Encyclopedia of SociologyVol._4

hancing self-appraisals and thinking of oneself in the most positive way. These objectives are accomplished by means of deeper encoding and more frequent retrieval of positive self-knowledge coupled with an avoidance of negative self-relevant information. That is, people with high self-esteem pay attention to information that says good things about them but ignore information that challenges a positive self-view. By contrast, the processing style associated with low self-esteem is one of self-con- sciousness and rumination. Individuals with low self-esteem focus on their own thoughts and feelings, often dwelling on negative life events. They are vigilant for information that confirms a negative self-view and ruminate on past failures, embarrassments, and setbacks in a nonproductive fashion.

Biased information processing helps people maintain their existing self-views. For example, an individual with high self-esteem may create a personal definition of what it means to be a ‘‘good student’’ that includes areas in which he or she excels while downplaying the importance of areas of personal deficiency. People with high self-es- teem also believe that their talents are unique and special but that their weaknesses are common and trivial. As a result of their selective processing of evaluative information, people with high self-es- teem are more adept at defending their self-es- teem from external threats. Thus, people with high self-esteem discredit sources of negative feedback while readily accepting positive feedback. These people are also more likely to show a selfserving bias, which refers to the tendency of individuals to take personal credit for success but to blame failure on external circumstances. Some studies in fact find a reversal of the self-serving bias in individuals with low self-esteem such that they credit success to the environment (e.g., an easy task or luck) and blame themselves for failure. People with low self-esteem appear to be generally less able to put a positive spin on negative personal information. For instance, after receiving a negative evaluation, individuals with low self-esteem are more likely to dwell on their weaknesses while individuals with high self-esteem recruit thoughts about their strengths. Differential responses to feedback appear to be an automatic consequence of self-esteem that does not require effort or conscious initiation (Dodgson and Wood 1998).

Baumeister and Tice (Baumeister et al. 1989) have proposed that the basic distinction between

high self-esteem and low self-esteem is motivational. People with high self-esteem are concerned primarily with self-enhancement, whereas people with low self-esteem are concerned primarily with selfprotection. The self-enhancement motive emphasizes feeling good about oneself with the aim of increasing one’s self-esteem. Thus, people with high self-esteem look for areas in which they can excel and stand out. When they fail at a task, they set higher goals so that they can prove they possess exceptional skills. By contrast, people with low self-esteem are concerned with avoiding humiliation, embarrassment, and rejection. Low self-es- teem individuals’ self-protective orientation guards against feeling even worse about themselves. Thus, when they fail at a task, they set more modest goals so that they do not lose further esteem through failure.

Self-esteem is known to be relevant to interpersonal behavior. For instance, high and low selfesteem people differ in their perceptions of interpersonal acceptance or rejection. A study in which participants were told that they had been rejected or accepted by their peers (Nezlek et al. 1997) showed that individuals with low self-esteem perceived peer inclusion and exclusion accurately, corresponding to experimental feedback. High self-esteem individuals, however, always perceived inclusion, even when they had been told they had been personally rejected. In general, people with high self-esteem believe that others admire, like, and respect them, whereas people with low selfesteem do not feel that others provide them with adequate support. This pattern fits in well with the reflected appraisal model of self-esteem that was discussed earlier. Because they are concerned with how others view them and are uncertain about their own beliefs, people with low self-esteem are especially yielding; they change their minds and behaviors to conform to the beliefs and opinions of others. Conversely, people with high self-es- teem are confident about their opinions and tend not to be influenced by others. Indeed, they often view their own ideas and beliefs as being superior to those of others.

The currently available evidence paints the cognitive, affective, and social worlds of those with high and low self-esteem to be quite different. But do people truly differ as a function of self-esteem? When people are interviewed, there appear to be great differences between those with high and low

self-esteem. When describing themselves, high selfesteem people say they are physically attractive, intelligent, socially skilled, outgoing, upbeat, optimistic, and satisfied with the state of their lives. Low self-esteem people depict themselves in a much less positive light and describe themselves by using more neutral and negative self-aspects than do those with high self-esteem. Unfortunately, the use of self-reports is problematic because they are confounded by one’s level of self-esteem. High self-esteem people generally like and believe favorable things about themselves, and it is not surprising that they rate themselves highly on positive personality traits. However, the extent to which high self-esteem individuals actually possess and exhibit these positive traits—and the extent to which they do not possess or exhibit negative traits—is not well known.

