The sociology of emotions: Four decades of progress

Definitions and types of emotions

Denzin (2009 [1984]: 66) defines emotion as ‘a lived, believed-in, situated, temporally embodied experience that radiates through a person’s stream of consciousness, is felt in and runs through his body, and, in the process of being lived, plunges the person and his associates into a wholly new and transformed reality – the reality of a world that is being constituted by the emotional experience’. For Kemper (1987: 267), Seymour Epstein’s definition of a primary emotion is useful: ‘a complex, organized response disposition to engage in certain classes of biologically adaptive behaviors … characterized by a distinctive state of physiological arousal, a distinctive feeling, or affective state, a distinctive state of receptivity, and a distinctive pattern of expressive reactions’. Lawler (1999: 219) defines emotions as relatively brief, positive or negative evaluative states, which have physiological, neurological and cognitive elements. Brody (1999: 15) sees emotions as motivational systems with physiological, behavioral, experiential and cognitive components that have a positive or negative valence (they make one feel good or bad), which vary in intensity and tend to be induced by interpersonal situations or events that merit our attention because they affect our well-being. While Scherer (2005: 697) defines emotion as an episode of organismic change ‘in response to the evaluation of an external or internal stimulus event as relevant to major concerns of the organism’.

Although the general term currently most widely used is simply that of ‘emotion’, it is important to distinguish between different classes of affective states.

Primary emotions are considered to be universal, physiological, of evolutionary relevance and biologically and neurologically innate, while secondary emotions, which can be a result of a combination of primary emotions, are socially and culturally conditioned. According to Kemper (1987), the primary emotions are fear, anger, depression and satisfaction, while Turner (1999: 145) identifies them as satisfaction–happiness, aversion–fear, assertion–anger, disappointment–sadness and startlement–surprise. Emotions such as guilt, shame, love, resentment, disappointment and nostalgia are considered to be secondary emotions.

Gordon (1981: 566–567) distinguishes between emotions and sentiments, which according to him are ‘socially constructed pattern[s] of sensations, expressive gestures, and cultural meanings organized around a relationship to a social object’. Lawler (2001: 326–328) distinguishes between global emotions, or generic responses to the outcome of an interaction, which are involuntary and not conditioned by interpretation or cognitive attribution, and specific emotions, which actors associate with specific objects and are defined through interpretive effort. Kemper (1978) also distinguishes between structural, situational and anticipatory emotions.

Jasper (2011: 286–287) establishes the following typology of emotions: bodily urges, such as sexual desire or the need to defecate; reflex emotions, which are short-term reactions to our immediate environment, both physical and social, such as anger, fear or joy; moods, or lasting affective states, not very intense and lacking a specific object; and reflexive emotions, like ‘affective loyalties’, such as love, respect and trust, or ‘moral emotions’, involving feelings of approval and disapproval.

In short, we can state that emotions constitute the bodily manifestation of the importance that an event in the natural or social world has for a subject. Emotion is a bodily consciousness that signals and indicates this importance, regulating in this way the relationships that a specific subject has with the world. In its most basic expression this involves three elements: (a) the assessment/appraisal; (b) of an event in the world; and (c) made by an individual.

Without doubt, the ‘self’, the feeling subject, constitutes the central reference upon which emotions turn. According to Denzin (2009 [1984]), the linkage of emotion to self is, in essence, a matter of definition. However, it is evident that the nature of emotions is relational (Burkitt, 2002, 2014; de Rivera and Grinkis, 1986). The concrete emotion that a subject feels will depend on what the perceived consequences of interactions with others are for the survival, well-being, needs, goals and personal plans of the self (Stryker, 2004: 3). The subject of emotions is not, therefore, a being or body hermetically isolated from its environment, but is a subject who must by necessity achieve its goals in relationship with others and other things in its environment.

The complexity of emotions

The apparent simplicity of human emotions hides abundant complexities, problems and paradoxes.

The emotions a subject feels should never be considered as simple mechanical or physiological responses to variations produced in the environment. As different theories have stressed, a subject’s emotional experience depends on many factors: How an act is evaluated consciously and/or unconsciously; to whom or what the cause/responsibility for an act is attributed; the subject’s expectations in the situation; the subject’s active social identity at each moment; and the subject’s identification with other persons or groups.

