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Sociological Introspection and Emotional Experience

Author(s): Carolyn Ellis


Source: Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring 1991), pp. 23-50
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction
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Sociological Introspection
and Emotional Experience
Although social constructionists now study emotions,
they neglect what emotion feels like and how it is experienced. This paper argues that social constructionists can
and should study how private and social experience are
fused in felt emotions. Resurrecting introspection (conscious awareness of awareness or self-examination) as
a systematic sociological technique will allow social constructionists to examine emotion as a product of the
individual processing of meaning as well as socially
shared cognitions. Examining introspection as a sociological process, this paper argues that introspection can
generate interpretive materials from self and others useful for understanding the lived experience of emotions.
Findings from four studies-one, self-introspective, and
the other three, interactive introspective examinations
with co-investigators-provide information about the
subjective part of emotion. They demonstrate the advantages of introspection in dealing with the complex, ambiguous, and processual nature of emotional experience.

Carolyn Ellis"
Of

South Florida

Sociologists, including symbolic interactionists, have been accused of neglecting emotions (Adler and Adler 1980; Meltzer, Petras, and Reynolds
1975; Stryker 198 1). Even now with the renewed emphasis on emotion,
sociologists continue to ignore what emotion feels like and how it is
experienced. This paper argues that sociologists can and should study
how private and social experience are fused in felt emotions. Resurrecting
introspection (conscious awareness of awareness or self-examination) as
a systematic sociological technique will allow sociologists to examine emotion as a product of the individual processing of meaning as well as socially
shared cognitions.

*Direct all correspondence t o Carolyn Ellis. Department of Sociology. University of South Florida.
Tampa, FL 33620.

Symbollc Interaction, 14( I ):23-50


ISSN 0 195-6086

Copyright 0 1991 by jAl Press, Inc.


All rights of reproduction in any form resewed.

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24

Symbolic Interaction Volume 14 / Number 1 / 1991

In the current resurgence in the study of emotions, social scientists have


focused on emotions as socially constructed, culturally influenced, and
managed (Harre 1986; Hochschild 1983; Shott 1979). Social constructionists contend that intrinsic to the constitution of emotions are contextual
considerations, local moral orders, moral imperatives of display, linguistic
practices, shared cognitions, and social roles. Averill ( 1 974), for instance,
writes of the cognitive core of emotion.
Certainly emotions involve shared cognitions and socially constructed
definitions. For example, many authors have demonstrated the sociocultural codes of possession and property that are necessary conditions for
jealousy (Clanton and Smith 1977; Davis 1936; Ellis and Weinstein 1986).
Yet, for this emotion to be felt in any particular case, these cultural beliefs
must be subjectively processed, as the following example illustrates:

Carl calls to tell me that since I cannot go to the party, he is taking another
woman. A twinge ricochets through my body. My stomach retracts as though
it is rolling over a ball placed in the middle of my abdomen. I recognize this
response as indicating jealousy. I have felt it before. Memories of similar situations
fight to get into my mind, not just the details, but also the emotions that went
along with them. Im not ready to think about what all this means, or even to
acknowledge yet that I am feeling jealous. Instead, I focus on getting information
that will tell me what is going on here.
Who is she? I inquire. A friend, he responds. Someone I used to date.
Were you ever sexual? No,he replies. Are you interested in being? No.
My gut relaxes; I seem to think more clearly. He continues, Listen, dont worry.
This is nothing. I just wanted to introduce her to some people. I want you to
come too.
Is he telling the truth? I dont know, but I feel relieved. I respond rationally,
No,I really have too much work to do. Saying these words makes me feel
more in control.
I hang up and think through what just happened. Was I really jealous? I feel I
was. I remember the questions I asked, the suspicion that lingered as I listened
for contradictory evidence, as,for example, a tone of voice indicating something
was going on. I tried to remember what it felt like-bodily tightening, mental
confusion, and a vague overall feeling of being on alert. Recognizing at this
moment that I had been feeling jealous then made the feeling ripple through
me again.
It wasnt totally unpleasant. I rather liked being reminded that 1 cared about
whether Carl was interested in other women. 1 even liked the adrenalin rush, the
moment of being out of control-it felt challenging, intense-although I feared
it at the same time.
I tell myself that there is no reason to be jealous. 1 know from past experience
that Carl would rather be with me. Besides I want to give him room to try out
other relationships. The jealousy starts to dissipate (Self-Introspective Fieldnotes
1988).