The few studies that have compared claims by high and low self-esteem people to objective standards have not found differences between selfesteem groups. For instance, although people with high self-esteem think of themselves as more attractive than do people with low self-esteem, both groups are seen as equally attractive by others (Diener et al. 1995). Ratings of intelligence show the same pattern: High self-esteem people claim to be more intelligent, but intelligence tests show no differences as a function of self-esteem (Gabriel et al. 1994). Similarly, self-report data indicate that high self-esteem individuals are more likable than are low self-esteem individuals. However, likability ratings of high and low self-esteem people by interaction partners show no relation to self-es- teem (Brockner and Lloyd 1986). Overall, most researchers have concluded that there are few differences in objective outcomes between those high and low in self-esteem (Baumeister 1998). A review of the literature by the California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility (1990) conceded that ‘‘the associations between self-esteem and its expected consequences are mixed, insignificant, or absent’’ (Mecca et al. 1989, p. 15). Self-esteem appears to be related to subjective rather than objective life outcomes.

It is even possible that high self-esteem is associated with negative outcomes in some contexts. For instance, although high self-esteem typically is associated with superior self-regulation, some evidence suggests that high self-esteem may

interfere with self-regulation when self-esteem is threatened. Relative to when they succeed, failure elicits higher goals and increased persistence— even on unsolvable tasks—in those with high selfesteem (McFarlin et al. 1984). Baumeister et al. (1993) demonstrated that ego threats sabotage self-regulation among those with high self-esteem. In this research, high and low self-esteem participants chose performance contingencies in which greater payoffs were associated with loftier and riskier personal goals. In the control condition, those with high self-esteem set appropriate goals and showed superior self-regulation. However, after ego threat (being told to play it safe if they ‘‘didn’t have what it takes’’), high self-esteem participants set inappropriate, risky goals and ended up with smaller monetary rewards than did participants with low self-esteem. Under threat, participants with high self-esteem also were significantly more likely to choke under pressure (i.e., to show performance decrements under conditions where superior performance is important) than were participants with low self-esteem. These findings suggest that people with high self-esteem are prone to self-regulatory failure in certain situations.

Similarly, extremely positive self-appraisals have been linked to poor interpersonal outcomes, especially when such self-appraisals are challenged or discredited. Baumeister et al. (1996) examined the literature linking self-esteem to interpersonal violence. In contrast to widely held assumptions that low self-esteem is associated with violent actions, they found a consistent pattern in which those who thought highly of themselves but encountered a threat or challenge to their positive self-views were more likely to act in hostile and violent ways. Similarly, Kernis and colleagues (Kernis 1993) have demonstrated that when it is unstable, high self-esteem is associated with increased hostility and aggression. They found that those with unstable high self-esteem are likely to respond to ego threats with self-aggrandizement and defensiveness (Kernis et al. 1997).

Other evidence suggests that those with highly positive self-views may exhibit poor interpersonal skills. Colvin et al. (1995) examined individuals with apparently inflated self-views, as indicated by the difference between self and other ratings. They found that those individuals were viewed by others as hostile and unlikable. In addition, during a structured and highly charged debate, such indi-

viduals engaged in a variety of negatively evaluated interpersonal behaviors, such as bragging, interrupting their partners, and showing an overall lack of genuine concern for their partners. Once again, these patterns are most likely to occur when high self-esteem individuals feel personally challenged. Schlenker et al. (1990) exposed high and low selfesteem subjects to contexts in which they were motivated to make a positive impression on a critical or a supportive audience. They found that high self-esteem subjects became egotistical when the evaluative pressures were greatest. They concluded that ‘‘people with high self-esteem become more boastful as the social stakes increase’’ (p. 891). Similar findings have been reported by Schneider and Turkat (1975), who found that high self-esteem subjects who also expressed high needs for social approval presented themselves much more positively after negative feedback than they did after positive feedback. Perhaps ironically, high self-esteem subjects who receive negative feedback about their intellectual abilities claim to have especially good social skills. However, the available evidence does not support their claims.