According to appraisal theories of emotion (Brody, 1999: 23; Scherer, 2001), human beings are not mere sentient biological mechanisms, as we cognitively evaluate the elements in our environment before we experience or express our emotions. Applying to all emotions Freud’s idea that anxiety warns individuals of a serious danger to their mental health, Hochschild (1983) argues that emotions function as messengers for the self; they carry out a signal function and are, therefore, adaptive and useful in both the evolutionary long-term and the interactive short-term (Burke and Stets, 2009; Heise, 2007; Scheff, 1990; Stryker, 2004). But in addition to carrying out a signal function, emotional experiences also have an impact and leave a mark, sometimes one that is enduring and which conditions the future disposition of the subject.

According to attribution theories (Lawler et al., 2008: 523), the emotion experienced does not depend only on the event itself, but also on the causal attribution made by the subject. If the individual believes that someone else has been the cause of an undesirable event, he/she will feel anger, and if the subject believes him/herself to be the cause, the response will be guilt or regret; finally, if the event is perceived to be caused by fate, the response will be sadness or despair (Brody, 1999: 24).

According to expectation states theory (Turner and Stets, 2006: 36), the assessment of an object, event or person will depend on the prior expectations of the subject, which can affect the resulting emotional experience. In the sphere of social interaction, a key factor is if individuals meet the expectations awakened in others based on their position of power or status.

According to identity theories (Stryker, 2004), which recognize and address the fact that both role identities as well as social and group identities operate in culturally defined positions within the social structure, emotions are also linked to the expectations that actors have in each social interaction: to the extent that an interaction validates or does not validate their identity they will feel positive or negative emotions (Burke and Stets, 2009).

Some theories, such as intergroup emotions theory, show that the emotions subjects’ experience are the result not only of what happens to them personally but of what happens to the social groups to which they belong and/or identify with (Devos et al., 2002; Mackie et al., 2000; Yzerbyt et al., 2003). Thus, as Durkheim argued in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, group, collective and socially shared emotions exist (Bar-Tal et al., 2007; Braithwaite, 2004; Von Scheve and Ismer, 2013; Von Scheve and Salmela, 2014), as do processes of emotional contagion (Hatfield et al., 1994).

The complexity of human emotions is also a result of the dialectic existing between emotional experience and expression, the capacity that emotions have to transmute and form successive emotional structures, and the multiple compositions that shape the nature of any affective state.

In the world of emotions, a fundamental distinction must be made between internal emotional experience (subjective feelings) and emotional expression (the external manifestation of emotions). What we feel can be expressed through words, facial expressions, vocal tones, actions and physiological changes. Emotional expressions are key in social interactions (Von Scheve, 2012). However, the existing relationship between internal experience and external expression is confusing and problematic (Brody, 1999). First, emotional expression cannot be reduced to the simple and mere manifestation of an internal state, as expression, oriented toward communication with another, emerges in the context of social interaction (Marinetti et al., 2011: 32; Thoits, 1996). A small child that falls may cry because he has hurt himself, or he may cry because he wants his parents’ attention. Second, it has not been demonstrated that internal feelings produce physiological or external bodily changes. For Damasio (1994), it is the physiological changes that trigger the feelings: we do not tremble because we feel afraid; we feel afraid because we tremble. In short, external manifestations have an emotion-expressive function, but also a social communicative function (Marinetti et al., 2011: 32).

The study of emotions is never simple, because emotions are part of an active process and can undergo multiple and enigmatic transmutations that are both voluntary and involuntary, or conscious and unconscious. Shame can become anger, happiness can turn to weeping, pain into pleasure. Repression, denial, displacement, projection, sublimation and attribution are some of the defense mechanisms that can alter our emotions (Turner, 2008: 326). In addition, it is obvious that we do not experience isolated emotions, one at a time, nor do the emotions constitute static states in time (Williamson, 2011). Our emotional lives are dynamic processes of multiple sequences and emotional structures.

