The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (98 page)

resources. The basic argument in this work is that positive emotional experience is more likely when people occupy positive, high status identities, when they

have control over interactions in which they are embedded, and when they have

coping mechanisms available to them to handle any misfortunes that do occur.

As the sturctural symbolic interactionists would predict, those who occupy high

status, high power positions are more likely to experience pleasant, efficacious emotions as they maintain those identitites.

The Interplay of Affect and Instrumental Action

While the research on instrumental action and on emotional processes proceeded

without much cross-fertilization for a long time, several recent research projects look at how the two interact. The convergence of interests began with a theory

of emotions based on social exchange principles. Kemper (1978) proposed a

theory based on two dimensions of relationships that he argued were universal:

status and power. Relative positions on these two dimensions defined the key

aspects of a relationship and determined its emotional character (what Kemper

called structural emotions). Changes in status or power and attributions about

who was responsible for causing those changes led to specific emotions. For

example, status loss led to anger if the other person was responsible. The anger then motivated action to regain status. Status loss by another, if caused by

oneself, led to guilt.

Since Kemper's theory, several research streams have developed to examine

how instrumental exchanges affect emotional outcomes. The oldest and most

developed stream focuses on how perceptions of justice, equity, or fairness

develop from exchange interactions (see review in chapter 10 of Cook et al.,

1995). Indeed, this was a central concern of the original exchange theorists,

Homans, Blau, and Emerson. Not surprisingly, people feel they have been

unjustly treated and express anger when their rewards are lower than their

investments. Past reward experiences, status structures, power structures, and

reference groups all serve to complicate the process, however. People quickly

acclimate to any given levels of rewards (or a stable trajectory, like steadily rising rewards) and experience outcomes that fall below that expected level with a

sense of distressing loss (Molm, 1997). Closely related to expectation states

theory, status value theory argues that people generally expect congruence

between status value within a group and the level of rewards that one receives.

Therefore, people perceive fairness and are satisfied with their outcomes when

they receive what people like them generally get.

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Lynn Smith-Lovin

Power is related to perceptions of fairness in a somewhat more complicated

way. Power use (and its lack of reciprocity) lead to perceptions of unfairness, but coercive power use causes much more negative emotion than reward withholding (Molm, 1997, pp. 190±218). Even when the two types of power use result in

equivalent departures from reciprocity, coercive power is seen as more nasty and intentional. These negative feelings by the low power person lead to behavioral

resistance ± reward withholding and even retaliation. This reaction, in turn,

makes the high power user lose part of the ability to reward; since loss is

experienced very sharply, the retaliation generally helps to mute coercive power use below what would be expected in the absence of the emotional response.

A more recent research thread in social exchange deals with the related

question of how trust and affective commitment (positive feeling) build up in

exchange relationships. Edward Lawler and his colleagues have posited a model

through which repeated exchanges each create small amounts of positive emo-

tion, cumulating over time to create a positive attitude toward the exchange

partner and behavioral commitment (high levels of exchange) to the ex-

change relationship (Lawler and Yoon, 1998). One of the most interesting

elements of this work is its analysis of how networks evolve over time in

response to emotional outcomes. In systems with some equal and some unequal

relations, pockets of positive, cohesive, committed relations tend to form among the power-equals, cutting them off from the more powerful actors within the

system. Since the more powerful actors generally have more potential exchange

partners, they spread their interactions among a large number of alters and

develop committed relationships with very few. On the other hand, when some-

what lower power, but power-equal, actors can exchange more frequently with

each other, they form highly cohesive subgroups.

Other network theorists have concentrated on the link between uncertainty,

behavioral commitment and trust. Basically, these researchers show that trust

can only develop when an exchange is risky (i.e. the situation allows for

untrustworthy behavior) and the trading partner acts in a reliable, trustworthy

manner. Kollock (1994), for example, showed that trust and behavior commit-

ment develops more quickly when the quality of the traded good is difficult to

determine (and therefore the opportunity to deceive is present). Molm (2000b)

showed that trust and affective commitment developed to highest levels in

reciprocal exchange (where partners did not negotiate to binding agreements),

especially when the power structure made behavioral commitment advantageous

for both.

Just as exchange researchers have shown how emotions are embedded in

exchange structures, expectation states researchers have begun looking at how

identity meanings and emotions can shape status processes. When status hier-

archies form in small, task-oriented groups, the high status people often experience more positive emotions, since they are encouraged to make contributions

and their contributions are more often marked by positive evaluation. Conver-

sely, the lower status people often feel negative emotions about being ignored or having their contributions commented on negatively. Lovaglia and Houser

(1999) demonstrated that these emotions tend to mute the status structure.

Social Psychology

419

The lower status group members are resistant to influence because of their

negative emotion, while the higher status members may be unusually accepting

because of their good feelings. Exchange researchers have noted the same thing

in the interaction of power, influence, and emotion: the negative emotion felt by low power people makes them much less likely to accept influence from high

power people for whom they would normally hold high expectations (Willer et

al., 1997).

