Queenstown, New Zealand (officially branded as the ‘adventure capital of the
world’) and experience the legendary Pipeline Bungee Jump (Cloke and Perkins 2002). In contrast to
the minimal risk of bungee jumping, one can experience real risk by traveling to Nepal or China and
joining a commercial expedition to climb Mount Everest (Tumbat and Belk 2011). In both instances, the
effort to combine travel with some form of risk taking (most often, a variety of ‘extreme sport’), serves
as a certain guarantee that tourists will get what they pay for: if the foreign destination fails to generate
the expected excitement, then the risk-taking activity will fill this void.
So, with this focus on the tourism industry as an illustrative case, we can better appreciate the basic
contradiction providers confront in marketing commodified excitement and how they respond to this
problem. As a highly valued emotional experience in late modern society, excitement is understandably
the focus of intense commodification efforts – in this case, the commodification of exciting travel. Yet,
the very success of tour operators in exploiting the exciting potential of travel is the reason that
traditional tourist experiences cease to be very exciting for many people. We return again to the
paradox of excitement, but a paradox that is created in this case by the commodification process of late
capitalism: the fact that many people today seek the excitement of travel through commercial tourism is
precisely why it is often experienced as an artificial form of excitement.
In closing, I will briefly mention the latest turn in this dialectical process. If the emergence of
adventure tourism represents a response to the paradoxical nature of mass tourism as a commodified
form of excitement, recent studies of adventure tourism reveal an additional paradox. As we have seen,
risk is essential to excitement and adventure, but real risk must also be carefully managed in order to
sustain adventure tourism as a viable business. Hence, we find a clear contradiction between the need
for planning and safety and the appearance of novelty and risk: ‘adventure tourism is sold and
consumed as providing an adventurous experience without the novelty, uncertainty, and hardship
typically defining adventure’ (Fletcher 2010:16, emphasis mine). The result is ‘manufactured adventure’
(Holyfield, Jonas and Zajicek 2005) and the construction of a ‘public secret’ that allows for the
simulation of ‘authentic’ adventure (and excitement) as ‘an experience that is understood to be safe and
dangerous, adventurous and tame, simultaneously’ (Fletcher 2010:27).

Conclusion
I have argued in this chapter that the significance of excitement to human beings must be understood
in terms of the shaping of all human experience by the broader social context of human actions and
relations. This approach reveals that as the social and cultural environment is transformed over time,
excitement is experienced and assessed in different ways. While excitement may have been a valued
emotion throughout most of human history, I have demonstrated that the privileging of excitement
above most other human emotions is a uniquely modern phenomenon. Finally, I have suggested that the
modernization of everyday emotions has given rise to a ‘paradox of excitement’ – the same modernizing
forces that have produced the privileged status of excitement have also worked to diminish
opportunities to experience ‘authentic’ excitement.
While I have endeavoured in this analysis to highlight the major structural forces shaping the
everyday experience of excitement in the (late) modern era, the study raises a number of important
unanswered questions that should be addressed by scholars interested in excitement as a privileged
emotion in the modern world. For instance, we may wish to consider the implications of the present
analysis for the future of excitement as a human emotion that can be experienced in everyday life. As
we have seen, the main impact of the structural trends discussed in this chapter – especially the trend
toward the increasing commodification of excitement – has been to make authentic excitement less
accessible to increasing numbers of people and force those who value this emotion to engage in more
extreme forms of risk taking in order to experience it. However, we may reasonably ask if there are
limits to volitional risk taking as a source of exciting experience, a point at which the destructive
consequences for both individuals and society of increasingly extreme forms of risk taking will stimulate
efforts to restrict it. Furthermore, if this point is eventually reached, will authentic expressions of
excitement cease to be a part of the repertoire of human emotions? Or, is it possible to identify counter-
currents in the flow of social-historical changes described here that offer different possibilities for
exciting experience through more mundane pursuits? These are just a few of the exciting issues that
remain to be explored in the academic study of excitement.

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7 Embarrassment
Experiencing awkward self-awareness in everyday life
Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Søren Kristiansen

Introduction
Embarrassment is an endemic feature of everyday life. It seems that almost everybody – old and young,
male and female, skinny and obese, high and low – may at times be struck by this unpleasant feeling of
awkwardness, mortification and heightened self-awareness that arises when our self is suddenly and
unexpectedly exposed in social situations. Embarrassment is an embarrassing emotion – it is an emotion
that shows, often even quite physically, that someone according to the situation has done something
wrong and is (or is made) painfully aware of it. We sometimes use expressions such as ‘to be an
embarrassment to somebody’ or ‘embarrassing oneself’, which captures how embarrassment is
generally regarded as a negative emotion that, at least momentarily, wraps its unfortunate victim in a
shroud of incompetence, belittlement and even public ridicule. For example, it has recently been
suggested, amongst others by Sir Richard Branson, that American President Donald J. Trump is ‘an
embarrassment for the world’ (The Independent March 28, 2017). This criticism of Trump rests on his
alleged refusal to shake the hand of Angela Merkel (and later also his too energetic handshake with
Emmanuel Macron), for the apparently misogynous way he has spoken about women (‘to grab them by
the p****’) and in general for his – according to critics and commentators – ‘disastrous’ leadership. We
are sure that opinions on this matter are as many and as strong as they are varied. Obviously, Trump is
far from the first politician ever to be labelled an ‘embarrassment’, and he will probably not be the last.
From our own latitudes, former Danish Foreign Minister Villy Søvndal was once accused of being a
national embarrassment for wearing too loose a tie at formal political negotiations (not to mention his
‘embarrassing pronunciation’ when stating that ‘the ice is melting at the poles’), and current Foreign
Minister Anders Samuelsen has been described by opposition politicians as embarrassing for his
updates on Facebook. Not only in political life but also in ordinary everyday life, experiences and
accusations of embarrassment are quite commonplace. By invoking the notion of somebody being an
‘international embarrassment’ or by stating that what they do, what they say or what they represent is
‘embarrassing’ to witness, one is making a moral or normative statement. As we shall see later in this
chapter, social norms and morality play a rather significant role in defining and experiencing
embarrassment as an everyday emotion.
At times participating in everyday life in general – and perhaps public or political life in particular –
can prove to be a risky emotional business. Despite all our efforts and attempts at anticipating future
events, everyday environments are not always controllable or predictable. One can easily and
unwittingly slip and falter, fail to live up to expectations, behave in awkward ways, step on someone
else’s sore toes, say something regarded as inappropriate or wrong or express opinions that by others
are viewed as deeply problematic. We are all more or less familiar with the unpleasant and
uncomfortable feeling that arises in a social situation whenever someone (and perhaps even oneself) is
seen to have made such a mistake: being flustered, blushing, fumbling, stuttering, having sweaty palms,
starting an awkward whistle, wanting to withdraw, lacking composure and appearing altogether
incoherent are just some of the most commonplace expressions and responses when the self is suddenly
unmasked (Crozier 2006). It seems that the element of surprise is often part of such embarrassing
situations (Edelmann and Hampson 1979). Add to this a documented increase in heart rate as well as
systolic and diastolic blood pressure when feeling embarrassed (Harris 2001). This is exactly what
embarrassment feels like physically and socially. Embarrassment is thus about the feelings associated
with awkward self-awareness arising from participating in social situations in which the self is exposed
and feels vulnerable. However, some people presumably feel and/or display this more than others. We
have probably all encountered a person who refrained from showing any sign of embarrassment even
when the occasion would normally have required it. On the other hand, we may also know people who
are very prone to show signs of embarrassment even though their ‘offence’ was in fact excusable. In
this way, even though embarrassment is a universal emotion found in almost all cultures and historical
times, it is not equally distributed among or experienced by everybody. As we will show in the following,
although there is indeed evidence for individually invariable components to embarrassment as an
emotion, it is in many respects a distinctly social emotion that is closely linked to different social,
cultural and ecological arrangements and not least to specific situational properties. So, if you really
want to understand a culture, it is a good way to start out by studying its norms and reactions
regarding embarrassment. Even though embarrassment as an emotional experience is universal, there
are indeed a variety of cross-cultural, ethnic, age-specific and gender-dependent causes, specifics and
outcomes of embarrassment (see, e.g., Edelmann and Iwawaki 1987; Holland and Kipnis 1995;
Weinberg 1968).
In this chapter, we will explore different dimensions of embarrassment as an everyday emotion. First,
we turn to some of the empirical research and conceptual development done within ‘embarrassment
studies’. Following this, we will discuss embarrassment in comparison to its ‘sibling emotion’ of shame –
two emotions that despite apparent similarities also have many differences. Next follows a presentation
of different typologies of embarrassment describing some of its forms and functions, causes and
consequences. This takes us into a discussion of embarrassment and its relationship to role segregation
and the interaction order. Finally, we will discuss some of the positive and negative aspects of
embarrassment as an everyday emotion.

Researching embarrassment
Rom Harré once stated that ‘the study of embarrassment may seem a small and insignificant enterprise,
and yet it raises some important psychological, moral and philosophical issues’ (Harré 1990:181).
Despite the fact that the attention to embarrassment as a research topic has perhaps not been
overwhelming (Heath 1988:136), the emotion has not entirely evaded the attention of social or
behavioural research (see, e.g. Edelmann 1981). The experiences, triggers, functions, displays and
processes of embarrassment have all been subject to psychological, social-psychological and
sociological research, the majority of which has been conducted from the late 1950s to the present day.
This research has been conducted using many different types of research methods such as
experimental, qualitative, quantitative, historical and conceptual designs. Broadly speaking,
psychological research has explored the cognitive, emotional, personality-related and behavioural
aspects of embarrassment (for an overview, see Edelmann 1987) while for sociologists, embarrassment
has been explored as a human emotion with an offspring in social organisation and with certain values
and functions in terms of sustaining social and moral order. In the psychological vein, early
psychoanalytic approaches have, among other things, focused on the role of exhibitionistic behaviour
and socially unacceptable impulses (see Saul 1966), while other approaches have explored the types of
personality traits that are associated with embarrassability. For example, in a study by Andre Modigliani
(1968) it was found that embarrassability is a result of the simultaneous presence of two specific traits:
‘(1) a sensitivity to the immediate evaluations of others, and (2) a general readiness to believe that such
evaluations are more negative than they really are’. Such findings supported the conclusion that
individuals who possess such traits ‘will suffer more severely from an incident which tends to
undermine his self-presentation’ and also will be ‘more “controllable” in face-to-face interactions’ and
‘less willing to engage in any deviant or orthodox actions which might jeopardize his self-presentation’
(Modigliani 1968:325). In a somewhat similar vein, John Sabini and colleagues (2000) have explored
how significant triggers of embarrassment (such as committing faux pas, being at the centre of
attention or threatening another’s social identity) relate to personality variables and they found that
different subscales of triggers correlate with specific personality traits. Other branches of psychological
research have focused on treatment aspects, for example cognitive behavioural programs for the
treatment of social phobias in adolescents (Albano 2000), blushing (erythropohobia), related
behavioural displays of embarrassment (e.g., Boeringa 1983; Drummond and Gatt 2017),
embarrassment in phobic dental anxiety (Moore et al. 2004) or the management of embarrassment and
sexuality in health care settings (Meerabeau 1999). Some branches of behavioural psychology have
investigated the non-verbal aspects and displays associated with embarrassment, documenting that
signs of embarrassment may be detected in smiles (Ambadar et al. 2009) and that people experiencing
embarrassment tend to fixate more on the eyes of their audience perhaps ‘because of the emotional
feedback carried specifically in the eyes’ (Darby and Harris 2010:1256). Evolutionary theorists have
suggested that embarrassment has served vital functions in terms of securing and maintaining group
living and that it has evolved to repair ‘the damage in situations where a person has unintentionally
violated a social norm’ (Harris 2006:526). Finally, psychological research has speculated on the
anatomic, physiological and neurological bases of the display of embarrassment (e.g., Cutlip and Leary
1993; Bas-Hoogendam et al. 2017; Takahashi et al. 2004).
In general, the social-psychological research has explored the processes that result in individual
experiences of embarrassment. Within this strand of research there have been several attempts to
conceptualise the interpersonal aspects and processes underlying embarrassment. As we will present in
more detail below, Erving Goffman (1956) was among the first to explore the social, emotional and
cognitive processes involved in experiences of embarrassment. Briefly stated, Goffman suggested that
embarrassment is caused by an individual’s violation of the social norms and expectations that regulate
social behaviour. When individuals perform in ways that do not meet situational and social
requirements, their presented self may be discredited, resulting in an experience of unease, discomfort
or embarrassment. Goffman’s interactional analysis have been further developed by Modigliani
(1968:316), proposing that the process of becoming embarrassed runs through three continuous steps:

(1) some event occurs which undermines or discredits the individual’s line of self-presentation; (2) as he
senses that others present have become aware of this, he experiences a loss of situational-subjective-public-
esteem; (3) this, in turn, produces a corresponding loss of situational-self-esteem which is associated with
embarrassment.

In empirical testing, however, only some support of the model was found, indicating that situational-self-
esteem plays a less significant role in the process of embarrassment (see, e.g., Archibald and Cohen
1971; Modigliani 1968, 1971). In the early 1980s, attempts were made to construct models that
incorporate more explicitly the question of intentionality of norm violation and actor awareness (see
Semin and Manstead 1981). More recently, Robert J. Edelmann has proposed a more extended model
synthesizing and extending the models proposed by Goffman, Modigliani and others. The six basic
elements in this integrative model are summarized by Edelmann (1985:198) as follows:

1 In social situations individuals attempt to control images of self or identity-relevant information,

before real or imagined audiences. This presupposes: (a) that the actor is aware of (or is made
aware of) a particular goal or standard, and (b) that the actor is concerned with avoiding significant
losses in social approval.
2 Given the above standard, a disruption of social routine, such as faux pas, impropriety, accident or
transgression, will result in the actor’s projected image creating an undesired impression.
3 Awareness of a discrepancy between present state and standard leads to the focus of attention on
the self.
4 The presence of an audience, whether real or imagined, directs attention to the public rather than
the private self.
5 A number of behavioural consequences are associated with heightened public self-attention
resulting from an observed disruption of social routine.
6 As a result of the identity-threatening situation a number of impression-management strategies may
be invoked by the individual in order to deal with his or her predicament.

As it appears, Edelmann’s model conceptualizes embarrassment as a rather complex process taking

its point of departure in concerns over violation of social standards resulting in various attempts to
control one’s self-image.
While social-psychological research has thus primarily explored the interpersonal processes of
embarrassment, sociological research on embarrassment has rather conceptualised embarrassment as
a violation of social expectation and investigated the links between embarrassment and social
organisation. For example, Harold Garfinkel (1956) explored and described how an eight-step process
of social degradation may follow from violation of social norms or expectations and that so-called ‘status
degradation ceremonies’ may serve to maintain and reaffirm the social rules in questions. In Garfinkel’s
perspective, status degradation ceremonies that may assign people to prisons or other total institutions
constitute ‘communicative work directed to transforming an individual’s total identity into an identity
lower in the group’s scheme of social types’ (Garfinkel 1956:420). In order to tease out and describe the
structuring of social transactions, some sociologists have suggested that by studying instances of
embarrassment something important may be observed and learned in terms of the structure of social
encounters and transactions. In a mid-1960s paper, Edward Gross and Gregory P. Stone stated that
‘embarrassment occurs whenever some central assumption in a transaction has been unexpectedly and
unqualifiedly discredited for at least one participant’ (Gross and Stone 1964:2). In their view,
embarrassment hinders some of the conditions that enable social transactions. Taking this perspective
as their guiding principle, they used embarrassment as an analytical lens to reveal the necessary
requirements for ordinary role performance. On the basis of recollections of embarrassment from
sociology students and from colleagues and friends, they identified three types of conditions for role
performance: poise, identity and confidence. Based on this they concluded that threats (in the form of
embarrassment) to these conditions incapacitate role performance. Embarrassment, therefore, should
be considered a general sociological concept, as prevention of or recovery from embarrassment will be
of vital importance to any society just as procedures to reduce or avoid embarrassment are integral
parts of all persisting social relationships (Gross and Stone 1964:15). In an historical analysis, Norbert
Elias (1939/1994) has demonstrated how our contemporary experience of embarrassment was in fact
formed in sixteenth-century Europe as part of a more general ‘civilising process’. According to Elias,
the civilising process that followed from the decline of specific feudal arrangements and the rise of new
social forms and classes was a process in which the ‘threshold of shame’ and embarrassment was
gradually raised, meaning that people began to feel ashamed or embarrassed by actions that were
previously either unnoticed or accepted. As social hierarchies changed, as the court systems required
certain forms of behaviour, as urban societies developed and as the inter-connectedness of people
increased, new forms of social constraints took shape. The new court nobilities ‘had to begin to learn to
be courtiers, to learn how members of lower ranks and estates were supposed to behave, and, above all,
to show their children how to behave in the new society’ (Gross 1984:52). Such fine-tuning of behaviour
that followed from the raising of the threshold of embarrassment implied the development of ‘a more
comprehensive super-ego’ as gradually, individuals ‘exercise self-control not just in front of superiors or
friends or even just anybody, but even in relation to oneself’ (Kuzmics 1991:10–11). Studies drawing on
Elias’s theory of the civilising process have shown how this development, set in motion centuries ago,
still has an impact on how we, for example, perceive of public nakedness in contemporary society (see
Górnicka 2016).
As it appears from this non-exhaustive listing of research, embarrassment research is a broad church
involving a range of approaches and disciplines that have explored specific aspects of this particular
social emotion. Psychological research has documented that embarrassment is associated with certain
personality traits and non-verbal behavioural forms, social-psychological research has documented the
processes culminating in experiences of embarrassment, and sociological research has identified the
social functions of embarrassment, and has shown how embarrassment has been nurtured as part of a
civilising process and how the experience is ecologically built into the interaction order ‘as a method of
constraining behavior within the bounds of social convention’ (Edelmann 1981:129). Add to this that
studies of embarrassment are also conducted within disciplines such as philosophy (Purshouse 2001),
criminology (e.g., Grasmick et al. 1993), linguistics (e.g., Chang and Haugh 2011), gerontology (e.g.,
Montoro-Rodrígez et al. 2008) and many other areas of research.

Embarrassment and shame – same same but different

It is always important to be as specific as possible about emotions when naming, studying and ascribing
them, especially because many emotions are difficult to observe and determine. Some emotions are
closely related to and seem almost indistinguishable from one another, whereas others are seen as
direct opposites on the spectrum of human emotions and yet others appear even to the scientifically
untrained eye to be entirely incompatible. Particularly two emotions are often mentioned almost along
the same lines as if they were similar or even equivalent: shame and embarrassment. Even though we
might in everyday parlour use these terms indiscriminately, they in fact refer to two quite different
emotional states that stem from different experiences, have quite distinct behavioural paths and
processes and often provoke different responses. Even though Elias (1939/1994) in his study of the
aforementioned ‘civilising process’ seemed to use the notions of shame and embarrassment almost
interchangeably, we need to stress here that embarrassment and shame, despite certain commonalities,
are in fact quite different.
To start out, however, it would not be entirely wrong to describe shame and embarrassment as
‘sibling emotions’, because they – at least from a superficial observation – share some important
emotional baggage. Embarrassment belongs to the cluster of emotions sometimes described as ‘self-
conscious emotions’ (Lewis 2000; Tangney and Fischer 1995) referring, for example, to shame, guilt,
shyness and pride. It is thus an emotion that reveals a lot about what an individual thinks or feels of
himself/herself and how an individual responds to the assessment of this self by others. It has been
suggested that embarrassment ensues when the self is unexpectedly exposed (Babcock 1988), when
what a person does or how a person appears is suddenly called into question by others present, which
creates an urgent sense of discomfort. There is no doubt that shame also has something to do with the
self and with an individual becoming painfully aware or conscious of certain undesirable, inappropriate
or secret aspects of this self. In our society, shame is often related to wrongdoing, personal inadequacy
or failure and is also often tied closely to moral issues of disgrace, remorse and regret. We may also
become ashamed because we cannot be the person we want or who others want us to be. A significant
difference, however, between embarrassment and shame is that whereas the latter is normally suffered
in private, the former is mostly something experienced in public. It is for all practical intents and
purposes impossible to claim that someone became embarrassed in total isolation from social
intercourse with others. Tiffany Watts Smith thus observes that ‘while shame [is] associated with the
elongated miseries of self-flagellation in private, embarrassment capture[s] social humiliations,
emphasising instead minor or fleeting transgressions before an audience’ (Smith 2016:91). Also, others
have zoomed in on the audience-dependent nature of embarrassment whereas shame seems to emanate
and play out from deep within the private self and shame can thus be felt even if one is all alone:

Embarrassment appears to depend more on an audience than does shame. Hence, shame results from not
meeting some internal, private standard about the self, whereas embarrassment results from a public
judgment based on social approval or appraisal in comparison to others.
(Petronio 1999:209)

Perhaps this is also one of the reasons why embarrassment is often revealed in public by observable
facial blushing whereas shame does not carry the same physiological identifiers (Keltner and Buswell
1996).
There are also other distinctive differences between embarrassment and shame. According to Thomas
J. Scheff, who draws on the work of Goffman and Helen Lewis, shame and embarrassment share a
certain recursive feature, but where the recursiveness of shame takes place within people,
embarrassment instead seems to be contagious between them. He also noted that the two emotions,
despite their kinship, differ when it comes to intensity, sociality and duration: shame is intense, suffered
often in solitude and can be lasting, whereas ‘embarrassment is a less intense, brief, and overtly
experienced form of shame’ (Scheff 1990:18). This view is supported by Arnold H. Buss who in his work
on self-consciousness and social anxiety compared shame and embarrassment. He summarized his
perspective by stating that ‘unlike embarrassment, which is trivial and momentary, shame is serious
and enduring. Embarrassment carries no moral burden; shame does. The opposite of embarrassment is
poise; the opposite of shame is pride’ (Buss 1980:148). It follows from this that a person can certainly
be an embarrassment to himself/herself as well as to others in a social situation (just think of the
example of the accusations against President Trump introducing this chapter) whereas it is hard to
imagine that someone is a shame to either self or others. Even the expression seems wrong. Shame
relates to the individual, to some inner and deep-seated feelings of something unresolved, to self-
disappointment or at times even self-disgust, whereas embarrassment seldom involves such strong,
deeply embedded and inescapable emotions or sentiments. Furthermore, one can be morally ashamed
of actions done and even actions not done (for example failing to help somebody in need), whereas it is
rare to feel embarrassed for refraining from doing something.
So, despite their apparent sibling status within the category of ‘self-conscious emotions’,
embarrassment does not run as deep as shame. Shame, it seems, is a substantial, deep-seated and
lasting emotion as compared to the more shallow, situational and passing emotional experience of
embarrassment. For example, it is seldom – even though certain actions might perhaps warrant it – that
people go through life feeling constantly embarrassed. Moreover, it is also difficult to think that larger
groups of people or whole nations should feel embarrassed. Embarrassment is most often an emotional
reaction relating to individuals or smaller units of people being co-present. It is, however, quite likely
that we would expect collectives to feel ashamed of what they or their ancestors did or did not do as
was the case with the German population after World War II. The Germans were not exactly expected to
feel embarrassed but rather ashamed, because of the moral deprivation of those who committed crimes
against humanity and of those who passively watched. There are also important differences when it
comes to the uses, consequences and reception by others of signs of shame and embarrassment. Just
like shame, embarrassment may serve as a mechanism of social control. Within the sociology of
deviance, researchers often talk about different ‘shaming’ strategies: making certain groups of people
stand out from or appearing to be inferior to the rest and insisting that they should feel ashamed of
what they or someone associated with them have done (at times described as ‘stigma by association’).
Here shame is externally assigned to someone else: ‘you should be ashamed!’. It really makes little or
no sense to talk about ‘embarrassing’ someone as a similar type of strategy, primarily because
embarrassment typically occurs (and disappears again) almost by itself without any imagined or actual
evil intent involved. Of course, it can be embarrassing to be embarrassed, but it is hardly something
that completely destroys or ostracizes people. So even though embarrassment, like shame, may serve as
a mechanism of microsocial control and, as we shall see below as something initiated strategically by
others, it is of a much milder form than that of shame and shaming. Studies have also shown that
people respond very differently to embarrassment and shame in everyday settings. Embarrassment
often seems to engender humour, smiles and jokes whereas shameful behaviour causes disgust, anger
and apologies (Miller and Tangney 1994). This supports the aforementioned suggestion that not only
are embarrassment and shame different when it comes to what initially triggers these emotions, but
also in the way their triggering actions are perceived and reacted to by others. So even though
embarrassment and shame are doubtlessly sibling emotions, they are not, as we have here aspired to
show, Siamese twins.

Embarrassment typologies – conceptualising causes, functions and consequences

As should be obvious from the aforementioned discussion of the similarities and differences between
embarrassment and shame as everyday emotions, there are various specificities and distinct features of
every human emotion. Even embarrassment in itself involves many different constituting causes,
responses, consequences and functions. Here we shall briefly review a few of them by looking at some
typologies developed in order to capture embarrassment (see, e.g., Cupach and Metts 1992; Miller
1986; Sharkey and Stafford 1988, 1990; Withers and Sherblom 2008). We start out by distinguishing
between two basic and relatively broad types of embarrassment. First, what is called ‘unintentional
embarrassment’, which arises due to a mistake or an accident regarded as being outside the control of
the embarrassed individual, and which produces negative self-appraisal. Second, we have ‘strategic
embarrassment’, which results from events intentionally pursued or purposefully provoked by other
people that are aimed at embarrassing, discrediting or humiliating others (Petronio 1999:210). In this
way, the causes of embarrassment, its triggering effects as it were, can either be produced by the
embarrassed individual, or can occur due to factors external to him or her.
If we leave behind the strategic causes of embarrassment and focus on the unintentional causes,
Jerome M. Sattler (1965) once proposed three types or clusters of behaviour that would normally create
a feeling of embarrassment: impropriety, lack of competence and conspicuousness. Impropriety can be
the outcome of using dirty language or wearing improper dress for a given occasion. Lack of
competence refers, for example, to slips of speech, clumsiness or forgetfulness in social situations.
Conspicuousness captures the experience of a person receiving more – and unpleasantly more –
attention than one’s fair share, and especially if this extraordinary attention is given because one is
seen as standing out from the rest. In addition to these three clusters of embarrassment, Buss (1980)
also mentioned breaches of privacy as an immediate cause of embarrassment. Bearing in mind the
previous distinction between unintentional and strategic embarrassment, either the embarrassed
person can create these breaches or others can instigate them. Such breaches of privacy, according to
Buss, could for example relate to involuntary exposure of parts of the body that should not be seen by
others, but they could also concern inappropriate touching or unpleasant physical proximity as well as
the revelation of secret of sensitive information regarding a person (e.g. sexual preferences, strong
emotions or private thoughts). In addition to these clusters, Buss also mentioned overpraise as a
common cause of embarrassment. At other times, it seems, embarrassment is linked particularly to so-
called ‘dramaturgic difficulties’ that refer to the problems of self-presentation experienced by
individuals in social situations (Parrott and Smith 1991). In a classic piece of embarrassment research,
Gross and Stone (1964) suggested that threats to identity, loss of poise or shaken
expectation/confidence were some of the main circumstances behind embarrassment. Moreover, we
want to suggest the notion of ‘anticipatory embarrassment’ to account for those situations in which the
individual is expecting (or is being warned) in advance that a given situation and, not least his or her
involvement or self in the situation, in all likelihood will turn out embarrassing. Imagine a teenager
taking his girlfriend home for the first time to meet his parents who are, as they are for most teenagers,
regarded as an embarrassment. Anticipatory embarrassment thus arises when we suspect that things
will turn out embarrassing – even though they may in fact turn out quite the opposite. So, it seems
there are many reasons why embarrassment suddenly occurs – Freudian slips, fumbling, clumsiness,
searching for words, appearing incoherent or socially incompetent, threats to identity, etc. – that in
different ways and degrees expose the self to others and cause embarrassment.
What happens to a person when he or she suddenly becomes embarrassed? What does the
embarrassed person or onlookers do whenever embarrassment occurs? What are the consequences or
outcomes of experiences of embarrassment? Also, here there are several available options. People may
use a variety of different strategies in trying to deal with, dampen or neutralise embarrassment
depending on cultural expectations or situational properties as well as on whether one is the
embarrassed person or the observer of another’s embarrassment (or a combination of these aspects).
For example, Buss suggested four common consequences for the embarrassed person. Firstly, one
becomes immediately self-aware and blushes. Secondly, one may experience a temporary drop in self-
esteem. Thirdly, attempts to escape from the embarrassing situation will often ensue. Finally, there will
be attempts – by the embarrassed person or by those present – to save face (Buss 1980:143–144). Here
different strategies may be used such as excuses, justifications, humour, remediation and aggression. A
study has shown that for the embarrassed person, excuses are more likely to be given in mistake
situations and less likely in recipient situations, justification is more likely in a faux pas situation,
humour and remediation are more likely in accident situations, and aggression is exclusively used in
recipient situations (Metts and Cupach 1989). Even though embarrassment due to its short-term nature
seldom has any severe or lasting consequences for individuals or their social standing and relationships,
people who experience the unpleasantries of embarrassment, humiliation and ridicule may decide to
shy away from situations in which their selves are exposed or in which they risk losing face.
Finally, let us briefly consider some of the purposes and functions of embarrassment. Above, when
discussing shame versus embarrassment, we stated that embarrassment may serve the function of
microsocial control. By creating or provoking embarrassment in certain situations, it is possible to exert
an element of control over people, because by making someone appear flustered, awkward,
incompetent or degraded (as in ‘strategic embarrassment’), we – at least temporarily before they regain
composure and poise – in a subtle way reveal their inability to control themselves or the situations in
which they participate. This can serve as an important way to win an argument, to get it one’s way or to
flaunt one’s own superiority. Embarrassment may not only engender disruptive or negative side effects,
but it can also have positive consequences for either the embarrassed person or the situation as such.
For example, studies show how embarrassment – from a functional point of view – serves an
appeasement function of reconciling social relations following the transgression or violation of social
norms (Keltner and Anderson 2000; Keltner and Buswell 1997). Another study has found that people
who openly express and admit embarrassment are seen by others as more trustworthy and sympathetic
(Feinberg et al. 2012). Besides social control, appeasement or social benefits, embarrassment, as we
shall see later, may also quite simply be entertaining – perhaps particularly for the onlookers – and one
should therefore not neglect the importance of laughter, humour and ridicule for sustaining social
situations or social organisation (Billig 2005).

Embarrassment, role segregation and the interaction order

After these attempts at identifying and capturing the emotion of embarrassment through different
conceptual typologies, let us now look at how embarrassment is an integral part of social interaction.
Whereas Elias, as mentioned earlier, provided a detailed historical account of the gradual advancement
throughout the centuries of the so-called ‘threshold of shame’, Goffman instead developed a much more
situational approach to the study of embarrassment (Jacobsen 2017). As is evident, embarrassment is a
human emotion closely tied to social interaction. Although embarrassment is experienced by
individuals, it is triggered by contingencies of human encounters and of various structural or situational
aspects of the immediate social environment in which individuals find themselves. Thus, embarrassment
is related to human interaction and to aspects of what Goffman once termed ‘the interaction order’
(Goffman 1983). According to him, the interaction order was a distinct unit for microsociological
analysis and one in which individuals were co-present and mutually respondent to each other’s
presence. Goffman was interested in the entities, dynamics and basic characteristics of this order, and
especially in how this order is maintained in the course of social interaction. At the core of Goffman’s
analyses of microsocial behaviour lie individuals’ self-presentations and their concerns with sustaining
an acceptable ‘face’ and meeting role expectations in encounters with others. This is also one of the
reasons why Goffman’s contribution to embarrassment research is often counted among the so-called
‘dramaturgical theories’ (Silver et al. 1987). For Goffman, then, embarrassment was among the most
central emotions, if not the most central, in social life. As Michael Schudson has pointed out:

For Goffman, human beings are creatures who live in the world and who are so completely dependent on
how others view them that they avoid at all cost the dashing, or even the dimpling, of social expectations.
Goffmanian men and women are driven by the need to avoid embarrassment.
(Schudson 1984:633–634)

For Goffman, then, embarrassment is closely related to self-presentation and to the situational threats
to the projection of a coherent self or identity. As individuals possess several selves in the social world
and social situations require the projection of only one specific self, individuals may sometimes
experience incompatible self-presentation requirements (Lizardo and Collett 2013). As Goffman puts it:
‘Often important everyday occasions of embarrassment arise when the projected self is somehow
confronted with another self which, though valid in other contexts, cannot be here sustained in
harmony with the first’ (Goffman 1956:269). The experience of threats to the projection of a coherent
self, in Goffman’s perspective, constitutes the basic social mechanism underlying embarrassment. In a
paper entitled ‘Embarrassment and Social Organization’, Goffman examined how people jointly seek to
avoid the type of embarrassment that arises when an individual’s self becomes threatened or
discredited. In social encounters, individuals will attempt to avoid the threat of embarrassment, and
consequently most people seek to avoid situations altogether that threaten their own projected self as
well as the self being projected by the other players present. This may be achieved by: (1) projecting
relatively modest self-claims into the interaction, (2) by deliberately charting a course skirting
potentially dangerous situations, or (3) by showing consideration or tactful tolerance towards others
(Jacobsen and Kristiansen 2015:80–81).
A crucial point in Goffman’s analysis is that the embarrassment or uneasiness is not always an
irrational reaction or impulse. Rather it is a functional necessity, a necessary form of behaviour that is
‘built into the establishment ecologically’ (Goffman 1956:270). Let us take a closer look at this seeming
paradox: how can uneasiness and embarrassment be built into the very fabric of social organisation and
thus be socially adequate? In addressing the question, Goffman examines the ways that individuals, in
everyday life, usually attempt to avoid embarrassment. Sometimes people try to stay calm and
controlled by way of a stiff smile, a nervous laughter or restless hand that does not reveal the person’s
actual unease. Although such ‘techniques’ or other ‘facework’ practices are able to conceal the most
obvious sides of the situational discomfort (see Goffman 1955), other less obvious signs will often
betray the performer:

Thus, while making a public speech, he may succeed in controlling his voice and give an impression of ease,
yet those who sit beside him on the platform may see that his hands are shaking or that facial tics are
giving the lie to his composed front.
(Goffman 1956:266)

Just as the performer in such situations tries to conceal his discomfort and tension, so will the audience
typically take measures to protect the performer’s face and help him regain composure. Often the
audience may oppress signs that might reveal their awareness of the performer’s true condition or they
conceal them by way of the same types of ‘covering gesture’ techniques employed by the performer.
There are, of course, situations and examples in which the performer is unable to conceal his unease
and breaks down into a panicking laughter, burst into tears, starts blushing, etc., and then finds it
impossible to re-gain situational composure. After such episodes of collapse, the performer, in
Goffman’s words, ‘abdicates his role as someone who sustains encounters’ (Goffman 1956:267).
And for Goffman, this expectation to maintain and uphold social encounters is an essential moral
obligation, but is it important to note that uneasiness and embarrassment not necessarily constitute a
breach of such moral requirements, rather the contrary. Through social interaction, the performer
projects an acceptable and tactful self, which contains certain situationally aligned attributes,
capacities and competencies. Simultaneously, Goffman points out, the individual must show deference
and respect to the selves projected by others in the social encounter. A social encounter, then, ‘consists
of effectively projected claims to an acceptable self and confirmation of claims on the part of the others’
(Goffman 1956:268). However, events may occur that threaten these claims and participants
accordingly may find themselves in a troubled situation. Interaction must be reconstructed and here
signs of embarrassment and unease play a crucial role as these expressions indicate that individuals
take their situational responsibility seriously. Finalizing the analysis of the causes of embarrassment,
Goffman adds an important complication: many examples of situational discomfort are grounded in the
fact that people possess different selves and that embarrassment may arise because a projected self is
confronted with another self (that may be valid in other social contexts) but cannot be upheld in
alignment with the first. In Goffman’s perspective then, embarrassment is related to the importance of
role-segregation as the individual usually

has more than one role, but is saved from role dilemma by ‘audience segregation’, for, ordinarily, those
before him whom he plays out one of his roles will not be the individuals before whom he plays out another,
allowing him to be a different person in each role without discrediting either.
(Goffman 1956:269)

Many social establishments, Goffman points out, are designed exactly to facilitate this process. Work
environments often have separate rooms and facilities for management and for employees. In Goffman’s
analysis, such arrangements reduce the likelihood that people who have different ranks (inequality) but
are closely related (by their joint organisational membership) find themselves in physically intimate
situations in which they are expected to maintain equality and distance. Such situations would be
characterised by discomfort and the interacting parties would experience tension and there would be a
variety of potential sources of embarrassment. The embarrassment or unease that occurs
simultaneously in the CEO and the employee when meeting in the company elevator is thus built into
the social situation. In Goffman’s perspective, this embarrassment finds its source, not in the persons
themselves, but in the social system that configures people with a range of different selves. The social
value and function of embarrassment in Goffman’s analysis is therefore quite evident: besides operating
as a mechanism of social control in face-to-face interactions (Modigliani 1968:313), embarrassment
saves situations while individuals, for a longer or shorter period of time, lose their role or their self.
Embarrassment, then, constitutes the individual ‘cost’ of role-conflicts that arises from the interaction
order and principles that are built into social organisations. Instead of allowing role-conflicts to
dominate and make social situations deteriorate, the individual sacrifices his self and identity by acting
as a social friction-preventer and by allowing different social principles to operate simultaneously. As
Goffman (1956:271) eloquently put it when summarising the effects of embarrassment: ‘Social structure
gains elasticity; the individual merely loses composure’. Basically, then, Goffman’s approach emphasizes
how embarrassment is closely related to various aspects of the interaction order. The interaction order
places certain behavioural constraints on the parties present in social encounters (such as presenting a
situationally appropriate self) and if participants behave inconsistently with these social constraints, he
or she may experience a momentary discreditation of his or hers projected self. Embarrassment may
thus be described as an inevitable cost of the incompatible role-requirement that individuals experience
during everyday interactions in modern society. The experience of embarrassment, then, is woven into
the very fabric of microsocial relations and serves ‘as an emotional mechanism that enables people to
maintain the stability of moral communities in the seemingly ordinary interactions of quotidian life’
(Keltner and Buswell 1997:250).