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Socio/ogical lntrospection and Emotional Experience

25

This example demonstrates the private processing-in this case, of memory, detail, feeling, recognition, physiological response, language, cognition, and tone of voice-that weds to sociocultural socialization of norms
of possession. The potency of these norms is documented by the subjects spontaneous and intense entry into jealousy mode in response to
a simple statement, one that is not threatening to this relationship. As the
process in the example shows, introspection varies from the descriptive
end of the continuum-where events, feelings, and thoughts are described
-to the analytic end-where the subject examines what she felt, why she
felt it, and whether such feeling is justified.
Few sociologists have examined lived emotional experience of this kind,
or looked into the details of the process by which people come to feel
the way they do. Hochschild ( 1983), in her insightful study of flight attendants, warns that we must not ignore the subjective aspects of emotions.
But she does not go as far as one could in examining the subjective process
of feeling management and redefinition of self. Do attendants blindly follow
emotion rules? What private arguments or self-dialogues occur as they
take on emotions? How do they actually feel? What is the process of
feeling management and redefinition of self?
Subjective processing must take into account physiological response,
another neglected part of emotional experience (Kemper 1 98 1; Scheff
1985). Physiological elements of lived experience are often ignored by
strong constructionists or regarded by moderate constructionists as
ingredients to be socially shaped (Armon-Jones 1986; Hochschild 1990;
Kemper 198 1). Harre ( 1 986:5), for example, is willing to admit only that
there might be leakages into consciousness from raised heartbeat,
increased sweating, swollen tear ducts and so on. Yet, the physical act
of sobbing uncontrollably after losing a loved one is more than just an
adjunct event. It is likely to be an important physiological cue for confirming
the authenticity of and thus intensifying the deep grief being experienced.
Scheff ( 1 985) suggests further that coarse emotions, such as grief and
fear, may even involve internal sequences that impact external expressive
signals.
Unfortunately, as Denzin ( 1985) observes, those few sociologists who
do examine the biological part of emotions, tend to sever the body from
the lived experience (see Wentworth and Ryan forthcoming, for an exception). But it is important to examine the role of physiological feeling in
lived experience, for example, in our embracing of feeling rules, and to
look at how people label physiological response or ignore it. Emotional
experience, including the physiological, is also essential to the authenticating process as a clue to self-knowledge/self identity (Hochschild 1983;
Morgan and Averill, forthcoming).

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26

Symbolic Interaction Volume 14 / Number 1 / 1991

Emotions result from applying personal interpretations of collectivelycreated rules to the situations in which we find ourselves (David Franks,
personal communication). Although what transpires individually and privately is appropriated from the public-collective realm (Wood 1986:197),
how the public-collective or social definition gets translated into the individually realized is a subject that can be penetrated deeply by introspecting
about our own experiences. In introspection, collective symbols become
embodied by individuals involved in continued interpretive apprehension
and transformation of these symbols (Rosaldo 1984:140). The meaning
they take on is a product of the mental-social complex and known to us
only through consciousness (Cooley 1 926:68).How social actors process
or appropriate the public into their personal autobiographies (Sarbin 1986)
to make sense of what is going on provides the private part of our emotion.
In some cases, constructionists are willing to examine emotion as private
as well as social experience, but they move quickly to the social part of
emotion, playing down its private essence as belonging to psychology?
Still, there is nothing unsociological in saying that individually lived experience includes subjective feelings and physiology which play a crucial part
in emotions (Kemper 1 98 1 ). Examining the private processing of feeling
does not have to imply irreducibility or an individualistic orientation (see,
for example, Gordon 1989). Furthermore, to argue that we can know our
emotions through introspection is not to counter the importance of context
and behavior in determining emotion (Bedford 1 986; Armon-Jones 1986).
N o r does it deny that our knowledge of emotions as well as the sentences
we use to describe them are enabled by culture (Solomon 1984).
Such would be true only for the over-psychological perspective on
introspection that deals with experience as if it was a solely internal
phenomenon, instead of an appropriation from the public order. Culture,
as Rosaldo ( 1984:1 50) says, is the very stuff of which our subjectivities
are created. Or, as Mead expressed it, the locus of mind (or the field of
which it is part) must indeed be social, but the focus lies within the individual
(Goff 1980).
The first step in studying this fusion of private and social is to acknowledge introspection, whether our own or that of others, as a sociological
technique that can provide access to private experiences. This paper
examines introspection as a sociological process and argues that it can
generate interpretive materials from self and others useful for understanding the lived experience of emotions. Findingsfrom four studies-one, selfintrospective, and the other three, interactive introspection examinations
with co-investigators-provide information about the subjective part of
emotion. They demonstrate the advantages of introspection in dealing with
the complex, ambiguous, and processual nature of emotional experience.