SUMMARY

Having high self-esteem confers a number of benefits to those who possess it: Such people feel good about themselves, are able to cope effectively with challenges and negative feedback, and live in a social world in which they believe that people value and respect them. Although there may be some negative consequences associated with having extremely high self-esteem, most people with high self-esteem lead happy and productive lives. People with low self-esteem see the world through a more negative filter, and their general dislike for themselves influences their perceptions of everything around them. It is striking that the objective record does not validate the subjective experiences of those with high and low self-esteem. The interesting unanswered questions about self-es- teem are related to what allows people to hold such positive or negative views of themselves in spite of objective evidence. For instance, it is possible that self-esteem is rooted in neurochemistry and therefore is not sensitive to contextual influence, but this has not been established. It is equally plausible that self-esteem is a cognitive style that develops through early socialization experiences, but this perspective also requires more conclusive

evidence. In any case, the subjective experience of having high or low self-esteem plays an important role in how people interpret the world around them.

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SENTIMENTS

To define the affective state, four terms can be used: passion, state of mind, emotion, and sentiments. The term ‘‘passion’’ is linked with the philosophical and literary tradition and designates a violent tension that the individual sustains for a certain duration. States of mind or moods are affective states of low intensity that are durable and pervasive, lack an immediately perceptible cause, and can influence initially neutral events. The term ‘‘emotion’’ indicates an intense affective state of short duration with a precise external or inner cause, a clear cognitive content, and the

ability to reorient attention. Most scholars agree that emotion is a psychological construct with several components: (1) cognitive: finalized by the stimulus caused by emotion, (2) physiological: from the participation of the neurovegetative system, (3) expressive: linked with movement, (4) motivational: linked with intentions and the tendency to act or react, and (5) subjective: consisting of the sentiment felt by the individual.

Sentiments are more enduring than are emotions (e.g., hatred compared with a momentary explosion of anger) and are more cognitively structured. Sentiments may last seconds (embarrassment) or months (mourning) and may be more or less intense, conscious or unconscious, and controllable or outside one’s control. When an individual names a sentiment by using a certain terms he or she refers to different elements: affection, cognitive contents or structures of evaluation, awareness of the level of readiness for action, and awareness of the body. Sentiments pervade daily life and are found in several artistic forms: music, poetry, literature, and painting.

In the philosophical tradition, the affective dimension appeared as a perturbation of human behavior that was considered the result of reasoning. Plato was the first to define passions as ‘‘diseases of the spirit.’’ For the Stoics, passion was a disease that gets hold of the entire spirit at the expense of reason: Crisippo considered it an unbridled agitation, an unstoppable force that makes the ego leave the self. For Aristotle, passions act as a destabilizer of the rational powers of the individual. An ambivalent attitude toward passions developed at the beginning of the modern age. They were execrated during the age of illuminism, exalted during the romantic era, condemned during the period of critical rationalism and rehabilitated in the postmodern age.

THE INATTENTION OF THE FOUNDERS

For a long time sociology, evidently influenced by the hegemonic philosophical paradigm, excluded the study of the affective dimension from its theoretical concerns. Affects thus were relegated to anthropology and psychology. The founders of sociology saw the role of sentiments in social life as rather marginal. An interest in sentiments can be

found in Durkheim, who saw them as agents and factors of cohesion in the formation of solidarity and morality. In his view, sentiments are learned and internalized during rituals and collective ceremonies through the sharing of emotions.

In Pareto’s terminology, residui are sentiments or the expressions of sentiments inscribed in human nature and derivazioni are the conceptual systems of justification with which individuals disguise their passions or give an appearance of rationality to propositions or behaviors that are not rational. People rarely behave in a logical way but always want to make their fellow people believe that their conduct is logical. The main characteristic of human nature is that it lets itself be guided by sentiments and puts forward pseudological justifications for sentimental attitudes. According to Pareto, nonlogical is not necessarily equivalent to illogical: Emotions follow some principles. The logic of sentiments Pareto identified can be summarized in five points. First, while reason is analytic, sentiment is synthetic. Second, sentiment follows justificational and persuasive principles. Third, sentiments are inaccurate, indefinite, and indeterminate. Fourth, sentiments may be ambivalent and conflicting. Fifth, sentiments can take on extreme, absolute characteristics that prevent learning from reality.

Weber begins by distinguishing four types of action: rational action in relation to an aim, rational action in relation to a value, affective or emotional action, and traditional action. The action Weber calls affective results from the state of mind or mood of an individual: the slap a mother gives to her unbearable child or the fist of a soccer player who loses his temper. Action, that is, is defined with reference not to an aim or system of values but to the emotional reaction of an agent who finds himself or herself in certain circumstances. The distinctive characteristic of the world in which people live is rationalization: a firm is rational, as is the bureaucratic management of a state, while scientific action is a combination of a rational action in relation to an aim and a rational action in relation to a value, which is truth.