From ‘nice guy’ theories to the enjoyment of observing embarrassment

As we have seen above, according to Goffman and many other theories and studies of embarrassment,
the embarrassment of being visibly embarrassed typically results in attempts at trying to reduce this
awkward and unpleasant feeling through various face-saving strategies employed either by the
embarrassed person or by others witnessing his or her embarrassment. We all know that observing
people being ashamed or feeling embarrassed in itself can be a rather painful experience and it
therefore seems as if embarrassment may be a shared or contagious emotion spreading throughout
those observing embarrassing incidents. This perspective has been captured by the notion of ‘emphatic
embarrassment’ as developed by Rowland S. Miller. According to him, emphatic embarrassment is the
uncomfortable emotion arising when witnessing someone else embarrassing themselves, even though
one’s own identity or self is not threatened. Such empathic embarrassment is evident in various verbal
and non-verbal displays of onlookers’ discomfort but also in their attempts at helping the embarrassed
person through the situation (see Miller 1978, 1987). Others have suggested the notion of ‘emphatic
stage fright’ to account for those situations when an audience in a performance feels anxious that they
are unable to assist the performer in an unfortunate or daring performance (Lyman and Scott
1970:174). More recently, others have developed and tested a scale to measure what they term
‘vicarious embarrassment’ (Uysal et al. 2014). So, the idea that people are civil, sympathetic and
courteous when confronted with the embarrassment of others is by now a classic insight in much
embarrassment research. For example, in an almost autoethnographic piece, Goffman (1981) once
described how a lecturer in front of an audience may show or, in his words, ‘give off’ physically
observable signs of embarrassment – for example by forgetting his/her argument, clearing his/her
throat, mispronouncing words, blushing or by revealing other minor but situationally unfortunate traits
of character – but he also insisted that the audience most often will forgive this and allow the lecturer
to continue or even encourage the person to carry on despite such mishaps. These ideas all underpin an
understanding according to which people are generally willing to cooperate, make excuses for and go to
great lengths in order to avoid other people from falling apart before their very eyes. Apparently, this
seems to be the case regardless of whether the incident takes place in private or in public. However,
according to empirical testing, it seems as if liking the embarrassed person and/or being able to
imagine oneself in his or her situation are both important factors in expressing emphatic
embarrassment (Stocks et al. 2011).
This notion of emphatic embarrassment, and with it also all the accompanying connotations of
sympathy, solidarity, altruism and cooperation, has been contested for example by Michael Billig’s
(2001, 2005) interesting critique of cooperative or so-called ‘nice-guy theories’ of embarrassment. Billig
states that ‘this view depicts human nature at its helpful, sympathetic best’ (Billig 2001:27), because it
centres on how onlookers feel for the embarrassed person and how they try to smooth out the situation
to save their own faces as well as that of the hapless victim of embarrassment. As he remarks, ‘it is
embarrassingly wishful thinking to believe that the human psyche is fashioned purely from niceness,
sympathy and helpfulness’ (Billig 2001:32). In his view, this position to some degree misrepresents
human nature and human motivation, because it generally overlooks the merriment or even delight to
onlookers that another person’s embarrassment may evoke: ‘The enjoyment of other people’s
embarrassment is left out of the picture and, with this omission, comes a somewhat optimistic view of
the relations between the individual and the social’ (Billig 2001:26). Instead, Billig suggests that
ridicule and laughing at the mistakes of others may in fact serve as important vehicles for microsocial
control, and he proposes that a certain pleasure seems to be involved in witnessing embarrassment and
states that ‘this pleasure is experienced as pain by the disrupter and, as such, the overt pleasure of
onlookers is disciplinary’ (Billig 2001:38). The sweet joy of watching somebody frying in their own fat –
perhaps especially someone who either ‘had it coming’ or someone who is otherwise socially revered
and respected – is also part and parcel of social life. Besides embarrassment being funny to onlookers,
their laughter or the ‘laughing at it later’ by the embarrassed person himself shows that embarrassment
also serves as a mechanism of normative control and cohesion. So even though the individual feeling of
embarrassment may be regarded as entirely negative and unpleasant, the social function of
embarrassment may, in fact, turn out to foster not only humorous energy, but also trust and prosocial
behaviour (see, e.g., Feinberg et al. 2012). Moreover, Billig insists that instead of being always pushed
or pulled by the search for a positive validation of self by others or seeking to make a good first
impression, some people may in fact – quite voluntarily – be looking to make a bad impression and even
to provoke embarrassment just for the sake of it. This view questions the basic idea from many existing
theories that embarrassment almost always arises involuntarily. Actually, some people voluntarily and
actively seek out situations in which their actions cause embarrassment in order to provoke common
sense or to challenge social conventions. Take as examples hereof professional embarrassment-causers
such as clowns, jesters, stand-up comedians or the classroom fool who all find pleasure in causing upset
and embarrassment and who deliberately transgress the boundaries intended to separate the socially
acceptable from the embarrassing (see, e.g., Klapp 1949). All in all, Billig’s critique of the ‘nice-guy
theories’ of embarrassment is valuable, because it challenges some ingrained assumptions about the
nature, processes and consequences of embarrassment in everyday life.

Conclusion
At the end of the day, everybody can, either voluntarily or involuntarily, turn out to be what Erving
Goffman (1961:81) once called a ‘dangerous giant’: someone whose untoward, clumsy or inappropriate
behaviour threatens social situations and selves, and embarrassing or embarrassed individuals are but
one example of such dangerous giants. Although embarrassment is perhaps something most of us think
we already know all about either from personal experience or from common sense, we have here
attempted to show how some of the research conducted on embarrassment may shed light on many
aspects of embarrassment that most of us either take for granted or devote little attention to. As the
chapter has shown, embarrassment is in fact a rather complex emotion with a rich history and a variety
of different aspects and dimensions: psychological, social-psychological and sociological. Obviously, this
chapter has not provided an exhaustive account of the many studies carried out on and the many
different dimensions of embarrassment, but it has carefully selected some insights that, particularly
from a sociological perspective, makes it evident how embarrassment is an important emotion in
everyday life.
While there has been some controversy as to whether embarrassment constitutes a distinct emotion
or a milder form of shame (see Sabini et al. 2001), there now seems to be at least some consensus that
embarrassment is a distinct emotion related to the individual’s self-presentation. We initially described
how this emotion for the afflicted individual evoked a sense of awkward self-awareness in social
situations. Embarrassment, then, is a public emotion that is displayed in front of an audience or an
interactional partner. Also, it may motivate individuals in different directions, i.e. to avoid the
circumstances that caused it or to restore the public face that has been diminished (Dong et al. 2013:1),
and there seem to be important cultural differences and variations in terms of the display, perception
and experience of embarrassment (Ho et al. 2004). The evolutionary, historical, psychological, cultural
and sociological aspects of embarrassment have been documented in an increasing body of research.
Today, we therefore know that embarrassment plays a vital role in sustaining social encounters and in
calibrating behaviour around a set of shared ground rules or moral expectations. As summarized by
Christine R. Harris (2006:526), embarrassment seems to serve at least three basic social functions.
First, it is an appeasement gesture signalising to others that the breach of expectations was unintended
and that it will not happen again. Second, the emotional suffering (or ‘social pain’ as Harris calls it)
associated with embarrassment makes it serve as a kind of deterrent, as individuals will seek to avoid
the behaviour that elicited the unpleasant experience. Third, embarrassment stimulates corrective
changes as it motivates individuals to repair the social damage and to restore other’s self-esteem.
Obviously, there are, as this chapter has shown, many processes and factors involved in eliciting,
displaying and reducing embarrassment and we have primarily provided an overview of some of the
sociologically relevant empirical research, theories and conceptual developments. Clearly, more
research on embarrassment is needed. Future studies may focus on, for example, cross-cultural
differences in embarrassment as well as age, gender, status and occupation-specific factors,
mediated/mediatized types of embarrassment or how the use of technological gadgets may either help
in enhancing or reducing experiences of embarrassment, just to mention a few topics for inspiration
and further exploration.

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8 Shyness
Self-consciously perceived relative social incompetence
Susie Scott

Introduction
Shyness is often assumed to be an individual characteristic – a personality trait, affective state or
cognitive style – and as such, has mainly been studied by psychologists. Here, it has been attributed to
various causes, including biologically innate temperaments (Kagan 1994), genetics (Hamer and
Copeland 1998), patterns of social cognition (Clark 2001; Crozier 2001) and communicative styles
(Mills and Rubin 1993), which create inherent differences between ‘shy’ and ‘non-shy’ populations. This
approach shapes common sense understandings of shyness as a relatively unusual condition afflicting a
minority of people. We think of shyness as an individual problem, neglecting the wider sociocultural
context in which it is embedded.
However, sociology can contribute to our understanding of shyness as a self-conscious emotion that
arises in certain types of social situation. This means that anybody can feel shy under certain
conditions, and it is a relatively normal and common experience. Using the perspectives of symbolic
interactionism (Blumer 1969) and dramaturgy (Goffman 1959), I argue that shyness is a property of
social interaction rather than individual minds, which emerges from people’s mutual (mis-)perceptions
in everyday encounters. I define shyness as a feeling of perceived relative incompetence at managing
social situations and presenting oneself appropriately, which evokes a fear of social judgment. We feel
shy when we doubt our ability to give an expected role performance, especially when ‘everybody else’
appears more competent than ourselves, and so dread making an embarrassing mistake.
Shyness can be considered a normal, intelligible and communicatively rational response to situations
of dramaturgical stress (Scott 2005, 2007). It makes absolute sense to be concerned about creating a
socially desirable impression, and to be aware of the potential consequences of failure; far from
indicating an individual pathology, this suggests normative motives of social conformity. Consequently,
shyness varies situationally: people may feel shy in some situations but not in others, depending on
their level of perceived relative incompetence. Few people describe themselves as ‘true blue shys’, who
experience the feeling most of the time and on most social occasions (Zimbardo 1977). It is much more
common for people to ‘drift’ (Matza 1964) in and out of shyness as a situational state, behaving
variously and inconsistently according to interactional contingencies.
Nevertheless, over time, some individuals who recurrently experience shyness may come to think of
themselves as a ‘shy person’, which becomes part of their self-identity. This is partly because of the
social reactions they encounter when they present and conduct themselves in certain ways. Shy
behaviours, such as avoiding eye contact or not talking in conversation, break some of the normative
rules and taken-for-granted assumptions about everyday interaction. Consequently, shyness is regarded
as deviant: often misperceived as rudeness or aloofness, it evokes reactions of teasing, impatience and
moral indignation.
Living with shyness is not just a matter of passive suffering, however. Those who develop this social
identity learn how to actively manage it in everyday life. This involves carefully rehearsed techniques
and strategies of dramaturgical self-presentation, which ironically demonstrate high levels of skill and
competence. Being, doing and managing a shy self involves daily practices of emotional labour. Feelings
of anxiety, embarrassment and shame are mindfully recognised and reflexively monitored, as actors
devise ways of concealing and containing their perceived relative incompetence. In some cases, this
may lead to positive self-conscious emotions like pride, whereby shyness is reclaimed as a valid
alternative way of being.
In this chapter, I shall explore how shyness emerges from contexts of social interaction, what it feels
like to experience it, the social reactions shy behaviours often evoke, and the ways in which the shy role
is performed and managed in everyday life. To illustrate this, I present data from a study I conducted of
40 self-defined ‘shy’ people, gathered through individual interviews and an email-based discussion
group (Scott 2004). The participants came mainly from western Anglophone countries (the United
Kingdom, the United States and Australia), were of various genders and ethnicities, and aged between
18–70. In the interests of anonymity, all of the names presented here are pseudonyms.

The shy self: subjective experiences

The feeling of shyness is a distinctive affective state that seems to arise suddenly, acutely, and beyond
individual control. It involves emotions of anxiety and dread, centred on concerns about making a
‘mistake’ in social interaction that would communicate unwanted impressions of oneself to others (see,
e.g., Goffman 1959). In Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical model, actors are constantly trying to project
characters that are appropriate to the situation and will be met with audience approval, but are alert to
the risk of failure. Here, we can observe the looming threat of embarrassment. This feeling occurs when
self-presentational identity claims are discredited and an actor cannot fulfil their role requirements
(Gross and Stone 1964). Actors who lose their ‘poise’ or command over a situation suffer an
embarrassing loss of ‘face’ (Goffman 1967), through a discrepancy between the image they intended to
communicate and that which they think they have actually created (Edelmann 1987). The self-
presentational model of social anxiety (Schlenker and Leary 1982) suggests that embarrassment arises
when we are motivated to make a particular impression but doubt our ability to do so. Shyness
therefore involves a fear of potential embarrassment, expressed through behavioural avoidance,
withdrawal and reticence. Anticipating the prospect of public humiliation, actors decide to remain silent
and still. Rather than risk doing the ‘wrong’ thing, they would prefer to do nothing at all.
However, shyness is more than just the fear of embarrassment. It responds to the dynamics of social
interaction: imagined mutual perceptions, evaluations and consequential reactions. Doubting that their
dramaturgical team-mates would provide protective facework (Goffman 1967) to cover up their
mistakes, shy actors feel vulnerably alone and exposed under the spotlight. Phenomenologically,
meanwhile, shyness is an intersubjective state that arises in the communicative space between, rather
than within, different minds (see Schütz 1972). This reveals the interconnected triad of mind, self and
society, whereby we import the ‘social process’ of conversational gestures into the individual lifeworld
(Mead 1934; Schütz 1972).
Shyness is one of the family of self-conscious emotions (Tangney and Fischer 1995) that arise when
we reflexively consider how we appear from an external viewpoint. Other self-conscious emotions
include guilt, shame, embarrassment and pride, and each of these involves imagining oneself as an
object of social evaluation. Arnold H. Buss (1980) distinguished between fearful and self-conscious
forms of shyness, the former being an instinctive response of infants towards strangers and unfamiliar
situations, and the latter a dread of exposure and scrutiny, which develops in older children and adults.
Self-conscious shyness is the form we most often encounter in everyday life, particularly in situations
requiring a role or identity performance.
This can be understood in relation to symbolic interactionist theories of the social self, a dualistic
entity comprised of subjective and objective parts (Scott 2015). George Herbert Mead (1934) described
the self as an internal conversation between two voices, engaged in a cyclical dialogue. The subject, ‘I’,
creatively acts and impulsively reacts, while the object, ‘Me’, views itself as an image from the
perspective of others. This reflective capacity to ‘take the view of the other’ (Mead 1934) is a uniquely
human characteristic, which makes us especially sensitive to real or anticipated social evaluation.
Charles Horton Cooley’s (1902/1983) concept of the ‘looking glass self’ suggests similar processes of
self-conscious reflection: we imagine how we objectively appear to others, anticipate their judgments,
and feel resultant emotions.
Applying this framework to shyness, I have conceptualised the feeling as an internal dialogue
between the Shy ‘I’, who is overcome with acute sensations of fear and anxious inhibition, and the Shy
‘Me’, who reflects upon how this response will make them appear in the eyes of the other (Scott 2004,
2007). For example, my participant Sally said: ‘I think people most often think I’m boring when I don’t
say anything. They probably think that I don’t have anything to say rather than I just don’t want to say
it’. Mead’s ‘generalised other’ perspective, representing the attitudes of the broader community, takes
on a particular form within shyness, as the ‘Competent Other’ (Scott 2004, 2007). Perceived relative
incompetence arises when we compare ourselves unfavourably to ‘everyone else’, who appear
effortlessly to understand the rules of interaction. For example, Emma said: ‘I think people are more
confident and can handle situations better than I can … they don’t seem to be worried [about] what
others think’.
Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967) helps us to understand this as a felt lack of the practical,
procedural knowledge about taken-for-granted norms that appears to be tacitly held by the Competent
Other. Shy actors see themselves as outsiders, unwittingly excluded from the tacitly shared stocks of
background awareness or ‘recipe knowledge’ (Schütz 1972) about how routine social encounters should
unfold. This creates a sensation of precarious vulnerability – as Nook confessed: ‘It’s like I’m being
asked not to be myself but to put on an act. I don’t really know what the act should be’. This mysterious
knowledge takes on a heightened significance because of its elusiveness. Georg Simmel (1908a/1950)
wrote of the ‘fascination of secrecy’, whereby information that is restricted or held out of reach appears
all the more tantalising. Thus, to feel shy is to see oneself as a stranger, excluded from privileged circles
of familiarity. Hardy gave the example of collecting his daughters from Brownies:

A few parents will be standing waiting for their children. These days I might actually say a vague hello.
Then we will stand in silence as I agonise over what I could possibly break the ice with. By then a few more
parents will have arrived who effortlessly ‘steal away’ the first group of parents with ‘insider’ remarks, such
as ‘How did your daughter get on at the birthday party last week?’. They bunch together in a conversation
about things which I, as a stranger, will have no knowledge of [or] couldn’t be party to. To break into such a
group from this point on feels like an intrusion.

Imagining themselves as conspicuously errant symbolic objects (Blumer 1969), shy actors feel
ambivalent about the prospect of social visibility. They feel torn between two conflicting wishes: to be
seen, recognised and included, but not to be marked out as different. As Georgia put it, she wanted
both ‘to be accepted and not’. The need for belonging is an important social motivation (May 2013),
which my participants frequently reported, but which they felt was belied by their ostensible gestures
of withdrawal.
In this respect, shyness differs from comparable states of quietness and introversion, as it suggests a
frustrated sociability. Whereas introverts may be quietly content to spend time alone, shy people long to
be ‘where the action is’ (Goffman 1967) but doubt their capacity to do so. Quietness can have positive
connotations of choice and agency (Cain 2012), whereas shyness can feel like an unwelcome, imposed
trap (Scott 2007). It is not an intentional act of resistance, but one of unwitting deviance committed
with bashful regret.
Unfortunately, the shy actor’s attempts to conceal their discomfort can actually accentuate it,
heightening their perceived sense of difference. In a paradox I call the ‘visibility of invisibility’ (Scott
2007), this self-conscious awareness can invoke embodied expressions, or ‘symptoms’, such as
trembling, blushing and stammering, which render the person even more socially conspicuous. As
Emma put it, she worried about ‘standing out as this red, shaking fool’. These are symbolic gestures
(Blumer 1969) that ‘call out’ a communicative meaning, which is mutually understood by the
interactants (Mead 1934). Blushing, for example, has been defined as a response to unwanted social
attention (Leary et al. 1992). Hence we do not blush when we expect or want to be seen (for example,
performing artists on stage), nor when alone, unless we imagine an audience. W. Ray Crozier (2001)
adds that we blush when we believe that an item of private information about the self has been exposed
to public scrutiny.
My participants spoke of the anguished humiliation they felt when they realised how blushing drew
even greater attention to their Shy ‘Me’. For example, Georgia remembered working on a supermarket
checkout and smiling at one of the customers, whose good intentions backfired into excruciating self-
consciousness:

[He said] ‘Oh, you’ve got dimples!’ and I could feel myself just cringing and blushing, and then ‘Oh, and you
blush!’ So I’m sitting there with my smiley dimples and blushing and thinking ‘I need the ground to open
up’, and – oh, I hated that. And of course, by him saying that, then other people were looking, and I was just
thinking ‘Leave me alone!’

The lived experience of shyness is felt through embodied self-consciousness (Merleau-Ponty 1962). This
makes it comparable to phenomenological accounts of other emotions like fear (Davidson 2000),
boredom (Barbalet 1999) and fun (Fincham 2016). My participants reported how their physical
‘symptoms’ were tied to ontological sensations of social withdrawal and self-absorption. Several
referred to their shyness with metaphors such as the shell, the filter, the hole or the bubble, to
emphasize the barrier between themselves and others. For example, Emily said: ‘I tend to climb inside
myself’, and Natalie spoke of ‘going into a hole. I just shut off sometimes, and start thinking’. The ‘shell’
of shyness was viewed with ambivalence, as both a protective enclosure and an inhibiting trap.

Performing the shy role

Once a person becomes reflexively aware of their own shyness, they face the challenge of managing it
in everyday life. This demands practices of emotion work (Hochschild 1983), designed to minimise the
anticipated negative effects of social judgement. Mirroring another self-conscious emotion, the cyclical
process of the shy self follows a ‘recursive [shame] loop’ (Scheff and Retzinger 1991), whereby one
experiences meta-level emotions: shame about shame, or shyness about shyness. Being aware of how
one’s self-consciousness appears to others makes one further self-conscious, reinforcing the affective
state. However, it can also instigate more agentic modes of response, expressing pro-social motivations.
Rather than passively enduring and suffering from this condition, I argue that people actively perform
shyness as a social role, showing an astute awareness of its effects on their relations with others. This is
not to suggest that people choose to be shy or deliberately cultivate the identity, but simply to
emphasise that, finding themselves in this social position, they can purposefully devise ways of
managing it.
The tactics, techniques and strategies ‘shy’ people report demonstrate an impressive range of
dramaturgical skills. Erving Goffman (1967) uses the term ‘defensive facework’ to describe the
mundane yet ritualistic gestures individuals use to maintain their dignity by keeping, saving or
repairing damage to their ‘face’, or public image. With shyness, much of this daily labour is aimed at
the avoidance of potential embarrassment. Thus, one self-conscious emotion is deployed in the strategic
management of another. As noted above, shy actors are sociable and want to be with others, but feel
ambivalent about the prospect of social visibility. This means they hover precariously on the margins of
interaction, embodying the dialectical forms of proximity and distance (Simmel 1971). Walking a
tightrope of meticulous self-regulation, they apprehend the dangers of falling.
Everyday life then takes on the quality of riskiness, in the dramaturgical sense of the word. Goffman
(1967) defined ‘action’ by two features: unpredictable outcomes and fateful consequences for self-
identity. There is a thrill of excitement when we find ourselves ‘where the action is’ and feel compelled
to perform, despite feelings of uncertainty and nervousness. These motivations are not specific to
shyness and may even be culturally normal. Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning (1986) argue that a quest
for excitement has arisen in resistance to the restrained, controlled ‘civility’ of modern society. Stephen
Lyng’s (2005) concept of ‘edgework’ also describes a human tendency to test the limits of our own
capacities, physically or ontologically.
One response to this dramaturgical risk is the technique of ‘tailoring’. Ronald D. Laing (1965:192)
used this term to describe how people with schizophrenia managed their fractured sense of self. One of
his patients, Julie, said that she felt ‘tailor-made’ as she constantly adapted her thoughts, speech and
behaviour to suit others’ wishes, and so lost sight of her own identity, preferences and values. While of
course, shyness is a far less disturbing mental state than schizophrenia, its management does involve
careful self-monitoring and behavioural adaptation. Dramaturgically, performers change costumes,
scripts and masks as they move between scenes and encounter different audiences, having, as William
James (1890:295) put it, ‘as many social selves as they are distinct groups of persons about whose
opinions he [sic] cares’. Georgia described her strategy of tailoring, and explained how this created
disorienting feelings of ontological instability:

I think I try and suss out who I’m talking to, and try to find out what they like and what they don’t like – and
kind of tailor what I say as to what I think they’d want me to say, so that they’ll like me … I almost didn’t
realise who I was … I didn’t know how to act.

Second, shyness can be dramaturgically managed by adopting a standardised role. Situational roles
provide ready-made templates of action, including character definition, costume and props, ritualised
moves and scripted lines. This affords a comforting sense of safety, insofar as the performance becomes
more familiar, controlled and predictable. In the workplace, for example, jobs usually carry a clearly
defined status and set of tasks. Natalie, who taught young sea cadets, said matter-of-factly that, ‘you’re
not really self-conscious when you’re teaching people – you’re just teaching them. You know it; they
don’t’.
By contrast, situations that lack this predictable quality can evoke dramaturgical stress (Freund
1998). Without a conventionalised blueprint, the pressure is on individual performers to improvise their
performances. There might be some tacit norms and expectations shaping the situation, but these are
hard to discern, and the finer detail of the action is left open to interpretation. My participants
explained that the most shyness-inducing situations were those in the ‘middle range’ space between
being formally structured and informal enough for a mistake not to matter. As Urchin explained, he
would feel that he lacked the procedural ‘recipe knowledge’ (Schütz 1972) needed to make these
scenes flow smoothly:

It’s not terribly clear how they ‘work’ – for example, bars/cafés/restaurants, where it’s not made clear
whether you order at the counter or sit and wait to be served, or when and how you pay. (I could make
similar points about libraries, galleries, betting shops, concert venues, etc., etc.) Doing the wrong thing
makes me feel extremely small, and can ruin what should be a pleasant experience.

Third, shyness can be managed by deliberate strategies of self-presentation (Goffman 1959). Through
practices of ‘mystification’, actors maintain a clear division between their frontstage and backstage
regions (Goffman 1959), preventing the audience from glimpsing into the messy machinery behind the
scenes. For example, some of my participants used material prop objects as ‘involvement shields’
(Goffman 1963a) to discourage unwanted social attention. They would bury themselves in newspapers,
books, mobile phones and so on, trying to appear immersed in self-focused activities and therefore
‘away’ (Goffman 1963a) or out of play. This was often accompanied by non-verbal gestures, such as a
bowed head and averted eyes, which communicated what Georgia called a ‘please-don’t-approach-me
look’.
Actors may also use techniques of subterfuge, such as ‘passing’ (Goffman 1963b), to conceal what
they perceive as a discreditable stigma, namely their perceived relative incompetence. They attempt to
dupe their audiences by appearing more socially poised and confident than they actually felt, disguising
their shyness and creating the opposite impression. Material props are used again here, this time as
‘side involvements’ (Goffman 1963a): secondary activities accompanying the main line of action, which
serve as a decoy to distract the audience. Urchin explained this technique:

Although I’m not normally a big eater, eating in a social situation gives me something to do with my hands
and face, and takes the pressure off me to interact with other people. So, at a drinks-party type of affair, I’ll
spend much of the time at the food table, stuffing myself with crisps and Twiglets … I find coping with other
people easier if I’m doing something else at the same time – if socializing and conversation aren’t the only
purpose of our being together.

Another strategy is to engage in backstage rehearsals: practising one’s lines and moves (Goffman 1969)
before a scene, so that the final frontstage performance will appear smooth and polished. Written or
mental scripts, composed before entering situations, can help to reduce the perceived likelihood of
making an embarrassing blunder. Thus, Georgia wrote notes before telephoning the gas company,
student Phoebe carefully planned what to say before raising her hand in class, and Connie described
how she prepared to catch the bus:

I always planned out what I was gonna say. Even if it was just ‘A single to – my nearest town,’ and always
made sure that I had the right money so that I wouldn’t have to go digging about in my purse. I just wanted
to make the situation as short as possible, talking to the bus driver.

Others were more devious, using costume and props to deliberately misdirect the audience. A
wonderfully ingenious example of this was Pearl, a woman of seventy, who played on stereotypes of the
elderly by dressing up as an ‘old lady’ to lower the audience’s expectations of her. Pearl calculated that
if people dismissed her as socially invisible, she would not have to be held accountable for her
performance:
I feel safer all wrapped up. I would love to wear a long robe and a veil, but that wouldn’t be very popular
today, would it? I compromise with coat, hat, gloves, spectacles (which I don’t need; they belonged to my
mother) and a walking stick, which I don’t need either. I like to be covered up and have something to hold.
A friend suggested the walking stick and I find it very helpful. It looks natural, too, for an old lady of
seventy to have one.

So, shyness is not simply felt, or suffered, in a negative way, but on the contrary, it can be positively
enacted and skilfully managed. We might then talk not merely of ‘being shy’ but of ‘doing shyness’ in
everyday life, as a practice involving self-consciously performed emotion.

Managing shyness as a deviant identity

Although shyness is felt transiently in the moment, it can also be consolidated into an identity that
endures over the life course. Following the labelling theories of deviance proposed by symbolic
interactionists (Kitsuse 1962; Becker 1963; Schur 1971), we can chart the micro-social, relational
processes through which this happens. Labelling theories shift the focus away from inherently deviant
individuals or acts towards the audiences who perceive and define deviance. There may not be
essentially ‘shy people’ but rather attributions of shyness as rule-breaking behaviour. Related to this,
identity is not as a fixed, stabled thing that we have, but a dynamic process that is negotiated with
others. We can then study the process of becoming shy (see Becker 1963), as a socially negotiated
‘career trajectory’ (Strauss 1969) that unfolds in a linear sequence of stages. Whether or not an
individual progresses from each stage to the next is contingent upon the encounters, transactions and
relations they have with significant others along the way.
There are two main kinds of social reaction that shy behaviour can evoke. Normalisation occurs when
an unexpected, rule-breaking act is attributed to external circumstances rather than to the individual,
and so can be rationally explained away. If a person appears shy in a situation that is out of the
ordinary, such as a job interview or when meeting strangers, those around them may reason that
‘anyone would feel shy’ under these circumstances, so there is nothing to be concerned about. Similarly,
when shyness can be attributed to a role or status, such as childhood, it is often condoned and viewed
sympathetically.
However, sometimes shyness cannot be made sense of, because it breaks the taken-for-granted,
‘residual rules’ of interaction (Scheff 1966/1984). Failing to observe conversational norms such as turn-
taking, maintaining eye contact and speaking volubly, marks the individual out as deviant and evokes a
morally indignant reaction. Just as Harold Garfinkel (1967) found in his breaching experiments,
witnesses to the transgression move in to defend the underlying order that has been threatened,
becoming cross and frustrated with the offender. Thus, my participants reported that their shyness was
often misperceived as rudeness or aloofness. Etta remembered how she had once been admonished for
scuttling past a row of passengers on the bus, with downcast eyes as she anxiously tried to find an
empty seat. A woman had exclaimed: ‘Who do you think you are, tossing your head at me? You think
you’re too good to sit near me!’. Titus agreed that shyness could be mistaken for rudeness because it
offended the moral principles of fairness and equal responsibility. He drew an analogy to how people
would regard a lazy and selfish housemate: ‘the person who steals your milk but never buys any’. These
misperceptions betray a cruel irony, for as we have seen, shy actors are in fact highly motivated by
social conformity: they are concerned with the desire to get things ‘right’ and make a favourable
impression. As Emily explained:

I worry that people will mistake me just feeling insecure and shy for me not bothering to speak to someone,
or … thinking that I’m too good to speak to someone. It’s just completely the opposite: your mind’s
whizzing, trying to think of something to say, but you can’t.

This kind of social reaction underlines the relational dynamic of shyness, as an intersubjective reality
that emerges out of the ‘conversation of gestures’ (Mead 1934) between social selves. One actor
manifests an emotional expression, which is interpreted and defined by those around them according to
background assumptions and stocks of indexical, tacit knowledge. The perception that someone is shy is
a contingent, negotiated ‘definition of the situation’ (Thomas and Thomas 1928). Shy actors are astute
observers of this dynamic process unfolding, and able to ‘take the view of the other’ (Mead 1934) to
imagine how things appear from the audience’s perspective. As Lauren reflected:

It can be very awkward talking to somebody that’s not actually reacting and giving back stuff – it’s much
easier to have conversations with people who help you along the way, and actually that you feel you’re
interacting with and not talking at. You know, it’s just more comfortable … if it’s a two-way thing rather
than you constantly having to try all the time.

Through this relational dynamic, an actor who manifests shy expressions may be positioned as an
outsider, on the margins of a scene. They represent the archetypal figure of the stranger (Simmel
1908b/1950), who confronts a group but is denied full membership, because they lack the requisite
stocks of tacit background knowledge needed to participate. This exclusionary ‘cutting out operation’
(Smith 1978) happens both transiently, through the mutual (mis)perceptions of interactants in an
immediate situation, and progressively, if the pattern is so habitually repeated that it consolidates into a
role.
In the first case, my participants recounted episodes in which they felt themselves being excluded
from social situations, particularly group conversations. This often happened because they spoke
quietly or struggled to break into a boisterous exchange. Ruby complained that chatty friends ‘just cut
me off halfway through’, and Toby agreed: ‘Lots of social gatherings are just shouting matches,
effectively, where the prize goes to the loudest person’. These actors experienced what Goffman (1959)
called the ‘dilemma of expression versus action’, which occurs when an actor is so self-consciously
aware of the stylistic form of giving a performance that they cannot concentrate on its substantive
content. Doubting their ability to contribute, and trapped in the reflexive internal dialogue between Shy
‘I’ and Shy ‘Me’, the actor hesitates and holds back, only to find that they have missed the beat of the
social dance and slipped out of the circle. Anna said regretfully: ‘It happens all the time … I’d think,
“Oh, should I say that? Should I say that?” – and then the chance goes’.
In the second case, people who routinely experience shyness may be seen as such by others,
internalise this attribution, and eventually come to see themselves as shy. Labelling was evident
throughout my participants’ accounts, as they were called various names, such as ‘weird’, ‘boring’,
‘quiet’ and ‘sensible’, which frustratingly did not match how they viewed themselves. The label ‘shy’,
however, seemed to be stickier, and clung to the person’s self-image. As Etta recollected, even well-
intentioned teasing could have a devastating impact:

My parents always called me ‘the shy one of the family’… [my uncle] would always ask me: ‘How’s my shy
girl?’. He’d say it as if he took some enjoyment in watching me cringe. He knew I was shy and would pursue
it to no end. My [other] uncle would also give me a certain look with a smile on his face. He would just stare
at me until he could get me to put that shy look on my face. We all know the ‘shy look’, I think. I would turn
beet red as I silently died inside … The more I showed I was shy, the more they would taunt me.

Through this vicious circle, the shy role gradually consolidates into a ‘master status’ (Hughes 1945), an
over-riding definition of identity based on one salient characteristic. As Georgia put it, shyness ‘almost
defines who you are. I suppose. It’s just like saying that someone’s a positive or negative person … you
kind of box people into how you see them’. This represents a shift from what Edwin Lemert (1967)
called ‘primary deviance’ (the initial rule-breaking acts) to ‘secondary deviance’ (adaptation to the
consequences of negative sanctioning, which alters self-identity). The result may be a fatalistic self-
fulfilling prophecy, whereby it seems easier to live up to others’ expectations than to challenge them.
For example, Anna reflected:

I think it’s who I am now, cos after so many years of being like that, I think I am [shy]. And I think quite a
few times, some people have said, ‘Oh, Anna’s the quiet one’ … it kind of stuck with me, I suppose … if
people say ‘Oh, you’re nice and quiet, you are’ and then you just think, ‘Well, why say anything then? Why
really speak up?’.

Drifting out of the shy role can then become difficult, because such inconsistency would constitute
further deviance. Acting out of character from one’s master status compounds the audience’s
expectations once again, rendering the actor even more conspicuous. Hence Ruby explained that, even
though she sometimes felt able to perform non-shyness, she was effectively prevented from doing so by
being trapped in the shy role:

Once you’re classified as a shy person, you can’t do anything that’s not shy, cos if you do that, then it’s like
there’s something wrong with you. You can’t do something just, like, drastic or outrageous, cos they’d say
‘Oh, what’s wrong with you? Are you sick?’… I can’t switch from being Little Miss Quiet in the corner and
then to be Little Miss Loud, cos it’s like – people just look at you funny.

The problematisation of shyness also occurs at the cultural level, where it represents a deviation from
certain dominant norms and values (Scott 2007; Moran 2016). Assertiveness, vocality and competitive
individualism are prized highly as the means to personal and professional success, and shyness is
antithetical to this ‘extrovert ideal’ (Cain 2012). As such, it transgresses the ‘feeling rules’ (Hochschild
1983) of contemporary western societies, failing to confer emotional capital (Williams 1998) upon the
individual. Popular texts of the mass media, such as magazines, Hollywood films, children’s novels and
self-help books, depict shy characters as objects of pity, held back by their unfortunate condition (Scott
2007). Shyness is framed as a barrier to meritocratic achievement: a problem that should be worked at
and overcome. This chimes with a wider moral discourse of neoliberal individual responsibility, which
identifies problematic subjects in need of social regulation, disciplinary monitoring and self-governance
(Rose 1990).
Shyness is therefore embedded within a deeper, structural ‘emotion regime’ (Reddy 2000), which
shapes social attitudes and responses towards it. One manifestation of this is the medicalisation of
extreme forms of shyness as a mental pathology. Social phobia and social anxiety disorder are relatively
new psychiatric categories, which came into use in 1980 (Scott 2006). Diagnostic bracket creep means
that forms of social behaviour that would once have been accepted as ‘normal shyness’ are now
reframed as being in need of medical treatment (Lane 2006). Consequently, we find health care
industries promising curative treatments, from pharmaceutical drugs to private therapeutic shyness
clinics (Scott 2006).
 Yet, against this trend, we find some evidence of resistance. My participants emphasised the positive
qualities associated with shyness, which they thought were often overlooked. These included
conscientiousness, sensitivity, kindness, compassion and empathy. In some discursive spaces, such
objections can escalate into something more defiant and politically assertive. A counter-discourse
(Foucault 1971) of ‘Shy Pride’ can be observed in some online communities, where members share
experiences and mobilise with a dissenting collective voice (Scott 2007). Echoing the social model of
disability (Oliver 1990), shy activists object to the individualised notion of impairment, and redirect
attention to the surrounding social environment that imposes barriers to their participation. This shifts
the burden of responsibility for change away from the ‘shy’ person and onto the wider society to
accommodate their needs. For example, Urchin suggested: ‘I mentioned my frustration at not daring to
ask for things in shops. Well, maybe the shop should rethink its layout and signage so I can find what I
want’.
However, the Shy Pride movement might need to begin at home. Michel de Certeau (1984) argued
that resistance must be exercised at the grassroots, everyday level, through small but symbolic gestures
as critically engaged ‘moments’. Thus, Twinkle called for the label to be reclaimed as a positive social
identity by challenging its unthinkingly negative use in routine, everyday encounters:

Shyness is seen as ‘other’, i.e. in some way deficient to non-shyness, and as such, the non-shyness model is
what us shy people are constantly being measured up against. Why should that be? Why does shyness have
to be seen as a ‘problem’, as other? Isn’t it about time that it was seen as equal but different?

Thus, shyness exists in a complex relation to deviance. It arises from the anticipation of social
judgement for one’s perceived relative incompetence, but it is the attempted concealment of this, and
resulting emotion displays, that actually evoke such a negative social reaction. Audiences are more
sympathetic towards someone who makes an embarrassing mistake than to someone who appears not
to try at all. This definition of shyness as deviance emerges proximally from situations, but is bolstered
by a strong cultural repertoire of norms, values and feeling rules of the wider emotion regime.