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Sociological Introspection and Emotional Experience

27

FROM A PSYCHOLOGICAL TO A
SOCIOLOGICAL INTROSPECTION
Sociological insight has been built on the introspective methods of its
forebears in philosophy and psychology (Heidegger,Husserl, Kulpe, Mead,
Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Titchener, Wundt). Yet modern social constructionists have neglected Cooleys affective orientation (Stryker 1981) and
introspective method for Meads more cognitive emphasis and technique
of understanding humans by studying what they do (Charon 1985).Many
researchers examining the development of modern sociology suggest
that in the post-Civil War era sociology was trying to prove itself a science
and claim scientific legitimacy apart from the physiologically-based behaviorism of psychologists (Camic 1986; Hinkle and Hinkle 1954; Ross
1979). Introspection as a method had already been rejected by the behaviorist psychologists as nonscientific (Grover 1982; Watson 19 13).
Grover ( 1982:206),for example, went so far as to say that with the advent
of Watsonian radical behaviorism in the 1900s, introspection became an
embarrassment to those psychologists aspiring to scientificrespectability.
For sociologists to have embraced introspection then would have hindered
the case for sociology as science.
Rosenberg ( 1988) suggests further that the sociological paradigm of
social factism-that sociologists must study social facts that exist outside
of individual consciousness-along with the more recent social behaviorist
paradigm prevented sociologists from dealing with self-concept, which
he defines as the totality of the individuals thoughts and feelings with
reference to the self as an object (3).The rejection of introspection as a
technique, along with the neglect of introspection as an object of study in
the form of thoughts and feelings, comes then from the idea that sociology
should define as its territory rational action (see Camic 1986) and social
facts (see Rosenberg 1988):
In theory, the gate in sociology has never been closed entirely to introspection. Some sociological and philosophical traditions closely allied with
sociology have maintained that understanding the meaning of ones own
experience and empathically interpreting meaning in the experience of
others constitute bases for inquiry? Along with ethnographic, feminist,and
hermeneutic approaches, social constructionism-including symbolic interaction, phenomenology, existential sociology, and, more recently, textual analysis-continue laying the groundwork for investigating emotions,
thoughts, and subjective meaning. Yet, social constructionists have not
attempted to use introspection in any systematic fashion to understand
social life.
Nevertheless, most researchers, and especially social constructionists,

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28

Symbolic Interaction Volume 14 / Number 1 / 1991

use data gathered introspectively at some point in their research, but


camouflage them as behavior, questionnaire responses, verbal reports,
and laboratory experiment results. Verbal reports, for example, are considered behavior observed by an experimenter, and are sometimes transformed into latencies and numbers of items correct (Ericsson and Simon
1980:2 16). while introspections are viewed as descriptions of inner states
reported by the subject (Boring 1953; Radford 1974). While in principal
introspection may be a verboten method, in practice it appears to be
prevalent and frequently used as an adjunct to other strategies (Grover
1982). As Kohut ( 1959) suggests, researchers have neglected the investigation of introspection because they are reluctant to acknowledge it
wholeheartedly as (their) mode of observation (465).
This neglect may also come from constructionists and others reaction
against the psychological view of introspection as implying self-contained
internal events. Coulter ( 1986: 122), for example, refers to the fallacious
doctrine of perceptual introspectionism, which leads us to think that emotions are internal events. Armon-Jones ( 1986:36) says that if it were
possible to identify emotions via introspection alone, then the notion of
appropriate context would be redundant and could not have the explanatory role which the constructionist ascribes to it. The real problem, however, has been the neglect of introspection as a sociological process, one
that is compatible with and necessary for the constructionist position. With
few exceptions (Denzin 197 1 ), introspection continues to be a taboo
subject among all sociologists.
The psychological approach ignored the socially constructed, processual
nature of thoughts, feelings, and introspection. Viewed as process, introspection, like any thinking, is covert communicative behavior. As private,
inner dialogue, it is enabled by publicly shared significant symbols, and,
thus, is inherently social (Lewis 1979). Because of the cognitive element
in human emotion (Averill 1974), the same is true for emotions.
Psychologists who used introspection presented it as a way to investigate
how an individual mind had constructed the world. For example, James
([ 18901 198 1:1 851) said: All people unhesitatingly believe that they feel
themselves thinking, and that they distinguish the mental state as an inward
activity or passion, from all the objects with which it may cognitively deal
(emphasis mine). Psychology de-emphasized the self-dialogue inherent
in introspection. It underplayed the impact of shared symbols on our
response to our own selves in inner conversation (Lewis 1979). Excluded
also was the role of external norms and social structure.
Introspection then is a social process as well as a psychological one. It
is active thinking about ones thoughts and feelings; it emerges from social
interaction; it occurs in response to bodily sensations, mental processes,