The importance of the emotional factor in the formation of charisma and the religious spirit is mentioned explicitly by Weber. Perhaps the spirit of capitalism is seen by Weber as deriving from the

pressure of strong and pervasive emotions such as anxiety, desperation, and fear on which Calvinist doctrine was founded. Weber does not ignore affection, but he considers it a parasite of reason, a noise producer, a disturber in the ascent to rationality.

SOME PRECURSORS

Sentiments are central in the work of Simmel, who thoroughly analyzed their role and formation, especially in his essay on love and his reflections on sociability. For Simmel, emotional reality is the foundation of an individual’s experience and social interactions. Individuals, he maintains, enter into relationships with one another through the sentiments. Social relations produce other sentiments that therefore are always connected to interactions. The Italian protosociologist Ferrero studied fear and tried to read the historical existence of civilizations in the light of such sentiments. For Ferrero, fear is the spirit of the universe. People, like all creatures, are molded by fear: To overcome fear, people arm themselves, but because they are armed, they cannot help fearing each other. Consequently, people become the most frightening and the most frightened beings because they are the only ones able to manufacture deadly and thus frightful instruments of offense. Moreover, fantasy creates imaginary dangers of all kinds. The human condition therefore is characterized by a permanent dialogue with fear. Even sacrificial rituals are interpreted as expedients to exorcise the fear that every person has of her or his fellow creatures, who are seen as potential bearers of death. Thus, the salute is a technique of mutual reassurance, a ceremony through which one manifests the absence of aggressive intentions toward others. The main instrument for defeating the original fear is power: the institutionalization of the monopoly of violence. This solution transforms people into subject by taking away their freedom. As a result of the monopoly of violence among those who exercise command, peace is guaranteed, but its price is very high. The fear of war of all against all is eliminated, but it is replaced by fear of power.

However, Ferrero emphasizes that those in power fear the subjects over whom they exercise command. No government is certain of the total

obedience of its citizens, and a revolt can break out among the most compliant subjects. In this way, feedback develops between the use of force and fear: The more those in power fear their subjects, the more they resort to instruments of repression, the more they are repressive, and the more they feel fear. For the usurper of power there is not only an external threat, as Plato, Senofonte, Machiavelli, and Montesquieu showed, but also an internal torment: fear of one’s own illegitimacy. In Community and Society, Toennies, in theorizing about the fundamental category of ‘‘community,’’ emphasized the sentiment of belonging. He recognized in sentiments a relative autonomy when he assumed that they were a guide for action and that the fundamental directions of human action depend largely on inner conditions (dispositions) and to a lesser extent on external conditions (circumstances). Veblen based his concept of the wealthy class on a complex mix of sentiments (superiority and inferiority, emulation and imitation) and showed their influence on collective behavior.

Scheler showed, through a phenomenology of resentment, the tight link between the sphere of individual sentiments and that of collective behavior. For Scheler, the forming of resentment and its mode of expression have an individual component tied to temperament and a social component: ‘‘The way and the measure in which resentment takes shape in entire groups and in individuals is linked in the first place to the disposition of the human material at issue, in the second place to the structure of society in which this lives.’’ Therefore, there is constant interaction between individual attitudes and collective mentality. The manifestation of resentment is linked to social inequalities and the inability to heal an offense, true or presumed, through vengeance or rebellion. The spreading of resentment creates the psychological premises that become linked with the structural premises, leading to the explosion of mass movements.

For Scheler, ‘‘the formal structure of the expression of resentment is always the same: A is approved of, supported and praised not for his intrinsic qualities, but with the intention—that remains unsaid in words—to deny, devaluate and reprove B.’’ The refusal of wealth is nothing but a repressed desire for wealth among the poor, who despise what they want but cannot have. Like

Tocqueville, Scheler sees in democracy the fuel of resentment. He maintains: ‘‘It will possess a maximum charge of resentment a society in which political rights and others of almost equal kind, jointly with a formal social parity publicly recognized, go together with great differences of power, of effective possession of assets and effective cultural formation.’’