Conclusion
In this chapter, I have presented a sociological model of shyness, drawing on ideas from symbolic
interactionism and Goffman’s dramaturgy. Challenging the assumption that shyness reflects individual
differences of psychology, I argue that it is a social role that emerges from interaction and whose
meaning is contextually negotiated. This is not to deny the emotional aspect of shyness, and how it is
subjectively experienced, but rather to treat these as relational phenomena. Shyness belongs to the
family of self-conscious emotions, involving concerns about social judgement. It is a state of anxious
inhibition that arises when we feel unable to behave in normatively expected ways, and anticipate
making an embarrassing mistake. The shy actor feels poorly equipped, compared to those around them,
to dramaturgically manage the situation; thus I define shyness as a feeling of perceived relative social
incompetence.
The shy social self has two constituent parts, engaged in an internal dialogue. Adapting Mead’s
model, I suggest that the Shy ‘I’ reacts with anxious inhibition and withdrawal, while the Shy ‘Me’
critically reflects upon its own image, from the perspective of the Competent Other. This implies pro-
social motivations – to belong, to conform and to be accepted – the frustration of which can create
loneliness, sadness and other negative emotions. Shyness is distinct from quietness and introversion in
this respect, for it reveals a deeply ambivalent attitude towards social visibility.
Nevertheless, shyness is actively performed and managed in everyday life. Actors can devise tricks
and strategies for concealing their discomfort and ‘passing’ as non-shy. These involve conducting
backstage rehearsals, using material objects as costumes and props, tailoring self-presentation to
different audiences, and hiding beneath a controlled and predictable scripted role. However, such
attempts to disguise a Goffmanian ‘discreditable’ stigma can sometimes backfire. Embodied gestures
like blushing, shaking and stammering mark out the shy role as ‘discrediting’ in itself, evoking negative
social reactions.
Shyness is regarded as deviant because it challenges certain values of contemporary western
societies, namely assertiveness, extroversion and competitive individualism. It breaks the cultural
feeling rules of this emotional regime, evoking negative social reactions in everyday encounters. Those
who routinely experience shyness may drift into the shy role as a master status, which defines their
social identity. This fatefully shapes future relationships and interactions, positioning shy actors as
perpetually ‘strange’ outsiders. Alternatively, positive meanings can be associated with shyness, and the
identity reclaimed as a source of pride.
Whichever attitude people adopt to their shyness, it is an actively experienced emotion. We
agentically manage this complex state of mind, demonstrating remarkable (and paradoxical) skills of
dramaturgical competence. Ultimately, shyness is a question of identity and lived experience, whose
meanings are negotiated with others. It must be recognised as a deeply social emotion of relational
selfhood, connecting the public and private realms of everyday life.

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9 Envy
Hostility towards superiors
Gordon Clanton

Introduction
Envy is conscious or unconscious hostility toward a superior, someone who is better off or more
accomplished in some important way. Any quality or achievement that provokes admiration also is likely
to provoke some envy. These include wealth, status, power, fame, success, talent, good health, good
grades, good looks and popularity. Because envy is repressed, denied, and relabelled, it is difficult to
observe and almost impossible to assess through self-report. To study envy by observation, we must
look for it in situations where it is likely, and we must watch for the disguises in which it often appears.
Envy is especially salient in competitive situations with high stakes including politics, literature, sports,
and entertainment.
In this chapter, envy will be defined and differentiated from jealousy, an innocent wish, admiration
and emulation. Examples from everyday life illustrate envy called jealousy, envy unnamed, and envy
correctly named. Envy, paradoxically, both threatens and helps to preserve social order. We explore the
hidden social usefulness of envy and the political institutions by which it is managed. Envy is considered
in various contemporary institutional settings, including the family, the workplace, advertising,
competitive sports, educational opportunity, and academia.

Envy and jealousy

A sociological understanding of envy begins with a clear definition of the emotion in which we
distinguish envy from jealousy. Envy and jealousy are separate and distinct emotions, but they are
confused with each other in ordinary speech. Clarity about the distinction between jealousy and envy is
a key to understanding either emotion – and the necessary foundation for their scientific study. Both
empirical research and therapeutic intervention are compromised by language that confuses envy and
jealousy.
It is widely believed that jealousy and envy are the same emotion. In ordinary American English
usage, the word ‘jealousy’ is applied to both emotions (Parrott and Smith 1993). Envy is routinely
referred to as ‘jealousy’. In fact, although jealousy and envy may be mixed together in real life, they are
responses to quite different situations.
Jealousy protects a valued relationship: Jealousy is a protective reaction to a perceived threat to a
valued relationship or to its quality (Clanton and Smith 1977/1998). The protective reaction can involve
thoughts, feelings, and/or actions. Although jealous behaviours sometimes damage relationships, the
intention of jealousy is to protect the relationship or to protect the ego of the threatened partner.
Jealousy typically involves an attempt to protect a valued relationship (especially marriage) from a
perceived threat (especially adultery). Adult jealousy typically results when a person believes that a
marriage or romantic relationship is threatened by a real or imagined rival. As Erving Goffman (1967)
notes about embarrassment, jealousy is not an irrational impulse breaking through socially prescribed
behaviour but part of this orderly behaviour itself.
An individual’s jealousy is likely to be strongest in those situations where the attributes or behaviours
of others threaten the individual’s own self-definition (Salovey and Rodin 1989; Salovey and Rothman
1991). Jealousy is felt in regard to what matters most – and marriage and marital fidelity matter very
much to most people.
Whereas jealousy is rooted in the desire to hold on to what one has, envy begins with the wish for
something desirable that one does not have (Foster 1972). Whereas jealousy may occur when a person
fears losing, or already has lost, an important relationship with another person to a rival, envy may
occur when a person lacks what another has and wishes that the other did not have it (Parrott 1991:4).
Envy is hostility towards superiors: Envy is a negative feeling toward someone who is better off
(Scheler 1912; Schoeck 1966). In other words, envy is resentment toward someone who has some
desirable object or quality that one does not have and cannot get. Any quality or achievement that
provokes admiration also is likely to provoke some envy. These include wealth, status, power, fame,
success, talent, good health, good grades, good looks, and popularity. Aristotle (d. 347 BCE) defined
envy as ‘pain caused by the good fortune of others’.
This definition of envy as hostility toward superiors must be qualified. First, the term superiors should
not be understood as a moral judgment that one person is better than another, only that one person has
an advantage over another – more money, more education, more successful, better looking, bigger
home, nicer car, etc. Second, the hostility in this definition rarely is expressed overtly. Envy seldom
provokes aggression or violence. Most envy is experienced as a hostile wish directed toward the
superior. The most common outward expression of envy is gossip (Foster 1972).
 Envy is not the wish for the object or advantage that provoked the envy. Envy is the much darker wish
that the superior would lose the object or advantage. An innocent wish may be accompanied by the
unconscious envious wish that the other would lose the advantage that provoked the envy, or otherwise
would suffer. Envy includes the perverse pleasure, the malicious joy (Schadenfreude) that is felt when
the superior fails or suffers (Smith 2013).
Most people with whom I discuss jealousy and envy are unclear about the distinction. In my
experience, however, Europeans and people from the Third World are much more likely than Americans
to understand what envy is – a clue as to how deeply Americans repress envy. My students delight in
finding examples of envy being called ‘jealousy’ or otherwise mislabelled. For example: ‘The other
players were jealous of the star’s huge salary’. Or: ‘I’m jealous because you were honoured and I was
not’. Or: ‘Some of the other performers were jealous of her obvious talent’. In each case, the emotion
being reported is envy.
Because envy is a completely negative emotion, it usually is repressed, denied, disguised, and
relabelled. For this reason, it is difficult to observe and almost impossible to assess through self-report.
As both Max Scheler (1912) and Helmut Schoeck (1966) noted, despite its considerable social
significance, envy largely has been neglected as a topic of social scientific inquiry. Having defined
jealousy and envy, making clear the distinction between them, we turn now to further analysis of envy.

Recognising envy
Here we revisit and extend the definition of envy, noting the difficulty of studying an emotion that
routinely is denied, repressed and relabelled.
A definition of envy: As noted above, envy is hostility toward superiors, a negative feeling toward
someone who is better off (Scheler 1912; Schoeck 1966). Put differently, envy is discontent at the
excellence or good fortune of another. Envy is resentment toward someone who has some desirable
object or quality that one does not have and cannot get. By ‘resentment’ we mean bitter indignation at
having been treated unfairly, as in ‘his resentment at having been demoted’. So, envy and resentment
are overlapping categories and near synonyms. Again, envy is not the wish for the advantage that
provoked the envy. Rather, envy is the much darker wish that the superior would lose the advantage.
Envy includes Schadenfreude, the perverse pleasure, the malicious joy, that is felt when the superior
fails or suffers (Smith 2013). Schadenfreude celebrates the downfall of the superior. As Ovid (d. 17 CE)
said, the envious person never smiles except at the sight of another’s troubles.
The envious person rarely resorts to violence against the superior and rarely seeks to seize or to win
the desired object through direct competition (Schoeck 1966). Often the envious person takes no action,
but instead merely wishes that the other would lose the advantage that provoked the envy, or otherwise
would suffer. And the envious person may quietly celebrate any such loss or suffering that may befall a
superior. Most often, such dark feelings are contained within the individual. Occasionally they may be
voiced to others: ‘I’d like to see him get what’s coming to him’, ‘Serves them right’, or, with satisfaction,
‘How the mighty have fallen’.
The most common outward expression of envy is gossip (Foster 1972). Recall, for example, the
deprecating labels your high school peers used to describe the student with the best grades (‘teacher’s
pet’ and worse), the best football or basketball player (‘dumb jock’), and the beauty queen (‘stuck up’).
Any quality or achievement that provokes admiration also is likely to provoke envy.
An individual’s envy is likely to be strongest when the advantage of the superior is in an area of
importance to the individual’s own self-definition. Following William James, Peter Salovey and
colleagues (Salovey and Rodin 1989; Salovey and Rothman 1991) conclude that envy is most likely
when comparisons are made in domains that are especially important to our self-definition. We only
truly care about our performance in a limited number of life domains. This ‘domain relevance
hypothesis’ holds that envy is most likely when comparisons with another person are negative for the
self, and these comparisons are in a domain that is especially important to self-definition.
Conceptually speaking, one cannot envy down. By definition, the envied must be better off than the
envier. In real life, however, it is possible to be simultaneously better off than another in some ways but
less well off in other ways. For example, younger people may envy older people their wealth and power,
but older people with wealth and power may envy younger people their health and good looks. The
unemployed youth who is going fishing may envy the bank president because of his wealth, but the
bank president may envy the unemployed youth because of his freedom to go fishing.
Envy, like all emotions, is a feeling within an individual. But envy may also prevail between groups,
classes, and whole societies. Poor individuals envy the rich. Losers in competitions envy winners.
Likewise, New Yorkers and Californians often are targets of envy from people who live in other parts of
the United States. Americans are targets of envy from people who live in other parts of the world.
The denial of envy: Because envy is a completely negative emotion, it usually is repressed, denied,
disguised and relabelled. To admit straightforwardly to envy is to declare oneself inferior to another and
hostile toward that person (or class of persons) because of the inferiority. Because of repression,
individuals usually are unaware of their own envy and so are not reliable informants about their envy.
Although many sociologists have an aversion to Freud and to the notion of the unconscious mind
(Manning 2005), the study of envy clearly represents an area of inquiry that requires both sociological
and psychological sensitivities.
As mentioned, envy is often mislabelled as ‘jealousy’, thus making it less likely that we shall
understand it and deal with it constructively. But jealousy is almost never mislabelled as ‘envy’. This
pattern of usage suggests that envy is more negative, more shameful, and more deeply repressed than
jealousy – even if we are not sure why. Envy is one of the seven deadly sins, but jealousy is not (Lyman
1978). The popular media both reflect and contribute to the confusion of jealousy and envy.
Some academic writing adds to the confusion. Margaret Mead (1931), toward the end of a classic
article on jealousy, begins discussing envy, without using the word envy and without realizing that she
has switched topics. Abram de Swann (1989) titles his inquiry ‘Jealousy as a Class Phenomenon: The
Petite Bourgeoisie and Social Security’, but the article is clearly about envy.
Situations and disguises: Because envy, as mentioned, is repressed, denied and relabelled, it is
difficult to observe and almost impossible to assess through self-report. To study envy by observation,
we must look for it in the situations in which it is likely, and we must watch for the disguises in which it
often appears.
Situations in which envy is likely include these: your best friend wins a coveted scholarship or award.
A neighbour hits the lottery. A co-worker gets a raise or a promotion, but you do not. Another woman
becomes pregnant when you cannot. The star of the team gets a huge salary and most of the press
attention. In a crowded parking lot, another driver finds a parking place when you cannot. Social media
can generate envy when one sees one’s friends having fun at a restaurant or traveling the world. In
each case, if you could be 100 per cent happy for the other without qualifications or second thoughts,
you would be without envy. But to whatever degree you find yourself, even for a moment, thinking the
other does not deserve the good fortune or wishing that the other would lose her advantage, that is a
measure of your envy. As Murray Kempton (1990) noted:

The poisons of envy corrode the veins of every passed-over associate professor when he crosses the path of
an anointed full professor, every failed novelist when he turns to the best-seller list, every waiter in a West
Side restaurant when he thinks of an actor who has a part.

The common disguises (indirect expressions) of envy include attempts to shift a comparison from areas
in which one compares poorly with another to areas in which one looks good, attempts to provoke envy
in others, projections of envy and greed onto others, excessive admiration, and attempts to share the
glory of another. Common verbal formulas for expressing envy include: ‘if I can’t have X, then no one
else should’; ‘it’s not fair that they have X and we don’t’; and, in Oscar Wilde’s famous variation, ‘it is
not enough for me to succeed; my friends must also fail’. In a New Yorker cartoon, a dog says: ‘it’s not
enough that we succeed. Cats must also fail’.
Envy in myth and literature: The great stories of Western civilization include many examples of envy.
The Egyptian god Osiris is killed and dismembered by his brother Seth, who is envious of his radiant
attractiveness, power, and success. Cain is envious of Able. Othello is brought down by the envious
Iago, who uses Othello’s propensity to jealousy against him. Salieri hates Mozart because he is more
talented and his work as a composer is so effortless. Sailor Billy Budd, adored by the crew for his
innocence and natural charisma, becomes the victim of the envy of the ship’s Master-at-Arms John
Claggart, who falsely accuses Billy of conspiracy to mutiny. Homer Simpson is envious of his more
affluent neighbour Ned Flanders (Smith 2013).
Envy understood: One of my students showed that she understood what envy is when she put this
note at the end of her final paper:

When I was in high school I knew this girl named Kim. I hated her to the point I avoided her in the halls.
She was everything I hated in a person. She was popular, pretty (well not all that pretty), had big boobs (but
they sagged), intelligent, and stuck up. It hit me in class after your envy lecture that I was envious of her.

Not only is this a remembered example of envious resentment of the superiority of another, the envy is
still active, as indicated by the tendency, years later, to gossip about Kim.

What envy is not

To be clear about what envy is, it is useful to differentiate it from several other emotions and conditions
with which envy often is confused in ordinary speech.
Jealousy: Most important, envy is not the same as jealousy. As noted above, jealousy is a protective
reaction to a perceived threat to a valued relationship or to its quality (Clanton and Smith 1977/1998).
Envy is hostility toward superiors, negative feelings toward someone who is better off. Whereas
jealousy typically involves three people, envy involves only two. Not only are the two emotions distinct
in terms of the situations that give rise to them, an experimental study (Parrott and Smith 1993)
revealed qualitative differences between them. Jealousy was characterized by fear of loss, distrust,
anxiety, and anger. Envy was characterized by feelings of inferiority, longing, resentment, and
disapproval of the emotion.
An innocent wish: Envy, as noted above, is not an innocent wish for what one does not have. Envy is
the darker wish that a superior should lose or suffer. Envy takes delight at the downfall of a superior. Of
course, any wish for an object or advantage may be accompanied by unconscious envy.
Admiration: Although often mixed together in real life, envy is different from admiration. In ordinary
speech we may say that we ‘envy’ someone’s ability as a public speaker. This is a misuse of the word
envy, because presumably we do not consciously wish the speaker in question would embarrass herself
before an audience or get laryngitis before a big speech. Instead, we are expressing admiration for this
person’s skill – and the admiration may or may not be mixed with unconscious envy. Advertisers often
play on the fact that, if one is admired, one also might be envied. A print ad for a German luxury car
trumpets: ‘More Horses. Bigger Engine. Increased Envy’. Another luxury car ad promises: ‘Once again
envy will be standard equipment’. An expensive men’s fragrance is called Envy. A recent print ad for
diet pills shows a photo of a newly slim celebrity model with the caption: ‘Be envied’. And a long-
running print ad for a line of hair products showed beautiful women with perfect hair and the caption:
‘Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful’. Advertising, which is the consumer culture’s version of
mythology, promises the pleasure that comes from being envied by others. As Aeschylus (d. 456 BCE)
noted: ‘He who goes unenvied shall not be admired’.
Emulation: Envy is different from emulation. In ordinary speech we may say that ‘envy’ is a good
thing because it motivates people to work harder to get for themselves what they envy others for
having. Rather than envy the owner of a fine automobile, we should emulate him. This presumably
means we should work hard, make a lot of money, and buy such a car. Our capitalist ethos encourages
us to convert our envy into emulation, thus reducing the risk that the envious have-nots will demand
redistribution of wealth. Because much envy is stimulated by differences that cannot be relieved by
emulation, this advice is hollow. Some envy can be converted into emulation with a resulting increase in
productivity, but a great deal of envy is the result of enduring inequalities that cannot be eliminated
through hard work (Clanton 2006).
Distinguishing envy from jealousy, innocent wishes, admiration, and emulation helps us to see that
envy, unlike these others, is a thoroughly negative experience for both the envier (because no one
enjoys contemplating their inferiority and their hostility toward others) and the envied (because no one
enjoys being hated and gossiped about by friends and associates). Although one may momentarily
celebrate being envied as a mark of success, no one really wants others wishing that one would fail,
lose, or suffer – and celebrating when one does.

Envy by any name

To clarify the linguistic confusion that surrounds envy, please consider these examples gleaned from the
media and from everyday life of envy called jealousy, of envy unnamed, and of envy correctly named.
Envy called jealousy: A 16-year-old girl writes to an advice columnist (August 5, 2000): ‘OK, I admit it.
I am a jealous person. My best friend is thinner than me, more popular than me, smarter than me, and
has a cuter boyfriend than I will ever have’. But this is envy.
Another 16-year-old girl was convicted of second-degree murder in the stabbing to death of a
classmate. The Los Angeles Times account (March 14, 1985) says: ‘There also was a suggestion that the
girl was jealous of her more popular and successful classmate’. But it would be envy that would move
the girl to tell officers in a taped confession:

I lost for cheerleader and I didn’t get the club I wanted and I didn’t get (on the) yearbook (staff). The things
that got me mad was it hurt and I couldn’t change it … like looks or money or popularity.

A Reader’s Digest article (November 1984) about ‘Who Should Inherit Your Family Treasures?’ warns
that ‘disagreements among siblings can be exacerbated by jealousy when one sibling is less well off
than another’. But that would in fact be envy.
A lawyer who became a sculptor says his former colleagues were jealous that he was doing what he
wanted to do. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen said: ‘Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius’. A college
football TV commentator at the Hawaii Bowl with a rainbow overhead says: ‘I was always jealous of the
announcers who got to call this game’. A movie magazine says that actor Taylor Kinney, Lady Gaga’s
fiancé, is ‘jealous of Gaga’s success’. All are examples of envy being called ‘jealousy’.
Envy unnamed: Mimi Swartz (2009), an executive editor at Texas Monthly magazine, writes:

Growing up in Texas, I knew a lot of girls like Farrah Fawcett, and I hated them. They had everything I
didn’t: blond hair, blue eyes, the power, seemingly, to get anything and everything they wanted in my small
public high school – boys, head cheerleader, the ability to decide, in a twinkling, who was cool and who
wasn’t … [Farrah] came to stand for everything I wanted to escape in my home state.

Her hatred of Farrah-types is envy.

In a Doonesbury comic (May 14, 2013), Mark, who is gay, learns that a gay friend, without much
conflict, has told his parents about his homosexuality and moved in with his boyfriend. ‘What?’, says
Mark, ‘it took me years to get it all sorted out. I hate you! Your life sounds perfect!’. Hating someone
because he has a perfect life is envy. Sally, an ex-smoker, becomes angry when others smoke. She
becomes the enforcer of anti-smoking regulations. Her anger is mixed with envy when she says: ‘By
God, if I can’t smoke, I don’t want others to smoke’. Gore Vidal admits: ‘Every time a friend succeeds, I
die a little’. And the poet Diane Wakowski (1984) writes: ‘I never hear praise of anyone else without
wanting to kill or destroy them … I see every beautiful face as a reminder of my plain one’.
A scholarly article from a symbolic interactionist perspective (Beggan and DeAngelis 2015) all but
ignores envy while exploring the hatred aimed at thin people. The article is titled ‘“Oh, My God, I Hate
You”: The Felt Experience of Being Othered for Being Thin’. The authors conclude ‘thinness is a hyper-
visible condition that produces a breakdown of norms regarding civil inattention toward thinness and
produces the experience of being othered by social perceivers’. ‘Thin people’, we are told, ‘are
distressed by the attention they receive because they are thin’, including unwanted comments about
their size. Envy, in this analysis, is mentioned only in passing, with a suggestion that future research
could explore the relationship between envy and disdain, thus overlooking the possibility that ‘disdain’
of thin people is rooted in envy. When one says to another: ‘I hate you because you are thin’, envy is the
emotion being expressed.
Envy correctly named: In her book Envy Up, Scorn Down: How Status Divides Us, psychologist Susan
T. Fiske (2011) argues that we humans constantly compare ourselves to one another and we compare
our groups to other groups. Two emotions result from such comparisons, envy (of superiors) and scorn
(toward those deemed inferior). Both are central to many interpersonal, societal, and international
problems. Fiske adds that, of the seven deadly sins, envy is the one that nobody ever boasts about. John
Tierney (2011) calls envy the most useless of the deadly sins. Essayist Joseph Epstein says: ‘Of the
seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all’.
‘Pension envy’ is encouraged by a situation in which public employees enjoy generous pensions and
retiree health benefits while most who work in the private sector do not (Paul and Weinberg 2010). An
architect being driven along California’s spectacular Big Sur coast highway said he felt seasick and
acrophobic. The driver asked: ‘From the height? From my driving?’. The architect said: ‘From envy.
Other people live here and I don’t’. Christopher Marlowe said darkly: ‘I am envy. I cannot read and
therefore wish all books burned’. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum (1974) in their analysis of the
seventeenth-century Salem witch trials conclude that ‘social envy’ motivated many of the accusers.
Awareness and fear of envy are higher in preindustrial than in industrial societies, higher in rural
than in urban communities, higher in recently arrived immigrant groups than among native-born
Americans. The fear of envy is higher in poor communities than in the middle class and above, higher
for non-white minorities than for most whites (Clanton 2006).

Envy and social order

Envy, paradoxically, both threatens and helps to preserve social order (Schoeck 1966).
The threat to social order: Envy threatens social order by stimulating interpersonal hostility that
might lead to conflict, by inhibiting the innovation and accumulation of wealth that are necessary for
prosperity, and by stirring the have-nots to revolution that overthrows the existing order. Thus, the
management of envy is a universal social problem.
All societies prohibit envy. All moral systems condemn it as a violation of the highest values. In
hunting-and-gathering societies, everyone remains poor because of the fear of being envied. In
agricultural and industrial societies, various rationalizations of inequality are employed to reduce envy
(Schoeck 1966). The Greeks explained success that otherwise might provoke envy in terms of luck; the
Roman Catholics, in terms of God’s will; the Protestants, in terms of the work ethic. All three
rationalizations are commonly used to reduce envy in contemporary American society (Clanton 2006).
The social function of envy: Envy also helps to preserve social order. The social usefulness of envy lies
primarily in its contribution to social control (Schoeck 1966). Fear of being envied provides one motive
(not the only motive) for conformity to necessary norms: we conform rather than be hated for our
nonconformity by those who do conform. Fear of being envied protects private property: one motive for
reporting a car thief is the envious feeling that ‘he has no more right to that car than I do’. Fear of
being envied encourages fairness: we are less likely to cheat on an exam or to take a favour from a
judge, because we know that we would be hated and perhaps reported to authorities by those who did
not cheat or receive favours.
More generally, fear of being envied reduces injustice in society (Smith 1991). Hostility is a typical
response to perceived injustice, so perceptions of unfairness are very important to the understanding of
envy. Journalist Richard Reeves views envy as ‘the midwife of social justice’:

Without people making comparisons between themselves and those more fortunate, the clamour for greater
equality would never have arisen. One man’s envy is another’s sense of justice – which is why it has always
been the political right that accuses the left of the deadly sin.
(Reeves 2003:29)

Some envy can be turned into emulation of those who are more successful. This, presumably, would
increase productivity, thus benefiting both the individual and the group. In all but a few cases, however,
it is not possible for the non-rich to become very rich simply by ‘working harder’. By exaggerating the
payoff for hard work, the capitalist prescription that envy be converted into emulation helps to
rationalize and preserve existing inequalities (Clanton 2006).
Envy, then, is double-edged. It is necessary to society because it inhibits dangerous deviance and
encourages justice, but it also threatens society, especially by inhibiting innovation, depressing
productivity, and discouraging accumulation of wealth. Thus, the management of envy requires that a
balance be struck.
From the point of view of the political right, the goal of envy-management in society is that there
should be enough envy to encourage the masses to conform to necessary rules, but not so much envy as
to hold back the most talented individuals (Schoeck 1966). From the point of view of the political left,
the goal of envy-management is that there should be, not only enough envy to encourage conformity to
necessary norms, but enough additional envy to inspire demands for some redistribution of wealth and
power (Slater 1980).
The right is concerned that too much envy would prevent the rich from becoming richer. The left is
concerned that too little envy would make it impossible to narrow the gap between the rich and the
poor. Thus, the right seeks to conceal, minimize, and rationalize existing inequality, while the left seeks
to reveal, publicize, and dramatize existing inequality (for more on the politics of envy management, see
Clanton 2006, for additional perspectives on envy, see Smith 2008, and for discussion of the positive
benefits of negative emotions, see Parrott 2014 and Hutson 2015).

Envy in everyday life

Here we consider envy in various contemporary institutional settings of everyday life.
Envy in the family: Family life holds considerable potential for envy. Children may become envious of
parental power and autonomy. Parents may become envious of their children who have opportunities
they did not have. Children may become envious of their siblings who are higher achievers, better
looking, more popular. Indeed, what is called ‘sibling rivalry’ often is a compound of jealousy (a sibling
is seen as threatening the relationship with the parents or with another sibling) and envy (one sibling
has a relationship with a parent that the other does not).
Family reunions and holiday meals provide occasions for envy. Comparisons are inevitable. One cousin
goes to college, another does not. One nephew or niece makes good grades or enjoys athletic success,
another does not. Some aunts and uncles age rapidly, others maintain their health and good looks.
Some family members are better off financially and socially.
A therapist told me about a young man who lost his mother when he was 11 and his father when he
was 18. He remembers being bullied for ‘not having a mom’. He is deeply envious of his peers with
‘normal families’. He says he hates them ‘because they don’t appreciate what they’ve got’.
The ten-year-old granddaughter of friend announced recently that she was ‘jealous’ of her cousins
because they have a big yard, a tree house, and a pool. She also says that she does not want to be
‘jealous’. Of course, this is another example of envy being called ‘jealousy’. Also note: At age ten, she
already has learned that ‘jealous’ is something she does not want to be.
Envy in the workplace: Envy is inevitable in the workplace, especially in an office environment where
employees of different ranks see each other every day for years and cannot avoid comparing themselves
with their co-workers. Envy can destroy constructive work relationships and sabotage organizations.
Envy is strongest between or among near equals.
The office workplace is a stratified environment. Some earn much more money than others – which is
why some companies keep salaries a secret. Some have much more power than others. The office
workplace is a competitive environment in which one person’s gain often is another’s loss. One wins the
corner office and several other contenders are discontent, potentially envious. One colleague gets a key
promotion or a big assignment or a larger expense account and others do not. One colleague gets a lot
of praise from a boss. The office environment produces few winners and many losers (Jackall 1988).
Some envy is inevitable and effective managers and executives need to minimize envy in the ranks.
Awareness of envy precedes its management. Fairness and cooperative strategies reduce envy.
Religious and ethical prohibitions reduce envy. Rationalizations of inequality reduce envy: ‘Our CEO
makes much more than we do because he is uniquely qualified to run our enterprise. Such a leader is
needed if our company is to be successful in a competitive market’.
Non-exempt employees envy middle management. Middle managers envy top executives. Those who
are promoted to a higher rank may stop socializing after work with former colleagues still working at
the lower level.
Popular books and articles about how to succeed in office environments often warn that success
almost always breeds envy. One such article (Glamour, January 24, 1992) starts like this: ‘If you are
successful at work, not everyone wishes you well. If you’re very successful, almost no one does’.
Arlie Russell Hochschild (1983) argues that more and more jobs require emotional labour in addition
to physical and intellectual labour. Part of the job is to feel the right way – or at least to appear to feel
the right way. The feeling rules of the work situation require emotion work to bring an individual’s
emotional display into harmony with group expectations. Often this involves pretending to be happy
when you are not. Furthermore, says Hochschild, it is sometimes easier to actually make yourself happy
than to pretend you are happy when you are not. Airline flight attendants reported that it was easier to
make themselves cheerful than to pretend they were cheerful. Hochschild calls this ‘deep acting’,
actually modifying one’s feelings from within, rather than ‘surface acting’, in which one pretends to feel
what one does not feel. In more recent work, Hochschild (2016) concludes that anger and mourning
(grief) are primary motives of white working-class Donald Trump supporters she interviewed in
Southwest Louisiana (for more on envy in the workplace, see Duffy et al. 2008).
Envy in advertising: A two-page spread in the New York Times (March 6, 2012) advertised a company
that arranges luxury vacation rentals that would: ‘Make your primary residence JEALOUS’ allowing you
to ‘be the ENVY of your well-travelled friends’. Of course, a home cannot feel jealousy. But otherwise
this ad uses the terms correctly. If your house was a person, it might feel jealous when you head out to
your other house. Of course, we do not want to be actively hated by our less accomplished friends, so
the ‘envy’ mentioned here is the need to be admired.
Hewlett-Packard offers HP ENVY laptops and tablets. In San Diego there is a chain of massage
studios called Massage Envy, a garage-organizing company called Garage Envy, and a closet-
remodelling business called Storage Envy. Taco Bell TV ads introduce the concept of ‘Order Envy, when
you want what you have and what they (other patrons) have’. The answer to order envy, we are told, is
to ask for a new taco with two different fillings. Most envy is not so easily resolved.
Envy in sports: The world of sports is very competitive, with every win and loss posted for all to see.
Success in sports breeds envy. In college sports, Duke basketball and Alabama football, because of their
long-running success, are targets of envy. In pro ranks, the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles
Lakers have been described by numerous sportswriters as ‘the most hated team in America’, the result
of long histories of success and glamour.
When the NBA Miami Heat had three superstars, a Knicks fan said: ‘We hate them because they are
front-runners’ (Los Angeles Times, December 24, 2010). Hatred of superiors is envy. When the
University of Southern California football team was sanctioned by the NCAA, the USC athletic director
said: ‘As I read the decision … I read between the lines and there was nothing but a lot of envy. They
wish they all were Trojans’ (Los Angeles Times, June 11, 2010). Following tribal tradition, players on
the Navajo boys’ basketball team in Chinle, Arizona, swallow bitter herbs before games to guard against
envy, jealousy, and witchcraft (New York Times, February 27, 2017).
Envy amid natural disaster: In 2016 Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was struck by unprecedented flooding.
The area is mostly flat, more than 100 air miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River but only 56 feet
above sea level. Nevertheless, some areas are at slightly higher elevation than others. The flooding
divided Baton Rouge into two separate but unequal realms. Homes above the flood line suffered little or
no damage. Those situated only a few inches lower were damaged, devastated, or destroyed.
In such a world, the temptation to envy is enormous. If your house was flooded and a neighbour’s
house was not, you would be tempted not only to wish that your house had not been flooded, but also
(and this is where envy begins) to wish your neighbour’s house had been devastated as yours was. This
is a dark wish. It brings no benefit. It changes nothing. It is the envy that is reflected more generally in
the wish that the superior would lose the advantage that confers superiority.
Envy and educational opportunity: A major cultural constraint on expanding higher education for
disadvantaged minorities is the high level of envy in the communities from which many minority
students come. If very few in a community have gone to college, there will be many who wish others
from the community also should not go to college. In some immigrant communities, it is assumed that
kids who go to college will move away from the neighbourhood, and the prevailing sentiment is that ‘it’s
a stupid man who makes his son better than he is’. This is similar to the Italian peasant proverb: ‘Never
educate your children beyond yourself’.
Black people sometimes refer to black communities as ‘crabs in a barrel’, suggesting that anyone who
is about to climb out of a disadvantaged neighbourhood will be pulled down by others. An African
American student who speaks standard correct unaccented English often will be put down by other
black students as ‘talking white’. Hispanic students, especially females, often face strong family
pressure to drop out of college, being told they are ‘selfish’ to want what their parents did not have.
Native American students are influenced by ancient tribal cultures in which high awareness and fear of
envy make individuals reluctant to achieve what their neighbours do not have. For all disadvantaged
minorities, and for poor whites as well, educational achievement and upward mobility are inhibited by
the fear of being envied in communities from which few have gone to college.
Envy in academia: The academic world is highly competitive. Recognition is the currency in academia,
and it can increase, decrease, or disappear over time. Thus, envy is an occupational hazard of academic
life (Bloch 2012). Anger at not getting enough recognition, envy, and Schadenfreude (gloating at
another’s fall) are rampant. More research will be needed.

Conclusion
As this chapter has shown, envy is hostility towards superiors. Envy is different from jealousy. Envy is
not the wish for what one does not have. It is the darker wish that the superior would lose her
advantage. Because envy is repressed, denied, and relabelled, it is difficult to observe and almost
impossible to assess through self-report. Envy both threatens and helps to preserve social order. Fear of
being envied provides one motive for conformity to necessary norms. Fear of being envied reduces
injustice in society. The management of envy is inescapably political. Envy arises in all aspects of life,
especially in competitive situations where the stakes are high. Envy is experienced in the family, in the
workplace, in advertising, and in sports. Envy rises during natural disasters. Envy undermines
educational opportunity and is commonplace in academia.

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10 Guilt
What’s so good about feeling bad about yourself?
Vessela Misheva

Introduction
Guilt was an important focus of research throughout the twentieth century in many social and
humanitarian sciences, particularly philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and theology, with sociology
being a latecomer to the field. It was also an important topic in public discourses involving such social
spheres as religion, politics, economy, and law. Prominent examples include the discourses concerning
prostitution, abortion, environmental degradation, climate change, genocide, military atrocities, racial
and gender violence, national minority policies, human rights violations and international relations.
Important prerequisites for the sociological analysis of guilt include studying the classical texts of
Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud; tracing the changing fortunes of guilt and shame studies
during the twentieth century; examining ideal examples of personal situations that elicit guilt;
investigating the most discussed types of guilt; and addressing the existing obstacles to classifying guilt
as an emotion. Two main issues are that guilt cannot be separated in theory from shame, and, in view of
its complexity, demands a micro-macro sociological analysis. This chapter will address the micro-
sociological issues in this analysis, putting aside its macro aspects for another discussion.

The classical foundation of guilt studies

During the classical age of guilt studies, namely, the final decades of the nineteenth and the first
decades of the twentieth century, two major theoretical frameworks emerged that tackled guilt from
different disciplinary perspectives – those of Nietzsche (1886/1968a, 1887/1968b) in philosophy and
Freud (1923/1962, 1930/1985) in psychology.
In respect to modern studies of emotions in the social and humanitarian sciences, Nietzsche’s
investigation of the origins of morality may be regarded as an inquiry into the origins of shame and
guilt. Nietzsche began his genealogy of morals at the point in history when human beings were confined
to what may be viewed as a social institution in which the ‘morality of custom’ rendered them
‘predictable’ (Nietzsche 1887/1968b, II:1–2). Nietzsche argued that the individual, through an ‘immense
process’ of further development, eventually broke loose from this type of morality and became ‘the
autonomous individual beyond morality’. Thus was born ‘the sovereign individual’ – ‘the ripest fruit of
that tree’. Human being as such attained its completion through this free individual, who ‘possessed his
own independent and enduring will’ and was alone ‘entitled to make promises’, have a ‘proud
consciousness’ beyond any shame, and possessed ‘a real consciousness of power and freedom’
(Nietzsche 1887/1968b, II:2). This second type of morality may be subsumed under Nietzsche’s ‘master
morality’, which is characterized by greatness and power, a mastering of the virtues, and an ability to
create values and ascribe them to both self and others as an expression of an abundance of will
(Nietzsche 1887/1968b, I:10–11). Nietzsche’s claim that ‘“autonomous” and “moral” are mutually
exclusive terms’ underlies the emergence of guilt and ‘bad conscience’ as a more profound type of
morality. Guilt, which is identical in German with the material concept of debt (Schuld), was related to
the idea of justice through a moral revolution driven by the ordinary man’s feeling of ressentiment, who
defined his suffering as injustice. Justice meant that the anger of one who had suffered injury was
modified and restrained since injuries are measurable, have equivalents, and ‘can actually be paid back’
– even by inflicting pain on the perpetrator of the unjust act (Nietzsche 1887/1968b, II:4). The
consciousness of responsibility and ‘power over oneself’ were thus ‘internalized into the deepest parts’
of the autonomous man and became ‘a dominating instinct’ – ‘his conscience’. The latter involves
acquiring an internal sense of judgment concerning wrong and right that helps one avoid punishment
and preserve her sovereignty and autonomy (Nietzsche 1887/1968b, II:2).
Although the twentieth-century debate about possible connections between Nietzsche’s and Freud’s
theories was inconclusive, there is strong evidence that Freud read Nietzsche and drew meaning from
his work (Andersson 1980; Assoun 1980/2002). Freud argued that the success of civilization was
associated with the development of a mechanism for controlling our ‘brute force’ and repressing the
inner inclination to aggressiveness. His approach focuses on a psychological analysis of guilt as a
mechanism of parental control and as a subjective feeling emerging in childhood that is transformed
into a distinctive capacity of civilized individuals. In Freud’s archaeology of guilt, the emergence of the
Oedipus complex, associated with fear of punishment, is a consequence of ‘the killing of the primal
father’ that then leads to identification with the father, the internalization of paternal commands and
prohibitions, and the establishment of the superego as an agency within the individual for monitoring
the ego. Tension between the ego and the superego gives rise to the feeling of guilt. Civilization thus
obtained ‘mastery over the individual’s dangerous desire for aggression’ by turning it upon itself,
establishing the superego as an internalized hostile force that critiques and reproaches the ego,
constrains its inclinations and desires for pleasure, and promotes moral behaviour (Freud
1923/1962:60–61). This transformed the fear of parental power and punishment into respect for
authorities and the social order, giving rise to a sense of justice that comprises the foundation of the
moral personality, with the superego as its agent of conscience. Since guilt cannot properly exist before
the internalization of authority and the establishment of the internal censor, Freud associated the social
anxiety that young children experience because of disobedience or bad behaviour as fear of loss of love.
This form of immature guilt is felt by a powerless and submissive debtor, dependent upon care-takers,
who accepts her punishment since she lacks the agency needed to undertake an act of reparation.
Subsequent research has drawn a distinction between two elements of Freud’s explanation of moral
agency related to two different notions of judgment. One, maintained by the ego-ideal, is associated
with goodness and perfection in terms of good and bad, while the second, steered by the conscience or
superego, is concerned with right and wrong (Deigh 1996:127). Freud’s theory may thus be said to
support a theory of morals involving two types of judgment – one concerning the whole self that
addresses behaviour in terms of good and bad, and another concerning only a part of the self that
addresses action in terms of right and wrong.
Both Nietzsche’s and Freud’s conceptions imply that immature forms of guilt and shame are
interwoven. Nietzsche’s slave morality bears a strong resemblance to what modern research terms
shame morality insofar as he characterizes it as the morality of ordinary men that promotes conformity
for the weak, who are incapable of standing alone, living ‘by personal initiative’, or ascribing a self-
created value to themselves, and always wait for an opinion about themselves from those to whom they
instinctively submit (Nietzsche 1886/1968a, §212 note). In addition, the feeling of ressentiment, which
Nietzsche identified as the driving force of the moral revolution, is synonymous with rage, which is now
accepted as a major source of violence in our civilization and an outcome of repressed, unacknowledged
shame (Scheff and Retzinger 1991). Freud’s immature guilt is also strongly reminiscent of certain
conceptualizations of shame, such as the shame of unreciprocated love or a withdrawal of interest
(Tomkins 1995). Classical texts thus appear to imply that a type of mature guilt emerged from an early
form of guilt, which very much resembles shame and is perhaps indistinguishable from it.