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~~~~

Sociological Introspection and Emotional Experience

29

and external stimuli as well as affecting these same processes. It is not


just listening to one voice arising alone in ones head; usually, it consists
of interacting voices, which are products of social forces and roles. Gagnon
( 1990), for example, argues persuasively that 20th century voices are
influenced by the rise of literacy and the reading of novels, access to rapid
travel, availability of the photograph, and fantasy consumption.
In the context of descriptive introspection, many psychologists and
philosophers argued that the act of self-observation changed the content
of introspection. Thus, they said, this meant we interfered with the very
life experience we were trying to understand (Dilthey [ 19001 1976;
McDougal 1922).The introspective process was therefore thought impossible to study. To remedy this charge, some of i t s advocates conceived
of it as proper only for analyzing the past (Bakan 1 954; James [ 18901
1981; Mill 1 879).
Yet, introspection is no more mediated or retrospective than any other
method (cf. Peirce 1958). We cannot study unmediatedpure thought
using any method. All reflection is of the past. We live in the specious
present (Mead [1934] 1962). The I is never directly observed, since
reflection changes it to a past me(Stone and Farberman 1970). Our
observation of introspection is part of the introspective process just as
interviewer-subject interaction is part of questionnaire responses (see
Cicourel 1 974). It is impossible to compare a subjects naturalperception
to her response organized to answer our interview questions; in the same
way, comparing purethought with self-observation of pure thought, as
the psychologists tried to do, cant be done. These are not different processes to be compared. In actuality, observation of ones own emerging
dialogue is a continuing and important part of any introspection as well
as being the foundation of role-taking in the theory of the self control of
behavior.

INTROSPECTION AS A SOURCE OF
INTERPRETIVE MATERIALS
For the most part, social constructionists who look at emotions fail to
examine their own responses and, instead, view emotions as feelings that
other people have. Even when they use their own experiences, they do
so in an emotionally detached way (e.g. Goffman 1959; Kotarba 1983),
or they hide reactions in an array of participant observation data (e.g.
Denzin 1987). Sociologists, however, can generate interpretive materials
about the lived experience of emotions by studying their own self-dialogue
in process. Who knows better the right questions to ask than a social
scientist who has lived through the experience?Who would make a better

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30

Symbolic Interaction Volume 14 I Number 1 / 1991

subject than a researcher consumed by wanting to figure it all out? That


there are problems in this technique is a given; that we have to take
precautions in interpreting, generalizing, and eliminating bias here the
same as we do with any data we collect is assumed (Ellis 1989). But the
understanding to be gained makes working out the problems worthwhile.
Using self as subject, we can base the researchers self-introspection on
accepted practices of field research and take into account the same issues
as we do when studying any n of one. Some ethnographers already see
themselves as part of the situation they study (Adler and Adler 1987;
Caughey 1982;Van Maanen 1988)and many openly acknowledge looking
to their own thoughts, feelings, and personal experiences as legitimate
and insightful data (cf. Clifford 1986; Crapanzano 1970; Hayano 1979;
Johnson 1975; Krieger 1985; Reinharz 1979). This paper moves from
ethnographers use of self-observation as part of the situation studied to
self-introspection or self-ethnography as a legitimate focus of study in and
of itself (see also Jules-Rosette 1975; Sudnow 1978).
Interactive introspection is also part of the introspective technique. Here,
the researcher works back and forth with others to assist in their introspection, but the object of study is the emergent experiences of both parties.
Interactive introspection provides self-introspection from subject and researcher, since a researcher must introspect about her own responses in
reaction to experiences and feelings of respondents (Denzin 197 1).
While including interactive introspection as a method opens up many
fronts of legitimate attack (e.g. the distinction between introspection and
verbal-reports, and the differentiation of introspection from intensive interviewing), I argue that this kind of interacting with others is similar to the 1s
response to the various MEsinvolved in self-introspection. Additionally,
interactive introspection offers a cross-check on self-introspective findings.
While interactive introspection resembles an intensive interview, it is
more interactive. Here, the researcher and subject work as equal participants and concentrate directly on emotional process (Smith 1979; Stacey
and Thorne 1985). Brief descriptive accounts and intensive interviews,
while compatible with introspection, often differ in their focus on outcome
and categories; the process is boxed in as an experience (see for example
Hochschild 1983; Thoits 1990). Although similar to obtaining verbal reports (Boring 1953; Ericsson and Simon 1980, 1984; and Radford 1974),
interactive introspection differs in that its goal is for subjects to relive their
emotion and talk about it as they experience it.
Finally, interactive introspection has some similarities to psychoanalysis
in its probing and feedback techniques. However, it differs in that the
introspectionists primary goal is not to help, change, or reach the unconscious of the subject; instead, it is to describe conscious experience of
both subject and researcher?