In the 1960s, MacIver explored the sentiment of attachment to a community, referring to the complex of memories, traditions, customs, and institutions shared by the members of a community. This sentiment of community, which is acquired through the socialization process, has three main elements: (1) the sentiment of we, (2) the sentiment of role, and (3) the sentiment of dependence. The first leads to the identification of a person with the others; the second is associated with the functions individual members perform in the community and expresses the way in which the individual normally realizes his or her belonging to the entire community. The sentiment of dependence expresses the dependence of a person on the community, which is considered a necessary condition for his or her existence, lessening his or her isolation. In modern society, an individual belongs not only to a single community but also to specific associations, as social life is subject to the process of differentiation and specialization. Moreover, the sentiment of belonging to the community seems to persist only in rural areas; in urban areas, it is replaced by attachment to other, less inclusive and more sectorial groups. In rural areas, the sentiment of attachment to the community remains strong because of people’s longer periods of residence. An enlarged sentiment of community is the sentiment of nationality, which is produced by historical circumstances and supported by common psychological factors.

Helen Lynd was the first to recognize the importance of shame in the complex dynamics of identity growth. According to Lynd, the values of a culture do not stimulate the experience and communication of emotions such as shame, joy, wonder, and love. However, once trust has been cre- ated—allowing one to reveal oneself and thus look for the ways in which to communicate shame—the risk of being exposed may become an experience of abandonment, self-revelation, and intimacy with others. Once accepted, shame leads a person to a

greater awareness and to an enrichment of his or her personality.

CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES

Sociologists’ interest in emotions and sentiments can be traced to the mid-1970s. In that period, one of the foundations of sociology—the idea of a rational social actor guided in his or her conduct, motivation, and choices by a utilitarian and instrumental logic while sentiments play a residual and socially insignificant role—was questioned. This model started showing its abstractness and rigid partiality and its inadequacy in explaining the complexity of individual and collective action, which depends on how people feel and manage their emotions. Thus, emotions started losing their residual and even disturbing function and were recognized as integral parts of social action.

This crack in the rational actor construction went together with a new cultural climate characterized by attention to the self and to the world of private and interpersonal relations, a desire for authenticity, and the revaluation of sentiments. Emotions and sentiments became objects of knowledge, attention, and communication both in daily life and in sociological reflection. In women and youth subcultures especially, the expression of one’s sentiments was encouraged. Advertising saw the positive value of the affective dimension and used it in its campaigns by linking it to products potentially able to stimulate emotions, such as sports, film, television, cars, and even food. The revaluation of the affective dimension also was stimulated by the increase in the number of magazines dealing with psychoanalytic issues and the growth of university courses on psychological subjects: In many textbooks, at least one chapter is devoted to the dynamics of sentiments and emotions. A widespread representation of emotions has resulted from cinematic and television fiction.

In the growing social sciences literature on sentiments and emotions, five approaches can be singled out: (1) sociohistorical, (2) positivist, (3) functionalist, (4) conflict, (5) interactionist, and

(6) socialconstructivist.

The Sociohistorical Approach. According to Elias, the phenomenon of civilization is a matter of controlling emotions and natural impulses. From

the documents he collected, it can be inferred that anger, which now seems psychopathic, was in medieval times considered normal, and that the desire to destroy was openly confessed, while it now is admitted with shame or used to attract attention.

For Elias, emotions and their expressive forms are strongly correlated with the social contexts in which they manifest themselves. Every social structure, he maintains, corresponds to a structure of emotions and sentiments, and their inhibition, repression, or free expression depends on their being functional to different social systems.

According to Elias’s theory of the process of civilization, daily life in the Middle Ages was characterized by abuse and violence. People, lived in a permanent state of insecurity and fear. The situation began to change when a stronger territorial power prevailed on the weaker ones and the monopoly of the state’s legal violence gradually was established. Violence, reserved to specialized bodies, began to be excluded from other areas of life, and some calm, protected zones started to form. Within those areas, ‘‘good manners’’ developed and eventually replaced violence and abuse in interpersonal relations. Starting in the higher ranks, individuals began to abandon spontaneity and impetuousness and learned to dominate themselves, control their impulses and passions, and regulate aggressiveness.

For Elias, institutionalized sports channel and often divert people’s natural emotions. Hunting, for example, often has been recognized as a substitute for war. In their free time, people can carry out activities that incite emotions closely tied to those of normal life.