Guilt and shame

Studies of guilt and shame had a complex inter-relationship throughout the twentieth century. Guilt was
well-established in the first half of the twentieth century as an important subject in both philosophy and
psychology by virtue of the considerable attention it received in the writings of such thinkers as
Nietzsche, Freud, G.W.F. Hegel, Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Paul Tillich and
Martin Buber. In subsequent decades, however, psychologists discovered that the dominant focus on
guilt was accompanied by the neglect of another social emotion – shame – which had become concealed
and subsumed under guilt (Lynd 1958; Erikson 1950/1963; Lewis 1971; Lewis 1992). This led to a shift
in focus from guilt – taken as a social emotion that had been discussed in connection with civilization,
culture, selfhood, morality, justice, and pathology – to shame, which subsequently came to be viewed as
responsible for virtually all of the negative socio-psychological effects that had previously been
attributed to guilt (Harder 1995:387). As studies of shame gradually overshadowed studies of guilt,
Freud’s original theory of guilt was subject to criticism and reconsideration. Since shame and guilt
could not be distinguished in psychology at the level of affect, Freud’s distinction between immature
guilt, associated with a strict superego, fear of loss of love, and concerns about fitting in, and mature
guilt, associated with taking responsibility for wrongdoing and feeling remorse, was refashioned into
the difference between shame and guilt (Tomkins 1995; Nathanson 1992). This is reflected in Erikson’s
model of individual psychosocial development, in which shame and guilt are associated with successive
stages of development, with Freud’s original notion of two forms of guilt being abandoned (Erikson
1950/1963).
In anthropology, however, it was shame that had attracted research attention ever since Darwin’s
work on the expression of emotions, with guilt being concealed and subsumed under shame. Benedict’s
classic work, which controversially argued that Western culture is guilt-based while Japanese culture is
shame-based, belongs to this tradition (Benedict 1946). Benedict discussed two mechanisms of socio-
psychological control and the two particular types of moral individuals they produce, but her focus was
on shame, and although she remarked that there was ‘much guilt as well’ in Japan, the latter was
neither investigated, nor compared with Western guilt (Crieghton 1990:281).
A similar situation held true for sociology, in which research was almost entirely focused on shame,
with guilt being viewed as a variant of shame. Shame, regarded as related to embarrassment,
humiliation, and anger, was considered to be the most important social emotion from the time of
Charles Horton Cooley’s theory of the ‘looking-glass self’ to the works of Erving Goffman and Thomas J.
Scheff. The possibility that a sophisticated sociological conception of guilt could be developed setting
off from George Herbert Mead’s theory of the self was raised some decades ago, but it remains
unexplored (Shott 1979). Also unexplored is the possibility of tracing the influences upon Mead’s work
not only to Freud, as normally assumed, but also to Nietzsche in order to reveal his source of
inspiration. Not of least importance, Mead’s comments about analysing society with a focus on the
relations between creditors and debtors have been entirely overlooked.
The opportunity to reconstruct the classical foundation of guilt studies as a truly interdisciplinary
endeavour, in which philosophy, psychology, and sociology are equally involved in uncovering the
connections between the emotions and civilisation, has thus been missed. For example, although
modern handbooks of sociology – including the sociology of religion, the sociology of emotions, and the
sociology of justice – rely heavily upon psychological studies and concepts, they seldom mention guilt as
an individual, social, moral, or legal emotion. Interest in the difference between shame and guilt began
growing near the end of the twentieth century, and it came to take precedence over the study of either
of them individually (Lewis 1971; Lindsay-Hartz 1984; Tangney 1993; Misheva 2000; Tangney and
Dearing 2004). Comparative studies of shame and guilt gained further popularity as empirical results
indicated that the ways in which these two emotions both complement and oppose each other are far
from clear (Tangney 1991; Baumeister et al. 1994). Intensive studies of shame, especially in psychology,
have provided new opportunities for theoretical renewal and empirical growth in guilt studies, which
were almost entirely focused in post-war research on philosophical moral issues. The notion that it was
time to turn the page from classical theories, which argued that guilt was the most important moral and
socio-psychological force appears unfounded today.
Scheff’s sociological theory depicts shame as the master emotion that constitutes the key to
understanding our civilisation. However, the more that knowledge advances in the social and
humanitarian sciences concerning emotions in general, and guilt and shame in particular, the more it
becomes clear that any single given key by itself is inadequate for the purpose (Misheva 2008). If all
efforts to use a single key to unlock the door that hides the most important knowledge about our
civilization have never been fully successful, the reason may well be that there is a double lock. We can
now better appreciate the conviction of classical scholars that shame is the master key not for directly
understanding our civilization, but for understanding guilt, which ‘cannot understand itself’ (Williams
1993:93).

Mapping personal guilt experiences

Psychologists have determined that conducting repeated descriptions and analyses of types of events
neither enhances our understanding of the basic distinctions between guilt and shame, nor helps to
reveal any ‘classic’ guilt-inducing situations (Tangney et al. 2007). It is important from a sociological
perspective to examine the personal situations of people experiencing guilt, not situations as objective
conditions. In order to understand what a person’s situation is, we need to employ a symbolic
interactionist approach and take into account her attitude or position as they are determined by her
relations with others, whose personal situations should also be taken into consideration. Doing so will
generate a typology of the great variety of guilt experiences and map the landscape over which a
sociological theory of guilt needs to extend in order to include all types of guilt. Indeed, the problem
with existing theories is that they are fashioned in respect to only a given type of guilt and not others.
Imagine a housewife having a birthday who is waiting for her husband to return home. When he
finally does arrive, he neither says anything, nor produces a present, and the wife’s feelings are hurt.
The man should apparently feel guilt for failing to meet his wife’s typical expectations, but we need to
know something more about his situation before making any judgment about his true feelings. If he
bought no present because he simply forgot, he should certainly feel guilty. But if he was unemployed
and had no means to buy a present, he would feel shame, not guilt, and would have preferred anything
other than confessing the embarrassing reason for his seemingly negligent behaviour.
Also imagine that a man is engaged in a serious fight in the street with an obviously more powerful
man, and is likely to be badly hurt. Two men pass by, but neither makes an attempt to help. Regardless
of typical expectations, it is not unconditional that they both will feel guilt. The one might be a man in
good physical condition who would not hesitate under different circumstances to defend the man in
need of help, but he was hurrying to an important meeting and chose to feel guilt for being ‘selfish’. The
other empathized with the weaker man, but did not intervene because he himself was physically weak
and unable to improve the situation. He left the scene ashamed, with the uncomfortable feeling of being
a coward.
A somewhat different case is that of a soldier fighting bravely, ready to die for his country, with no
empathy for the enemy, who fight and die for their country. Killing them is part of his role as a soldier,
and he will bear neither moral, nor legal guilt for doing his job. However, he will both feel guilt and be
found guilty for not fulfilling his duties if he behaves cowardly or disobeys the commands of his
superiors. And if he fails to attend to the needs of his fellow-combatants when requested, regardless of
whether or not he has been commanded to do so, he will feel guilt towards them, too, since he belongs
with them and is bound to them through friendship, mutual trust, and cooperation. He likely feels guilt
when, being a member of a team engaged in an operation whose success depends upon everyone’s
contribution, he fails to do his part and the common goal is not attained. He also typically feels guilt for
an unsuccessful operation carried out by his fellow-combatants when the group becomes an object of
blame, even if he himself did not take part.
Motion pictures sometimes depict a soldier approaching the body of an enemy he just shot who
adopts a type of behaviour usually associated with guilt and remorse, blended with shame, upon seeing
his childish and innocent face. Aggression towards the enemy was justified by the nature of the ‘game’
he was playing, but only if the enemy is also in a role. Realizing that the young soldier did not fully
accord with the role of enemy he was playing, and being incapable of then seeing him as a combatant
against whom he can measure his own strength and skills, the soldier could not perceive himself as
being in a role. He thus momentarily stepped out of his role and became a human being capable of
feeling empathy and moral guilt for taking a human life and for illegitimately using his skills and
strength – and even shame for killing a virtual child. He thus became self-conscious of the fact that the
other’s death was caused by his own actions – now no longer justified as role-bound. Stepping out of the
role he was playing, and removing the protective ‘mask’ that it provided, returned him to the lifeworld
as a moral domain in which harming another is always ‘bad’ – beyond ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
Guilt can also be felt for no obvious reason. For instance, no responsibility can be imputed to a soldier
who, in his own mind, feels he did not deserve the decoration he received. His sense of justice will be
challenged, and he will feel guilt, if others whom he regards as no less deserving of distinction were not
decorated as well. Successful competitors often indicate feeling guilt for winning a competition by
virtue of having some natural advantage or for simply being favoured by chance or luck, which placed
others at a disadvantage. The status of the group to which one belongs, from which one’s identity
devolves, is also a significant source of shame or guilt feelings. It is well known from the practice of
charity that members of higher status groups can experience guilt when they become pointedly aware
of both others’ misfortune and their own advantage, for neither of which they are personally
responsible. The survivor of a dramatic and traumatic event – an earthquake, airplane crash, terrorist
attack – may feel guilt and joy for her good fortune, even though she cannot be held responsible for the
misfortune of those who did not survive. This type of guilt can also be felt by the children of survivors,
who have reported experiencing it even more strongly than their parents.
Against this background, the guilt of the child breaking a toy and making an effort to repair it is so
innocent that it hardly seems to belong to the same species of feeling. It is indeed a theoretical
challenge to subsume the full range of guilt experiences – including the guilt that Charles Darwin once
reported having seen in the eyes of one of his children at two years of age, the guilt felt for not doing
one’s homework, the guilt associated with (not) eating felt by those with an eating disorder or the guilt
for delinquent or criminal behaviour – within a single theoretical framework.

Types of guilt
There is a rich and highly articulated taxonomy in the literature of types of guilt in respect to
experiences of guilt in differing personal situations. A list of the types most often discussed, which also
summarizes most of the experiences described above, includes at least the following:

Authority guilt: considered typical of the first stage of moral development, associated with fear of a
parental figure or authority who commands obedience, and regarded as a precursor of ‘guilt proper’
(Deigh 1996:55). It is also a normal element of a dutiful professional life in which supervisors, mentors,
team-leaders, and the like, may play the role of an authority who matters, towards whom one feels guilt
when failing to meet their expectations. This particularly applies to new employees and to those
working in organizations with strong institutional traditions that endorse respect towards authority and
hierarchical relations.:
Virtual guilt: imaginary guilt involving the acquisition of ‘guilt scripts’ that are activated, generating
guilt feelings in the child, whenever she thinks she has committed a transgression (Hoffman 2000:11).
This type of guilt is important for the development of early moral motives, although it is often linked to
depression and other similar clinical symptoms (Cimbora and McIntosh 2005:5).:
Superficial guilt: a lighter form of guilt for breaches of conduct, breaking a jam jar, for example, that
does not evoke the heavy imagery of transgression, violation, and punishment implied by such deeper,
cultured forms of guilt as ‘civilized guilt’ (Carroll 1981:460).:
Association guilt: felt for breaches of mutual confidence by participants in a joint activity that involves
cooperation, ties of friendship, and mutual trust, such as when one fails to do one’s part (Rawls
1971:133).:
Collective guilt: a legitimate feeling in groups, although groups, properly speaking, have neither
‘collective emotions’ nor ‘feeling sensations’, and do not feel guilt in the strict sense of the term (Gilbert
2002:122). This became a major focus in international relations studies when defined in respect to
those who ‘categorize themselves as members of a group that has committed unjustified harm to
another group’ (Branscombe and Miron 2004:316). The term also refers to such other feelings as the
guilt felt by those with a privileged status who are not personally responsible for the privileges they
enjoy (Branscombe and Doosje 2004:6). Another example is the guilt felt by parents when they assume
typically guilt-patterned behaviour for their children’s wrongdoings and undertake efforts to initiate
positive parenting practices and repair the damage themselves (Scarnier et al. 2009).:
Survivor guilt: experienced by those who remained unharmed while others experienced traumatic
injury or death. It is triggered by empathic distress and a feeling of injustice, thus comprising a
response to the question: ‘Why me – why was I saved and not somebody else?’ (Hoffman 2000:13).:

Other recognized types of guilt include: relationship guilt (for the problems of one’s partner);
separation guilt (over leaving a group); achievement guilt (for achieving more than others); victim guilt
(feeling responsible for leaving an abusive relationship); and bystander guilt (for inaction) (Hoffman
2000). Some of these reveal the close affinity between feeling guilt and shame, thus making clear why it
is so difficult to distinguish between them in research. Others indicate their radical dissimilarity, which
explains the persistent efforts to demonstrate their existence as separate emotions that can be present
simultaneously.

Guilt in classifications of emotions

Guilt is difficult to classify. Unlike other emotions, which by definition are ‘short-lived responses’, guilt
is a ‘haggling anxiety’ that can be prolonged over an indefinite period of time (Lynd 1958:49). It may
also be defined as a mood for this reason. An unproblematic classification of guilt as an emotion would
thus require removing the element of temporal duration from the existing paradigm (Solomon 2004:19).
It is also a challenge to locate guilt within the established classification of primary and secondary
emotions. Certain psychologists regard guilt as a primary emotion since it appears early in life, has a
distinctive expressive pattern, and is universal. Others instead view it as a secondary emotion since it is
a higher cognitive emotion not bound to particular facial expressions and is acquired in ontogenetic
development through learning within the social context (Damasio 1994; Shweder 1994; TenHouten
2007; Prinz 2007). Justice can be done to both claims only by accepting that guilt is an unusually
complex emotion that exists in two forms – as both a primary and a secondary emotion.
Research has also found guilt to be a negative and painful emotion reinforced by audio effects – a
‘sense of badness’ that is felt ‘when nobody watches and when everything is quiet except the voice of
the Superego’ (Erikson 1950/1963:227). Deeply rooted in the self, it becomes a source of constant
‘conscious horror’ (Fingarette 1955:20). A typical image illustrating the mental suffering involved is
that of a harsh conscience ‘weighing like a shackle on the soul’, although it may also remain invisible,
hidden behind ‘non-expression’ or deceptive expression, when subject to emotional control (Ho et al.
2004:74). This negative image has somewhat improved after the expansion of shame studies, which
depict guilt as a less painful emotion that is consequently more preferable than shame. This position is
supported by reports of people who, in their desire to end the painful experience of shame, admit to
crimes they did not commit (Braithwaite 1989:162).
The issue of pain appears crucial in definitions of guilt and shame, including the distinction between
them. The dominant psychological view is that the negative evaluation of the self in guilt involves only
specific things done or undone, and thus only part of the self, while shame is a much more painful
emotion since the negative evaluation concerns the entire self, which is experienced as fundamentally
flawed (Lewis 1971). This conception, clinically tested in psychological research, provides the basis for
no longer regarding guilt as a completely negative and painful emotion. The new understanding is that
guilt was associated with negative consequences for which it is not responsible only because it was
consistently confused with shame. Only in this latter case does guilt appear in empirical studies as
unusually painful and associated with poor psychological adjustment (Tangney 1995).
One important result of such studies is that a clear distinction is drawn between two types of guilt –
shame-fused-guilt and shame-free-guilt. Another is the provision of empirical support for the view that
shame and at least one form of guilt (shame-fused guilt) are practically indistinguishable from each
other, and, from a certain point of view, can be regarded as a single compound emotion (Tangney and
Dearing 2004:122ff). In addition, the distinction between bad or negative guilt and good or positive
guilt that leads to ‘positive change – either making reparation in some way or resolving to make
changes for the future’ – demonstrates that guilt simultaneously belongs to the two sub-classes of
positive and negative emotions even in this classification (Tangney and Dearing 2004:124).
Guilt is also classified in psychology, together with shame, pride, and embarrassment, as a self-
conscious emotion. These emotions, in their original psychological interpretations, are regarded as
requiring ‘self-awareness’ and ‘self-representations’, emerge later than basic emotions, facilitate ‘the
attainment of complex social goals’, and imply self-appraisal and cognitive complexity (Tracy and
Robins 2007:5ff). They developed late in evolutionary history and appear late in childhood, but lack any
‘discrete, recognized, universal facial expression’ (Tracy and Robins 2007:6). However, ‘self-
consciousness’ is much more than ‘consciousness appraising itself’, and guilt is both a psychological
and a social phenomenon that ‘happens between people as much as it happens inside them’
(Baumeister et al. 1994:243ff). It is not simply ‘standing back and reflecting on one’s own emotions’,
but includes appraising the other’s emotions as well (Campos 2007:xii). Guilt additionally belongs to the
two classes of rational and irrational emotions, the latter being exemplified by the irrationality of
survivor guilt. We should also note that shame appears to be a different type of self-conscious emotion
than the other members of this class, not least because of the different relationship between self and
other that it presupposes and the fact that an accumulation of unacknowledged shame causally leads to
rage and violence (Scheff and Retzinger 1991).
Furthermore, both guilt and shame are classified as moral emotions, which motivate prosocial
behaviour, encourage people to take the interests of others into account, and lead them ‘to do good and
to avoid doing bad’, at times against their personal interests (De Hooge 2013:208). Guilt is a moral
emotion because it discourages doing bad things, which harm the interests of others, and links one’s
actions to the well-being of others, the group, or society at large. Morality is thus a question of self-
interest versus other’s interests and ‘other-regarding’ duties, which, when neglected, induce guilt. A
proneness to guilt, or being socially conditioned to have a bad conscience whenever some established
moral order is violated, discourages children from pursuing their bad and sometimes evil wishes
(Fingarette 1955:20). Guilt also inhibits problematic ‘behaviour’ and prevents people from engaging in
destructive or criminal ‘behaviours’ (Tangney and Dearing 2004:137). Tangney notes that ‘lying,
cheating, stealing, failing to help another, disobeying parents’ are both guilt inducing and often blended
with shame, which encourages moral goodness in line with community or social norms (Tangney et al.
2007). People may feel guilt at the work place as well, such as when they are paid to lie, act unethically
under pressure to perform, or do not support those treated unethically (Meier et al. 2013). Although
guilt itself may have very negative consequences and ‘stimulate unethical behaviours in the workplace’
(De Hooge 2013:212), it is nevertheless accepted to regard guilt for specific behaviours as moral when
it is constructive, reparative, leads people to improving their relationships with others, and increases
well-being.
There is a persistent claim in research that the experience of guilt indicates the presence of a
somewhat ‘prestigious feeling’ and ‘respectable state’ that ‘involves an intact self, able to have done
and to undo something’. It brings about a certain ‘satisfaction, some quiet moral elevation in
acknowledging that one is guilty’ (Lewis 1990:242). Scheff also remarks that the experience of guilt has
a positive side to it insofar as people may ‘feel pride (the reverse of shame) that they are feeling guilt’,
and that they are ‘basically moral persons’ with capable selves (Scheff 1990:169). A corresponding
gratification based upon the experience of shame has never been acknowledged. In addition, the
perpetrator of a ‘bad’ action may have a ‘good’ feeling about herself since feeling guilt brings an
awareness of one’s own power, that is, of being a potent agent who, intentionally or unintentionally, is
capable of hurting or overpowering another. Stated otherwise, the perpetrator of such an action
possesses an excess of something that gives her an advantage within a social context where competition
is important, while, as some sociologists claim, the absence of a feeling of guilt can be taken as a mere
consequence of a lack of power (Kemper 2002). Such observations may indeed be regarded as one of
the most interesting aspects of the quandary that guilt represents, namely, that experiencing guilt,
painful as it might be, can in fact make people feel good about themselves.
Shame, in contrast, has no positive influence upon relationships with either the other or the self, has
not been demonstrated in research to enhance well-being, does not inhibit immoral actions, and has
been shown to be capable of promoting criminal behaviour and self-destruction (Tangney and Dearing
2004). There should then be a type of guilt that is non-moral, having nothing to do with well-being and
regard for others, that is not fused with shame. Separation guilt, or the ‘severing of personal ties to
members of the group with which one identifies’, for example, has in fact been discussed in the
literature as both ‘non-moral’ and rational (Morris 1999; Greenspan 1992). If the class of moral
emotions is then to be complemented by a class of ‘non-moral’ emotions, guilt will, once again, be a
member of both.

Guilt from a micro-sociological perspective

The difficulty with locating guilt within existing psychological classifications suggests that it is a
complex social emotion, which exists in more than one form. The question of guilt would thus remain
problematic unless one can argue that there are two types of self-consciousness, morality, selves and
socialisation that produce different types of guilt. Sociology appears to have no grand theory with an
appropriate focus on guilt. While Mead’s symbolic interactionist theory of the self is relevant to the
issues discussed above, he himself made no explicit reference to guilt or any other self-conscious
emotion. And although scholars have argued that Mead’s theory provides a particularly appropriate
sociological framework for explaining guilt and related emotions (Shott 1979), it provides no basis for
distinguishing either between shame and guilt, or between two different types of guilt. An influential
sociological symbolic interactionist theory of shame successfully employed Cooley’s theory of the
‘looking-glass self’ to understand this emotion (Scheff 1990). It clearly indicated, however, that Cooley’s
theory does not comprise an appropriate framework for studying guilt, although one would have
thought that it would have addressed at least some form of guilt (Cooley 1967). Symbolic interactionism
seems best equipped among sociological and social-psychological theories for tackling such dichotomies
and controversies in a consistent way and making further progress in the field. While there may indeed
be no single theory capable of tackling guilt’s double form, it nevertheless appears possible to combine
Cooley’s and Mead’s symbolic interactionist theories of the self within a single theory that can address
the issues discussed above.
For anthropologists, ‘self-conscious emotions’ is not the most appropriate name for a class in which
shame, pride, and guilt are equal members. For example, it has been argued that shame and pride are
‘quintessentially other-oriented emotions’ rather than ‘self-conscious’ emotions insofar as since ‘how
one feels about oneself is contingent on other’s assessments’ (Fessler 2007:187). Similar objections can
also be raised from a sociological perspective in that the question of self-consciousness is discussed
within symbolic interactionism in relation to two theories of the self that, in turn, can be related to two
forms of socialisation. Cooley’s theory depicts a self-consciousness that is a consciousness of self in
reference to a social group or social consciousness (Cooley 1962:5), which was articulated through
observations of the emergence of the self as a self-feeling in early childhood (Cooley 1967). It describes
an undifferentiated ‘I’-‘we’ self that is produced in early experiences of shame and pride and socialised
through membership in primary groups and communities. In addition, a socially conscious ‘looking-
glass self’ presupposes and allows for experiences of not only shame, but also an immature guilt that
reveals dependence upon the care-taker and is thus fused with shame. However, one experiences this
self only as a subjective self-feeling, and cannot take an objective stance towards it since it is not
autonomous. Mead’s work theorizes the self-consciousness of a role-player in a game, who adopts her
own role while taking the role of the other and assessing her own role-self from the other’s position
(Mead 1977). For Mead, self-consciousness means having an ‘I’-‘me’ self, or a self (‘I’) that includes the
other’s attitude towards it (‘me’), thereby being both a subject and an object to itself. This self is
capable of adopting ‘an objective, non-affective attitude towards itself’ that is reasonable and
impersonal. If the individual does not have this type of self, capable of self-observation, she possesses
‘just consciousness, not self-consciousness’, and is unable to act ‘intelligently or rationally’ (Mead
1977:202). This ‘I’-‘me’ self provides a self-consciousness that makes possible individual autonomy and
playing social roles in cooperative and competitive games.
These two models of the self are complementary insofar as Mead was interested in the self of the role-
player in games and did not investigate the self-consciousness of the child who simply plays, which was
the focus of Cooley’s work. Sociology accepts the existence of two distinct forms of socialisation –
primary and secondary socialisation (Berger and Luckmann 1967). One may then distinguish between
primary guilt, which is cultivated in primary socialisation within primary groups, and secondary guilt,
which emerges in secondary socialisation in relation to the playing of social roles and the acquisition of
role-specific languages. Furthermore, the Coolean self may be regarded as the product of primary
socialisation, and the Meadean self as the product of secondary socialisation. A main difference
between these two forms of socialisation is that primary socialisation is emotionally charged and
learning depends upon love, while learning in secondary socialisation depends upon reason.
Since socialisation theory proposes that all societies possess some form of primary socialisation, the
guilt feeling that originates in primary socialisation should also be a basic, universal emotion. In
addition, such primary guilt should be a type that is difficult to distinguish from shame. It is noteworthy
that ‘internal conflict and guilt’ receive only cursory notice in Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s
socialisation theory as outcomes of ‘unsuccessful socialisation’ (Berger and Luckmann 1967:190).
However, the self-doubt the individual experiences when disobeying the authority who mediates social
reality is not necessarily something negative. It may instead be a sign of normal psychological growth in
a complex modern world, where basic guilt emerges naturally as the individual aspires to leave the
comfortable world of childhood and enter the larger world of discrepant realities and a multiplicity of
choices on the way to autonomy and maturity. A possible reason for why primary guilt has been ignored
in sociological analyses is the fact that the Coolean self, with which it is associated, was subsumed
under the Meadean self, which was taken as a more elaborated version of it.
Primary guilt from a sociological perspective is a self-conscious social emotion that is the most painful
type of guilt because the self exists only as long as the individual is an integral part of the ‘social’,
which provides individual/social identity and is the sole world to which one belongs. An important
peculiarity of the world of primary socialisation is that it has no alternative, whereby exclusion from it is
tantamount to ‘social death’ – which may be worse than physical death (Misheva 2000). Primary or
immature guilt is thus an expression of a fear greater than the fear of punishment, which comprises a
powerful force driving repression. This type of guilt appears very similar to shame since it is fused with
fear of a ‘loss of love’, social disapproval, and expulsion from the only world to which one belongs,
ostracism from which is equal to social death. The prospect of social re-integration can thus constitute a
powerful motivation for confessing one’s guilt – both real or imaginary.
Secondary guilt is a self-other-conscious emotion that is not associated with what makes us human,
but rather with what makes us virtuous role-players with a sense of responsibility and ethics concerning
duties towards both others and self. This is necessarily a shame-free guilt since shame cannot be felt,
serving as a means of social control, when the true self of the role-player is always protected by the
mask of the role being played. Such mature guilt is also pain-free and primarily a positive emotion of an
autonomous self, to which we can ascribe ‘constructive intentions in the wake of wrongdoing and
consequent constructive behaviours (e.g., nonhostile discussion, direct corrective action)’ (Tangney
2007). Secondary guilt is felt in a realm beyond the single world of primary socialisation and the
satisfaction of basic human needs, when the individual enters a world consisting of a plurality of
realities that are selected and internalized for particular purposes. This is where all individuals play
roles that comprise discrepant (but never real) selves, from which one may consciously detach oneself
while acting them out ‘with manipulative control’ (Berger and Luckmann 1967:192). But even though
we are ‘merchants of morality’ as role players and performers, to use Goffman’s term, we are not really
concerned about morality here (Goffman 1959/1990). Secondary guilt is less painful since it is shame-
free, does not paralyze action, and takes place in a world chosen from a myriad of social worlds.
Exclusion from any one of the latter is no more than a biographical accident and a reason for change.
From a sociological perspective, seemingly inexplicable cases of ‘guilt without fault’ or ‘guilt without
agency’ (Greenspan 1992), can in fact be explained as forms of false self-consciousness. They may also
be addressed as examples of the complex dynamics involving shame and guilt, through which the
painful shame experiences of helplessness and weakness can be transformed into painless and
preferable shame-free guilt. This indicates that even so-called ‘irrational’ guilt may have its own
rationality, and that it can be understood if the existing discrepant theoretical elements and frames are
linked together within one larger theoretical frame capable of tackling shame-guilt dynamics.

Conclusion – do we still need guilt?

This chapter has looked into different aspects and dimensions of the emotion of guilt. A long and
authoritative tradition in the social and humanitarian sciences regarded guilt as the most important
moral feeling in that it provided ‘a higher order of morality’ than shame. But regardless of objections
that this claim was overblown, the tradition of regarding guilt as ‘our morality’ – the morality of the
personally independent citizen of modern industrial society – remains unchallenged (Stocker and
Hegeman 1996:4). People in the modern world have moral obligations, and they are expected to feel
guilty over their wrongdoings, with an inability to feel guilt being taken as a sign of a personality
disorder. Indeed, an absence of guilt feelings is viewed as a more serious pathology than neurotic guilt
and guilt-related depression since it is not only dangerous for the self and the other, but is potentially
more harmful for society.
Who is and is not socially conditioned to feel guilt – or who is and is not an agent of the history that
brought modernity into being – has been an important topic for research since at least Sigmund Freud
and Max Weber. Freud claimed that women are less prone to guilt than men because they have a
deficient super-ego, whereby their sense of morality is weaker and not internalized to the same degree.
However, recent empirical studies have produced inconsistent findings in this regard. Some have
reported ‘a greater tendency toward shame and guilt in women than men’, while others, using a
multivariate framework, have reported that women manifest two different styles, namely, ‘an
exclusively shame-prone style’ and ‘a mixed style, involving both shame and guilt’ (Ferguson 2010:88;
Tangney and Dearing 2004:153). Scholars apparently agree that although the experience of guilt may
differ across gender, ethnic, age, and cultural boundaries, any strict dichotomy between those who are
and are not capable of feeling guilt most likely stems from imbedded theoretical and methodological
biases. While certain anthropological studies have seemingly found that concerns over right and wrong
and remorse at harming another are largely absent from certain cultures (Rosaldo 1983; Fessler 2007),
not only has the possibility of alternative interpretations never been excluded, the claim that guilt is a
basic emotion, and that it can be found among all peoples in the world, has never been proved wrong. It
is clear, however, that the differing disciplinary backgrounds and vocabularies in guilt studies remain an
obstacle to progress in the field.
Certain sociologists raised concerns that guilt in those advanced modern societies characterized by
the globalization of traditional institutions was gradually withering away due to increasing moral
permissiveness and the breaking of previous moral restraints. Since at least the 1970s, feminists have
raised the alarm that a disappearing sense of guilt is accompanied by a lack of effective legal measures
against tendencies to decriminalize varied forms of sexual abuse. Such tendencies have clearly been
viewed as contradicting Freud’s conception of the relationship between guilt and civilisation, whereby
guilt was not only a major factor in the emergence and development of civilisation, but was also
expected to continue intensifying in the future, leading to heightened human suffering and unhappiness
(Freud 1930/1985). Anthony Giddens regarded this process as related to the liberation of the self from
the sway of the ‘over-weening super ego’, whereby it becomes a ‘reflexive project’ and an object of self-
governance characterized by movement ‘away from guilt’. He also maintained that such changes on a
global scale would lead to the replacement of the dynamics of guilt by the dynamics of shame on the
psychological centre stage (Giddens 1991:55).
Guilt, however, is not simply an ‘anxiety produced by the fear of transgression’ or ‘loss of love’, but
rather the very hallmark of the modern self as both self-feeling and self-conscious. A shift from a guilt-
governed to a shame-governed world is hardly feasible since it would threaten both agency (free will)
and action. Shame’s great moral power and social function consists in maintaining stability by
discouraging change, eliminating differences, and constraining, or even abolishing, autonomy and
action (Misheva 2000). Shame is thus indispensable for the socialisation of moral human beings
committed to equality, but is not suitable to be the sole ruler of the modern world. But neither is guilt,
unless it is imagined as a compound emotion of shame-fused and shame-free guilt. Consequently,
shifting the research focus from independent studies of shame and guilt to their complex mutual
dynamics is both justified and timely.

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11 Anger
An emotion of intent and of desire for change in relationships​​
Keith Oatley and Jennifer M. Jenkins

Introduction
In ancient times, the Stoics thought that anger had to be excised because it is destructive to oneself,
destructive to other people, destructive to society (Nussbaum 1987). In modern life, people continue to
be wary of it. We start this chapter by discussing how, for most people, anger occurs when someone else
does something they regard as wrong, and which upsets them. The emotion makes it urgent to lay
blame, to say or do something to punish the other or to take revenge. Often, as a result, some
renegotiation of an aspect of the relationship can occur. We then discuss how some people – a small
proportion of the population – are angry frequently and intensely. For them anger has become a trait of
personality, and can indeed be destructive, as the Stoics realized. In these people, the tendency to
anger affects colleagues, friends, family members. We move next to an analysis of how personality and
negative feelings are important in relationships, not just in expressing anger, but in eliciting it from
others. We show, too, how anger can become a characteristic of relationships with particular others.
Several programs have been found to be effective in reducing anger in relationships with children, and
within couples. We end by considering anger and its effects as depicted in plays, novels, movies and
video games.
Carol Tavris (1989) entitles her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion. She explains that many
people think that when one feels anger, it’s best to vent it. Sometimes perhaps it is, but sometimes it
may better not to do so, but to wait, to think about the issue, to consider effects and implications. How
are we to decide? In this chapter we offer some evidence to enable anger to be better understood.

Anger when a concern is compromised

In psychology it is thought that typically an emotion derives from an appraisal of an event that has
affected a concern, and has made it urgent for the person who experiences it to do something about it.
The readiness-for-action of anger also often has the mental aspect of preoccupation with the event,
physiological aspects such as changes of heart rate, and behavioural aspects such as clenching the fists
and saying something wounding to the other person (Frijda 2007; Keltner et al. 2014).
Anger can be seen even in infants. Michael Lewis et al. (1990) carried out an experiment in which
two-month-old babies could turn on music by pulling a string attached to their arm. When their string-
pulling no longer turned the music on, the infants showed anger and fussiness. Thus, as with anger
elicitation in adults, when goal attainment is frustrated, anger can occur. Leonard Berkowitz (2011)
argues that anger is caused by frustration of a goal, as well as by physical or mental pain. The
experience, he argues, is associated closely with the urge to attack the perceived perpetrator.
Characteristically anger is interpersonal. In most episodes someone has done something to elicit it: a
child has misbehaved, a spouse has undermined us, a work colleague has interfered in what we are
doing. It becomes urgent, then, to punish, to get one’s own back, or to take the other down a peg. We
call anger of this kind normative.
In The Psychology of Everyday Life, James Drever (1921) wrote that emotions can overwhelm
purposes and principles, and this seems especially true of anger. For most people, though, the
overwhelming aspect of anger is short-lived and usually not too compromising for those who express it
or for those at whom it is targeted. Despite this, on rare occasions ordinary people can be seriously
overwhelmed and feel so provoked as to be destructive, even to inflict bodily injury, sometimes even to
commit murder.
In a small proportion of the population recurring readiness to anger is a trait of personality. We may
know people with this trait, or at least read about them in the news. They react to provocation at a
lower threshold, with greater intensity, and with greater frequency than do the majority. They tend
often to get into physical or verbal fights. They tend to be the ones who commit protracted abuse that
harms others in families.
Norman Finkel and W. Gerrod Parrott (2006) show that, although destructive actions are legislated
against in most societies, the law could be much better attuned to understandings gained from research
on the psychology of anger.

Emotion diaries and the epidemiology of normative anger

In medicine, research takes place in three phases. The first is epidemiology, in which interviews,
surveys, and other methods are employed in the community to diagnose a disease and see what
circumstances are associated with it. The second is to test hypotheses that derive from the
epidemiological results, about causes and mechanisms. In the third stage people work to see what is to
be done about the problems. This same pattern can be used for the emotion of anger.
The first epidemiological study of the emotion of anger seems to have been done by G. Stanley Hall
(1899). He wrote a questionnaire that he sent out to teachers and others, in which he asked them the
following:

In description be photographically objective, exact, minute and copious in detail. Tell age, sex, family life,
temperament, nationality of every child. Add to all a description of your experience with anger in yourself,
and if possible get a few of your adult friends … to write theirs (Hall 1899:529).