Finally, the complexity of emotions is also reflected in their composition. Scherer’s multicomponent theory of emotions (2001) considers the following five components: cognitive, neurophysiological, motivational, expressive and subjective. Shott (1979: 1318) argues that at least two elements – physiological arousal and cognitive labeling as affect – are necessary for an actor to experience an emotion. Thoits (1989: 318) distinguishes between appraisals of situational stimuli, physiological or bodily changes, expressive gestures, and cultural labels applied to specific combinations of the first three components. In short, subjective conscious feeling constitutes only one of the essential elements involved in the experience of emotions. Furthermore, emotional states can be classified according to several dimensions, such as their valence (positive/negative), potency (strong/weak) and arousal (active/passive) (Heise, 2007; Lively and Heise, 2004; Rogers and Robinson, 2014; Scholl, 2013; Smith and Schneider, 2009).

The social nature of human emotions

The use of the sociological perspective is essential to understand the innumerable emotions that make up the affective universe of human beings. Despite the implicit meaning in many of the metaphors used in current language (Kövecses, 1990), emotions are not, according to Gregory Bateson, a specific substance, but rather, patterns of relationship which link the self with its environment, fundamentally with others – in other words, with the social world (Burkitt, 2002: 151). Kemper’s social relational theory (1978) argues that primary emotions are a product of the outcome of interactions in two basic social dimensions, power and status: Fear is the outcome of an interaction in which an actor is subject to a power greater than his/her own; anger appears when we believe someone else is responsible for denying us merited status or prestige; depression emerges when an actor loses status, but sees him/herself as responsible for the loss; and finally, ‘satisfaction results from interactions in which the power outcome is nonthreatening’, and status outcomes are similar to what was expected or desired (Kemper, 1987: 275).

Both the meaning and understanding of every one of the innumerable feelings which form our broad emotional universe are intimately connected to specific relational patterns, in other words, to their specific social nature. What we feel in a social situation will depend on the content and outcome of the interaction, the balance we obtain from the exchange, the type of social relationship that connects us to the other, the relevant norms and values, and a broad set of other social factors. Thus, by analyzing the existing social structures and social factors which condition an emotion, and analyzing the expression, behavior and social consequences stemming from it, we can reach a greater understanding of each emotion. Understanding the social life of emotions and establishing adequate sociological definitions of them are essential to gain understanding of not only the complex world of emotions but also that of human beings in the context of the processes and structures of social interaction (Barbalet, 2009; Bericat, 2005; Charmaz and Milligan, 2006; Jacoby, 2012; Lewis and Weigert, 1985).

The emotional nature of social reality

In all social phenomena, without exception, emotions are present and play a fundamental role. This is true in those collective phenomena in which intense passion occupies a central place (e.g. festivals, sporting competitions, the response to terrorist actions and political revolutions), as well as in more intimate social relations, such as within the family and in friendships, which are charged with lasting though often almost imperceptible feelings, and which give flavor to every minor daily encounter.

The two basic dimensions of sociability are the symbolic or intercommunicative dimension and the energetic or interactive dimension. Hence, social reality is always culture, communication and consciousness, and at the same time, structure, energy and action. This is why emotions are a constituent part of all social phenomena. Due to their informational and expressive nature, emotions are one of the three fundamental components of the intercommunicative dimension of sociability (cognitions, values and emotions). But due to their energetic and motivational nature, emotions are also determinants of individual will, one of the three components of the interactive dimension of sociability (natural energy, social power and individual will).

In short, emotions are a constituent part of any social phenomenon, whether it be conflict between partners (Retzinger, 1991), violence (Collins, 2008), the Christmas season (Schervish et al., 1996), law and legal processes (Grossi, 2015; Nussbaum, 2006), the attack on September 11 (Burkitt, 2005; Kemper, 2002), politics (Demertzis, 2013), comedy series on television (Weaver, 2010), or trends in the stock market (Berezin, 2009). And this fact requires the development of a sociology which studies the complex existing affective structures and emotional dynamics in the context of social life. As Thoits (1989: 333–334) has pointed out, emotion concepts are being incorporated as intervening variables in substantive sociological research on such diverse topics as charisma, gender roles, the division of labor in the home, responses to stress, the reaction of battered women to violence, group solidarity and inequality in intimate relationships. The incorporation of emotions into this research makes it possible to provide more specific and more detailed explanations of these important social phenomena.