The Positivist Approach. According to Kemper’s positivist approach, people have philogenetically inherited a set of primary emotions—fear, anger, joy, and depression—that serve evolutionary and adaptive needs and are sensitive to certain contingent environmental situations. For human beings, the main contingent environmental situations are of a social nature; therefore, social vicissitudes determine emotions unless society intervenes normatively with different demands.

Kemper states that emotions are universally elicited by two fundamental dimensions of social relationships: power and status. Possessing ade-

quate power produces feelings of security, possessing excessive power produces feelings of guilt, and possessing inadequate power produces anxiety. Fear develops when the power of two interacting individuals is uneven.

Anger emerges from interactions in which an expected, habitual status is denied or withdrawn by an actor considered responsible for the status reduction. Depression is tied to a loss of status, and the person considers himself or herself responsible for the loss. Individuals feel shame if they perceive that their status is too high; in the opposite case, they feel depression. Satisfaction results from interactions in which power is not felt as threatening and the status is expected and desired.

The positivist approach to the study of emotions attempts to (1) treat emotion as a variable, (2) undertake studies that embrace various cultures,

(3)develop the history of particular emotions, and

(4)examine the link between emotions and sociological variables such as social class, gender, and ethnicity.

The Functionalist Approach. In the functionalist perspective, innate emotional behavior may have developed in the course of evolution because of its value in being functional to adaptation. The purpose of emotions is to face emergency situations by estimating the importance of the events in order to organize appropriate action. First, emotions prepare the body to react to hostile or dangerous situations, predisposing the organism for the emergency and thus leading to rebalance and adaptation. As Darwin noted, fear is an emotion common to various species, as it is conducive to survival, aids in adaptation, and is linked to a safeguarding mechanism that is evident in the first phases of life.

Emotions also have the function of interpersonal signaling. That is, they produce the effect of communicating the state of the organism to the outside world. The variety and specificity of emotions reflect the flexibility of the forms of adaptation to the environment. Therefore, for example, fear helps avert danger, sadness is a call for help, and happiness is a phase of recovery after the attainment of a goal.

The Conflict Approach. The conflict theory of emotion can be found in the works of Coser and

Collins, according to whom the crucial determinant of emotion is membership in competing groups and classes. Emotion, Coser says, is a resource that can be mobilized, directed, and exploited in conflicts over power. Moreover, it can be used to create emotional loyalty and solidarity. Human biological nature supplies emotional energy, but the differentiation and management of emotion are achieved by competing groups that fight for control over the means of emotional reproduction, that is, the resources for assembling the ritualistic arousal of emotions in support of one’s group. According to conflict theory, persons not only manage their own emotions but also to stimulate, suppress, or transform emotions in other people. This also happens at the collective level. For example, hostility perceived as coming from external groups increases in-group solidarity, and emotion is intensified by the presence of a large number of people in an expressive ritual.

For Collins, emotional energy is an essential part of the model of chain ritual interaction, and he maintains that the basis of every interaction is a minimum feeling of positivity toward others. Thus, a person accepted in a conversation receives from that experience not only an increase of positive emotional energy but also additional emotional resources (trust, warmth, enthusiasm) with which to negotiate in the next interaction.

The Interactionist Approach. In the interactionist approach, emotions essentially result from social interaction. They differ according to the social and cultural worlds one belongs to and thus continuously change.

Symbolic interactionists draw a distinction between biological emotions and social sentiments. An emotion is fixed in the human organism, is experienced concurrently with bodily change, and consists of a fixed configuration of bodily sensations and gestures in response to simple, standard stimuli. In contrast, a sentiment originates through cultural definition and social interaction and continues over time in enduring social relationships. The expressive gestures and internal sensations of a sentiment are culturally defined and can be altered according to the situation and on a broader cultural scale, since sentiments are not fixed in human biological nature. In the course of interaction, differences among sentiments are developed,

and sentiments are redefined continuously through encounters and relationships.

Goffman has examined the system of rules that dominate interaction and the efforts made by individuals to be in tune with the emotional states of a situation. This control of impressions essentially is a strategy for avoiding embarrassment or shame and is inspired by pride and the desire to make a positive impression.