He collected 2184 returns. Here is an example:

My capacity for anger is great and deepens into indignation, scorn and contempt. I can despise in a way
impossible before. To think and to say inwardly that my antagonistic is a – fool vent my feeling, sometimes I
pity him and yet know I shall revert to feeling him a fine man.
(Hall 1899:531)

Hall’s examples are not without interest, but they are heterogeneous, and mostly without information
about what prompted the episodes, or what they meant.
The first proper epidemiological study of anger seems to have been by Georgina Gates (1926). She
invented the emotion diary, in which she asked 51 women students to record incidents of anger or
extreme irritation that occurred to them during a week, and rate the intensity of each episode on a
scale from 1 (the lowest noticeable degree of anger), and 5 (as extreme as she has ever felt). The
number of incidents recorded was 145, a mean of 2.8 per person during the week, with 6 incidents of
degree 5, 23 of degree 1, and the rest in between. The anger lasted from less than five minutes to a day.
In 115 of the cases (79 per cent), another person prompted the anger, and the instances were mostly
experienced as a thwarting of some kind. The most common response reported was of wanting to make
some verbal retort to the other person. Thoughts of wanting to do some physical damage to that person
were also reported.
As Magda Arnold and J. A. Gasson (1954) showed, among the phenomena of psychology, emotions are
some of the most important, and generally they are relational. Usually they derive from the relation of
something within the person to some outer event, often caused by someone else. Arnold and Gasson
propose that the event is appraised as present or not-present, and as suitable or unsuitable to the self.
Thus fear is an emotion towards something that is unsuitable, and not present. Anger derives from an
event that is unsuitable, and present. A method of choice, then, for the study and understanding of
emotions, including those of anger, is the emotion diary, because in it, people can report on their
concerns, on events that relate to them, and on the emotions that arise.
Although Georgina Gates (1926) was the explicit inventor of the emotion diary, we can see its use far
back in history. In his book La vita nuova (1295) the poet Dante offered 31 poems along with a kind of
emotion diary (Oatley 2007) about how each poem was written. The principal subject of the book is an
every-day occurrence: falling in love with someone unattainable. For Dante the person was Beatrice.
The turning event of the book occurs when a friend of Beatrice tells Dante that although he thinks his
poems are in praise of Beatrice, really he is only writing about his own anguish. In response, he is so
upset – we infer that he is angry at the woman who said this to him and angry at himself – so that for
several days he does not know what to do with himself. He can no longer write anything at all. At last,
after working through the episode, he starts to resolve this state and express the result in a poem that
he addresses to the women in Beatrice’s circle of friends. It is a poem that can be thought of as the
beginning of the European Renaissance, in bringing the meaning of life down from the heavenly and
ideal, to understanding what we are doing with each other here on earth.
A comprehensive study of anger was made by James Averill (1982). He asked 80 married people and
80 university students to look out for the next instance of anger they experienced, and 80 further
students to look out for an episode in which they were the target of someone’s anger, and to record the
details in an emotion diary structured like a questionnaire. Some two thirds of the people who
experienced anger found the experience to be negative, but 62 per cent of them, and 70 per cent of
targets, found that with the discussions that ensued, the episode was beneficial: some important issue
between them and another person was resolved.
The most common function of normative anger, then, is to adjust something that has gone wrong in a
long-term relationship. Averill found that an experience of anger usually starts with the sense of being
wronged by another. With negotiations that often ensue, it usually ends with both participants making
some adjustment and reaching a reconciliation. In episodes of short-term anger some of what happens
is inter-personal: angry words, accusations, blame, and so on, but some is intrapersonal, as the person
comes to understand better what has gone wrong, and to recognize her or his part in the episode.
Nico Frijda et al. (1991) asked people to look out for episodes of emotion and, in a modified form of
diary, to draw graphs of their time course. They found that emotions often just last for minutes but some
emotions, particularly anger, can last for days, and recur in waves as the experiencer tries to come to
terms with them.
Keith Oatley and Elaine Duncan (1994) used emotion diaries and asked 47 employed people to look
out for the next four episodes of emotion they experienced. From what people said about their goals
and concerns and the nature of the event that had prompted the emotion, we were able to predict
correctly for 69 per cent of episodes what kind of emotion had occurred, over the range happiness,
sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. Although in a previous study of diaries kept by students (Oatley and
Duncan 1992) fear was the most frequent emotion recorded, for these employed people anger was the
most frequent emotion. It was usually prompted, as Gates (1926) had found, by another person
thwarting or interfering with a goal or concern. In 37 per cent of episodes of anger in this study, it was
found that the emotion did not occur alone but was mixed with some other emotion. In 41 per cent of
the episodes of anger the emotion did not remain stable, but changed to an emotion of another kind,
usually sadness, as the person mulled it over.
In a follow-up study (Oatley 1998) in which people were asked to make diary entries when prompted
at random times during the day, happiness was found to occur more frequently than anger. This
difference seemed to occur because happy feelings and emotions are sufficiently usual that they are not
always remarked upon or remembered, and hence not always recorded in diaries without prompting.
Anger is an emotion that usually is noticed, remembered and remarked upon. On more than 90 per cent
of occasions, too, as with other emotions that are remembered when diaries are completed at the end of
each day, Bernard Rimé (2009) found that the episode had been related and discussed with one or more
other people, not to diminish its intensity, but to gain perspective from others on it, and to engage in
the ongoing activity of integrating oneself and one’s understanding of oneself with others in society.
Using a modified diary, Oatley and Laurette Larocque (1995) and Larocque and Oatley (2006) asked
people to record what happened when a joint plan or arrangement had been made with someone else,
but had gone wrong. We called these events ‘joint errors’. Here is an example:

My co-worker was measuring some circumferences of pipes, converting them to diameters and reporting
them to me. I recorded the figures and used them to drill holes later. The drilled holes were incorrect for
diameters. It could have been the conversion or measurement. I had to modify the holes.
(Larocque and Oatley 2006:246)

Our participant was angry and, as often occurs in such episodes, he had distrustful thoughts: ‘My co-
worker is not as careful about numbers as I am – maybe I should do this kind of task with someone
else’. Typically, also, there are attempts at repair, in this case: ‘I need to and want to do something
about this kind of thing with him’.
Anger was the emotion that occurred most frequently as a result of joint errors. By both participants,
the error was typically seen as having occurred because of a fault of the other person. In one sample, of
157 people, Larocque and Oatley (2006) found that 50 of them made derogatory mental ascriptions
about the other person involved in the error: ‘unthoughtful, untrustworthy, unreliable, disrespectful,
dishonest, irresponsible, inconsiderate’ (Larocque and Oatley 2006:257) and so on. They also imagined
the other person making such attributions towards themselves. In an analysis of a sample in which of
both people involved in such joint errors reported on the error and their emotions when it occurred
(Oatley and Larocque, 1995), it was found that people were only 29 per cent correct at recognizing in
the other person emotions over the range happiness, sadness, fear, shame, and guilt, but they were 73
per cent correct at recognizing when the other person was angry. In a cross-cultural study of joint
errors, Ilaria Grazzani-Gavazzi and Oatley (1999) found that whereas Anglophone Canadians somewhat
more often focused on what had gone wrong to produce the error, Italians more often focused on the
relationship with the other person involved.
Along with emotion diaries, another important method, especially with children, is that of
observation. Richard Tremblay (2004) discusses episodes of anger and aggression seen in children of
different ages. He shows that the peak age for anger and aggression is between 24 and 42 months.
Whereas at age 2, 43 per cent of boys and 34 per cent of girls were found to use physical aggression,
which minimally is a push or a shove, to try and get what they want, by the age of 11, these rates were
14 per cent of boys and 7 per cent of girls (see also Goodenough 1931).
Jennifer M. Jenkins and Oatley (2000) observed 71 children in a playground during recess periods. We
identified short-term emotions by means of facial and vocal displays of emotion: they included, anger,
happiness, fear, and so on. Each emotion usually lasted 10 seconds or less. Each was elicited by a
specific event that had affected the child. We also obtained estimates of symptomatology of an
internalizing kind (anxieties and sadness) and of an externalizing kind (anger and aggression) from
parent and teacher questionnaires, and from sociometric ratings from peers. Externalizing
symptomatology was predicted by more frequent displays of anger, fewer displays of happiness, and
fewer displays of sadness. Internalizing symptomatology was predicted by more frequent sadness and
less frequent anger. We found a relationship between short-term emotional expressions and
internalizing and externalizing psychopathology, which was best understood in terms of a balance
between different short-term emotions.

Trait anger and cycles of aggression

The problem of frequent and intense anger becoming a trait is among the most important for
psychology as a discipline devoted to the improvement of individual lives and society. It is not just the
problem which, in modern everyday terms, is called ‘anger management’. It is not just that this kind of
trait can blight families. It is that the aspect of anger that is aggression, can also involve contempt, and
become no-longer a matter of mutual adjustment of a relationship. It can become violent. In
industrialized nations, billions of dollars are spent each year on policing, on the justice system, on
prisons, on social and health services, in problems that derive from people with dispositions to anger
and aggression.
Avshalom Caspi, Glenn Elder and Daryl Bem (1987) followed up children who were first assessed at
age 8 and then 30 years later: people who were angry as 8-year-olds tended still to be ill-tempered as
adults. Their adult lives exhibited too-frequent and too-intense expressions of anger and aggression:
they were less likely to have stayed in school and they had more erratic work lives, leading to
downward social mobility and lower occupational status. Males had higher rates of job loss, higher
rates of domestic violence, and broken romantic relationships. Females who were angry as children also
did relatively worse than non-angry age-mates. They married below their social class expectations, had
less marital satisfaction, and were more ill-tempered as mothers than those who were non-angry at age
8. The tendency to anger had taken its toll on how their lives had unfolded.
An angry disposition that continues from childhood into adulthood carries not only a risk for
criminality, but also for alcohol and drug abuse, as well as for problems in every kind of relationship. So
the urgent question is: how might cycles of anger, aggression, and violence, be reduced? In analyses of
quantitative historical data, Steven Pinker (2011) has found that over the last half-millennium
homicides, not just those that result from individual assaults but also those that occur in wars, riots,
and group antipathies, have decreased enormously worldwide. His finding is that one answer to the
problem of reducing cycles of violence is to live within nation-states. In them, homicides are fewer, by a
factor of ten or more, than in non-state societies.
Some people show a propensity towards certain emotions rather than others, as part of what
psychologists call temperament and personality. Such propensities can be measured in infancy
(Rothbart et al. 2011) and show continuities over time. A small proportion of children, somewhere
between 4–10 per cent of the population, show marked problems with anger and aggression from early
childhood into adulthood (Broidy et al. 2003). More boys than girls have this tendency (Hudziak et al.
2003). Children with intense and frequent expressions of anger and aggression also tend to act in other
oppositional ways such as lying and stealing. Children with this trait are referred to as conduct
disordered. When this set of problems continues into adulthood it is categorized as antisocial
personality disorder. Adults with this disorder are more likely to enact aggressive crimes, to steal and to
lie, and to be unable to maintain relationships with partners or children (Skeem et al. 2006).
Reasons why people show a high propensity towards anger are both genetic and environmental. In a
recent twin study of 795 adult twin pairs, 31 per cent of the variance in trait anger was due to genetic
influence (Montag et al. 2016). The heritability estimates for conduct disorder, and of the clinical
condition which represents the extreme version of anger and aggression, are even higher. In a twin
study of over 8000 twin pairs, carried out longitudinally and in different countries, between 50–80 per
cent of the variance in conduct disorder was attributable to genetic influence (Porsch et al. 2016).
Environmental influences that relate to anger expression are usually seen as emerging in the family
environment. From the high levels of heritability in anger expression, we know that the biological
parents of angry children are more likely, themselves, to react angrily to their children. Thus, when a
provocative angry child responds to a parental demand with anger, the parent is likely to escalate his or
her own anger (Knafo and Jaffee 2013). In longitudinal studies, when changes in children’s anger are
tracked over time, angry children have been shown to elicit angry responses from their mothers. Their
mothers’ angry responses have then been shown to increase the child’s anger over time. Repetitive
episodes of angry interactions teach both the parent and the child that increasing anger in an
interpersonal context is effective in making the partner yield or comply (Granic and Patterson 2006).
Thus we can see the mix of genetic and environmental processes that contribute to expressions of anger
over time. Parental anger expression can be viewed as a continuum. At the most severe end it can
involve physical harm to children.
Kenneth Dodge, John Bates and Gregory Pettit (1990) studied consequences of physical abuse in 309
four-year-old children. First, they interviewed mothers to find if their child had been injured by an adult
to produce bruises, or a need for medical attention. Forty-six of the children (15 per cent) were
classified in this way. Six months later, the children were assessed for aggressive behaviour by teacher
ratings, peer ratings and direct observation at school. The children who suffered physical abuse were
more likely to be aggressive: some 36 per cent of those rated as physically harmed were rated as
abnormally aggressive by teachers as compared with 13 per cent of other children. Abuse was found
more likely in families that suffered poverty, deprivation, and marital conflict.
Family influences can also operate in the other direction: the way in which anger is or is not
expressed by siblings can influence the anger expression of young children in a surprising way. Ella
Daniel, Andre Plamondon and Jennifer Jenkins (2018) tracked 916 toddlers and their preschool- and
school-aged siblings in some 400 families over three years. The study was unusual because it controlled
for genetic influence, shared social environments, shared history of the siblings, and parental influence,
prior to examining the role of angry sibling behaviour. Anger was not found to beget anger as has been
found for parents and children (as described above). Rather, when older siblings had an angry younger
sibling, the younger sibling’s anger was found to reduce the older sibling’s expression of anger over
time. Thus, older children learned from their younger siblings, but their learning was about what not to
do rather than what to do. Younger siblings’ anger had the effect of curtailing their own expression of
anger.
Trait anger has been shown to have a series of consequences from childhood to adulthood in terms of
the relationships that individuals enter into and the effects of those relationships on children. For
instance, Jennifer Jenkins, Jennifer Shapka and Ann Sorenson (2006) reported on women who were
interviewed as teenagers and followed up as adults 12 years later. The more angry these women were
during their adolescence the more likely they were as adults to fight with their partners and to
experience romantic breakups. Their children were exposed both to high levels of marital conflict and
to more family transitions. The children of angry mothers showed higher levels of anger and aggression
in their own lives when they were 12 years old. Others have found that angry people are more likely to
choose as partners others who are angry (Dishion and Tipsord 2011; Krueger et al. 1998).
These patterns of anger in relationships play out across generations. Individuals who have been
treated in an angry way are more likely to parent their own children more harshly (Kovan et al. 2009;
Scaramella et al. 2008). This same pattern is exacerbated by mate choice. Parents are even more likely
to parent their own children harshly when they have been harshly parented and when their mate also
parents harshly (Conger et al. 2012).

Dyad effects in anger and the reduction of anger

What does anger do to human relationships? From diary studies we have seen that it can help people
renegotiate relationships in which something has gone wrong. But we have also seen that frequent
anger between parents and children can turn into a reciprocal process in which each person reinforces
the other’s anger so that escalating patterns of this emotion become evident within each individual.
How can we understand whether anger is good or bad for relationships? Does expressing anger help to
put things right or does our expression of it so irritate the other person that nothing good can come of
it? The answer to this lies with the combination of people in the relationship. Social relations models
were developed to determine how consistently people act with different others, in terms both of
emotions they express and of emotions they elicit.
Jon Rasbash et al. (2011) analysed anger expressions in over 600 families in which there were a
mother, a father, and two children. Each person in the family was observed in interaction with each
other person (e.g. the mother with the father, and with each of her children). Consistent with the
evidence on traits that we described above, about 20 per cent of the negativity that individuals
expressed to one another was found to be an aspect of what is normally thought of as personality:
people express about the same level of anger to all other individuals. About 9 per cent, however, was
attributable to the person with whom an interaction occurs: thus to some extent individuals can
characteristically elicit anger from others. For instance, John would tend to elicit anger from his mother,
his father and his younger sibling. But the strongest effect in the study was the dyad effect, in which 50
per cent of the variance in negativity was attributable to the unique combination of two people in the
dyad. Thus, when John would be irritable, his mother sometimes would respond by being angry with
him, but not too often. When John would be irritable with his dad, his dad would be a bit more likely to
react with anger than the mother. But as soon as John and his brother, Pete, talked to one another for
even a minute they would begin to fight. Thus, the extent to which anger is damaging in the
relationship depends in part on how others respond to it. Some people may notice someone else’s
anger, but they won’t react to it. Others may be offended by it, so that it pulls anger from them. People
have to know their partners and think in advance what the likely outcome of an expression of anger will
be.
How do we reduce anger then? In research programs that start with epidemiology, a second stage is
to understand causes (as we have discussed above), and a third is to develop therapies. For anger, a
well-demonstrated therapy involves teaching parents to respond differently to children’s behaviour
(including anger and aggression). This has both short and long-term benefits for children (Menting et
al. 2013; Scott et al. 2014).
Couples can also be helped to get along better with one another by an intervention that takes an
average of seven minutes a month. Eli Finkel et al. (2013) asked newly married couples to journal after
they had a disagreement. They were asked to think about their conflict, from the perspective of a
neutral third party who wanted the best for both members of the couple. Although the marital
satisfaction of newly married couples generally decreases over time it did not decrease for the couples
who received this intervention. The implication is that being able to transcend our own immediate
goals, and to think about the goals of another, helps to reduce anger and dissatisfaction with partners.

Anger in fiction
Anger appears in the earliest written stories. In the Epic of Gilgamesh (Anon, 1700 BCE) a goddess is
angry with Gilgamesh and, to punish him, his friend, Enkidu, is killed. In the Bible’s Genesis (see, e.g.,
Rosenberg and Bloom 1990), God is angry with Eve and Adam for disobeying him so he expels them
from the Garden of Eden and imposes other punishments. Homer’s Iliad (762 BCE) is a story of anger
between Achilles and Agamemnon. Since these early times, anger and aggression have continued to be
depicted in plays, in novels and short stories, in movies, television series, and most recently in video
games.
Anger is indeed, as Patrick Hogan (2003) has found, a recurrent theme of stories around the world.
Stories of anger are sufficiently pervasive to be considered almost human universals. In a typical
example a rightful ruler is usurped by another person, perhaps a brother. Fighting breaks out, and
people on each side come to behave as badly as each other.
In 1508 Erasmus wrote Praise of Folly, in which Folly explains how, in everyday life, people like to
make out that everything they do is motivated only by rationality, whereas often they are clearly driven
principally by their emotions. It seems likely that it was on reading this that William Shakespeare had a
realization about what he would depict in the theatre. After reading Erasmus’s book he wrote Romeo
and Juliet which, although it is about love, is also about the angry conflict between the Montagues and
Capulets, which neither family is prepared to forego.
In films, television series and video games, anger and aggression are so prominent as to have become
clichéd. Many media producers evidently think that people enjoy watching episodes of angry and
contemptuous violence. This onslaught has prompted many investigations of the effects of media
violence. The consensus of reviews and meta-analyses is that media violence is indeed contagious, and
that it can spread to everyday life (see, e.g., Krahé 2012; Huesmann et al. 2013; Bushman 2016).
In contrast, works of fiction that can be considered as art can enable us to understand anger and its
consequences better. They can depict anger and its implications in ways that enable us to understand it
better and so perhaps become able to express it more judiciously and become able to empathize more
effectively with others who express it.
In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s (1866) Crime and Punishment, for instance, Rodion Raskolnikov is a student
who has no money, who is unsuccessful in his life, but who nonetheless thinks himself superior to
others. In a protracted state of anger against the unfair state in which he finds himself, he plots to kill a
woman who is a money-lender and extortioner. He does kill her, and also kills her half-sister who
happens to come on the scene. Much of the novel is about Raskolnikov’s sense of guilt and anguish at
his deed, and the growth of understanding of him by the detective, Porphiry. Reading the book enables
us not only to understand Raskolnikov, but to understand better within ourselves destructive
consequences of anger, even when others whom we harm may seem undeserving.
A whole genre of fiction – the mystery or detective story – is devoted to understanding how someone
has committed a crime, usually in an angry way, and has thereby torn the fabric of society (James 2009).
We are disquieted by such events. We come to feel a sense, when the perpetrator is identified and
mechanisms of justice are put into motion, that the torn fabric has been mended so that the rest of us
are once again able to get on with our lives together.

Conclusion
As this chapter has shown, anger is an interpersonal emotion. In its normative form it can occur some
two or three times a week, when something goes wrong that affects a concern. The question, then, is
what to do about it. If a person has it out with the other person involved, when that person is someone
the angry person knows and loves, there is a good chance that the incident will lead to some revision of
the terms of the relationship. At the same time, in the normative mode, people are usually careful not to
injure the other person involved. Some people, however, are angry for much of their lives, and for these
people anger is not only a burden they carry, but a blight they inflict on others. People for whom intense
and frequent anger have become aspects of their personality are at risk not only of worsening their
relationships, but of addiction and crime.
In order to understand negativity in relationships a social relations model is useful. Not only is there a
general effect of one’s personality on most others (an actor effect), but one can elicit certain emotions,
such as anger, from others (a partner effect). Most importantly, relationships have a certain emotional
tone that is distinctive (a dyad effect). This can be affectionate, but it can also be angry, and aspects of
anger can enable it to escalate and recur within particular relationships. Therapeutic measures have
been devised that are effective, between parents and children, and in couples, for reducing the
frequency and damage of pervasive anger in relationships.
Anger is depicted in literature, films, television shows, and video games. Concern has grown in social
science that pervasive aggression in the media, spreads violence into everyday life. At the same time,
artistic fiction can enable us to understand better the nature of anger, its effects on others and on
ourselves, and its possible remedies.

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12 Grief
The painfulness of permanent human absence
Anders Petersen and Michael Hviid Jacobsen

Introduction
Throughout our lives many things and people come and go. Things and lives sometimes come to an end,
at times because we decide to end them ourselves, at other times because external agencies or forces
beyond our reach terminate them. For example, we may lose money, friends, jobs, prestige, self-respect,
dreams and so on. Life is full of such momentary or more lasting losses. As a consequence, we may feel
sad, empty and even depressed. In everyday language we sometimes say that we ‘grieve’ such losses.
Most often, however, we will eventually come to replace the missing thing or person: we make new
money, have new friends, find new jobs and regain our prestige, self-respect and dreams. Grief, it
seems, comes in many different guises. Sometimes we grieve for something that is not going to be as
we have hoped for. For instance, imagine that you are the parents of a multi-handicapped child, then it
is indeed possible to grieve that the life opportunities for this child already from the outset seem
severely diminished, we may also grieve that the family business built up through many generations
went bankrupt, or we may grieve a romantic relationship that never turned out to last.
Seen through this lens, life may be defined as a shorter or longer wait for the experience of grief.
Only very few people, if any, are allowed to pass through life without ever experiencing some kind of
loss, be it expected or unexpected, natural or tragic, accepted or unbearable. If not a certainty, then at
least grief is something that must be calculated as part and parcel of what lies ahead. In general, ‘grief’
is an emotion triggered by the sense or experience of loss, and grief is thus an ‘emotion of absence’ that
arises from the realisation that we have lost something or are missing someone who was somehow
important or dear to us (Jacobsen and Kofod 2015). Such is our everyday usage of the notion of ‘grief’ –
it is used indiscriminately for many different types of loss and forms of absence. However, if the concept
of ‘grief’ should be meaningfully separated from ‘loss’ in general terms or from other types of ‘absence’,
then it would be worth reserving the notion of ‘grief’ for experiences of irretrievable loss of human life
and thus to link it to the experience of death. Life is so full of what clergyman Granger E. Westberg
once called ‘little griefs’ that may in themselves feel disturbing and painful but which in time will most
often be mitigated and pass by. At times, however, we encounter ‘large griefs’ such as irretrievable loss
and especially death (Westberg 1961:11). Such large griefs may call the world into question and
challenge the very meaning of life. The concept of ‘grief’ as a human emotion is therefore often
associated with permanent and absolute absence – that is death. Unavoidably, death triggers the
experience of what Jean-Paul Sartre (1943/1956) once called a ‘concrete nothingness’ – the existential
realisation of someone or something missing – and for good. Pierre, in Sartre’s famous example, is
simply not here right now – he will, in fact, never return again. Experiencing such permanent and
absolute absence is and remains an integral part of human life. Throughout life we are thus constant
spectators, as Sigmund Freud once insisted, to the deaths of others (family, friends, acquaintances and
complete strangers), and not until we ourselves eventually die and perish do we stop being spectators,
and others are then left to witness and grieve our disappearance. In this way, grief is safely and silently
passed down through generations.
Even though grief is such an integral part of human existence, it seems to be a rather invisible
emotion in everyday life. It is, after all, not very often we come into contact with people who are openly
grieving. For all practical intents and purposes, grief nowadays most often takes place behind closed
doors. In contemporary Western society, there is apparently something negative about grief (Charmaz
and Milligan 2007:518). This is not simply because grief phenomenologically is associated with negation
and absence, but more so because grief painfully reminds us that a happy life is always until further
notice and is threatened by the eventual loss of exactly those people who make life happy. Grief is an
assault on happiness (Ariès 1974:94). Grief is a difficult emotion in a society that celebrates openings
and which finds it difficult to face or to accept endings. Grief becomes problematic in a society that
regards death as a problem. And grief, as we shall see later in this chapter, becomes particularly
problematic in a society that thinks of grief as an illness that requires diagnosis and treatment.
In this chapter we will examine grief as an everyday emotion from many different perspectives:
definitional, philosophical, sociological, psychological, historical and literary. First, we will look into how
we may define grief as an emotion. Then we will present some of the many different faces of grief,
before moving into a short historical overview of our changed attitude towards grief and ways of
grieving in which we will also deal with how grieving in public in contemporary society can be seen as a
case of so-called ‘spectacular grief’. Finally, we will deal with grief as an illness and look at how it is
diagnosed and treated within contemporary psychological and psychiatric practice. It is important
initially to stress that this is not a chapter on grief theories, but a discussion of grief as an ‘emotion of
absence’, or an emotion associated with death, that is deeply embedded in everyday life. This chapter
does not aspire to present a systematic or comprehensive review of the vast research literature on grief,
but it draws on, discusses and engages with parts of that literature which is found particularly useful
for understanding grief as an everyday emotion.

Defining ‘grief’
In his famous study The Concept of Anxiety, Søren Kierkegaard once argued that anxiety is to be
perceived as a basic human condition. Anxiety, according to Kierkegaard, is to be understood as an
existentially and religiously embedded condition (strongly connected with hereditary sin) that
individuals have to address when making free choices. Thus, according to Kierkegaard, anxiety is
intrinsically linked with the ongoing formation of individual freedom (Kierkegaard 1844/1980). Could
we, perhaps, think of grief in a similar vein? Well, in A Treatise on Human Nature, David Hume
considered grief (alongside fear, hope and joy) to be one of the basic human emotions – what he
referred to as the ‘direct passions’ (Hume 1740/1978). Although Kierkegaard’s and Hume’s reflections
on anxiety and grief, in several respects, are dissimilar, one common denominator unites them: they are
both intrinsically human emotions. For our purposes here, what is important is, of course, Hume’s
proclamation that grief is human emotion ‘writ large’, in all its overwhelming effects. Whether grief also
qualifies as what emotion researchers call a ‘basic emotion’ is debatable, but it is nevertheless, as we
have already stated, almost certainly inescapable.
Positioning grief within the realm of human emotion does not, however, relieve us from the difficulties
involved in attempting to define grief in a more specific sense of the term. There are many different
definitions and theories of grief, and grief is often discussed and debated in relation – and sometimes in
juxtaposition – to rather similar concepts such as ‘sorrow’, ‘bereavement’, ‘mourning’ and ‘loss’ (see
Sprang and McNeil 1995) or ‘sadness’ (see Bonanno et al. 2008). It is beyond the scope of this chapter
to discuss these definitional and theoretical distinctions here, but rather to focus on approaching grief
as a human emotion by asking the following question: what triggers this emotion? As we have touched
upon in the introduction, we consider grief as an ‘emotion of absence’. Hence, grief occurs when we
have lost someone or something important in our lives, though grief might also occur even before the
actual loss has taken place. This is what Erich Lindemann (1944) once referred to with his concept of
‘anticipatory grief’: the mere anticipation of a loss to come is enough to generate the reactions of grief.
Here the concept and understanding of loss is of great importance. As Nina R. Jacoby has recently
shown, one is able to classify losses along two dimensions – personhood/artefact and
materiality/immateriality – and thus to sort loss experiences into three general categories: (a)
relationship loss (person, animal), (b) status loss (way of being, such as health or job), and (c)
(im)material object loss (e.g., artefacts, places, ideals) (Jakoby 2015:112). In relation to grief, all of
these categories are generously covered in the existing literature. For example, it is sometimes
suggested that loss due to divorce (e.g., Weiss 1975) or geographical separation (e.g. Price 1998) can
trigger grief-like responses. And in contemporary society, it is by no means considered peculiar that
some researchers have included the loss of pets into the grief vernacular. In fact, it has even been
argued that ‘the death of a pet induces grief responses of comparable severity to the loss of human
relationships’ and that ‘people often describe being more emotionally attached to their pets than to
humans in their lives’ (Carmack and Packman 2011:273). Moreover, the discussion, which we will not
enter here, on whether animals themselves (such as elephants or dolphins) are capable of eliciting grief
responses similar to those of humans is still ongoing (see, e.g., McGrath et al. 2013).
Neither do we want to challenge these statements nor this line of research as such – in fact, we are
appreciative of the theories that seek to understand grief within a broader context of loss. Here we
simply wish to limit ourselves – and hence the definition with which we work – to discussing grief in
relation to the human emotions generated by the loss of human life. But not just any human life. In our
perspective, a qualification and sensitisation of the concept requires that grief relates to the strong and
deep emotions involved in the involuntary loss through death of another human being who are
perceived to be of significant importance by the grieving actor in question. Thus, the spontaneous grief
response that sometimes occurs in relation to the death of a music celebrity (as we saw when Michael
Jackson or more recently Prince and David Bowie passed away) or a member of a royal family (as we
saw when Princess Diana died), and to which we return later, is beyond this relatively narrow definition.
Vital to us – as the title of this chapter strongly indicates – is also the connection between grief and
(how it is displayed in) everyday life. The experience of absence of a significant other reverberates as a
powerful and difficult feeling in one’s everyday life, exacerbated by the lack of conversation, bodily
contact and overall interaction that one shared with the human being who passed away.
Here, then, is the grief experienced in everyday life. In this respect, grief is mostly associated with
negative experiences. In fact, neurologically and physiologically, grief experiences can be quite similar
to the intense withdrawal symptoms experienced by somebody who is quitting drugs. Craving,
desperation and longing are among the symptoms frequently involved in grief. More specifically,
empirical studies have shown that grief’s

‘symptomatology’ (varying somewhat from individual to individual and within individuals from time to time)
includes such diverse physical and mental feelings and activities as: sleeplessness, restlessness, loss of
appetite, frustration, hallucinations, ‘irrational’ behavior, shortness of breath, heaviness, in the chest,
nausea, headaches, uncontrolled weeping, sadness, despair, hopelessness, apathy and irritability.
(Lofland 1985:172)
As some note, however, grief reactions can also oscillate between negative and positive experiences –
such as laughter and joy – hence emphasising that ‘grief reactions are not uniform or static. Rather, as
many bereavement investigators have noted, grief seems to occur in waves’ that each brings something
new to the shore of the experience of loss (Bonanno et al. 2008:803). This entails that grief is not, in
and by itself, bad, and that good aspects of grief can actually be explored – even to an extent that one
can (and perhaps should) talk about a so-called ‘good grief’ (Westberg 1961) or ‘good mourning’ (Meyer
2015).
But whether one situates the analysis of everyday grief experiences within the realms of the good or
the bad, it is our contention that grief as an emotion of absence should be concerned with social
relations. As phenomenological scholar Thomas Fuchs has recently stated: ‘Like hardly any other
psychic phenomenon, grief discloses the fact that as human beings we are fundamentally related to and
in need of others, that indeed our self is permeable and open to them’ (Fuchs 2017:6). Thus, grief
cannot – as we shall expand on later – only be understood as an ‘individual’ emotion. Although grief is
always manifested in a person, the experiences of grief are nonetheless socially shaped and reshaped
(Jakoby 2012). It is also seldom that only one single person is grieving the absence of a significant other
and this grief is most often shared with others who also mourn the loss. One could thus say that grief is
deeply interwoven in historically changing socio-structural contexts, rules and norms and (also) takes
place – and changes form, content and structure – in actual face-to-face interactions with other people
in everyday life situations.

The many faces of grief

Having framed grief in this manner is obviously not to say that it is easily captured. Grief has, indeed,
many faces: it is a multi-facetted, multi-dimensional and multi-layered emotion that can be connected to
a multitude of different emotional and physical experiences (Jackson 1972; Sprang and McNeil 1995).
By frequently invoking the facial metaphor in the literature on grief, it becomes obvious that grief,
besides being a deep-seated and mostly invisible emotion within the individual, apparently also has a
certain observable physiognomy evident, for example, in frowning, a sullen or sad look and not least
tears (in Voltaire’s memorable words ‘the silent language of grief’). Add to this other bodily sensations
felt by the grieving person such as fatigue, forgetfulness, aches and pains, shortage of breath,
headaches and loss of appetite just to mention a few, and it becomes obvious that grief also has a
physical dimension, as times even referred to as a ‘broken heart syndrome’.
As we have already touched upon, grief can itself trigger a number of other emotions. As explicated
by George A. Bonanno and colleagues: ‘In addition to sadness, grief has been associated with a wide
range of negative emotions, such as anger, contempt, hostility, fear, and guilt … and … genuinely
positive emotional experiences related to amusement, affection, happiness and pride’ (Bonanno et al.
2008:798). Moreover, as the authors just quoted discuss in great detail, grief can also be triggered by
other emotions, particularly by sadness, which the authors believe shares considerable features with
grief but at the same time is quite different from it. Any attempt to blur the distinction between the
emotions in question would hence be misleading and analytically unproductive. Rather, one should
separate them from each other in order to pave the way for a finer grained analysis of sadness as well
as grief experiences. That is not to say, however, that the concepts are not closely intertwined. What the
authors argue is rather that the phenomenology of sadness is somewhat mirrored ‘by the ways in which
sadness appears to give way to more complicated grief reactions during bereavement’ (Bonanno et al.
2008:801). In sum, sadness can be supportive of so-called ‘complicated grief’, a terminology that more
than indicates a distinction from ‘normal’ – or non-pathological – grief. We shall return to some of the
implications of this later in the chapter.
A pursuit of the many faces of grief cannot, of course, restrict itself to mentioning the
interconnectedness with other emotions or looking at the physical aspects of grief. It has to explicate
how the permanent absence of someone significant is actually experienced and expressed in everyday
life. As mentioned, grief is a social emotion unfolding in concrete social and historical circumstances.
Knowing that we are not able to exhaust this area of research here, we have selected some areas that
show the great variety of different experiences and expressions of grief. For example, the relation
between social class and the experiences and expressions of grief has been analysed, among others, by
Julie-Marie Strange (2002). Strange, taking her point of departure in literature written in and
discussing late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, makes a nuanced analysis of the complexities involved
in working-class grief during the time in question. According to Strange, there is no doubt about the
fact that materiality played a vital part in the possibilities of expressing grief. As she writes: ‘Grief was,
undoubtedly, inextricable from material circumstance: bereavement provoked concerns about the costs
of burial, while the death of a wage earner depressed a family’s finances’ (Strange 2002:149). Some
researchers have argued that this created a somewhat blasé attitude towards grief from the working-
class – that their material insecurity encouraged a containment of grief, thereby showing a lack of
sensibility towards grieving (see also Vincent 1980). But as Strange shows, one can also claim that grief
was managed by the working-class. That is, working-class individuals developed specific strategies for
confronting both death and grief that allowed them to handle their grief in a pragmatic way. She states:

In managing grief, working-class families did not negate loss but, rather, they formulated positive,
constructive and, crucially, malleable means for its expression.… Grief was articulated by, first, through the
social rites of mourning and, second, via personal and abstract symbols and signs.
 (Strange 2002:160–161)

These ways might not have been shared (or societally sanctioned) definitions of grief by the ruling class
of society, but nonetheless important manifestations of grief expressions that bear witness to the
socially variable nature of grief and how it is dealt with in everyday life.
In a similar vein, albeit in relation to contemporary society, Kenneth J. Doka has written extensively
about what he calls ‘disenfranchised grief’ (Doka 1989). As he has written in a short piece:

the concept of disenfranchised grief recognizes that societies have sets of norms – in effect, ‘grieving rules’
– that attempt to specify who, when, where, how long and for whom people should grieve. These grieving
rules may be codified as personal policies.
(Doka 1999:37)

Disenfranchised grief, then, is the grief of those who incur a loss but a loss that cannot be publically
acknowledged or socially accepted. Indeed, certain types of grief (for example following an AIDS-
related death) may even be stigmatized or delegitimized. According to Doka, disenfranchised grief can
be identified in three primary forms: (1) lack of recognition of the grieved relationship, (2) lack of
recognition of the bereavement experience itself, and (3) lack of recognition of the individual griever
(Doka 2002). The notion of disenfranchised grief bridges sociological and psychological understandings
of grief. It not only conceptualizes issues of societal legitimization of grief but also delivers a prism
through which one is able to understand the personal consequences of disenfranchised grief. Needless
to say, a lack of recognition in any of these realms can have devastating personal outcomes.
This analytical framework has paved the way for concepts such as ‘gagged grief’ – the socially
sanctioned ‘shushing’ of grief experiences – mostly effecting marginalized groups such as homosexuals,
who would like to publically grieve the loss of a partner but are socially prevented from doing so (Green
and Grant 2008). Another interesting concept that owes its theoretical scaffolding to disenfranchised
grief is ‘suffocated grief’ (Bordere 2010). This concept is particularly applicable to the predicament of
young African American males who, according to Tashel C. Bordere, find their grief disenfranchised in
multiple ways: by stereotypical gender messages that emasculate instrumental grieving, by the often
violent circumstances surrounding death and by society’s devaluation of African American lives. Thus,
in the face of these circumstances, these males are denied the opportunity to express their grief in a
functional or purposeful way to them, which is why

they must ‘suffocate’ and silence their grief. Young African American males are often faced with powerfully
negative societal responses to their natural outpourings of grief and coping strategies. Certain expressions
of mourning (e.g., rap music, tattoos, graffiti, and mourning T-shirts) may be actively rejected, and even
condemned as inappropriate or ‘dysfunctional’ to the mourner or ‘offensive’ to others.
(Molaison et al. 2011:383)

Suffocating and silencing one’s grief – and being socially scorned for the ways in which one attempts
to grieve – is potentially devastating. What is being suffocated is, in fact, large and pivotal aspects of
one’s self. The denial of functional ways of grieving is, in many respects, an undermining – perhaps even
a ridicule – of identity. Moreover, it might provoke undesirable psychological reactions when the grief is
being contained and restricted: suppressed emotions can contain the ingredients of an explosive
cocktail.