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31

Socio/ogicalintrospection and Emotional Experience

Although the specific boundaries between introspection and other


techniques, or even the need for delineating them, are yet to be determined, I offer a preliminary scheme for clarification in Figure 1.
Introspection, as I am defining it, occurs in all cells except the upper
right-hand corner. Even here, researchers reflect on their own experiences
at every stage of the research process-when they formulate hypotheses
and questions, conceptualize, operationalize, gather data, speculate about
members meanings (Cicourel 1974), and draw conclusions. They also ask
their subjects to introspect, without ever taking into account methodological considerations of introspection (Ellis 1989).
The more direct forms of introspection exist in cells C and D.However,
Cell A investigates introspective evidence and calls for introspection on
the part of the researcher who carries on imaginary dialogues with authors
ofthese sources to determine the meaning of the experiences described.
Cell E also requires that the researcher engage in introspection, with the
degree of introspection depending on the extent the researcher sees
herself also as subject in the research process.

Emphasison
Private Processingof
Thoughts and Feelings

I
Separation of
Subject/
Researcher

I
B
Surveys
Questionnaires
Experiments
Verbal reports

A
Diaries
Journals
Free-writing

-------- -------Integration of
Subject/
Researcher

Emphasison
Social Aspects of
Thoughts and Feelings

Intensive interviews
Oral histories

C
(Self-Introspection)

D
(Interactive Introspection)