According to Goffman, embarrassment is linked to the impression of people transmitted to others and is a phenomenon that blocks interactions among individuals and makes them unable to interact. The attitudes deriving from this process violate behavioral standards shared with others and cause inappropriate behaviors. Embarrassment, however, is a normal part of everyday life, since it is a manifestation of adaptation to social organization. One structures in several ways other people’s perception of oneself according to the various roles one takes on. What creates embarrassment and uneasiness for an individual is the diversity of multiple interactive situations, which imply different and often discordant rules of behavior. Goffman also describes the process of emotion management: By managing the impressions others have of them, people facilitate their goals and attract the responses they need. Often, however, expression management involves inauthentic sentiments to avoid situationally inappropriate emotional gestures, such as laughter at a funeral or a forced smile on meeting an enemy. Emotion management is guided by implicit and shared social rules about appropriate or inappropriate displays of sentiment and emotion. These emotional rules constitute a normative framework of expectations that people take into account.

The Social Constructivist Approach. For costructionist theorists, emotions are not natural answers but experiential and expressive models determined by the sociocultural context; they are learned answers that have neither natural contents nor functions and are tied to the conservation of the individual and the species. From the costructionist point of view, emotions are complex syndromes whose meaning and function can be understood only by referring to the social system of which they are part.

According to costructionists, emotions are functional, as they are socially constructed and pre-

scribed to maintain and support a certain system of values. Therefore, a community will try to promote emotional manifestations that are functional to the maintenance of a socially founded moral order and will try to penalize and remove emotions that are in opposition to the moral order. Examples of how an emotion with a negative connotation, such as hatred, can be promoted and prescribed by a community include Nazi Germany and the Ku Klux Klan. In both cases, hatred became the accepted emotional behavior, as its negative side was socially nationalized. Does the ethics of success on which contemporary Western culture is founded not use in a functional way the emotion of envy as a motivational force for the individual?

SOCIAL IMPACT OF SENTIMENTS

Imagining a passionate individual in total isolation is impossible: Passions require sharing, participation, and a common horizon of values and rules. A person perceives his or her passions through those he or she is able to stimulate in other people and decodes them on the basis of their reactions. There is no passion without a mental or a real relational context.

‘‘Others’’ are necessary interlocutors for the expression of sentiments that involve a mutual exchange: Often children wait to be in the presence of an obliging listener before venting their emotions. Moreover, some places are considered socially more suitable than others for expressing certain emotions. For example, aggressiveness is more often shown in a stadium than in a church.

Research on large social groups shows that the distribution of specific emotions (pain, jealousy, love) varies from one social group to another, while studies conducted at the micro level indicate that the experience and expression of an emotion, as well as attempts to control it, are influenced by socialization and the prevailing situational factors.

A society is certainly founded on some sociostructural presuppositions, but it cannot function if it does not also rest on sentiments, beliefs, and obligations. These factors act as a social glue, as an ‘‘a priori’’ that, without being the object of codification or knowledge from individuals is nonetheless necessary for society to function.

One of these psychosocial elements is trust, which represents a precontractual requirement of the fulfillment of social exchanges. As Simmel maintained, society would disintegrate in the absence of trust among men.

It is not trust alone that supports social order, but trust is one of the psychosocial elements that play a fundamental role in maintaining the social system, even if structural theories neglect it. Trust is a powerful cultural resource, a precondition for a full use of other resources, such as entrepreneurship, citizenship, and legality. It is an intangible resource, like the spirit of belonging or consent.

Different social objects can be invested with trust, and so there can be various types of trust:

1.Generalized trust gives people an ontological security about the system.

2.Segmental trust involves entire institutional segments of society, such as the economy and justice.

3.Technological trust involves the expert systems such as transportation and computer science networks.

4.Organizational trust refers to real organizations such as the army and the university.

5.Commercial trust refers to goods with a specific trademark or produced in certain countries.

6.Positional trust is invested in particular social roles, such as priests and doctors.

7.Personal trust can refer to virtues revealed by public or private persons.

The social objects in which trust is placed can be found in one’s own society or in foreign societies. From this fact arises the distinction between inner trust and outer trust. One speaks of focused trust when trust is placed in a particular category of objects; one speaks of diffuse trust when one metaphorically refers to the trustful or distrustful atmosphere that pervades the society. This climate can be incorporated in a culture as well as in a normative perspective. For example, a large part of Italian fiscal legislation appears to be based on distrust of the honesty of the contributors. Trust in a specific object can be justified in an indirect way,