From glorious grief through obscene grief to ‘spectacular grief’

Grief not only has a history within each and every human being experiencing it. It also has a social
history. According to G.W.F. Hegel, history is about what man does with death. Throughout history, from
the Stone Ages and ancient Greek and Roman empires, there have been many historical shifts and
transitions in our mourning practices and understandings of grief, some knowledge of which has been
preserved for posterity (see, e.g. Davey 1890/2013). However, most historians who have worked with
death and mourning cultures – such as Philippe Ariès, Johan Huizinga or Michel Vovelle – have taken
the dark Middle Ages as their analytical starting-point. Perhaps the most cited piece of work
documenting and systematising our changing attitudes towards death and grief was proposed by Ariès,
who in his magisterial The Hour of Our Death (1981) from the myriad of historical detail carved out four
different ‘death mentalities’ in the West from medieval times to contemporary society. Without going
into detail with these four epochs – ‘tame death’ in the Middle Ages, ‘death of the self’ in the Late
Middle Ages and Renaissance period, ‘death of the other’ in the nineteenth century, and ‘forbidden
death’ in the twentieth century – Ariès told a story of an increasing alienation towards death and grief
throughout the past 1000 years. Death and grief, previously such familiar and visible phenomena in
everyday life, gradually disappeared and were replaced by distance, embarrassment and taboo.
Before grief was a feeling that one would unavoidably be confronted with many times in life in the
shape of magnificent mourning clothes, slow funeral processions, the grand architecture of the
graveyard and in the elaborate mourning rituals and customs following the event of death. Especially
during the time of ‘death of the other’ in the nineteenth century the culture of grief was nothing less
than a glorious public celebration of loss (Stearns 2007). Recollecting even the period of World War I
and his own adolescence, Geoffrey Gorer, whose father drowned when the Lusitania sank, remembered
how ‘in the summer of 1915, and thereafter, widows in mourning became increasingly frequent in the
streets’ (Gorer 1965:xx). However, with the coming of the twentieth century, with its secularisation and
celebration of science, death was increasingly privatised, surrounded by a strange scent of obscenity,
and was in the middle of the century described by Gorer (1955) as ‘pornographic’. When death became
pornographic, grief became something akin to emotional masturbation that should, for the sake of all,
be reserved solely for the grieving person. Mourning had to a large degree been removed from public
space, the days of the funeral procession moving at a leisurely pace were now over, mourning clothing
went out of fashion and comprehensive mourning rituals were gradually replaced by silence and denial
(Bedikian 2008). According to Ariès, death became institutionalised, professionalised and medicalised –
a technical phenomenon that the ‘doctors of death’ began to control and manage. With this privatisation
and professionalisation of death also followed the privatisation and professionalisation of grief, and
increasingly grief was seen as a ‘morbid state which must be treated, shortened, erased by the “doctors
of grief”’ (Ariès 1974:99–100). We return to this topic again later.
Previously in the chapter we stated that in our definition of grief as the experience of the permanent
loss of a loved one we would not include those expressions of mourning that are associated with public
grief over non-significant others. However, it is important to stress that besides its ‘feeling side’, grief –
like so many other emotions – also contains a ‘display side’ (Lofland 1985:173) that is perhaps
particularly evident in the dramaturgy and manifestation of public grief. Grief is therefore not only an
individual emotion experienced by an individual human being. Grief can also be, and most often is, a
shared feeling of loss that is somehow performed or put on display. In recent decades there have been
signs of the gradual return of grief as a public event, not least relating to grieving the return of soldiers
in coffins from international conflicts or mourning the victims of terrorist attacks. Anthony Giddens
(1991) once repeated Freud’s notion of ‘the return of the repressed’ as a signifier of late-modern
society, and others have claimed that the death taboo is apparently dissolving (see Berridge 2002;
Walter 1994). Yet others have spoken of a new phase in death mentality substituting Ariès’s ‘forbidden
death’ and have claimed that this fifth phase of ‘spectacular death’ also leads to manifestations of
‘spectacular grief’ (Jacobsen 2016).
In times of peace, public mourning and collective expressions of grief are however still mostly held at
a minimum, whereas during times of war, unrest or insecurity, public mourning rituals and ceremonials
serve the important purpose of igniting the national spirit. So whenever there have been recent
terrorist attacks – in France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, England, Sweden, Spain or elsewhere –
people seem to feel the need to gather to express their solidarity with the victims, to confirm the social
bond and to state that they are not afraid. We have seen similar kinds of manifestations when crowds
gather to mourn the often tragic, dramatic or unexpected death of celebrities. Just think of the
mourning of Princess Diana, Michael Jackson or Prince. Before them, and well before the age of
‘internet mourning rituals’, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, John Lennon and Olof Palme were
mourned in quite similar ways. However, not just the deaths of national heroes or celebrities receive
this special kind of public attention. Often when someone dies in public under tragic circumstances
such as from violent attacks or violent accidents, we will see what is variously called ‘roadside rituals’,
‘spontaneous altars’ or ‘makeshift memorials’ at the site of death marking the public’s anger,
compassion and grief. C. Allen Haney and colleagues (1997) have listed several characteristics of this
so-called ‘spontaneous memorialisation’ and its expressions of grief in public at the site of a dramatic or
tragic death. For example, that they are open to participation and that nobody is in principle excluded
from the circle of grief, that the items and mementos left at the small shrines marking the site of death
are personally meaningful to the mourners, that they often constitute a bricolage of religious and
secular symbolism, that they breach with normal conventions for the form and duration of grief, and
that mourners often in small notes or on cardboard signs communicate messages (moral or political)
that go beyond the actual death that is being mourned. In this way, we may say that such ‘spectacular
grief’ today seems to serve as an important vehicle for expressing a grief that is perhaps in many ways
still silenced and tabooed. So we now live in times of what Erika Doss (2010) has called ‘memorial
mania’ or we might also call it ‘mourning mania’ in which we want to make a public spectacle of the
losses we experience. Obviously, it is debatable if this kind of ‘spontaneous mourning’ expression, in
fact, qualifies as ‘grief’ at all, and if so if this kind of grieving for celebrities or complete strangers is
comparable to the one experienced when a significant other passes away.

Diagnosing grief – from ‘normal grief’ to ‘complicated grief’

‘There isn’t any need for a civilized man to bear anything that’s seriously unpleasant’, says Mustapha
Mond, the fictitious ‘Resident World Controller of Western Europe’ in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel
Brave New World, published in 1932. The answer to the question of human suffering in Huxley’s book
was ‘Soma’: not a drug taken by the citizens as a reaction to any specific illness, but in order to prevent
unpleasant things occurring (Huxley 1932/2006). Now, we cannot put the perspective of suffering
explicated in Huxley’s novel on the same footing as the situation in contemporary society. Still, it seems
worthwhile to discuss it in relation to a situation, in which so-called ‘prolonged grief disorder’ will
become a separate diagnosis in the ICD-11 to be published in 2018. How can we understand the
transformation from normal (or uncomplicated) grief to complicated grief – and hence grief becoming a
distinct diagnostic category?
In order for grief to become a diagnostic category, it has to be perceived not only as an emotion but
also as a disease. The disciplines of psychology and psychiatry have been instrumental in this line of
thought, which is by no means new. Already in 1961 George L. Engel asked the pertinent question: ‘Is
Grief a Disease?’. He began his paper by acknowledging that this might be an odd question, since most
people would not think of grief along such lines. But still, he argued – as the medical scholar he was –
that it is worthwhile contemplating the question in light of the new medical research that developed in
the historical epoch in which he lived (Engel 1961). Had Engel, however, been a devout Freudian, he
would have answered the question quite quickly with a pretty definitive ‘no’. In Freud’s famous essay
‘Mourning and Melancholia’, written during World War I, he stipulated that grief was not to be
understood as a pathology and that ‘although mourning involve great departures from the normal
attitude to life, it never occurs to us to regard it as a pathological condition and refer it to medical
treatment’ (Freud 1917/1957:252). In contemporary society, however, Freud’s standpoint is being
increasingly challenged. Or, one might even say that it has already been surpassed by the exact
opposite point of view. Perhaps we can explain this by pointing out that Freud – and his psychological
theories – was only a hiatus in the history of psychiatry (Shorter 1997:145). Psychiatry is predominantly
a medical discipline that – particularly since the launch of the DSM-3 in 1980 – is best understood as
‘diagnostic psychiatry’. According to Allan V. Horwitz, who coined this term, ‘diagnostic psychiatry
defines diseases through the presence of overt symptoms, regardless of the causes of these symptoms.
It regards diseases as natural entities that exist in the body and that generate the particular symptoms
a person displays’ (Horwitz 2002:56). Within the realm of diagnostic psychiatry, then, the primary
causes of mental diseases are not sought in childhood disturbances – or in difficult socio-economic
living conditions for that matter – but instead in disturbed brains and neurochemical activities, all of
which manifest themselves in various symptoms that can be monitored, measured and communicated.
In that respect, the main focus is on symptoms that can be classified and collected into a given
diagnosis.
Now, grief was not included in the DSM-3 – neither in the DSM-5 (2013) for that matter. But as
mentioned, ‘prolonged grief disorder’ will occur in the ICD-11. The proponents of the diagnosis (such
as, e.g., Prigerson et al. 2009) claim that it will help to distinguish pathological grief from the diagnosis
of depression and from normal grief, thereby enabling the right kind of treatment to those who suffer
from pathological grief and avoiding unnecessary treatment of normal grief responses. Of course, this is
not an easy task. The symptomatology of normal and prolonged/complicated grief is not that
straightforward to separate from each other. But it is, according to those in favour of the diagnosis,
worthwhile. As it is stated in a review article about whether complicated grief meets the criteria for a
mental disease or not: ‘the potential benefit of creating a new diagnosis in order to identify individuals
who require clinical attention appears to outweigh the potential harm as long as the diagnosis is
applied properly’ (Shear et al. 2011:107). We will have to wait and see whether the diagnosis will be
applied properly or not. Meanwhile, the debate about – and the critique of – the transformation of grief
into a diagnostic category will most likely continue to intensify.
Quite a few scholars have argued that grief should not be understood as a disease (e.g. Averill and
Nunley 1988). Instead it should be addressed as a prototype of intense but normal sadness that society
‘writ large’ does not perceive as pathological. As Horwitz and colleague Jerome C. Wakefield claim, it is
common sense not to consider intense grief reactions to be symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. Instead,
most people would define grief as a normal reaction to severely constraining circumstances (Horwitz
and Wakefield 2007:31). The problem arises when grief reactions are thought of as medical signs of a
disease. The coming diagnosis of prolonged grief disorder can be seen as an example of the
pathologisation of normal grief that Horwitz and Wakefield also detect in relation to the diagnosis of
depression. The consequences of this, according to Horwitz and Wakefield, dubious diagnostic approach
to considering what is respectively ‘normal’ and ‘pathological’ is not only a potential rise in the
numbers of false-positive diagnoses (Horwitz and Wakefield 2007:38), but also that this understanding
buttresses the medicalisation of grief. Peter Conrad’s (2007) influential analysis of the medicalisation of
society – in which he stipulates how normal human distress, suffering and personal troubles is
increasingly transformed into medicalised objects and mental disorders – has been applied by Julia
Bandini (2015) specifically in relation to grief. She points to three potential consequences of the
medicalisation of grief: (1) a potential for overdiagnosis and overtreatment, (2) a potential for expanded
market shares for pharmaceutical companies (some years ago, John Abraham (2010) discussed the
possibilities of a regular pharmaceuticalisation of society as a situation in which an expansion of
treatment with pharmaceuticals denotes how society perceives the normal way of treating human
suffering, so why not a pill for grief, one could ask?), and (3) a loss of traditional and cultural methods
of adapting to the loss of a loved one (Bandini 2015:351). The risk of diagnostic thinking colonising
other forms and ways of relating to grief is indeed present. As Svend Brinkmann has argued, this is not
only the case in relation what we normally construe as traditional or cultural modes of coping with
issues such as grief. It is also shown in the languages we use to articulate issues of human suffering as
such. He claims that alternative understandings of human suffering ‘have been somewhat depreciated
by the status of the diagnostic language’ (Brinkmann 2016:52). That is not to say that other languages –
social, existential, political, etc. – have disappeared from our vocabulary. They have, though, less status
than the diagnostic language when it comes to articulating – and thus to organising – our suffering. Why
should grief be an exception?
Both the protagonists and the critics of the grief diagnosis may have valid and convincing arguments.
What is often ignored in this debate, however, is the individualisation of grief that the diagnosis can
lead too. By allowing the logic of diagnostic psychiatry to absorb grief, there is a severe risk that grief is
being turned into an individual problem to be dealt with individually. Hence, one loses sight of the social
dimensions and expressions of grief – which also take place in everyday life – and thereby of the fact
that grief has been triggered by the loss of a significant other who is now absent in the griever’s life.
The diagnosis then, risks individualising a difficult life experience and thus casting a shadow on the
vital social aspects of grief, thereby echoing an overall transformation in contemporary society in which
‘the social’ is being marginalised, perhaps even neutralised.

Treating and relieving grief

From giving a diagnosis usually follows attempts at curing, treating, relieving or healing. We have, until
now, touched upon many different components and understandings of grief reactions and experiences.
In the previous paragraphs it has become clear that a wide array of academic developments and
societal transformations have been influential in relation to the multiple spheres of grief. Some of the
same (historical) dynamism is also found in the ways in which grief is treated and relieved.
As we have seen, for psychology and medical science it was simply too tempting not to leave grief
alone. Previously, grief was primarily the domain of pastoral and communal care. With the rise of
modern society and modern science, it was no longer an emotion that could remain outside the
advancing regime of cure and treatment for long. For a long time during the twentieth century, the
experience of grief was shrouded in almost mythological theories and iron-clad models that insisted that
it should be seen as a series of consecutive stages that would eventually end in resolution and
acceptance of the loss. Until the late 1990s, the theoretical hypothesis of ‘grief work’ was central within
clinical lore and hence was incorporated in most intervention programmes. Grief work, in the simplest
understanding of the term, suggests that grief has to be worked on (and coped with) in order for the
grieving person to let go and move on in life. As Tony Walter has hinted at, the embedding of this idea in
clinical lore is perhaps due to William Worden’s hugely popular book from 1983 Grief Counseling and
Grief Therapy (Walter 1999:161). In Worden’s book, he suggested four tasks that bereaved people
should accomplish for the process of mourning to be completed: (1) accepting the reality of the loss, (2)
working through the pain of grief, (3) adjusting to the environment in which the deceased is missing,
and (4) finding an enduring connection with the deceased whilst embarking on a new life. Now, grief
work is not – as the last of the four tasks indicates – entirely incompatible with continuing the bond with
the deceased. Nevertheless, the core idea that grief can be governed by tasks and eventually be
‘accomplished’ and ‘completed’ has in recent decades been met by severe criticism. In fact, as Walter
quotes Margaret Stroebe and colleagues for stating: ‘Not only is there very little scientific evidence on
the grief work hypothesis, but studies that bear on the issue yield contradictory results’ (Stroebe et al.
in Walter 1999:160). Following these types of questions concerning the efficacy of the grief work
hypothesis, other theoretical models have been developed in order to deal with grief. One of these
models is the ‘two-track model’, which is defined in the following way:

The Two-Track Model of Bereavement advocates for the assessment of both functioning and the nature of
the continuing attachment to the deceased when significant others die – and this is across the entire course
of the bereaved person’s lifetime. The clinical focus of the model derives directly from its binocular focus.
(Rubin et al. 2011:49–50)

The theoretical scaffolding presented in the two-track model is not new. One of the authors just quoted,
Simon S. Rubin, embarked on this theoretical endeavour back in 1981 (Rubin 1981). Since then, Rubin
and co-workers have elaborated on the model, making it applicable in the areas of research and
practice. The first of the tracks in the model addresses the question of biopsychosocial functioning and
examines whether intervention is needed in these realms. The second track addresses the type of
relationship the griever has to the deceased, which adaptive strengths and weaknesses there exist and
examines if intervention in the relationship domain is required. Thus, the two-track model serves to
organise a reality – that might be more complicated in real life than in the model – in order to
conceptualize some specific points to pay attention to, and on which to prepare intervention with the
bereaved. It rests on letting go of and staying connected to the deceased as a dual process in which the
interplay is not unilinear or predictable, as in the conventional stage models. So, the ‘two-track model’,
ideas about ‘continuing bonds’ and other more recent inventions in grief theory and grief therapy insist
that instead of rigid stages, tasks to be performed or equally one-dimensional scenarios, we should
rather focus on the constantly changing and complex dynamics of the grieving process. The danger
obviously lurks that even models and theories that on the surface seem to open up for the multifarious
dimensions of grief (looking at ‘tracks’ instead of ‘tasks’) can be taken too literally or ideologically by
being transformed into regulations and proscriptions for practice.
There is doubtless a lot to be learned from the many theories of grief that continue to be developed
within and proposed for clinical practice. Without recourse to any abstract theorising or empirical
findings, however, we suggest that the best way to learn to live with grief is by reconciling ourselves to
the fact that everything human must die. This is and continues to be the way of all flesh. Any notion
about a ‘good grief’ must therefore necessarily be seen as an extension of the notion of ‘good death’
that has been suggested within palliative care practice. Of course, there are many formal definitions
and criteria of such a ‘good death’, but perhaps the most important thing, after all, is to avoid a ‘bad
death’ (Jacobsen 2017) and with it also a ‘bad grief’. Scientific theories, clinical models and therapeutic
or medical treatments might perhaps not be the most appropriate sources to consult if one wants to
avoid such a bad grief, because they usually end up reducing the multi-facetted, multi-dimensional and
multi-layered dynamics of grief to ‘stages’, ‘tasks’, ‘interventions’ and similar ideas. As C.S. Lewis, who
after experiencing the loss of his beloved wife Joy Davidson wrote a small and wonderful book titled A
Grief Observed containing his ‘mad midnight moments’ of contemplating grief, once importantly
suggested: ‘I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be
not a state but a process. It needs not a map but a history’ (Lewis 1961/1984:55).

Conclusion
In this chapter, we have introduced you to some general ideas and more specialised insights about grief
as an everyday emotion. We have drawn generously and admittedly also unsystematically on various
definitional, philosophical, sociological, psychological, historical and literary sources of inspiration in
order to try and capture the multi-facetted, multi-dimensional and multi-layered and always changing
nature of human grief. Throughout the chapter we have revisited and discussed different aspects of the
grief experience and in the process have aspired to show how it makes sense to reserve the notion of
‘grief’ for those losses in human life that are indeed irrevocable and definitive. Other experiences of
absence or loss in everyday life may also contain certain germs or glimpses of grief, but if the notion of
grief is to retain any analytical value and avoid dilution, it should be related to the death of significant
others.
The chapter started out by stating that grief is hard to come to terms with – not merely as a theme for
research (not least due to the heaps of work now published on the topic), but also as a fundamental
human experience. Sociology, psychology, history, theology, medical science, literature, poetry and other
branches of human knowledge and insight can take us some way in understanding grief. However, in
order to be fully appreciated, grief needs to be experienced first-hand. As Edgar N. Jackson once
proposed: ‘It may well be easier to confront the dynamics of grief in theory than in the form of the
baffling and often contradictory behavior of a person in the midst of a grief experience’ (Jackson
1972:9). Scientific theories, conceptual apparatuses, research methods, psychiatric diagnoses and
treatment regimes, one way or the other always end up objectifying grief. However, grief is first and
foremost a lived experience – a human response to the experience of the permanent and irretrievable
absence of a loved one. Let us therefore end this grand tour of grief as an everyday emotion (but also as
a scientific construct) with an apt observation by C.S. Lewis who in his aforementioned ‘diary of grief’
reminded his readers of the following – something that concerns us all as human beings, but also
something that each and every researcher of grief and bereavement should carefully remember:

We were even promised sufferings. They were part of the programme. We were even told ‘Blessed are they
that mourn’ and I accepted it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the
thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination.
(Lewis 1961/1984:33)

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13 Boredom
Emptiness in the modern world
Patrick Gamsby

Introduction
Boredom is a rather curious phenomenon. In the fall of 1929 and winter of 1930, German philosopher
Martin Heidegger set out to think through this difficult topic through a series of lectures titled ‘The
Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics’ (1995). Devoting roughly one-third of these lectures to
something akin to an ontology of boredom, Heidegger offered one of the best summaries of the
difficulty in capturing the essence of boredom when he referred to it as a ‘riddle’. As Heidegger was
well aware, boredom is not a standard riddle which can be glanced at and pondered over, or even
passed on orally from one person to another. It is difficult to pin down in a fixed form, because it belies
fixity. There are various depths to boredom, some more profound than others. It is a feeling that
appears and then vanishes, returns and escapes. The complexity of boredom is compounded by this
fluidity. That is, if one wishes to describe one’s own experience(s) of boredom, the moment one begins
to think about it and become interested in it, the experience begins to dwindle or vanish entirely.
Furthermore, the boredom experienced today could be different from that experienced tomorrow and,
presumably, that of the past. As such, one of the main methodological and theoretical difficulties in
studying boredom is that it is an experience that effaces its own history (Goodstein 2005).
Perhaps, then, the biggest challenge with theorizing boredom is how to grasp the historical
particularity of this particular mode of experience. This is especially difficult given the lack of focus on
boredom in academia, especially with regards to its historical and social aspects. After summarizing the
state of boredom studies, this chapter will delve into some of the socio-historical aspects of boredom via
close readings of some key concepts by social theorists Georg Simmel (1858–1918) and the blasé
personality, Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) and the absence of style, and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973)
and Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) and the culture industry. These theorists are not typically
recognized for providing penetrating analyses of boredom, but it will nevertheless be argued that they
do indeed provide key insights into the riddle of boredom in everyday life.

Three basic views of boredom

The literature on boredom is only now being anthologized (Gardiner and Haladyn 2017; McDonough
2017). Monograph length analyses of boredom have appeared here and there over the last few decades
(Healy 1984; Klapp 1986; Kuhn 1976; Spacks 1995; Svendsen 2005; Toohey 2011), but only a modest
few have been written. While the majority of these studies focus on literature, there are nevertheless
scant reflections on boredom in articles scattered throughout other types of literature – psychological
(Farmer and Sundberg 1986; Fenichel 1953), philosophical (Kierkegaard 1959; Russell 1930), musical
(Higgins 1981), sociological (Simmel 1997), etc.
Simplifying things in a considerable way, it can be said that there are three basic views with regards
to boredom. The first view is the ordinary one; the one that is found strewn throughout everyday life,
passed on from grandparents to grandchildren, friend to friend, teacher to student, etc. This is a
commonly held position where boredom is equated with individual emptiness, is something that is easily
remedied, and ultimately unworthy of serious attention. If one is strong enough (mentally, physically,
spiritually, and so on) then boredom is easily repelled, if it ever does make an appearance. Indeed, with
the ordinary view, boredom is almost treated as a spectre lying in wait to penetrate the hearts and
minds of those without the constitutional fortitude to forestall its advances. One of the most succinct
explanations of the ordinary conception of boredom is in Martin Heidegger’s aforementioned lectures:

Boredom in the ordinary sense is disturbing, unpleasant, and unbearable. For the ordinary understanding
all such things are also of little value, they are unworthy and to be condemned. Becoming bored is a sign of
shallowness and superficiality. Whoever sets a proper task for his or her life and gives it content does not
need to fear boredom and is secure in the face of it.
(Heidegger 1995:158)

This view of boredom attaches a rather unpleasant stigma to those that are bored. One dare not say one
is bored, at least around those that hold this view, as the bored individual will be met with scorn. The
idea of treating boredom as a serious topic of inquiry would seem absurd to those with the ordinary
view of boredom.
The second basic view of boredom is an ahistorical one. This position takes boredom to be a universal
experience that has been felt by countless individuals since the dawn of time. As long as there has been
time, people have been bored with it; it is a constant of humanity. The idea here is that while boredom
as a word did not exist until the nineteenth century, other pre-modern terms such as acedia, ennui, and
so on, are seen as synonyms and thus boredom under another name. This view is commonly held among
psychologists and philosophers. In this case, boredom is a worthy subject of inquiry; however, it has
only recently been deemed to be worthy, evidenced by the lack of attention to this topic in previous
centuries, despite its supposed pervasiveness throughout all of time.
The third view, argued most forcefully by Elizabeth S. Goodstein in her book Experience Without
Qualities, takes boredom to be an historically specific phenomenon, one that is inextricably tied to
modern life. Other signifiers, going back several centuries, have been used to describe experiences that
are often conflated with boredom – acedia, horror loci, melancholy, taedium vitae, etc. – but none can be
equated with what we call boredom. Goodstein expounds on this as follows:

If we may trust the Oxford English Dictionary, boredom was literally non-existent until the late eighteenth
century – that is, it came into being as Enlightenment was giving way to Industrial Revolution. While its
continental cousins ‘ennui’ and ‘Langeweile’ are older, they were not used synonymously, that is, in the
modern sense that combines an existential and a temporal connotation, until about the same time. This
linguistic convergence reflects experiential transformations that were transnational in nature, for
modernization literally altered the quality of human being in time. In the course of the nineteenth century,
even as the temporal rhythms of everyday life were being revolutionized by technological and economic
developments, a new, secular interpretation of human temporality was gaining ground.
(Goodstein 2005:3)

Goodstein asserts that boredom is linked to what she calls the ‘democratization of skepticism’ where
the masses are no longer tied to the idea of divine providence and are thus free to cast doubt upon
anything and everything. It is this third view of boredom that can be found in the three key concepts
discussed hereafter.

Blasé personality
In addition to industrialization, one of the hallmarks of modernity is urbanization. In their respective
writings, Walter Benjamin and Georg Simmel each have an ideal type of urban occupant strolling
through the streets. Benjamin’s is the flâneur and Simmel’s is the blasé personality. Although the labels
are different, these two figures are not so different. Fran Tonkiss has sketched some commonalities
between them. ‘Distracted by the urban spectacle even as he is estranged from it,’ writes Tonkiss, ‘the
bored desire of the flâneur bears a likeness to Simmel’s jaded metropolitan, battered to the point of the
blasé’ (Tonkiss 2005:126). Aside from sharing the desire to assert themselves as pedestrians, these two
figures are both plagued by seemingly perpetual fits of boredom. To Tonkiss, the flâneur and the blasé
personality both ‘exemplify an ambivalent mode of being in the modern city which combines emersion
with estrangement, consumption with detachment, desire with boredom. He is always “just looking”’
(Tonkiss 2005:125). In a certain sense, this is passive observation in that these figures are not actively
participating in the activities taking place in their immediate surroundings. In another sense, it is an
active observation where they are much more in tune with what is happening in their surroundings than
the ones who are participating in the activities. It is both active and passive at the same time. It would
seem as though the blasé personality is developed by being both present and absent in the modern city.
Simmel’s essay ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’, conceived in 1903, offers one of the finest and
perhaps most famous example of blaséness. Simmel writes of ‘the rapid crowding of changing images,
the sharp discontinuity in the grasp of a single glance. And the unexpectedness of onrushing
impressions. These are the psychological conditions which the metropolis creates’ (Simmel 1997:175).
This description touches on the vast amount of distractions that were made available in major cities at
the turn of the twentieth century and even today. This ‘peculiarly modern form of boredom’ (Petro
1995:273) is what one develops through the constant process of mediation in the metropolis and is best
exemplified by the impersonal exchange of money. Simmel notes how ‘the metropolis has always been
the seat of the money economy’ (Simmel 1997:176), but it is the capitalist one, the one moulded for and
by modernity that is of concern to him. Specifically, money is the key culprit for blaséness because it
‘reduces all quality and individuality to the question: How much?’ (Simmel 1997:176). Money, then, is a
leveller of difference where everyone requires it to sustain oneself. That is, we all need money to buy
food, clothes, shelter, etc. Of course, the amount of money people possess is not levelled. ‘Money,’
observes Simmel, ‘with all its colourlessness and indifference, becomes the common denominator of all
values’ (Simmel 1997:178). The mediation of money in the metropolis, so widespread throughout the
world, is believed to be the chief cause of the blasé personality.
Blaséness is characterized by Simmel as a ‘mood’. Elizabeth S. Goodstein claims it is ‘a mental
attitude associated with the experience of boredom in relation to the historical and cultural
circumstances of urban existence’ (Goodstein 2005:264). Simmel believes that ‘this mood is the faithful
subjective reflection of the completely internalized money economy’ (Simmel 1997:178). Here,
reflection is meant in the sense that it mirrors, rather than the reflection of deep thinking, or to reflect
in a philosophical sense. The money economy ensures that encounters in the metropolis are certainly
impersonal, ‘for entirely unknown purchasers who never personally enter the producer’s actual field of
vision’ (Simmel 1997:176). Simmel is here emphasizing the lack of familiarity in the exchange of goods
and services. That is, although the situation of exchange is one that can be found throughout the
metropolis and is therefore quite familiar, the inter-subjective interaction is relatively hollow and
customers and vendors both simply go through the motions in order to complete a transaction. Neither
side seems to enjoy the moment. There is always something else in the future or even in the past that is
more desirable. It is only a means to an end.
With the blasé personality, there is a shift in the logic of everyday life that becomes most apparent
with an examination of a rationalised urban space. Over the course of time, the ‘modern mind,’
according to Simmel, ‘has become more and more calculating’ (Simmel 1997:177). With the blasé
attitude, quantification is valued above all else. That is to say, quantity is valued more than quality.
Everything is measured in price and duration of time. ‘How much is it going to cost?’ or ‘how long is it
going to take?’ are frequent questions heard throughout the metropolis and can confirm this point,
perhaps even together, such as with a ride in a taxi. The clichéd saying that ‘time is money’ seems to
apply to this. Simmel’s fellow philosophical countryman Martin Heidegger would perhaps agree with
this. It should be noted that Heidegger also briefly mentions blaséness in his lectures on boredom
(Heidegger 1995:110), but does not refer to Simmel or the money economy. The common thread
between these two thinkers is not found in those lectures, but is instead present in Heidegger’s
‘Memorial Address’ from 30th October 1955, where he differentiates between two kinds of thinking in
the modern world: calculative and meditative. The former type of thinking ‘computes ever new, ever
more promising and at the same time more economical possibilities. Calculative thinking never stops,
never collects itself’ (Heidegger 1966:46). With the subsequent advent of computers, it would seem as
though both Heidegger and Simmel were prophetic in their assessment of calculative thinking.
Meditative thinking, on the contrary, constantly ‘collects itself’, evaluates and re-evaluates, pauses,
carries on, turns back, is careful, deliberate and comparatively slow. These two modes of thinking are
opposed to one another. Activities that do not contribute to the money economy would, to the
calculating mind, be superfluous. With such a pervasive emphasis on calculative thinking, what is
missing is quality of life.
Simmel observes ‘the universal diffusion of pocket watches’ (Simmel 1997:177). To Simmel, the
profusion of pocket watches ‘symbolizes subjective adaptation to the highly rationalized form of
metropolitan life’ (Goodstein 2005:271). This rationalization is evident in the multitude of time
schedules such as those for work, department store hours, movie show times, or those found at a train
station, all of which altered everyday life. Time is an important aspect of the blasé attitude. It must be
emphasized that this is not an obscure or rare attitude. Simmel would claim that ‘there is perhaps no
psychic phenomenon which has been so unconditionally reserved to the metropolis as has the blasé
attitude. The blasé attitude results first from the rapidly changing and closely compressed contrasting
stimulations of the nerves’ (Simmel 1997:178). This effectively defines how the blasé attitude appears
as well as how prevalent it is in the metropolis. Simmel continues by mentioning how ‘a life in
boundless pursuit of pleasure makes one blasé because it agitates the nerves to their strongest
reactivity for such a long time that they finally cease to react at all’ (Simmel 1997:178). Such a
boundless pursuit is thought to be doomed to failure from the beginning. Something is missing.

The absence of style

For a consideration of the experience of boredom in everyday life as it relates to the pursuit of pleasure,
it is perhaps best to turn to the work of Henri Lefebvre. Lefebvre’s critique of everyday life spans
multiple texts and is perhaps one of the most penetrating and comprehensive attempts to understand
everyday life. In the first volume of his Critique of Everyday Life (1991a), Lefebvre argues that James
Joyce’s Ulysses is ‘profoundly boring’. At first glance, this would appear to be a derogatory remark
about one of the classics of literary modernism. However, in making such an assertion, Lefebvre is
arguing that Joyce succeeded with his portrayal of everyday life in the modern world. Such an argument
is consistent with recent research, such as the work of Elizabeth S. Goodstein, which, as stated above,
argues that boredom is an historically unique phenomenon inextricably linked to modernity. While
Goodstein’s book was published in 2005, Lefebvre made such an argument close to 60 years earlier.
Lefebvre makes numerous references to boredom in various texts, most notably his writings on
modernity and everyday life, and I will hereafter assemble some of the fragments that make up what
could be called his latent theory of boredom.
The connections between boredom and Lefebvre’s critique of everyday life are buried in his texts. The
content, then, is available, but requires a great deal of exploration. It may be surprising to some
Lefebvre scholars that Lefebvre proposed a study of boredom not as a side project, but as a key
component to his critique of everyday life. Both explicitly and implicitly, the theme of boredom looms
large in Lefebvre’s critique of everyday life. The threads, though incomplete, can be found hiding
throughout his work, and the subject matter may not always be apparent. For example, in one text,
Everyday Life in the Modern World, Lefebvre (1984:170) writes that ‘our sun is black and it spreads
terror’. This short passage touches upon both Lefebvre’s concept of a ‘black sun’, as well as something
he would call the ‘intellectual terrorism’ surrounding it in academia. So far, boredom is absent.
However, in another text, Introduction to Modernity, Lefebvre writes that ‘the threat of massive
boredom hovers over us: exhausted themes, worn-out expressivity, universal pleonasm, spectacles
which are monotonously “private”, etc.’ (Lefebvre 1995:231). Boredom is present in this passage, and
the mention of it hovering above could be an allusion to the black sun. Here, then, are two threads
which may be related; it is only in another text where it becomes apparent that there are links between
them. These two threads are brought together with a passage from the second volume of the Critique of
Everyday Life where Lefebvre claims that ‘on the horizon of the modern world dawns the black sun of
boredom, and critique of everyday life has a sociology of boredom as part of its agenda’ (Lefebvre
2002:75).
 Despite the fact that Lefebvre explicitly states that boredom is an important part of his critique of
everyday life, Lefebvre never followed through with his proposed sociology of boredom. Nevertheless,
around the same time of the second volume of his Critique, at the beginning of the 1960s, Lefebvre
offered his most complete sketch of this project in his Introduction to Modernity. Here, Lefebvre
discusses the interrelationship between modernity and boredom:

From this we can sketch out the main features of a sociology of modern boredom. It would draw attention
to the ambiguity and internal dialectic of ‘mass culture’. This culture raises the average level of people’s
culture; it helps to promote training, education, and above all, technicity. It is informative. It is interesting.
At the same time it swamps people with information which is neutralized by its very quantity. It establishes
a parallel between cultural and intellectual consumption and ‘private’ material consumption. It is voracious.
It pillages culture’s accumulated wealth. It endlessly exploits old symbols, myths, forms and styles. It
transfers the totality of history into discourse, and shatters discourse with visual images. It engineers a
cultural retrogression into biology and brute nature (by way of sex or violent body language). Its ersatz
provocations accelerate the wear and tear upon experience, and blight the world of expressivity.
(Lefebvre 1995:231)

Despite the richness of his proposed project, Lefebvre did not explicitly elaborate on the above passage,
leaving it to others to delve into. The guiding thesis, however, is clear enough with Lefebvre’s emphasis
on an ‘internal dialectic of mass culture’ as a key for understanding boredom in modernity. With this,
there is a connection between the mass culture of modernity and the historical uniqueness of boredom
as an experience. It would follow that, for Lefebvre, in order to contribute towards an understanding of
boredom, it is important to examine some elements of modernity’s mass culture broadly defined to
include the production and consumption of things in space as well as space itself, specifically the
contradictions of space.
Lefebvre begins the last chapter of the aforementioned first volume of his Critique of Everyday Life by
asking a question that is fundamental to his overall research project: ‘When the world the sun shines on
is always new, how could everyday life be forever unchangeable, unchangeable in its boredom, its
greyness, its repetition of the same actions?’ (Lefebvre 1991a:228) For Lefebvre, this is a question that
requires asking in order to understand the industrialized and urbanized world of modernity. While there
is no concrete, definitive answer given, Lefebvre is speaking of a general orientation to his work and
what he saw in modern society. So what exactly was Lefebvre getting at with this question? The title of
the chapter from which this passage is derived is an important clue: What is Possible. Lefebvre’s point
in asking this is to emphasize that everyday life is indeed changeable. Everyday life in its current
manifestation(s), while seemingly unchangeable, is ultimately an open project. Lefebvre’s critique of
everyday life helps to create an awareness of this openness.
In Lefebvre’s view, modernity fails to produce a unique and sustained style of life. Instead, modernity
produces an absence of style stemming from the failed promises of mass culture in the guise of genuine
style. Style is important to Lefebvre as far as the study of everyday life is concerned, but it is absolutely
essential for understanding his fragmented thoughts on boredom. Style is here not simply meant in the
sense of designer clothes, fast cars, or expensive homes, but in the sense of the totality of everyday life.
These items are, nevertheless, essential components for understanding the distinction between what
people are looking for and what they get, which is, at its roots, the distinction between style and mass
culture.
Throughout everyday life in the modern world, through leisure activities and routines, people seek a
style of living that is ultimately shrouded by mass culture. Under the guise of style, mass culture comes
to dominate and colonise everyday life. This, it is argued, occurs beneath the attention of consumers,
despite their best intentions. As Lefebvre puts it, ‘leisure involves an original search – whether clumsy
or skilful is unimportant – for a style of living. And perhaps for an art of living, for a kind of happiness’
(Lefebvre 1991a:42). Temporary happiness may be achieved, yet the eternal happiness promised by
mass culture conversely offers but a fleeting satisfaction despite the promise of a unique style of life.
Lefebvre argues that ‘style has degenerated into culture – subdivided into everyday culture for the
masses and higher culture’ (Lefebvre 1984:36). The basic definition of style can be found in the third
volume of his Critique of Everyday Life where he writes: ‘The term “style” refers to an aesthetic or
ethical bearing in which the middle classes are precisely lacking. As for lifestyle, it is easily defined: it is
the everyday itself’ (Lefebvre 2005:160).
In pre-modern times there was an abundance of style in life. This was before capitalism and therefore
before modernity. With the advent of modernity, style of life dwindled and in its place what has come to
be known as everyday life, that is, in its modern sense, began to take shape. Rationality and uniformity
rule the day (Lefebvre 1987). The withering away of style in life brings with it a quest for a style as well.
This is a dialectical movement. With the absence of style emerges the experience of boredom and the
quest for style brings with it a temporary solution. For Lefebvre, permanent solutions can be had, but
they require a revolution in everyday life. A revolution is here meant as a radical change, as opposed to
a slight shift, which can only be referred to as a reform.
In the first volume of his Critique of Everyday Life, Lefebvre proclaimed that everyday life ‘should
become a work of art’ (1991a:199). At first glance, this appears to be a fairly simple proclamation. But
what does Lefebvre mean by this phrase ‘make life a work of art’? What Lefebvre is referring to is the
widespread inability in the modern world to make life a work of art. Lefebvre’s utopian longing for
everyday life as a work of art is consistent with this. What better way to live one’s life than as a work of
art? To understand what Lefebvre means by this poetic phrase, a distinction must be made between his
use of the term ‘work’ and his use of the term ‘product’. Combined, these two concepts constitute ‘the
human world’ in Lefebvre’s work. Lefebvre distinguishes them by noting ‘whereas a work has
something irreplaceable and unique about it, a product can be reproduced exactly, and is in fact the
result of repetitive acts and gestures’ (Lefebvre 1991b:70). Further, a work is ‘unique, original, and
primordial’. As Lefebvre himself notes, ‘For many people, to describe something as a work of art is
simply the highest praise imaginable’. It is important to keep in mind, however, that there is the
‘prospect of discovering a dialectical relationship in which works are in a sense inherent in products,
while products do not press all creativity into the service of repetition’. Style of life, then, at least to
Lefebvre, entails the transformation of everyday life into a work of art.
It is somewhat odd to claim the absence of style in everyday life. After all, style abounds in virtually
every aspect of everyday life. With the proliferation of websites, magazines, television programmes, and
newspaper columns that flood everyday life, all of which instruct one on the appropriate style of life, it
seems crucial to scrutinize these representations and whether they truly offer styles of life or whether
they represent their opposite, an absence of style. From magazines and websites to the billboards at the
side of the highway and the television shows – even a television channel called ‘Style’ – if anything, style
seems to be omnipresent rather than absent. With Lefebvre being an ardent proponent of the dialect,
his method of analysis often involved seeing a surface masking its opposite. If style is to be found, it is
not lurking in the pages of a style magazine or the flickering images of a television show that claims
style as its own.
Lefebvre’s essay from 1960 titled ‘Notes on the New Town’, found in his book Introduction to
Modernity, is where he offers his most sustained reflections on boredom and everyday life, and it is a
key example of the supposed style of life produced by mass culture. This essay is an archetypal example
of how the proliferation of boredom can be linked with the historical and socially unique conditions that
came exclusively with modern times. Lefebvre juxtaposes the boredom found in two geographically
close yet socially and structurally distant towns in south western France. The first is Naverrenx, which
is where Lefebvre resided at the time of his writing. Lefebvre categorizes Navarrenx as a dying
medieval town that has been gradually feeling the effects of modernity. Slowly changing its spatial
makeup, the town struggles with and against modernization while looking back at the traditional
structures that are melting away. In contrast, the second town is completely fabricated within the
context of modernity. The new town of Mourenx inspires Lefebvre to wonder if one is ‘entering the city
of joy or the world of unredeemable boredom?’ (Lefebvre 1995:119) Naverrenx, too, has its boredom,
but it is distinct from that of Mourenx. The difference between the two towns is characterized as
sampling different varieties of boredom much the same as one samples different wines at a wine-tasting
event. Lefebvre mentions the boredom of Naverenx as long winter nights and summer Sundays. This
type of boredom would appear to be akin to the idleness often associated with lazy Sundays.
Mourenx’s boredom is one that can be said to represent modernity itself. To Lefebvre, it is ‘pregnant
with desires, frustrated frenzies, unrealized possibilities. A magnificent life is waiting just around the
corner and far, far away. It is waiting like a cake is waiting when there’s butter, milk, flour and sugar’
(Lefebvre 1995:124). Unlike Simmel who, in his previously mentioned essay ‘Metropolis and Mental
Life’, notes the blasé personality fostered by the increasing speed of the city centre, nevertheless does
not discuss any potential emancipatory escape from the clutches of blaséness. Instead, Lefebvre sees
great potential to break out of the boredom inflicted by urban spaces. The ingredients are all there, one
simply has to mix them together to create the desired experience. This is a key moment for Lefebvre’s
theorizing of boredom and offers an interesting take on the excitement lurking amongst the fog of
boredom.
Lefebvre’s writing does, in a way, resemble Simmel’s, at least when he focuses on the rationality at
work in a new town. Though having few actual traffic light signals, Mourenx is viewed by Lefebvre as
reflecting the prohibitive and permissive ‘do’ and ‘don’t’ logic of the traffic light signal (Lefebvre
1995:119). Essentially, the entire town is one giant traffic light. Much like Simmel’s calculating mind of
the metropolis, for Lefebvre, the new town is shaped by a calculating mind:

Sociologically, the truth is that new towns reduce the everyday to its simplest terms while at the same time
‘structuring’ it heavily: the everyday in them is perfect and stripped bare in its privation, basic and deprived
of basic spontaneity. It wanders around stagnantly and loses hope in the midst of its own emptiness, which
nothing technical can ever fill, not even a television set or a car. Everyday life has lost a dimension: depth.
Only triviality remains. Apartment buildings are often well-constructed ‘machines for living in’, and the
housing estate is a machine for the upkeep of life outside work.
(Lefebvre 2002:78–79)

Here we can see Lefebvre’s thinly veiled critique of modernist architect and city planner Le Corbusier,
as well as those city planners that are in the same mould, with his reference to apartment buildings as
‘machines for living in’. Lefebvre sees Le Corbusier’s spectral fingerprints all over Mourenx and is
terrified whenever he fixes his eyes on the ‘machines for living’ that are strewn throughout. Lefebvre
believed that ‘every town planning scheme conceals a programme for everyday life’ (Lefebvre 2002:79)
and characterizes Le Corbusier’s style as ‘the dictatorship of the right angle’ (Lefebvre 2003:109)
whose bland functionalism inevitably leads to boredom. It is interesting to note that Le Corbusier was
aware of the potential boredom when attempting to impart utopia in a seemingly perfectly planned
space. The right angle results in straight streets, which Le Corbusier acknowledges are boring for
pedestrians to walk in, but at the same time are efficient for automobiles. The inevitable question
arises: how does one resolve the tension between these two opposing positions? Le Corbusier, though
having written that ‘there must never come a time when people can be bored in our city’ (Lefebvre
1987:238), would side with efficiency. Le Corbusier would rather have a straight street to facilitate the
flow of business than fabricate curved streets that would be enjoyable to walk in. This is not to say that
Le Corbusier was insensitive to leisure activities as a whole, they were simply subordinate to the speed
of automobiles and business. This subordination of leisure to work is what Lefebvre finds so boring
about the New Town and which makes him ask the dialectical question: ‘Can the new towns which are
born of ugliness and boredom become works of art?’ (Lefebvre 1995:279) Something else would need to
happen to remedy this boredom.