The place of emotions in sociology

The sociology of emotions was born in the second half of the 1970s, initiated by the research of three pioneers: Arlie R Hochschild, Thomas J Scheff and Theodore D Kemper (Bericat, 2000).

Hochschild was the first to use the term in 1975, reflecting on the relationship between emotion and gender. In 1979 she published an article in which, through concepts such as feeling rules or emotion work, she demonstrated the existing relationship between culture, politics and emotions. The culture defines what, when and how we should feel. In her book, The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling (1983), she analyzed the emotion management that must be carried out by certain service workers, such as flight attendants. Scheff published an article in 1977 in which he linked social rituals to a process of emotional catharsis, and another in 1988 in which he synthesized his sociological theory of shame and pride. In Microsociology, Discourse, Emotion and Social Structure (1990) he presents an argument for incorporating emotions into the core of sociological meta-theory, based on the idea that maintaining social bonds is the most important of human motivations. Kemper’s book, A Social Interactional Theory of Emotions, published in 1978, presents his structural theory of emotions, based on two basic dimensions of social interaction: power and status. In an article from 1981, he summarized a theoretical debate that emerged between positivism and social constructivism, and in another article from 1987 he tried to integrate both positions by distinguishing between primary and secondary emotions. In 1990 he edited an important collection with contributions from many of the pioneers in the sociology of emotions.

Included among these pioneers are: Randall Collins (1975, 1981, 2004, 2008), who has developed a theory of ritual interaction based on the concept of ‘emotional energy (EE)’; David R Heise (1979, 2007), who has developed the ‘Affect Control Theory’; and others like NK Denzin (2009 [1984]), SL Gordon (1981), S Shott (1979), PA Thoits (1985, 1989, 1996), C Clark (1987), M Hammond (1983) and L Smith-Lovin (Smith-Lovin and Heise, 1988). To these must be added others who have expanded the body of literature on the sociology of emotions through diverse and important contributions over the last four decades: JH Turner, JE Stets, JM Barbalet, KJ Lively, EJ Lawler, DD Franks, DT Robinson, PJ Burke, J Clay-Warner, JM Jasper, H Flam, I Burkitt, S Schieman, E Summers-Effler, J Kleres, E Illouz or M Berezin.

Various academic journals have dedicated special issues to the study of emotions: Symbolic Interaction 1985, 8(2) (Symbolic interaction and emotions); Rationality and Society 1993, 5(2) (Rationality and emotions); International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 1996, 16(9/10) (Social psychology and sociology of emotions); Advances in Group Processes 2004, 21 (Identity theory and emotions); European Journal of Social Theory 2004, 7(2) (Anger in political life); Journal of Social Issues 2007, 63(2) (Emotional climate and security); Theory and Society 2009, 38(4) (Emotions and the economy); Emotion Review 2012, 4(3) (Social-constructionist approaches to emotions); Emotion Review 2014, 6(3) (Culture, social structure, and emotions); and Emotion Review 2015, 7(1) (Methodological innovations). In addition, several important collections have also been published: Franks and McCarthy (1989), Kemper (1990), Bendelow and Williams (1998), Goodwin et al. (2001), Barbalet (2002), Stets and Turner (2006, 2014), Clay-Warner and Robinson (2008), Greco and Stenner (2008), Hopkins et al. (2009), Demertzis (2013) and Von Scheve and Salmela (2014).

It is clear that since its birth, the sociology of emotions has developed tremendously. However, if social interaction and emotions are intimately linked, as has been argued here, we must ask why the sociology of emotions emerged so late. We should also ask if sociology in its foundational or classical epoch incorporated the emotions into its analysis.

A reading of the works of the classical sociologists, as well as those of other thinkers of the 19th century, reveals that these first social scientists incorporated the emotions into their work in a spontaneous and natural manner. However, the gradual advance of modern culture, the exclusive and excluding legitimacy that the positivist paradigm began to acquire in the social sciences and the hegemony ultimately reached by cognitivism in the middle of the 20th century led to the almost complete disappearance of the emotions in both social theory and research. Only with postmodern social and cultural change was the door opened to new approaches, facilitating a re-encounter between the social sciences and emotions.

