V. Managing Your Emotional Expression

1. Managing your emotional expression is part of emotional intelligence (James Gross): an ability to interpret your emotions accurately, communicating them constructively and solving relationship problems.

2. Emotional management is an ability to: (a) to influence what emotions you have, (b) when you have them, (c) how you experience them, (d) how you express them.

3. Managing Your Emotions After Occurrence: (a) some event triggers arousal; (b) we interpret our response; (c) we become aware of our emotions.

4. Two ways of dealing with emotions: Michael Argyle: (a) suppression; (b) venting. Suppression is caused by relational, social and cultural factors; we may suppress not only negative but also positive emotions. Suppression is a way of managing unavoidable and unwanted emotions but its effectiveness is marginal. Venting is allowing emotions to dominate thoughts and explosively expressing them. We vent both positive and negative emotions.

DISCUSSION STARTER 5: Consider your own use of suppression and venting.

What leads you to choose one or the other strategy? Are there limits to how often you vent or how long you suppress? What ethical considerations arise related to each strategy?

5. Preventing Emotions: (a) encounter avoidance: staying away from people, places and activities that provoke unwanted emotions; (b) encounter structuring: intentionally avoiding specific topics that trigger unwanted emotions; (c) focusing attention: devoting your attention to what does not provoke unwanted emotion; (d) deactivating: systematically desensitizing yourself to emotional experiences.

6. Reappraising Emotions: actively changing how you think about emotional situations to change your reaction to them: (a) before the negative emotion is triggered, call to mind positive aspects of the encounter; (b) consider short-term and long-term consequences of your actions.

VI. Online Communication and Emotion

1. John Suler: Online communication presents difficulties in emotional expression due to (a) asynchronicity and (b) invisibility.

2. Knowing that the communication is asynchronous and invisible we: (a) openly express emotions because we don’t get immediate feedback; (b) have the feeling of “not being there”; (c) have hard time empathizing or taking perspective; (d) do not take time to ask questions.

3. Therefore: (a) be aware that lack of empathy is not due to person’s character but rather the nature of online interaction, (b) actively seek out feedback (ask questions on perspective, communicate empathic concern); (c) be tolerant of aggression (save your messages for 24 hours before sending them).

DISCUSSION STARTER 6: Recall an online encounter in which you inappropriately expressed emotion. How did lack of empathy shape your behavior? Would you have communicated the same way face-to-face? What does this tell you about the relationship between feedback, empathy, and emotional

expression?

VI. Anger

1. Len Berkowitz, Eddie Harmon-Jones: Anger is a negative primary emotion that occurs when you are blocked or interrupted from attaining an important goal by an improper action of an external agent;

2. Anger is driven by the sense of something improper or unfair;

3. Usually anger is managed by suppression, especially when its expression is (a) unprofessional, (b) due to mistaken perceptions, (c) due to mistaken attributions. Chronically suppressing anger leads to chronic hostility.

4. Another anger management strategy is catharsis, when you openly express emotions for purging. Research shows that venting actually boosts anger.

5. To manage anger use: (a) encounter avoidance; (b) encounter structuring; (c) reappraisal.

6. Alternatively, use the Jefferson strategy of counting to ten.

7. Steps in anger management offered by Mayo Clinic (Michael’s Sound Bite 4-2): Carol Tavris: (a) take a time out; (b) after calming down, express your anger; (c) get some exercise; (d) think before you speak; (e) identify possible solutions; (f) speak for yourself; (g) learn to get over problems; (h) use humor, (i) practice relaxation, (j) know where to seek help. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/anger-management/MH00102

8. Deeply entrenched anger is a psychological problem.