Amusement congeals into boredom

Mass entertainment is usually thought to be a remedy for boredom. Elizabeth S. Goodstein argues that
the proliferation of boredom amongst lower classes during the nineteenth century has much more to do
with the availability and accessibility of mass entertainment, rather than an increase in factory labour
(Goodstein 2005:182). Nevertheless, labour and leisure are not so easily divided. The dual aspects of
consumption of culture (consumer) and production by industry (producer) are best encapsulated by
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno’s concept of the culture industry as the two words ‘culture’
and ‘industry’ speak to both sides. The fourth chapter of Horkheimer and Adorno’s book Dialectic of
Enlightenment – ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’ – is devoted to exploring this
concept, which arguably offers one of the most penetrating critiques of mass entertainment and
consumerism and one of the most profound statements on boredom.
A lot has changed in the last seventy or so years since Horkheimer and Adorno first constructed their
foundational texts of the Frankfurt School and their Critical Theory. It is important to ask, then, is the
‘culture industry’ still relevant as a concept today? For the present purposes I take the general
framework set out by Horkheimer and Adorno to be highly relevant to the contemporary situation,
especially for understanding boredom and everyday life. Ben Highmore shares this view of their
present-day relevance. In his book Ordinary Lives: Studies in the Everyday, published in 2011,
Highmore claims that ‘today it requires a substantial amount of effort to avoid the products of the
culture industry’ (Highmore 2011:115). If anything, then, the culture industry, as a conceptual tool for
analysis of contemporary society, is more relevant today than it was in Horkheimer and Adorno’s time.
Highmore notes that a century ago the culture industry’s products were predominantly located in the
central location of a city. These products were not exclusive to the city, but were much easier to obtain
in that particular space than elsewhere. However, with the proper amount of money, time, and effort,
many of the products could be acquired by those who resided outside of the city’s limits. With the
seemingly perpetual expansion of the urban fabric, the availability of these products has steadily
increased over the course of time around the world.
There is a style, or, as above with Lefebvre, an absence of style at work with consumption. The style
of the culture industry is a ‘neon-lit style’ which ‘covers the world’ (Adorno 1990:94). To Horkheimer
and Adorno, ‘the style of the culture industry, which has no resistant material to overcome, is at the
same time the negation of style’ (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002:102). The production of style, then, for
the culture industry, creates emptiness. This emptiness is promoted worldwide as ‘the whole world is
passed through the filter of the culture industry’ (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002:99). What once passed
for culture has become ‘neutralized and ready-made’ and, in the final analysis, leaves it ‘worthless’
(Adorno 1967:34). It seems as though, as Lefebvre puts it, ‘we are surrounded by emptiness, but it is an
emptiness filled with signs’ (Lefebvre 1984:135). This emptiness is an allusion to boredom.
How does the concept of the culture industry inform an analysis of boredom? There is only one
mention of boredom in the ‘Culture Industry’ essay, but it is a significant one. The passage which
features the comment on boredom serves multiple purposes for the present discussion. It provides
valuable insight into both the ‘need’ for a continuous production of items for consumption, as well as
the parallel ‘need’ of consumers to seek out something ‘new’ after tarrying with the same product for a
while. In addition, somewhat paradoxically, it also explains why the culture industry continues to
produce ‘sameness’. If there is one key facet of the culture industry that facilitates boredom, it is the
production and reproduction of the same thing. This is made explicit by Horkheimer and Adorno when
they claim that ‘culture today is infecting everything with sameness’ (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002:94).
As for the mention of boredom, Horkheimer and Adorno articulate as follows:

Entertainment is the prolongation of work under late capitalism. It is sought by those who want to escape
the mechanized labor process so that they can cope with it again. At the same time, however, mechanization
has such power of leisure and its happiness, determines so thoroughly the fabrication of entertainment
commodities, that the off-duty worker can experience nothing but after-images of the work process itself.
The ostensible content is merely a faded foreground; what is imprinted is the automated sequence of
standardized tasks. The only escape from the work process in factory and office is through adaptation to it
in leisure time. This is the incurable sickness of all entertainment. Amusement congeals into boredom,
since, to be amusement, it must cost no effort and therefore moves strictly along the well-worn grooves of
association. The spectator must need no thoughts of his own: the product prescribes each reaction, not
through any actual coherence – which collapses once exposed to thought – but through signals.
(Horkheimer and Adorno 2002:109)
Not only is the line between labour and leisure blurred, but so too is the line between boring and
interesting. Interesting things become boring; interest turns to boredom. As they say, amusement
congeals into boredom.
Amusement and interest, however, are not the same things. Amusements may be interesting, but what
is interesting is not always amusing. In addition, what is found to be either interesting or amusing one
day is most likely a slight variation of a previously successful amusement or interesting thing. The
persistence of the new is the persistence of the old. That is, although what is bought and sold is the idea
of a type of teleological progress towards a newer and newer world of objects, there is relatively little
that is innovative. There is no avant-garde to the culture industry because these terms are antithetical
to one another. What is portrayed as avant-garde in the culture industry is not worthy of the name.
Rather, avant-garde art is the adversary of the culture industry (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002:101).
This is an important distinction, but one that can be blurred.
To Horkheimer and Adorno, the banality of everyday life is often blurred with the excitement of film
and television. They write: ‘The familiar experience of the moviegoers, who perceives the street outside
as a continuation of the film he has just left, because the film seeks strictly to reproduce the world of
everyday perception, has become the guideline of production’ (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002:99). These
imaginary worlds are more real than real for some. Whether they resemble anything remotely similar to
an empirical example from their own actual everyday life is fairly inconsequential. Movies and television
programmes offer entertainment that is so improbable that some individuals cannot help but become
entranced by it. Living vicariously through the lives of the actors on-screen becomes a way to escape
from one’s everyday life, one that is utterly unsatisfactory. This often results in the use of imagination
for imaginary things and a concurrent ‘withering of imagination’ (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002:100)
for creating real things. This is part of a process of ‘running away’ from reality. The ‘flight from the
everyday world’ is a promise of the culture industry (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002:113). It is, as
advertised, a way to get away from it all.
In his reflections on his ‘damaged life’ found in his book Minima Moralia, Adorno further reflects on
the boredom facilitated by the culture industry. Adorno writes:

The boredom that people are running away from merely mirrors the process of running away, that started
long before. For this reason alone the monstrous machinery of amusement keeps alive and constantly grows
bigger without a single person being amused by it.
(Adorno 2005:139)

Adorno portrays the culture industry as an endless spiral of entertainment that is inevitably met with
boredom, which then leads one to seek out other entertainment, which, again, leads one to be bored,
and so on ad infinitum. In his collaborative work with Hans Eisler, Adorno and Eisler argue for the
possibility of objective boredom. That is, they claim that ‘it should be noted that today almost every
product of the culture industry is objectively boring, but that the psycho-technique of the studios
deprives the consumers of the awareness of the boredom they experience’ (Adorno and Eisler 2007:84).
Consumers, then, are bored but they are not always aware of their boredom. This is facilitated by the
culture industry’s insistence that their commodities will remedy boredom while neglecting to
acknowledge that they also instill boredom in their consumers.

Conclusion
Boredom is virtually everywhere, but it is given serious consideration virtually nowhere. It is both
everywhere and nowhere in the everyday life of modernity. Boredom can appear anywhere from the
modern metropolis, new towns, or even in the virtual spaces of entertainment. It is both present and
absent in these spaces. It can often be found in or around the very things that are supposed to excite
and enthral. It is an historically specific mood linked to the rhythms of modernity. Depending on one’s
perspective, boredom can either be a monolithic entity or it can appear as composed of many elements.
Through readings of the works of Georg Simmel, Henri Lefebvre, and Max Horkheimer and Theodor
W. Adorno, it has been argued that whereas modernity continuously promises newer, more exciting
things with its mass culture, it concurrently fosters the experience of boredom in everyday life. This
position can be opposed to the ordinary conception of boredom, mentioned above, in several ways.
First, boredom is common but it is not commonly understood. It is a widespread phenomenon and it is
highly complex. Second, while it is usually perceived as a superficial emotion that can be easily
remedied, the remedies also foster the boredom they claim to prevent. Third, the locus of boredom in
the ordinary conception is predominantly ascribed to the psychology of the bored individual as opposed
to being a (by)product of modern society. Fourth, boredom is usually perceived as ahistorical and the
afflicted are either just as bored as they have always been throughout time, or, because of the
prevalence of amusements, the boredom of today is less than it would have been in the past. That is, as
opposed to boredom being historically unique to modernity. Fifth, while boredom is primarily associated
with time, the neglected category of space is here viewed as vital for understanding the contemporary
prevalence of boredom. It is with the unique rhythms of the time-space of modern everyday life where
boredom becomes possible.
What makes boredom such an intriguing topic of inquiry is its familiarity to so many individuals on
the one hand and its inattention by these very same individuals on the other. A great many people
experience the emptiness of boredom on a daily basis throughout the globe, yet virtually no one takes it
to be a serious phenomenon for investigation. The mass culture of modernity that is found throughout
everyday life both enables such an attempt to solve the riddle of boredom and also prevents it.

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Adorno, Theodor W. and Hans Eisler (2007): Composing for Films. London: Continuum.
Elden, Stuart (2004): Understanding Henri Lefebvre. London: Continuum.
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University Press.
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University Press.
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14 Laziness
From medieval sin to late modern social pathology
Michael Hviid Jacobsen

Introduction
Is laziness an emotion? Is it an ailment? A state of mind? A way of life maybe? Or is it perhaps
something else? Such questions might seem obnoxiously trivial. However, they nevertheless show us
that something as ordinary and everyday as laziness (for who has not experienced this well-known
feeling every now and then?) raises more questions than it seems to answer.1 This chapter is an attempt
to inspire thinking and theorising about laziness as an emotion, especially because we seem to know so
much about it and be so familiar with it, yet still so little academic attention has been devoted to the
study of laziness. Sociologists otherwise seem to study almost any kind of emotion: anger, depression,
self-blame, pride, love, hate, stress, trust, loyalty, empathy, jealousy, grief and even boredom. Laziness,
however, is not a very well-researched emotion. In fact, in most of the encyclopaedias and handbooks
published within the so-called ‘sociology of emotions’ there is little if any mention of laziness
whatsoever. No separate chapters are devoted to teasing out the sociological implications of laziness
and only a surprisingly few studies concerned with investigating or analysing laziness seem to have
been conducted or published. Whereas for example the ‘sociology of boredom’ is by now a quite well-
established sub-discipline within the sociology of emotions (with its own theories, conceptual apparatus,
exponents and empirical studies), we still lack a comprehensive sociological interest in laziness. And
despite their apparent similarities, laziness is not boredom and boredom is not laziness. We shall return
to this issue later.
This chapter seeks to remedy the curious and regrettable lack of interest in laziness as an emotion
worthy of sociological exploration (Jacobsen 2015). Sociology, however, is not the only discipline being
guilty of this sin of omission. In the mid-twentieth century, psychologist Leonard Carmichael observed
that ‘laziness is not a word that appears in the table of contents of most technical books on psychology’
(Carmichael 1954:208), and so neither psychology or anthropology nor political science or economics
for that matter have developed any substantial or comprehensive body of research on laziness.2
Obviously, one will find some scattered psychological studies (see, e.g., Baddeley 2009; Burton 2014;
Pelusi 2007), which are often published in online journals or on internet portals, but only very few
systematic empirical efforts showing how laziness is something to be taken seriously alongside other
emotions (see, e.g., Gilmore and Boulton-Lewis 2009; Immordino-Yang et al. 2012; Hsee et al. 2010).
Even within philosophy (at times itself called a ‘lazy discipline’), the topic of laziness also seems to have
been largely avoided. Although towering figures such as Immanuel Kant (1785/1993), Friedrich
Nietzsche (1873/1983) and later Walter Benjamin (1928/2003) all wrote incisively about laziness, since
then there has been no persistent interest in or substantial development of the topic. Obviously, you can
order your own personalized ‘Philosophy of Laziness’ mug in order to impress colleagues or students
with your smug, defiant or witty character, you can some find scattered philosophical testimonies of the
importance of laziness on the internet, there are also the more or less insightful collections of quotes
and proverbs on laziness from classical and contemporary philosophers and writers, and there are
indeed blogs dedicated to ‘the philosophy of laziness’ some of which actually show great originality.3
However, as a topic of systematic and sober philosophical study, laziness lacks the same amount of
attention as is also found in sociology and related social science disciplines.
But why is laziness neglected or ignored as a subject to be studied by the social sciences? The
reasons are as many as they are mostly unconvincing. For example, some might claim that it is difficult
if not even impossible to study something that is characterized by physical inactivity, mental relaxation
and downright ‘doing nothing’ as is (apparently) the case with laziness. Others might say that it is
difficult getting people to verbalise or admit to feeling lazy. Laziness is just laziness and nothing to talk
or make a fuss about. Yet others might insist that the topic of laziness is an entirely insignificant,
negligible and tedious phenomenon to obtain any serious scientific attention. All of these arguments can
quite easily be refuted. First, boredom, for example, is also something that is mostly characterized by
physical inactivity, mental relaxation and at times even downright indolence, and yet it has been studied
in great detail and commented on in by now numerous studies. Second, also other emotions can be
difficult to get people to verbalise or admit to – just think of shame, shyness, pride, hate or sexual
desire. These emotions are all well-described in the existing research literature. Third, as has been
claimed by Swedish ethnologists Billy Ehn and Orvar Löfgren, when we apparently seem to be involved
in trivial matters of doing ‘nothing’ such as queuing, daydreaming, waiting or performing routine tasks,
something important and meaningful is actually taking place. In the midst of this apparent inactivity
and monotony, we are in fact engaging in the significant and noble art of contemplation, creativeness
and imagining the world differently (Ehn and Löfgren 2010). Why should this not also pertain to
laziness? So, all in all, the possible reasons – or excuses – for not giving due attention to laziness as a
topic deserving of scientific scrutiny are found to be probably as unfounded as they are mostly
unconvincing.
In this chapter, we will attempt to rectify some of this lack of attention to laziness. Even though the
chapter cannot provide any in-depth, substantial or detailed account of all the many facets and different
dimensions of laziness, we shall nevertheless explore some of the sociological relevance of laziness as
an emotion. First, we will look at some of the most common and obvious dimensions and forms of
laziness as a relevant topic of research. Then we will move backwards in time and revisit the biblical
and medieval warnings against the dangers and folly of ‘sloth’ as a historical backdrop for
understanding contemporary attitudes. Following this, we will consider some of the defences and
praises of laziness from philosophers and literary writers alike, particularly from the past few centuries.
Then we will discuss how laziness relates to our contemporary social and political climate by looking at
the revival of the so-called ‘work ethic’ and see how society constructs and labels different groups as
‘lazies’. Finally, we shall look at some of the consequences of living in a ‘high-speed society’ that puts
pressures on the possibility and legitimacy of being lazy. Here we will also discuss some of the attempts
to oppose or counter the increasing demands for optimising, accelerating and capitalising everything in
contemporary social life. It is thus the aspiration of this chapter to assist the reader in thinking
sociologically (and critically) about laziness and to consider how more studies of this emotion may help
in shedding light on some important yet routinely overlooked aspects of laziness in everyday life.

Two dimensions and four forms of laziness

A ‘sociology of laziness’ must obviously start out with trying to conceptualise the core concern of its
scientific endeavours, namely the study of ‘laziness’. But what is ‘laziness’? Is laziness an emotion at
all? It is my contention that laziness shares all the same basic components and features as other human
emotions such as happiness, boredom, courage, hatred or fear, whose ‘emotionality’ we hardly ever
seem to question. If we accept Arlie R. Hochschild’s contention that emotions (contrary to mere
‘feelings’) consist of an awareness and appraisal (1) of the situation, (2) of the experienced bodily
sensations, (3) of the display of expressive gestures and (4) a cultural label to pin on this emotional
experience (Hochschild 1990:118–119), and if we can see that all these four aspects also apply to
laziness (just as they do to the other emotions mentioned above), then we must admit that laziness is
indeed an ‘emotion’. So, if we can agree that laziness is an emotion – but for some also a lifestyle, for
others a state of mind, and for yet others probably an ailment – then we can move on to examining
laziness a bit more closely. If we do not agree, the following might nevertheless still be illuminating
reading.
In Danish, my own native tongue, we primarily have the noun dovenskab (from the old Norse word
dofinn meaning ‘dead’) – although we also use such rather inelegant notions as dvask, sløv, lad, ugidelig
and dorsk – to describe the experience of doing nothing or not wanting to do anything, whereas in
English we have the colourful and more poetic palette of ‘laziness’, ‘indolence’, ‘idleness’ and ‘sloth’ to
capture this type of inactivity. In Danish, the adjective doven is not solely related to human inactivity
and one might also use the expression ‘to be doven’ to describe the staleness of a beer that has lost its
nitrogenic spark. As mentioned, in English we have more words to describe the peculiar experience of
being inactive, being disinclined to act and of refraining from participating/contributing such as
‘laziness’, ‘indolence’, ‘idleness’ and ‘sloth’. They all have each their connotations and uses and we will
return to them in due course. Whatever the language, what is so characteristic of laziness (to be doven
in Danish) is the focus on inactivity, inertia, refusal or disinclination, despite having the ability, to do
something. Laziness is therefore an emotion most often characterized by choice and voluntariness
(Rosa 2014:293). Whereas happiness is characterised by feelings of joy and well-being, love is defined
by feelings of deep devotion and longing, and anger is related to strong feelings of aggressiveness and
aversion, the feelings involved in laziness are primarily flat as well as rather unflattering. In fact, most
often the concept of laziness is used as a pejorative, but it can also, as we shall see later, be used for
describing a privilege of not having or needing to work hard in order to make a living.
Digging a bit deeper into laziness as an emotion, or what I prefer to call an ‘emotional experience’
(the word ‘emotion’ in itself at times almost tends to become amorphous), we can easily see that it has
subjective as well as objectives dimensions – as do most other emotional experiences. The subjective
dimension obviously relates to how it feels to be lazy (from the point of view of the feeling individual).
Here one will focus on the sensations – bodily, mental, social, etc. – involved in feeling lazy. The
objective dimension, however, is concerned more with how laziness is ascribed meaning by different
groups or collectivities in society and how ‘laziness’ as an often derogatory label is constructed and
applied to the behaviours or attitudes of certain other groups. ‘Laziness’ is thus a broad generic
phenomenon that can be used and misused for many different purposes. We therefore always need to
qualify what we mean when we talk about or analyse ‘laziness’ – are we talking about how it actually
feels or is it rather how it is constructed? These two sides do not necessarily overlap, although feelings
and constructions sometimes seem to coagulate and at other times collide. The main focus in this
chapter will primarily be on the objective side of laziness rather than its purely subjective side, as we
will be dealing with how laziness has been defined and understood in society and in some of its sub-
fields such as religion, literature, science and politics throughout history.
In order further to qualify our discussion of laziness, I propose (no fanfare needed, please) the
following four basic forms or types in order to capture some important yet differential aspects of
laziness that each in their way show us how laziness is far from a one-dimensional or self-explanatory
emotion, but that the subjective and the objective dimensions are intricately interwoven. The first two
forms of laziness relate to the temporal aspect of the emotion (its duration). Laziness may either be a
short-lived and passing emotion or it may be a long-term and potentially chronic condition. So, we have
short-term/passing laziness and long-term/chronic laziness respectively. Whereas the former is
generally regarded as a common aspect of human life and as something that comes and goes without
leaving a trace, the latter is often seen as something disturbingly innate in certain individuals for whom
laziness has become a defining trait of their very character. Semi-clinical notions such as ‘avolition’ or
‘youth dementia’ try to capture the potential psychopathological aspects of chronic laziness either on
individual or group level. The final two forms of laziness relate to an assessment or value-oriented
aspect of the emotion (the evaluations or feelings it evokes). Here we find respectively
destructive/counterproductive laziness and creative/productive laziness. Some forms of laziness, and
perhaps particularly the short-term/passing type, are seen as being at least potentially productive and
creative, because they allow people to have a much needed time-out or break in busy everyday life, to
be inspired, recharging their mental batteries and contemplating life. This is often the type of laziness
associated with creative geniuses or business entrepreneurs who, by practicing this momentary type of
laziness, suddenly discover pockets of brilliance, but it is in fact something that most people, however
unwittingly, draw on regularly in order to fight off monotony and daily routine. They allow themselves to
be lazy for a short period of time – to ‘kick back’, ‘relax’, ‘dose off’, ‘veg out’, ‘chill’, ‘mellow’ and so on –
before once again returning to the daily toil. Other forms of laziness, and perhaps especially the long-
term/chronic type, are mostly seen as problematic, because they basically bring nothing new to life.
This is the lifestyle of so-called ‘loafers’, ‘scroungers’, ‘spongers’, ‘social parasites’ and ‘leeches’.
Throughout time, many different specific groups have been lumped together under this repellent
category of laziness such as ‘the intellectuals’, ‘the bourgeoisie’, ‘public servants’, ‘welfare recipients’
and ‘single mothers’ to mention just a few. When laziness, by default or by choice, becomes such an all-
consuming and lasting lifestyle choice or a condition that takes up most of one’s living time, it can be
destructive and damaging to one’s social relations, physical health, creativity and participation in
normal social life (Jacobsen 2015). It is simply too much of a provocation and a burden for most others
to be around extremely or chronically lazy people for too long.
The originality or profundity of this four-type schema is admittedly not overwhelming, and one may
easily find many places to stick the knife in, however it nevertheless provides us with a certain tentative
conceptual platform for understanding the fact that laziness comes in many different guises that, each
in their way, have different individual and social implications.

Sloth as sin
Laziness has probably always been with us, but the way we think about and respond to it changes
throughout time. Let us go back to some of the first formulations of laziness, which primarily dealt with
the problematic nature of laziness or ‘sloth’ as it was then often called. In the Old and the New
Testaments there are several passages warning against laziness, because the temptation of laziness was
first and foremost seen as a sin against God, but also as something that ends up destroying the
livelihood of the lazy person. For example, in The Book of Proverbs it reads that ‘a sluggard does not
plow in season; so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing’ (20:4), and later it states how ‘the
sluggard’s craving will be the death of him, because his hands refuse to work’ (21:25). One should
instead labour in God’s honour and through hard work show how to live as a good Christian. In
Ecclesiastes there is a concrete description of the adverse consequences of laziness: ‘Through laziness,
the rafters sag; because of idle hands, the house leaks’ (10:18). Also, the later ‘desert fathers’, ascetic
and solitary monks such as John Cassian and Evagrius Ponticus, in the fourth century AD strongly
warned against the dangers of the so-called daemon meridanus (the ‘noon-day demon’) that would
unexpectedly take possession of its unfortunate victim and destroy any incentive to be productive.
Consequently, crops would rot in the field, cattle would die of thirst, things would fall apart and nothing
would be done at all if idleness was allowed to flourish (DeYoung 2007). Expressions such as ‘idle hands
are the devil’s workshop’ or ‘idleness is the root of all evil’, although not biblical quotes, reveal a lot
about the religiously inspired understanding of the dangers – to the individual and society at large – of
torpidity and a dormant lifestyle. Only work and prayer would keep the hapless human being away from
earthly temptations, misdeeds and the proclivity to do nothing.
First and foremost, the notion of ‘sloth’ was, and remains, one of the seven deadly sins or cardinal
vices that, particularly during medieval times, informed Christian teaching as well as captured the
public imagination. Alongside greed, pride, lust, gluttony, envy and wrath, sloth was regarded as an evil
element in individuals and in society and as something that should for all practical intents and purposes
be eradicated. Often sloth was referred to with the Latin phrase of acedia (meaning ‘without care’) that
specifically captured a spiritual kind of laziness that made, for example, monks forgetful of prayer and
the praise of God. It was a kind of inner affliction that caused passivity, apathy, indifference to one’s
vocation and to the real world. Later – particularly provoked by Thomas Aquinas’s writings in the
thirteenth century – the notion of acedia spread from its monastic settings into the wider population
(DeYoung 2007). There was, however, also a physical aspect of acedia that would often manifest itself as
a cessation of motion, an aching body, fatigue, a tired mind and an accompanying aversion to perform
work (Wenzel 1960/1967). So the connections between boredom and laziness are here quite obvious,
even though they are not entirely identical emotions (and later, during the Renaissance, the idea of
acedia was replaced by the notion of ‘melancholy’).
 This medieval understanding of laziness as sinful ‘sloth’ is clearly an example of the aforementioned
destructive/counterproductive form of laziness from which nothing good can come (Lyman 1989).
During the early and late Middle Ages, the notion of deadly sin inspired not only religious thinking but
also the literary writings of the time, and Boccaccio’s Decameron, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and
Dante’s Inferno all contain frequent references to the deadly sins and to sloth. Even though Dante did
not report specifically about the painful punishment awaiting those guilty of sloth in Purgatory
(whereas the punishment for envy was to have one’s eyelids sown together), sloth or acedia would
definitely secure a ticket to the elevator going downstairs towards the sulphurous flames of Purgatory
or Hell. Iconic wood carvings and paintings from that time, for instance by Hieronymus Bosch and
Pieter Brueghel the Elder, also reveal how artists were keen to reflect the many religious warnings
against sloth on the canvas. However, with the coming of the Enlightenment period, such religious and
moralistic understandings of punishment and torment began to lose some of their terrifying potency.
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the gradual rise of industrialism and
protocapitalism, laziness was first and foremost increasingly secularised – in time, as we will see, it
became regarded more as an economic problem than a religious issue – and moreover, the period
(particularly due to the process of industrialisation) also spelled the sanctification of work, whereby
(factory) work came to be constructed as a spiritually animated sort of activity (DeYoung 2007). For
those not contributing or working, however, the accusation changed from them being guilty of ‘sloth’ or
acedia to being either ‘idle’ or ‘lazy’. Despite the change in terminology, however, laziness was still
regarded as something to be kept at bay by either prayer or asceticism but increasingly so also by
enforced hard work. So, in short, laziness understood as ‘sloth’ or acedia – in both cases it was spelled
out as a sin – was throughout at least a millennium and a half regarded as something detrimental to the
individual’s devotion to God, to his personal well-being and to his obligation to society to work.

Idleness as privilege
Whereas laziness as mentioned is primarily conspicuous by its very absence in the social sciences, this
has not been the case within the arts, literature and popular culture. Here one will find in abundance
descriptions, depictions and celebrations of idleness and the lazy lifestyle associated with doing as little
as possible or preferably nothing at all. Many iconic pieces of art – such as Francois Boucher’s 1752
portrait of Marie-Louise O’Murphy (one of the many mistresses of Louis XV), Sir William Quiller
Orchardson’s Dolce far niente (‘pleasantly doing nothing’) from 1872 or Daniel Hernández Morillo’s La
Peresoza (Idle Woman) from 1906 – all show the almost sensual idleness of a young woman reclining or
resting on a couch and looking satisfied and careless. Laziness is here seen as a pleasant and gracious
pastime rather than an unspeakable sin. Lucian Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping from 1995 plays
on a similar note, however here with a much more obese and imposing female figure at the centre of
attention. So, contrary to the many warnings and admonitions against sloth in the aforementioned
medieval wood carvings and paintings by Bosch and Brueghel, here the reclining and carefree lifestyle
is seen as a privileged approach to life. In general, in literature as well as the visual arts, ‘idleness’
(often deliberately used as a more poetic and appreciative expression than ‘laziness’) has been
celebrated and valorised instead of being condemned and blasphemed. For the writer or artist, idleness
holds the promise of contemplation and self-realisation, and thus we here more often encounter the
previously mentioned creative/productive form of laziness than its destructive/counterproductive
counterpart.
Even though the Enlightenment and the advent of modernity is most often associated with the
celebration of ideas of rationality, science, progress and productivity, rather than only attacking laxness
and indolence, within eighteenth and nineteenth-century politics, philosophy and art there was also a
romantic counterculture or undercurrent embracing and promoting more positive ideas about idleness
(Saint-Amand 2011). This tendency is particularly evident in a lot of the literature from the eighteenth
century and onwards. Many famous writers from the so-called ‘Romantic Period’ thus wrote wistful odes
and poems to idleness. Samuel Johnson’s The Idler (1761/1963), Charles Dudley Warner’s ‘The Art of
Idleness’ (1865/2006), Jerome K. Jerome’s Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886/2010) and perhaps
most famously John Keats’s ‘Ode on Indolence’ (1899/2001) are but a few examples of this literary
infatuation with idleness from the period. This sentimentality also coincided with philosophical ideas of
going ‘back to nature’, with the gradual availability of more ‘leisure time’ (at least for the upper
segments of society), with a celebration of the ‘great outdoors’ and other romantic notions that in many
ways were directly at odds with the grand project of modernity (see, e.g., Fludernik and Nandi 2014).
So, idleness was part of an almost anti-modernist movement – consisting of many different voices –
seeking to protect the individual against the pressures of modern capitalism and the increasing
demands and requirements of bureaucracy, industry, mass society and the reign of ‘the machine’.
Instead of production, laborious work and the torments of modern urban life, this movement proposed
contemplation, leisure time and voluntary solitude. To be idle had a sense of almost noble or even
childlike innocence about it. For example, as Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky’s nameless protagonist remarked
in Notes from the Underground:

Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should have respected myself, then. I should
have respected myself, because I should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have
been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed myself.
(Dostoyevsky 1864/1960:39)
As mentioned, the notion of ‘idleness’ was often used as a more refined term for ‘laziness’ – far more
refined than the shear inability or unwillingness to act often associated with plain laziness – and the
epitome of refined laziness was spelled out with experiences of ennui and Weltschmerz characteristic of
so many Continental European and Anglo-American poets and writers around the turn of the nineteenth
century, who in their work expressed combined feelings of weariness, cynicism and a critique of the fin
de siècle. Other renowned writers such as Mark Twain and John Steinbeck have also written about idle
and carefree characters or have praised the wonders of laziness. Twain’s (1884) depiction of
Huckleberry Finn as a person devoted to fishing, smoking and a laid-back lifestyle is nothing less than a
homage to the simple and anti-intellectual foundations of a happy life, and Steinbeck’s log book from
the Gulf of California contains the following entry, expressing the inherent goodness and desirability of
laziness:

Only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation which is a balancing of values, a weighing of
oneself against the world and the world against itself. A busy man cannot find time for such balancing. We
do not think a lazy man can commit murders, nor great thefts, nor lead a mob. He would be more likely to
think about it and laugh. And a nation of lazy contemplative men would be incapable of fighting a war
unless their very laziness were attacked. Wars are the activities of busy-ness.
(Steinbeck 1951/2000:193)

Not only literary writers but also some philosophers have hailed the wonder of or defended the right to
laziness. With often unworldly visions, they have regarded idleness as a privilege often to be reserved
for those who want to or are capable of writing and contemplating. If one is thus unable or unwilling to
perform the often hard but supposedly ‘honest’ ‘work of the hand’, then one should instead be allowed
to live and prosper through the ‘work of the spirit’. One prominent example of a philosopher believing
that the right to laziness should be a privilege for all is found in Bertrand Russell’s extended essay In
Praise of Idleness (1932/2004). In this piece, Russell advanced a critique of the widespread belief that
human worthiness or virtue (a relic from the degradation of sloth by religious and economic elites) was
to be decided by whether one worked hard or not. In his polemical all-out assault on the apparent
wonders of work, Russell – not so different from the ideas of Steinbeck above – stated that this
obsession with work was not only ridiculous but also downright dangerous. It caused over-production,
inequality, unhealthy competition and potentially also war. Instead, he argued, we should reduce the
work day to four hours for all, thereby allowing for more time for leisure, happiness and human growth,
which would, in his words, also ‘die out the taste for war’.
In many ways, artists and intellectuals are the two major groups that throughout the past few
centuries have often joined hands in their defence of the right to idleness, and there are now even self-
help books available informing lazy intellectuals or wannabe-writers about how to be successful without
too much strenuous effort (see, e.g., Wallace and Wallace 2010). Nowadays there is therefore still a lot
of so-called ‘lazy literature’ on offer in the shape of books devoted to describing, satirising and even
saluting the lives of the lazy (see, e.g., Hodgkinson and de Abaitua 1997; Jacobsen 2015:427). For
example, Tom Lutz’s Doing Nothing (2007) contains many stories and insights from scholars, poets,
politicians, fictional characters and ordinary people who have either hailed or cursed the art of
slacking, deferring, procrastinating, sauntering, relaxing or idling in a world marked by hurry-scurry.
Within popular culture, as was also the case in some of the poetry and paintings of the nineteenth
century, laziness is today often depicted as a delightfully deviant act against the absurd pressures of
modern living, and movies portraying the lazy lifestyle have also become popular. One of the most iconic
illustrations of laziness is that of ‘The Dude’ (Jeff Bridges) in the 1998 movie The Big Lebowski, in which
the main character personifies the idle and carefree lifestyle: no job, no hobbies (besides bowling) and
no overall purpose, the film provides a humorous insight into a man who has developed and refined
laziness into an art of life. In fact, the film later turned into a gospel for the so-called religion of
‘Dudeism’ or more formally ‘The Church of the Latter-Day Dude’ that combines insights from Taoism,
Buddhism and Sufism with the plain message of the movie: that it is okay to be lazy.