Although the major 19th-century social thinkers, Marx (worker alienation), Durkheim (social rituals), Weber (Protestant desire for love) and Freud (anxiety), considered affective phenomena in their work (Denzin, 2009 [1984]; Shilling, 2002), emotions occupied a relatively marginal analytical place, as can be seen in Weber’s typology of social action. Only Charles H Cooley, with his theory of the looking-glass self explicitly placed emotional dynamics at the centre of social interaction (Turner and Stets, 2005: 106–107). However, a detailed analysis of Suicide, by Durkheim, and the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism of Weber reveals the significant role that emotions play in these two paradigmatic sociological studies. These authors also demonstrate that any sociological theory that does not consider the emotions involved in the social phenomena it is attempting to explain or understand will be incomprehensible (Bericat, 2001a, 2001b).

What, therefore, is the place of emotions in sociology? Schieman (2006: 493), in his work on anger, emphasizes that an essential question for sociology is the following: ‘What can we learn about social life by studying anger?’ As we have seen, the analysis of any emotion offers us a unique perspective from which we can observe certain essential aspects of specifically human social interaction. However, despite the great interest in understanding the social nature of each of the emotions, the primary interest of the sociologist should be to understand the emotional nature of social life, in other words, the emotional structure and dynamics present in the social phenomena that are the object of study.

In conclusion, sociological analysis should always include the emotions felt by participants in specific social phenomena, practices, situations, actions, events, structures and processes.

The sociological analysis of emotions

The evident macro-sociological and empirical projection of the micro-sociological theories of Kemper, Scheff and Collins can illustrate a necessary path for integrating micro- and macro-analyses.

Although Kemper’s theory begins with the analysis of a concrete situation in which two individual actors interact, it predicts the resulting emotions based on the two basic structural dimensions of sociability. These emotions are not a result of the individuals’ biological nature, but of the power/status associated with their social positions and the variations in power/status they experience in the course of the social interaction (Clay-Warner and Robinson, 2008; Kemper, 2011). In the same way, social actors’ emotional energy (EE), produced in every micro-social encounter, whether of a hierarchical (power) or egalitarian (status) character, is the result of the structurally accumulated energy in interaction ritual chains (Collins, 1981, 2004). For Scheff (1994: 4), who studies episodes of shame and rage in microscopic detail, the analysis of the parts and the whole (part/whole analysis) ‘places equal emphasis on the smallest parts of a social system, the words and gestures in discourse, and the largest wholes, the institutions that exist within and between nations’.

Thus, the sociological importance given to fear and anger, on the one hand, and shame and pride, on the other, are explained not so much by their importance in individuals’ psychic lives, but by the fundamental role they play in the social structure and in social dynamics. Fear and anger are the central emotions in the interactive dimension of sociability (power), while shame and pride are the central emotions in the intercommunicative dimension (status).

Fear constitutes a broad emotional family composed of feelings such as worry, anxiety, panic, terror or horror, which differ both in content and in intensity. According to Kemper (1978, 1987), individuals feel guilt if they perceive themselves to possess excess power, and they feel fear–anxiety if they lack sufficient power. For Barbalet (1998: 161), fear indicates that the future interests of the actor are threatened. In this sense, Hume (1911 [1739]) pointed out that both fear and hope depend on the likelihood that an event will happen, a desirable event in the case of hope, and an undesirable event in the case of fear. Barbalet (1998) distinguishes between the cause of fear, which is vulnerability and an actor’s relative lack of power in relation to something out in the world, and the object of fear, which is the expectation of suffering harm.

Anger is the node for an extensive family of emotions which range from simple annoyance or indignation, to rage or fury. It is most often stimulated by perceived or real insult, injustice, betrayal, lack of equality, obstacles to achievement, incompetence and physical aggression (Schieman, 2006: 496; 2010). Anger emerges when an individual loses power or status and when this loss is considered remediable and another actor is considered responsible (Jasper, 2014; Kemper, 1990). Anger activates the power dimension in the form of hostility or aggression of the self toward the other, who is considered responsible for a negative or unjustified outcome. There are four forms of anger: frustration (because of undesirable outcomes), resentment (because of outcomes which benefit others), reproach (attributing blame to others) and anger itself (for undesirable outcomes in which blame is attributed to others) (Clore et al., 1993: 68).