The group processes researchers are also beginning to explore how identity

interacts with status and power processes. Identity that links low and high power positions seems to mute power use in exchange networks (Lawler and Yoon,

1998). If the subject in an expectation states experiment shares an identity with a simulated actor, that piece of positive identity information seems to combine just like other status information to form performance expectations (Kalkhoff and

Barnum, 2000).

Conclusions about the State of Sociological Social

Psychology

Psychology

The research strategy chosen by the major theoretical programs in sociological

social psychology has paid off handsomely. Isolating power, status, and identity processes so that they could be studied in pure form has led to a dramatic growth of theoretical knowledge in the past 25 years. Indeed, we have progressed so far that researchers are starting to put the picture back together again. In just the past five years, several studies have appeared that examine how status, power,

identity, and emotion interact in more complex situations. Our increasing under-

standing of these interactions has also increased the interplay between experi-

mental, survey, and ethnographic researchers. As the experimentalists, who

primarily test theories, develop more complex views of how basic processes

interact, their theories become more useful to survey and ethnographic research-

ers, who necessarily deal with a more complex social situation.

It is, of course, more difficult to say where we are going than to say where we

have been. One expects the current trend toward studying the interactions

between status, power, identity, and emotion to continue. But advances will

certainly come within the faces of social psychology as well.

In social exchange, people are beginning to think about how exchange net-

works change. Studies of network dynamics ± how networks evolve through

different power structures ± will constitute much future work. Since the research has focused so heavily on networks where exchange in one relation is negatively

correlated with exchange in another, the future might lie in the study of posi-

tively connected networks ± those where different resources are obtained from

alters or where resources must be passed through an intermediary to obtain

rewards. And ultimately, of course, we will have to study how complex exchange

networks that mix the different types of connections operate.

In the study of status processes, theorists are beginning to consider what

happens when you relax the basic scope conditions under which the theory

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Lynn Smith-Lovin

should operate: the collectively oriented, goal seeking group. The exchange-

based logic of the theory depends on these scope conditions (they are the only

reason why we would expect an actor to defer to a higher expectation alter in

order to obtain the collective reward). So the puzzle is why so many of the

expectation states processes seem to operate outside the range of these situa-

tions. Researchers will explore a variety of avenues before understanding the

phenomenon, but one suspects that issues of identity will play a major role in the answer.

The study of identity and emotion must focus to some degree on exploring the

differences between the Heise and Burke models that now dominant the field.

There also may be a return to the more network-ecological view of the self that

characterized the structural symbolic interactionists' early efforts (Stryker,

1980). Once we understand how the social actor attempts to maintain identity

meanings through social interaction and emotion display, we can return to the

central question of how those identities and their meanings are obtained, and

what evokes them in one situation as opposed to another.

The research on emotion management and emotion norms has been largely

descriptive until now. Now that the existence of such norms (and their variation across historical time and across societies) is well established, we need additional work to establish the sources of the norms. What explains cultural variations in normative structure? How do emotion norms and other aspects of the social

fabric co-evolve over history? In addition, Hochschild's (1983) original work

suggested a number of hypotheses that we need to explore. She suggested that

the class structure influences emotional socialization, so that middle-class children learn skills that better suit them for emotional labor. She also argued that participation in emotional labor over a long period tends to alienate workers

from their authentic feelings, creating mental health problems. Data about

emotional experience over many occupations and class backgrounds will be

necessary to test such hypotheses.

Part VIII

Social Action

29

Immigrant Women and Paid

Domestic Work: Research, Theory,

and Activism

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo

Many commentators refer to paid domestic work as thèìnvisible occupation.''

The work occurs in private households; it is generally performed in isolation,

without the company of co-workers or managers; and in the United States it has

historically been the province of marginalized women, of women of color and of

immigrant women. The occupation did achieve national visibility for a moment

in 1993 with the revelation that two female nominees for attorney general had

hired undocumented immigrant workers to care for their children in their

homes. Yet even as national attention focused on nannies as domestic workers,

the objections raised by the Senate inquisitors, the media, and the constituents centered on thèìllegality'' of hiring unauthorized immigrant workers and in

particular on Zoe Baird's failure to pay the requisite taxes and make social

security payments. This focus obscured issues that have to do with basic work

rights of domestic workers. In fact, the media attention ignored the voices and

concerns of the domestic workers themselves.

Who performs paid domestic work in the United States today? While domestic

employees are a diverse group that include European au pairs, college students,

and laid-off aerospace workers, the principal entrants into the occupation are

Latina and Caribbean immigrant women. They represent a group of workers

who, due to their class, race, gender, and legal status, are among the most

disenfranchised and vulnerable in our society. Little wonder, then, that their

This chapter was originally published in Heidi Gottfried (ed.), Feminism and Social Change: Bridging Theory and Practice (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1996), copyright # Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 1996. Reproduced by kind permission of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.