The revival of the ‘work ethic’ and the labelling of ‘the lazies’
But is it really okay to be lazy? Apart from when referring to the animal (the sloth), the moralistic notion
of ‘sloth’ is no longer commonplace, and is primarily used in movies playing on the theme of serial
killers being inspired in their dirty deeds by the medieval deadly sins (most iconically shown in the box
office success Seven from 1995). However, the rather romantic understanding of ‘idleness’ that so
enamoured some philosophers and authors from the Enlightenment period onwards also seems to have
lost much of its allure. What has not disappeared, however, is the concern with laziness within the
realm of politics, or how political and social elites construct discourses on laziness as problematic.
According to Stanford M. Lyman (1989), the seven deadly sins are therefore still with us and, in new
secular or semi-religious guises, inform current ideas and practices. This is part of what was previously
referred to as the ‘objective dimension’ of laziness: that some (most often the powerful groups) accuse
others (often minorities or relatively weaker groups) of being dangerously lazy (see, e.g., Ruggiero
2010).
Obviously, all societies construct divisions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘deserving’ and ‘underserving’,
‘respectable’ and ‘deviant’. Stereotyping and labelling people who are regarded as socially problematic
or culturally inferior is thus part and parcel of any kind of social order. Blaming people for being
unproductive is perhaps one of the oldest ways of denigrating and setting them apart from the rest –
the good, deserving and respectable people. According to Max Weber’s famous thesis on the intricate
connections between Protestantism and the rise of modern capitalism, the Puritans – who knew that
time was money and work a calling – were some of the main driving forces behind capitalism as we
know it (Weber 1905/1930). They embodied a deep-seated devotion to work (making and saving money)
in order to obtain signs that they were among the ‘chosen ones’ for salvation. Mind you, making money
for the Puritans was not the same as being greedy – it was rather a matter of being virtuous. Therefore,
particularly in Protestant societies throughout the eighteenth century the so-called ‘work ethic’
developed as an important ideological and moral construct to support the demand for more workers in
the ‘dark satanic mills’ during the dawn of modern capitalism (Jordan 2003). The idea of getting the
torpid to work has therefore always been an ambition of either religious moralists, or later of
industrious capitalists. According to the ‘work ethic’, being unemployed, lazy or a combination of both
was unacceptable, whereas working hard was a moral imperative and a social duty. For example,
America’s first sociologist and a slavery apologist, Henry Hughes, put this position quite unequivocally:

Labor, whether of the mind or body, is a duty … To consume and not to produce either directly or remotely
is wrong. Idleness is a crime. It is unjust. Every class of society has its economic duty. If it does not do it; if
it positively or negatively violates its duty, that is criminal.
(Hughes quoted in Lyman 1991:50)

Later, industrialist and one of the first to introduce assembly line production, Henry Ford, insisted that
‘there is no place in civilization for the idler. None of us has any right to ease. Work is our sanity, our
self-respect, our salvation. Through work and work alone may health, wealth and happiness inevitably
be secured’ (Ford quoted in DeYoung 2007). According to such views, a respectable person is someone
who works for a living and who gives more to the community than he or she receives – and this also
means that the unemployed, the lazy or anyone receiving alms or welfare benefits are often regarded
with ill-concealed suspicion and contempt. Although ‘good people’ have always been defined by their
altruistic willingness and moral obligation to help out those struck by misfortune, this does not mean
that laziness in itself was ever regarded as a legitimate reason for receiving charity or social welfare.
History is full of thought-provoking and not least tragic examples of how societies have demonised,
degraded and even criminalised those groups who were regarded as particularly or, to use the
terminology from before, destructively lazy. For example, Syed H. Alates’s (1977/2010) studies of
colonial history has documented how the Spanish conquistadores regarded many of their conquests as
being inhabited by uncivilised lazy populations, not understanding that this presumed laziness was the
result of their loss of freedom, culture and self-determination. Stanford M. Lyman (1991) has shown
how the Confederate politicians and plantation owners in the South were successful in insisting that the
coloured slaves be put to work precisely because they were innately lazy and reluctant to performing
physical activity. Hereby an entire slavery system was legitimised for a long period of time. John Ettling
(1981) has described how the perceived general laziness of people in the Southern States by the
population in the North was believed to be caused by an intestinal parasite (the hookworm), that
apparently sucked all energy out of its unfortunate victims. This so-called ‘germ of laziness’ was used
politically to point out how the South was unproductive and still culturally inferior to the North. Finally,
Alex Zukas (2001) has analysed how, towards the end of the Weimar Republic, politicians of both Left
and Right in their propaganda targeted the lazy and dangerous unemployed as being responsible for
the miseries of the country, for the violent upheavals in the streets and for the national bankruptcy
culminating in the Great Depression.
However, the ‘work ethic’, just as the seven deadly sins, is not a thing of the Protestant or colonial
past. In recent decades, we have witnessed the rise of the so-called ‘work society’ and with it a revival
of the work ethic (see, e.g., Jacobsen and Tonboe 2004). Politicians in many Western liberal democratic
countries have promised voters to put a lid on public welfare expenditure and demanded more ‘self-
support’. Benefits must become means-tested and everybody needs to contribute. With the gradual
dismantling of the welfare state, people are now expected increasingly to rely on their own resources.
In an individualised society, the misfortunes that befall people are declared their own fault and their
personal responsibility. Expect no salvation from society (Bauman 1998). This ‘work society’ particularly
targets so-called ‘welfare spongers’ wherever and whoever they are, it clamps down on everyone who
takes out more than he or she gives and requests that ‘the lazies’ are put to work for their benefits. In a
Danish context, the notorious cases of the unemployed recipients of welfare benefits – derogatorily
called ‘Lazy-Robert’ and ‘Poor-Carina’ – headlined some years ago. Both were long-term unemployed
welfare recipients – and the former proudly declared himself lazy by nature and stated that he would
always prefer social benefits to any low-paid job. They quickly became the very personification of a
social evil or an immoral life in which, at least as presented by the media and in political discourse,
receiving benefits, beating the system and making the most of it had become a lifestyle subsidised by
hard-working tax payers. Even though ‘Lazy-Robert’, despite his self-proclaimed laziness, later in fact
managed to forge a short-lived television career and also held on to some sporadic employment, the
way he and Poor-Carina were both publicly ridiculed and shamed bears witness to the persistency of the
ideas of the ‘work society’.

Resistance to the ‘work society’ in a ‘high-speed society’

Is it possible to salvage the privilege or restore the right to laziness in a ‘work society’ that labels its
‘lazies’ unworthy, undeserving and ungrateful? The answer would probably be ‘possibly’ was it not for
some new developments that are captured by the arrival of the so-called ‘high-speed society’ to which
we will return in a moment. If the only enemy of laziness was the ‘work ethic’ or the ‘work society’, then
the Marxist idea of revolutionising the economy and the means of production might be a viable solution
to the problem. As Karl Marx’s son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, remarked in his essay ‘The Right to be Lazy’,
written in the late nineteenth century, on the pathologies of the work ethic of capitalist society:

A strange delusion possesses the working classes of the nations where capitalist civilization holds its sway.
This delusion drags in its train the individual and social woes which for two centuries have tortured sad
humanity. This delusion is the love for work, the furious passion for work, pushed even to the exhaustion of
the vital force of the individual and his progeny. Instead of opposing this mental aberration, the priests, the
economists and the moralists have cast a sacred halo over work.… Rude and terrible has been its
punishment. All its individual and social woes are born of its passion for work.
(Lafargue 1883/2000).

This delusion has far from disappeared, as we saw above, but seemingly continues to gain momentum
despite occasional opposition. Marx’s old dream from his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1891) that
a society could be constructed on the idea that ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to
his needs’ seems very far away in a work society like ours, in which people are expected to overwork
and to stay ever longer on the labour market to secure an economy of never-ending growth. The same
goes for the so-called ‘society of leisure’ – heralded and hailed by so many sociologists in the 1960s and
1970s – that promised to end the reign of endless toil. And more recent ideas about ‘basic income’ also
appear more utopian than realistic. Today, just as the burdens of the work society are borne individually
– such as burnout, stress, cutthroat competition, dissolved social relationships and work-life imbalances
– so too are the potential pockets of resistance or the coping strategies sought out by ingenious
individuals wanting to avoid unnecessary overwork and to defend the right to be lazy (see, e.g.,
Birkeland 2016; Honore 2005; Jackson and Carter 2007; Paulsen 2015). Corinne Maier’s hugely popular
book Bonjour Laziness (2005) is one example of such individualised resistance. For example, she argued
that the corporate worker ‘should work as little as possible and spend time cultivating [his or her] social
network’, should ‘make a beeline for the most useless positions’, ‘learn to identify kindred spirits’ within
the organisation who also ‘believe the system is absurd’ and then await the system to collapse all by
itself. Despite their seductive charm, such popular one-liners are hardly going to change or overthrow a
system of corporate capitalism based on overwork and the permanent occupation of people’s leisure
time (they are perhaps more likely to get you fired).
Today, as mentioned above, the main enemy of leisure and laziness is no longer only the ‘work society’
that colonises ever larger portions of people’s lives. Social life in general has become accelerated in
ways unimaginable to the inventors of industrialism or the protagonists of modern capitalist
entrepreneurship. This has made some argue that today we live in a so-called ‘high-speed society’
characterised by processes of constant acceleration (Rosa and Scheuerman 2008). This acceleration is
evident within three domains: technological development, social change and the pace of life. Each in
their way they account for speeded up processes, events and actions that were previously allowed to
take time or run their natural course: time is accelerated, work is accelerated, transport is accelerated,
love is accelerated, culture is accelerated, knowledge is accelerated, leisure is accelerated, politics are
accelerated and even death is accelerated. The outcomes of this development are feelings of alienation,
stress and loss of meaning (Rosa 2013). One of the first casualties of this high-speed society is the
disappearance of ‘true leisure’. Leisure becomes ‘waste’ when time is short, accelerated and
compressed (Rosa 2014). Moreover, in such an accelerated society, by compressing everything into
mere snapshots and momentary experiences there is really no time left to be lazy. The reign of the so-
called ‘tyranny of the moment’ signalling a shift from ‘slow time’ to ‘fast time’ (Eriksen 2001) does not
mean that these moments should be spent on laziness, but rather on making the most of it. Laziness is
thus regarded as a counter-productive activity, as simply ‘wasteful time’, and in a society in which stiff
competition and constant performance are some of the most important and visible features of social and
everyday life, even laziness, we might expect, will therefore eventually end up becoming thoroughly
accelerated.
So perhaps all resistance to the ‘work society’ and its new offspring the ‘high-speed society’ will, in
the long run, prove in vain, but all the various well-hidden yet still viable pockets available for such
resistance – in everyday life, in work life and in society at large – show that people may still be able to
be a little lazy at least sometimes.

Conclusion
This chapter has attempted to tease out some sociological insights about the often overlooked emotion
of laziness. Contrary to many other emotions such as boredom, shame, love, guilt or grief, laziness has
received only scant attention from social researchers throughout the years. Searching and scanning the
internet for hits on ‘the sociology of laziness’ will prove entirely in vain. Even the few studies that
somehow deal with laziness have often regarded the topic as an aside to more important issues, or they
have used the theme merely as an inroad for discussing, for example, boredom. It seems as if laziness
has been regarded firstly not really as an emotion at all, and secondly, if it is, only as an emotion of little
importance for or bearing on social life. This is surprising, especially if taking into consideration how
many people – many more than those who, for example, have felt grief, guilt or shame within the past
few days – have recently experienced some sort of laziness. Perhaps laziness is just a shallow emotion
with no actual, deep or lasting impact on individuals, social groups or societies. However, as this
chapter has aspired to show, there are many good reasons for taking laziness seriously, because it is
quite impossible to imagine life without both the experiences and constructions of laziness. Not only is
the way we feel and behave when being lazy (the subjective dimension) interesting to study, but so is
the ways we talk about and sanction laziness (the objective dimension) within the spheres of politics,
religion and morality. In a society like ours devoted to the ideals of productivity, effectiveness and
performance, laziness has developed a bad reputation. Therefore, there are many interesting both
microsociological as well as macrosociological aspects of laziness – and not least their intricate
interconnections – that should be studied more closely if we want to come to grips with what it means,
feels and does to be lazy. There is no doubt that themes that are commonplace in literature and popular
culture – such as for example idleness/laziness – can inform sociology in many different and important
ways (Carter and Carter 2014).
The chapter first attempted to rectify the lack of sociological interest in laziness by proposing an
admittedly rather simple analytical schema with which to capture some of the different dimensions and
forms of laziness. Then we moved into a more chronological-historical description of some important
ideas on laziness. We first revisited the biblical and medieval notions of ‘sloth’ as sin, then moved on to
discussing ‘idleness’ as a privilege through a number of examples from literature, philosophy and
popular culture before looking at how the so-called ‘work society’ constructs certain groups of people
as ‘lazies’. Following this, we saw how the accelerated pace of everything in the contemporary ‘high-
speed society’ renders demands or options for laziness problematic, and finally we discussed some –
admittedly bleak – possibilities for resistance. Even though – or perhaps rather because – laziness has
been so largely overlooked in the research on emotions, there is no doubt that there is potential for
subjecting the everyday experiences as well as the social constructions and implications of laziness to
more systematic scientific scrutiny. This chapter is thus a call to arms to those who wants to further our
sociological understanding of the nature and role of laziness in social life not to be idle in advancing
theories, developing concepts and conducting studies of this quite peculiar emotion.

Notes
1 The ideas of this chapter are inspired by and developed from a chapter on laziness previously published only in
Danish (see Jacobsen 2015).
2 It was Carmichael’s contention that modern psychology (and especially its behaviourist strand) had been far more
concerned with understanding human motivation to act than being interested in conceptualising how people defer
actions or perhaps even decide to do nothing (Carmichael 1954).
3 See, for example, the poetic and witty yet fictional keynote lecture on ‘The Philosophy of Laziness’ available online
at: https://romi1jain.wordpress.com/2017/10/24/the-philosophy-of-laziness.

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Index

Abraham, John 202

abuse 33, 171, 183
acceleration, of life 238
action theory 94–99
Adler, Alfred 75
admiration, envy vs. 147–48
Adorno, Theodor, W. 209, 219–22
advertising, envy and 153
African Americans 154, 197–98
Alate, Syed H. 235
alienation 198, 238
Amis, Kinsley 49
anger 9, 176–90; as an instrument 53; children and 177, 181–84, 185, 187; cycles of aggression and 181–84; depictions
of 185–86, 187; effects of 184–85; epidemiological studies of 177–81; fear and 178, 179–80; gender and 182;
physical characteristics of 177; workplace and 180
Anger (Tavris) 176
animal rights 57
animals 33–35, 39, 46, 57
anthropology 160
anticipatory embarrassment 113
anticipatory grief 193
anxiety 65, 66, 67, 100, 127–28, 137, 193
Arendt, Hannah 61
Ariès, Philippe 198, 199
Aristotle 72, 78
Arnold, Magda 178
artwork, depictions of idleness in 231–32, 233–34
Asian philosophy 73
association guilt 164
athletes, courage and 77, 80
authority 14, 57, 58, 167
authority guilt 163
Averill, James 179
Avineri, Shlomo 72–73

Bandini, Julia 202

Barbalet, Jack M. 9, 15, 19–21, 52
Bates, John 183
Bauman, Zygmunt 7
Beck, Ulrich 7
Becker, Selwyn 82–84
Behar, Ruth 6–7
Bem, Daryl 181–82
Benedict, Ruth 160
Benjamin, Walter 211–12, 226
Berger, Peter L. 169
Berkowitz, Leonard 177
Berry, William 84
betrayal 27–28, 29–30, 38, 39
Bible 185, 227, 230
Big Lebowski, The (film) 234
Billig, Michael 119–20
Biswas‐Diener, Robert 79, 80
blasé personality 211–13
blushing 130
Boltanski, Luc 65
Bonanno, George A. 195–96
Bonjour Laziness (Maier) 237
boredom 10, 209–24; ahistorcial view of 210–11; blasé personality and 211–13; complexity of 209; emptiness and 210,
218, 222; everyday view of 210; laziness vs. 225, 226; mass entertainment and 219–22; modernity and 211, 212,
214–19, 222; social class and status and 216, 219, 220–21; urbanization and 211–13, 215
Bosch, Hieronymus 231, 232
Boucher, Francois 231
Boyer, Paul 150
Brave New World (Huxley) 200
Brent, John J. 93–94
Brinkmann, Svend 202
Brookner, Anita 49, 50–51
Buss, Arnold H. 111, 113, 114, 128
bystander guilt 164

Canterbury Tales (Chaucer) 231

capitalism 62–63, 99–101, 102, 220–21, 235
Carmichael, Leonard 225, 239n2
Caspi, Avshalom 181–82
Cassian, John 230
Chang, Robert 83
Chapa, Olga 81
Character and Social Structure (Gerth and Mills) 29
Charles, Nickie 34, 35
Chaucer, Geoffrey 231
child abuse 183
children: abuse of 183; anger and 177, 181–84, 185, 187; compassion and 56; embarrassment and 109; envy and 152;
guilt and 159, 163, 164, 166; social anxiety and 159
Christianity 59–60, 150, 230
Civilizing Process, The (Elias) 89–91
class see social class and status
Cobb, Jonathan 47–48
collective guilt 164
commercialised loyalty 35–38, 39
commercial tourism 99–101
commodification, excitement and 99–101, 102
communication media 57, 58, 65–66
compassion 9, 56–70; authority and 57, 58; children and 56; ‘compassion fatigue’ 9, 57, 58, 64–66, 67; cultural history
of 58–61; gender and 60; health care profession and 56, 66; modernity and 60, 63, 67; morality and 56, 58–60, 62;
politics and 56–57; scholarship on 57–58, 61–64; social class and status and 62–63
competence, lack of 113
Confucius 73
Conrad, Peter 202
conspicuousness 113
consumer society 99–101, 212, 219–22
contractual loyalty 29
Contre‐Jour (Josipovici) 48
Cooley, Charles Horton 128, 160, 168–69
cooperation, trust as basis for 20–21
courage 9, 71–87; athletes and 77, 80; culture and socialization of 79–82; defined 71, 72–73, 76, 77, 78; depictions of
79, 82; fear and 72, 74; features of 75; gender and 77, 82–84; health care profession and 81; in hindsight 78;
interactionist conceptualizations of 76–77; language and narratives of 77–79; patriotism and 74–75, 80;
philosophical history 71–73; psychology of 73–76; race and 83–84; sexual orientation and 84; social class and
status and 84; structured interactions and 82–84; teaching 81; types of 74, 75–76, 77; workplace and 81
Courage Quotient, The (Biswas‐Diener) 80
Crane, Greg 61
Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky) 186
Critique of Everyday Life (Lefebvre) 214–15, 216–17
Critique of the Gotha Programme (Marx) 237
Crozier, W. Ray 130
culture industry 219–22

Dance to the Music of Time, A (Powell) 51

Daniel, Ella 183
Dante Alighieri 178–79, 231
Darwin, Charles 160, 163
Death of Ivan Ilyich, The (Tolstoy) 50
de Certeau, Michel 138
de Laine, Marlene 6
De Swann, Abram 146
Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer) 219
Dickens, Charles 61
dignity: abuses of 51–53; as an emotion 47–48; concept of 42–44; depictions of 48–51; as human right 42, 43, 44–47,
52–53; humiliation and 46, 51, 52–53; as mixed blessing 51; morality and 47–48; rationality and 44–47; respect and
43, 44–54; workplace and 47–48
Dignity at Work (Hodson) 47
Dignity of Working Men, The (Lamont) 47
disenfranchised grief 197
doctor‐patient relationships 14–15, 16–17, 18, 20, 56, 66, 81
Dodge, Kenneth 183
Doing Nothing (Lutz) 234
Doka, Kenneth J. 197
Doss, Erika 200
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor M. 186, 232
Douglas, Jack D. 4
dramaturgy 126, 127, 131–33, 138
Drever, James 177
DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) 200–202
Duncan, Elaine 179–80
Dunning, Eric 89–91, 92, 94–95, 97–98, 131
Durkheim, Émile 6, 63, 90

Eagly, Alice 82–84

Edelmann, Robert J. 107–8
edgework theory 89, 94–99, 131
education 16, 81, 154–55, 215
Ehn, Billy 226
Eisler, Hans 222
Elder, Glenn 181–82
Elias, Norbert 7, 115, 131; on bonding 30–31; civilising process 6, 109, 110; on compassion 63–64; on embarrassment
109, 110, 115; theory of excitement 89–93, 94–95, 97–98, 131; ‘threshold of shame’ 6, 109, 115
embarrassment 9, 104–25; children and 109; defined 104, 105, 143; interaction order and 115–18; internal processes
of 107–8, 114; observing 118–20; physical and social characteristics of 105; politics and 104–5; psychological
research on 106–7, 109; purposes and functions of 114, 119–20; shame and 6, 105–6, 109, 110–12, 115, 120;
shyness and 127–28; as social control 114, 117; social‐psychological research on 107–8; sociological research on
108–9; typologies of 112–14, 118–20; workplace and 117
emotion diaries 177–81
emotions 1–12; approaches to study of 7–8; early theories of 19–20; feeling states and 30; growth of as field of study 7;
meta‐level 131; methodology and 8; as social building blocks 1–2; study of 2, 4–8; see also specific emotion
empathy 56, 76, 118–20
emphatic embarrassment 118–20
employers, loyalty and 35–38, 39
emptiness, boredom and 210, 218, 222
emulation, envy vs. 148
Engel, George L. 200–201
Enlightenment era 43, 60, 211, 231, 232
envy 9, 142–56; admiration vs. 147–48; advertising and 153; children and 152; defined 143, 144–45; denial of 145–46;
in education 154–55; emulation vs. 148; expressions of 145; families and 152; fear and 143, 147, 150–51, 154–55;
function of 150–51; gossip and 145; as innocent wish 147; jealousy vs. 142–44, 147, 148–49; in myth and literature
146–47; natural disasters and 154; politics and 151, 153–54; in popular culture 146–47, 148–50, 153–54; race and
154–55; repression of 145–46; scorn and 150; situations and disguises of 146; social class and status and 154–55;
social order and 150–52; in sports 153–54; workplace and 150, 152–53
Envy Up, Scorn Down (Fiske) 150
Epic of Gilgamesh (Anonymous) 185
Epstein, Joseph 150
Equilibrium (film) 1
Erasmus 185
Erickson, Erik 160
ethnographic studies 84
ethnomethodology 129
Ettling, John 236
European Reformation 60
Everyday Courage (Way) 84
everyday life: defined 3; lifestyle and 214–19, 220; micro and macro aspects 3–4; pace of 236–38; as theme of study
2–5
Everyday Life in the Modern World (Lefebvre) 214
excitement 9, 88–103; civilizing process and 89–91, 92; commodification of 99–101, 102; modernity and 93–94;
paradox of 89; risk‐taking and 94–99; sports and 88, 89–98; theory of 89–93, 94–95, 97–98, 131; valorisation of 88
Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Hirschman) 37
Experience Without Qualities (Goodstein) 211
expertise, trust and 14
extreme sports 92–94, 98

false self‐consciousness 170

family loyalty 32–33
fear: anger and 178, 179–80; courage and 72, 74; envy and 143, 147, 150–51, 154–55; guilt and 158–60, 163, 169,
171–72; loyalty and 29–30, 39; shyness and 126, 128–29, 169
films and television 1; depictions of anger in 185–86, 187; depictions of courage in 79; depictions of laziness in 234;
depictions of shyness in 137; as entertainment 221; lifestyle and 217, 218; see also specific film or show
Finkel, Eli 185
Finkel, Norman 177
Ford, Henry 235
Frankenstein (Shelly) 50
Frankfurt School 3–4, 219
Freud, Lucien 231–32
Freud, Sigmund 6, 157, 158–60, 171, 192, 199, 201
Friedman, Richard 33
Frijda, Nico 179
Fuchs, Thomas 195
Fukuyama, Francis 18
functional trust 16–17

gagged grief 197

Gambetta, Diego 21
Garfinkel, Harold 108, 134
Gasson, J. A. 178
Gates, Georgina 178, 179–80
gender: anger and 182; compassion and 60; courage and 77, 82–84; grief and 197–98; guilt and 171
Gerth, Hans H. 29
Giddens, Anthony 7, 14, 18, 171, 199
Giulianotti, Richard 91
Goffman, Erving: on action 98; on courage 76–77; ‘defensive facework’ 131; ‘dilemma of expression versus action’ 136;
dramaturgical model 127–28, 138; on embarrassment 6, 107–8, 111, 115–18, 118–19, 120, 127–28, 143;
‘interaction order’ 115–18; on loyalty 37; on risk‐taking 95–96; on shame 160
Goleman, Daniel 6
Goodstein, Elizabeth S. 211, 212, 214, 219
Gorer, Geoffrey 198–99
gossip, envy and 145
Grazzani‐Gavazzi, Ilaria 181
Greek philosophy 58–59, 71–72, 150
grief 10, 191–208; defined 191, 193–95, 199; diagnosing 200–203; faces of 195–98; gender and 197–98; memorial
 mania 200; performance of 199; race and 197; social history of 198–200; treating 203–5; types of 193, 194, 197–98
Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy (Worden) 203
Grief Observed, A (Lewis) 205
Gross, Edward 108–9, 113
guilt 9, 157–75; authority and 167; children and 159, 163, 164, 166; classical studies of 157–59; classification of
164–67; fear and 69, 158–60, 163, 166, 169, 171–72; gender and 171; mapping experiences of 161–63; micro‐
sociological perspective of 167–70; morality and 157–59, 166–67, 170; sexual abuse and 171; shame and 157,
159–61, 164, 165–67, 171–72; social control and 159; traumatic experiences and 163; types of 163–64; workplace
and 166
Gurbrium, Jaber F. 85

Habermas, Jürgen 45
Hall, G. Stanley 177–78
Haney, C. Allen 200
Harré, Rom 106
Harris, Christine R. 121
Haskell, Thomas 62–63
Hasse, Joan 81
health care profession 14–15, 16–17, 18, 20, 56, 66, 81
Hegel, G. W. F. 72–73, 198
Heidegger, Martin 209, 210, 213
heroism 79, 82–83; see also courage
Hidden Injuries of Class, The (Sennett and Cobb) 47–48
Highmore, Ben 219
Hirschman, Albert O. 37
Hispanic students 154
Hochschild, Arlie R. 6, 79–80, 153, 227
Hodson, Randy 47
Hogan, Patrick 185
Holstein, James A. 85
Honneth, Axel 51–52
Horkheimer, Max 209, 219–22
Horwitz, Allan V. 201, 202
hostility 151
Hour of Our Death, The (Ariès) 198
Hughes, Henry 235
Huizinga, Johan 198
human rights 42, 43, 44–47, 52–53, 57, 61
Hume, David 44, 60, 193
humiliation 46, 51, 52–53
Huxley, Aldous 200
hyperconsumption 99

ICD (International Classification of Diseases) 200–202

idleness 217, 228, 230, 231–34; see also laziness
impropriety 113
Industrial Revolution 211
Inferno (Dante Alighieri) 231
In Praise of Idleness (Russell) 233
institutional trust 15–18
interaction order 115–18
Interaction Ritual (Goffman) 76–77
interpersonal trust 15–16, 17, 22
Introduction to Modernity (Lefebvre) 214, 215, 217
introversion, shyness vs. 129–30
irrational emotions 166
Ishiguro, Kazuo 50

Jackson, Edgar N. 205

Jacobsen, Michael Hviid 11, 123, 207, 241
Jacoby, Nina R. 193
James, William 131–32, 145
jealousy, envy vs. 142–44, 147, 148–49
Jenkins, Jennifer M. 177, 183–84
Josipovici, Gabriel 48

Kaczynski, Theodore 33
Kant, Immanuel 43–47, 53, 72, 226
Katz, Jack 5
Keller, Simon 27
Kempton, Murray 146
Kierkegaard, Søren 193
King Lear (Shakespeare) 27
Kohut, Heinz 5
Konstan, David 59
Krantz, James 37
Kraska, Peter B. 93–94

labelling theory 134, 136

Lafargue, Paul 237
Laing, Ronald D. 131–32
Lemert, Edwin 136
Lamont, Michelle 47
Larocque, Laurette 180–81
laziness 10, 225–42; as an emotion 227–28, 239; boredom vs. 225, 226; depictions of 231–32, 232–34, 233–34; forms of
228–29; high‐speed society and 236–38; historical vies of 235–36; modernity and 232; politics and 236; scholarship
on 225–27; sloth and 227, 229–31; social class and status and 231–34; subjective and objective dimensions of 228;
work ethic and 234–36, 237–38
Le Courbusier 218–19
Lefebvre, Henri 209, 214–19, 220, 222
leisure 216, 238
Lewis, C. S. 204–5
Lewis, Helen 111
Lewis, Michael 177
lifestyle, modernity and 214–19, 220
Lindemann, Erich 193
literature 34, 96, 146–47, 231–34, 239; see also specific author or title
Löfgren, Orvar 226
Lofland, Lyn H. 194
Lopez, Shane J. 75
Lord, Herbert Gardiner 73–74
love, trust and 17
loyalty 9, 27–41; abuse and 33; as an emotion 28–30; betrayal and 27–28, 29–30, 38, 39; as bonding emotion 30–32;
choosing between 38–39; components of 28; defined 30–32; family 32–33; fear and 29–30, 39; national 32, 38;
organisation/group 35, 39; pets and 33–35, 39; reciprocity and 27, 29; as sub‐set of trust 29; types of 29, 35;
workplace 35–38, 39
Luckmann, Thomas 169
Luhmann, Niklas 14, 21
Lutz, Tom 234
Lyman, Stanford M. 234–35
Lyng, Stephen 98, 131

Mackenzie, Henry 60
Maier, Corinne 237
Managed Heart, The (Hochschild) 79–80
Margalit, Avishai 51, 52
Marx, Karl 3, 6, 47, 90, 99, 237
mass culture 216, 217, 219–22
mass entertainment 137, 219–22
material object loss 193–94
Mead, George Herbert 128, 138, 160, 167–69
Mead, Margaret 146
memorial mania 200
men: anger and 182; grief and 197–98
Middle Ages 198, 231
military 80, 162–63
Miller, Rowland S. 118
Miller, William 71, 72, 78
Mills, C. Wright 29, 78, 81
Minima Moralia (Adorno) 221
Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) 92–94, 95, 98
modernity: boredom and 211, 212, 214–19, 222; civilising process and 90, 93–94; compassion and 60, 63, 67;
excitement and 93–94; laziness and 232; trust and 22–23
Modigliani, Andre 106, 107
moral emotions 56, 61, 166, 167; see also specific emotion
morality: compassion and 56, 58–60, 62; dignity and 47–48; guilt and 157–59, 166–67, 170
Morillo, Daniel Hernández 231
mourning 198–200
movies see films and television
Murray, John 81

nation‐states 32, 89–91

Native American students 154
natural disasters, envy and 154
natural loyalty 29
New Life, The (Dante Alighieri) 178–79
Next Big Thing, The (Brookner) 49, 50–51
Nietzsche, Friedrich: on courage 72; on dignity 52–53, 57–58; on guilt and shame 157–58, 159, 160; on laziness 226;
‘ressentiment’ 52–53, 57–58, 158, 159; ‘slave morality’ 53
Nissenbaum, Stephen 150
normalisation 134
normative anger 177–81, 186
Notes from the Underground (Dostoyevsky) 232
Nussbaum, Martha C. 6, 44, 45–47, 48, 53, 66

Oatley, Keith 179–81

Oedipus complex 158
Old Devils, The (Amis) 49
Olsthoorn, Peter 80
O’Murphy, Marie Louise 231
Orchardson, William Quiller 231
Ordinary Lives (Highmore) 219
overpraise 113
Ovid 144
Parrott, W. Gerrod 177
patriotism 74–75, 80
‘pension envy’ 150
Peterson, Gretchen 91
Petit, Gregory 183
Petronio, Sandra 111
pets, loyalty and 33–35, 39
Pieter Brueghel the Elder 231, 232
Pinker, Steven 182
pity 57
Plamondon, Andre 183
politics 56–57, 104–5, 151, 153–54, 236
Polybius 59
Ponticus, Evagrius 230
popular culture 79, 82, 146–47, 148–50, 153–54, 185–86, 187; see also films and television; literature
populism, resentment and 52–53
Powell, Anthony 51
power relations 57, 58, 167
Praise of Folly (Erasmus) 185
primary emotions 19, 165; see also specific emotion
primary guilt 169
privacy, breaches of 113
psychiatry 200–203
psychology 73–74
Psychology of Courage, The (Yang) 75
Psychology of Everyday Life, The (Drever) 177
public mourning 199–200
Pury, Cynthia 75
Quest for Excitement (Elias and Dunning) 89–90
quietness, shyness vs. 129–30

Rabash, Jon 184

race 83–84, 154–55, 197
rage 159
Rankin, Lindsay 83
Rate, Christopher R. 75, 76, 81
rational emotions 166
rationality 20–21, 22, 44–47, 216
Reeves, Richard 151
relationship guilt 164, 171
Remains of the Day, The (Ishiguro) 50
repression, of envy 145–46
resentment 144, 159
Respect (Sennett) 48
respect, dignity and 43, 44–54
ressentiment 52–53, 57–58, 158, 159
Rimé, Bernard 180
risk‐taking 9, 17, 94–99, 131
Romans 43, 59
Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) 185
Royce, Josiah 32
Rubin, Simon S. 204
Russell, Bertrand 233

Sabini, John 106

Salovey, Peter 145
Sanders, Clinton 34
Sartre, Jean‐Paul 19–20, 192
Sattler, Jerome M. 113
Schadenfreude 144
Scheff, Thomas J. 111, 160, 161, 167
Scheler, Max 144
Schoeck, Helmut 144
Schudson, Michael 115
scorn, envy and 150
Scott, Susie 37
secondary emotions 19, 165; see also specific emotion
secondary guilt 169–70
self‐blame 21
self‐conscious emotions 110, 111, 126, 127, 128, 131, 138, 166, 167–68; see also specific emotion
Sennett, Richard 36, 47–48
separation guilt 164
sexual abuse, guilt and 171
sexual orientation, courage and 84
Shakespeare, William 27, 185
shame: embarrassment and 6, 105–6, 109, 110–12, 115, 120; guilt and 157, 159–61, 164, 165–67, 171–72; social
control and 112; ‘threshold of shame’ 6, 109, 115
shame‐free‐guilt 165, 170, 172
shame‐fused‐guilt 165, 172
Shapka, Jennifer 183–84
Shelley, Mary 50
shyness 9, 126–41; defined 126; depictions of 137; as deviant identity 127, 134–38, 139; embarrassment and 127–28;
 fear and 126, 128–29, 169; forms of 128; introversion vs. 129–30; managing 134–38; performing 130–34, 139;
physical characteristics of 130, 139; quietness vs. 129–30; social self and 127–30; workplace and 132
Shy Pride movement 137–38
Simmel, Georg 6, 129, 209, 211–13, 218, 222
Sloterdijk, Peter 52
sloth 227, 229–31
Smith, Adam 60
Smith, Tiffany Watts 110
social anxiety 111, 128, 137, 159
social change 238
social class and status: boredom and 216, 219, 220–21; civilizing process 89–91, 92, 94; compassion and 62–63;
courage and 84; envy and 154–55; grief and 196–97; laziness as privilege 231–34
social control 112, 114, 117, 150–51, 159
social emotions 9, 66, 105, 109, 139, 160, 169; see also specific emotion
socialisation theory 168–69, 171
social order 150–52
social phobia 137
social science 5–8
social self 128–29
social theory 5–8
‘sociology of emotions’ 3
Socrates 71–72
Solomon, Robert C. 1, 6
Sontag, Susan 81
Sorenson, Ann 183–84
spontaneous grief 194
spontaneous memorialisation 200
sports 35, 88, 89–99, 92–94, 153–54
Starkey, Charles 75
status loss 193–94
Steinbeck, John 233
Sternberg, Robert 78–79
Stoics 44, 45, 58–59, 176
Stone, Gregory P. 108–9, 113
Stowe, Harriet Beecher 61
Strange, Julie‐Marie 196–97
strategic embarrassment 112–13
Stringer, Donna 81
Stroebe, Margaret 203
style, defined 216
subterfuge 133
suffocated grief 197–98
superficial guilt 164
survivor guilt 164, 166
Swartz, Mimi 149
symbolic interactionism 126
sympathy 56, 57, 118–20

Tampio, Nicholas 72
Tavris, Carol 176
technological development 238
television see films and television
Thomas, Keith 60
Thomas Acquinas 230
Thompson, Hunter S. 96
Tierney, John 150
Tolstoy, Lev 50
Tonkiss, Fran 211
tourism industry 99–101
trait anger 181–84
Treatise on Human Nature, A (Hume) 193
Trembley, Richard 181
trust 9, 14–26; as an emotion 18–22; authority and 14; basis of vs. need for 20; cooperation and 20–21; definition and
conceptualisation of 14–18; expertise and 14; health care profession and 14–15, 16–17, 18, 20; in information 23;
love and 17; loyalty as sub‐set of 29; modernity and 22–23; rationality and 20–21, 22; types of 15–18, 22
trustworthiness 22
Turner, Bryan S. 52
Turner, Jonathan H. 7, 20, 21
Twain, Mark 233

unintentional embarrassment 112–13

urbanization, boredom and 211–13, 215

vicarious embarrassment 118–19

victim guilt 164
video games 71, 84, 93, 185, 187
virtual guilt 164
von Scheve, Christian 19
Vovelle, Michel 198

Wakefield, Jerome C. 202

Waldron, Jeremy 45
Walsham, Alexandra 60
Walter, Tony 203
Ward, Paul R. 29
Way, Niobe 84
Weber, Max 3, 6, 62, 90, 171, 234–35
Westberg, Granger E. 191–92
Wizard of Oz (film) 82
Wolff, Robert 29
Wollstonecraft, Mary 60
women: anger and 182; compassion and 60; courage and 77, 82–83; guilt and 171
Worden, William 203
work, product vs. 216–17
work ethic 234–36, 237–38
workplace: anger and 180; courage and 81; dignity and 47–48; embarrassment and 117; envy and 150, 152–53; guilt
and 166; loyalty and 35–38, 39; shyness and 132; see also specific type of workplace
Wouters, Cas 64
Wrong, Dennis H. 8
Wynn, Michael 76
Wynn, Rold 76

Yang, Julia 75
Yoffe, Emily 33

Zidane, Zinedine 80
Zimbardo, Philip 79
Zukas, Alex 236