Scheff argues that shame and pride are the fundamental social emotions. Cooley’s theory of the looking-glass self conceives the human being as always adopting the role of the other, arguing that we always see and evaluate ourselves from an external perspective. This basic mechanism of sociability involves three steps. The first is imagining how we appear to the other; the second is imagining how the other judges this appearance; and the final step is a response based on what we think of this judgment in the form of a feeling such as pride or shame (Cooley, 1964 [1902]). Any encounter can become embarrassing for any participant (Goffman, 1956: 265), who can suffer a loss of face and feel ashamed. Scheff’s theory of shame is based on the assumption of the ‘maintenance of bonds as the most crucial human motive’ (Scheff, 1990: 4). There are secure and insecure bonds. Secure bonds produce solidarity, and insecure bonds, alienation. In each encounter our bond with the other can be ‘built, maintained, repaired or damaged’ (Scheff, 1994: 1). Shame and pride constitute a ‘gyroscope’ which informs the individual of the state of his or her social bonds. We feel legitimate pride when the bond is secure, and shame, a very painful emotion, when we are rejected by or lose worth in the eyes of the other.

The system of social control is effective thanks to the compelling force of these four key emotions: fear, anger, shame and pride. However, as can be seen in the emotional classifications developed by different authors (Kemper, 1987; Ortony et al., 1988; Plutchik, 1980), many emotions still remain to be analyzed. Social scientists have contributed to the understanding of some, such as, for example, confidence and trust (Barbalet, 1998, 2009; Dunning and Fetchenhauer, 2010; Luhmann, 1979), empathy and sympathy (Clark, 1987; Smith, 1976 [1759]), grief and sadness (Charmaz and Milligan, 2006; Jacoby, 2012), boredom (Barbalet, 1999; Darden, 1999), love (Felmlee and Sprecher, 2006; Illouz, 2012), horror (Bericat, 2005) and disgust (Douglas, 2002; Nussbaum, 2006).

The emotions in sociological analysis

Sociology has incorporated, and must continue incorporating in its different areas of study, the analysis of three types of social emotions: (a) interactional emotions, that is, the affective dispositions, emotional states and emotional processes related to the different positions that actors occupy in the social structure; (b) group and collective emotions, that is, those that subjects experience or express by being a member of a group or forming part of a collective in a specific social situation; and (c) emotional climates and cultures, that is, the transient emotional states or the general and lasting moods rooted in the essential characteristics of a specific society or social unit.

First, bearing in mind that emotions can only exist in the body of individual organisms, sociology must study the emotions experienced by individuals as actors who occupy certain social positions (Gordon, 1990: 161). Thus, for example, anger is assumed to be a ‘masculine emotion’, one which women should repress (Brody, 1999; Hochschild, 1975). Those who occupy higher positions of power express anger more easily, while those that are in subordinate positions try to control their anger (Collet and Lizardo, 2010; Schieman, 2006: 508). ‘Because of the greater ability of those in power to define situations, including emotional ones, depression and anxiety often come to replace anger in the experience of subordinate actors’ (Freund, 1990: 467; Simon and Lively, 2010). However, anger, rage and indignation form part of the moral emotions (Stets et al., 2008) which are provoked by injustice, the violation of norms, social deviation and guilt. This explains their presence in both moral panics and social movements (Berry, 1999; Jasper, 2011; Van Stekelenburg and Klandermans, 2013).

The sociology of gender has studied emotional differences based on gender in great detail (Hess, 2015; Shields et al., 2006; Simon, 2014). Traditional cultures and societies associate women with emotionality, excluding men from the world of feelings. Women are encouraged to feel and express powerless emotions, such as fear and sadness, while men, on the other hand, must repress and hide these emotions, instead feeling and expressing powerful emotions, such as anger and pride (Brody, 1999). Both the conceptual approaches (feeling and expression rules, emotion management, surface and deep acting) and the empirical research of Arlie R Hochschild (1975, 1983, 2003), carried out using participant observation, content analysis and unstructured interviews, have had a tremendous impact on the development of sociologies of gender and work. The role that emotions play in work or in the culture of the workplace, the emotional content of different occupations, the social and personal consequences of emotion management, and the emotional structure of the workplace in comparison with the family have been the object of many studies (Clay-Warner and Robinson, 2008; Hochschild, 2003; Wharton, 2009).

Second, individuals experience and express group emotions and collective emotions because they are members of a group or form part of a collective in a determined social situation (Von Scheve and Ismer, 2013; Von Scheve and Salmela, 2014). For example, fear often emerges in social contexts, not as a mere individual reaction to a threat, but as the result of an intersubjective experience. ‘Thus, the conception of fear as an individual reaction to physical threat offers very little for an understanding of social behavior and action’ (Barbalet, 1998: 153).

The sociology of social movements has been an area in which the analysis of group and collective emotions has made an important contribution, deepening knowledge of specific social movements as well as leading to theoretical renewal in the fields of public opinion and political action (Berezin, 2014; Demertzis, 2013; Goodwin et al., 2001; Holmes, 2004; Jasper, 2011). Many emotions, such as indignation, moral shock, anger, fear, shame, pride and humiliation, condition and inspire social movements, whether in their origin, recruitment of members, maintenance of organization or in the struggle to achieve their objectives. Emirbayer and Goldberg (2005) theorize collective action and social movements, incorporating emotions based on the rejection of three erroneous postulates: that reason and emotion are mutually exclusive, that emotions are individual states of mind, that collective emotions lack analytical autonomy.

Lastly, it is clear that the basic structure and processes of a society create specific emotional climates, emotional cultures, or even societal emotions, which condition the general sentiments of the population (Bar-Tal et al., 2007; de Rivera, 1992; de Rivera and Páez, 2007; Smith-Lovin and Thoits, 2014; Solak et al., 2012). In this sense, a sociology of any emotion, such as for example, a sociology of fear, must analyze the cultural matrix in which fear emerges and address the patterns of social action commonly associated with it (Barbalet, 1998; Tudor, 2003: 244). Helena Flam (1998), using biographical interviews as her research technique, studied the role of fear in the communist regimes of Poland and East Germany. Thomas Scheff, using the microscopic analysis of verbal content and paralinguistic and visual behavior, studied the role of shame in micro family conflicts and in the macro-violence of the two world wars (Scheff, 1994).

Every emotion can be an essential component of very diverse social phenomena. For example, fear plays an important role in terrorism (Burkitt, 2005), unemployment (Barbalet, 1998: 158), the circulation of elites (Barbalet, 1998: 161), consumption (Miller, 1998), politics (Marcus, 2000), social movements (Jasper, 2011) and the economy (Berezin, 2009). However, it could be argued that today fear also constitutes a societal emotion, in other words, an emotion that essentially characterizes the ethos of our postmodern societies. The culture of fear (Furedi, 1997), or the culture of horror analyzed by Bericat (2005) using micro- and macro-analyses of the emotional content of the news published in North American newspapers, stems from characteristics which are essential aspects of our society as a risk society (Beck, 1992; Zinn, 2006) and a liquid society (Bauman, 2006). Every society or social unit fosters, in every age, specific characteristic emotions.

In short, through analyzing the emotions involved in social phenomena, sociology has broadened, deepened and renewed knowledge in different areas of study. The following particularly stand out: the sociology of gender (Brody, 1999; Shields et al., 2006), work (Clay-Warner and Robinson, 2008; Grandey et al., 2012; Hochschild, 1975, 1983, 2003; Lively, 2006; Wharton, 2009), organizations (Fineman, 2008), social movements (Emirbayer and Goldberg, 2005; Flam and King, 2005; Jasper, 2011) and mass media (Döveling et al., 2011; Knottnerus, 2010). Another areas, like health, law and justice, crime, politics, economy, consumption, leisure, religion, sport or space (Brown, 2011; Greco and Stenner, 2008; Grossi, 2015; Nussbaum, 2006; Reckwitz, 2012; Stets and Turner, 2014) are also incorporating the analysis of affective structures and emotional dynamics.