Current thoughts and feelings


of researcher

Current thoughts and feelings


of researcherand subject

Fieldnotes
Narratives

Conversations

~~~

Figure 1. Sources and Methods of Interpretation

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Symbolic Interaction Volume 14 / Number 1 / 1991

In summary, introspection can be accomplished in dialogue with self,


and represented in the form of fieldnotes, or narratives: or it can be accomplished in dialogue with others, or by reading and analyzing their
journals or free writing, where subjects write non-stop about what they
are thinking and feeling and what it means to them (CandaceClark, personal
communication; Elbow 1973).
The past disregard of the observing selF as researcher (Linden forthcoming) and subject in social science research is surpassed only by the
complete neglect of the experiencing self. Both introspective techniques
provide information substantially different from other forms of social science data in the description and analysis of intense and subtle feelings of
the observing and experiencing selves of subjects and researcher.
Systematic sociological introspection permits a look into the processing
of everyday emotional life. It will provide a link between ones own experience and the expressionsof life (Polkinghorne 1983)sociologists currently
study, such as cultural representations of emotional life on film (see Denzin
1990), directed interviews of emotion management and display (see
Hochschild 1983),and historical treatments of emotionology, rules and
standards affecting our feelings (Stearns and Stearns 1986). In addition,
introspection may provide a glimpse of the interface between social and
biological phenomena (Kemper 198 1 ).
Introspection will allow us to address previously neglected experiential
questions that can be approached by fusing social and personal experience.
Do we construct new feelings when we change situations (Averill 1986)?
Do people in the same situation feel different emotions? Are some emotions harder to create? Harder to control? Do emotions such as indignation
and annoyance actually feel different to us (Bedford 1986)?If so, how?
What are the situational and historical cues that lead us to label them
differently (Davitz 1969)?What is the relationship of felt emotions to
behavior? The relationship of felt emotions to feeling rules? Do people
feel what we observe them Feeling? How do we move from emotional to
cognitive reality? I address some of these questions in the next section.

APPLICATIONS OF
INTROSPECTIVE RESEARCH TO THE
SOCIOLOGY OF EMOTIONS
The following illustrates the results of four preliminary examinations of the
lived experience of emotion, an arena of study particularly amenable to
the introspective technique. I study felt experience, not as an internal state,
but as emotional process recognized internally and constructed externally.
In the three inquiries where I used interactive introspection, I acknowl-

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SociologicalIntrospectionand Emotional Experience

33

edged my intent to use experiences as introspective evidence and made


an effort to work on an equal level with respondents. Thus, I refer to my
subjects as co-investigators or co-researchers.
In the first preliminary investigation, I talked with two people about their
involvement in sadomasochistic activities, and I held conversations with
women in a bereavement group I led. In a second examination, I gathered
interactive introspective evidence from recorded discussions over a period
of several months with ten friends, who were living the emotional experiences they described. Third, a student, who introspectively studied her
career as a dancer in a strip bar, discussed with me her feelings and gave
me access to her fieldnotes.
My major purpose in all these exchanges was to assist respondents,
almost all of whom were white and middle to upper middle class. in
understanding their emotional experiences. I asked questions, made comparisons among the details they reported, and discussed possible outcomes of each course of action. The more empathy, response, and shared
experience I had to offer back, the more successful were the interactive
contexts. The emotional experience, both mine and theirs, that emerged
during our conversations was then available for examination.
Finally, six hundred pages of my own introspections, written during and
after the illness and death of my partner, provided written self-introspective
interpretive materials (Ellis 1988).
The examples from these four investigations provide information for the
sections below, which demonstrate the advantages of introspection in
dealing with difficult aspects of emotion and emotion work experienced
by the sociological person. The last segment concentrates on the kind of
substantive findings available from an intensive and systematic introspective study.

Why Introspective Techniques Are Needed To


Study Emotions
It is difficult to get information about emotions. Often people are unwilling to admit to, or simply unaware of, what they are feeling unless they
are in a context perceived as a safe place for exploration. That emotions
are complex and experienced as process-continually fluctuating and
changing-add to the confusion.
Difficulties in Getting Information
About Emotions
The complicated relationship among feelings, situation,and the language
that describes them makes it difficult to know what subjects are answering

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34

Symbolic Interaction Volume 14 / Number 1 I 1991

on social science surveys about emotions or even if they know what


researchers think they are asking. For example, one of the respondents in
my study of jealousy told me she never experienced jealousy when her
husband was with another woman because she knew he would never
leave her. Because we were in an interactive setting, I could push: What
do you feel then? A pain in my heart, she answered with a look of agony
on her face. According to my definition, that was jealousy. Yet, if she had
responded to my questionnaire study, she would have said that she was
never jealous.
We obtain only partial information from asking people simple questions.
Likewise, we also cannot consistently rely on using specific behaviors to
indicate emotions, because people often act in ways they dont feel. For
example, a dancers sexy smile contrasted with her written description of
what she was thinking and feeling about her admirer: This rotting carcass
of wrinkled flesh is no threat. Just keep your shit together until the dance
is over.. . I keep getting angrier and angrier. It escalates exponentially now.
But I must act nice, pretty and pleasant (Rambo Ronai 1 987).Her thoughts
helped distance her from the self-effacing physical acts in which she participated, and, though not observable, these thoughts were crucial to her
emotional experience.
Some co-researchers admitted to controlling their behavioral response
to manipulate the emotional response of others. One informant explained:
When I am really angry, I dont say anything about it. I act sort of like nothing is
wrong, except there is an edge to what I say and do. 1 want my partner to know
Im angry, but not be able to prove it from my behavior. That makes him angry,
we fight, its not just me doing it, and 1 feel better.

Her inner experience, given only through her own introspective capacities,
is crucial for understanding her lived emotions.
On the other hand, it is possible through introspection for people to
acknowledge emotions that they might not be willing to admit to under
other circumstances. For example, in my introspective journal, I wrote
about my dying partner: In actuality I now want him to die. There I said
it. I am fucking ready for him to die. Likewise, a professional woman told
me about how she gave in to depression: Life is very tiresome and any
thoughts of suicide are really rooted in the desire to find some kind of
hold button. The overwhelming desire is to collapse and be taken care
of. One of my co-investigators discussingsadomasochismacknowledged:
Iam a feminist. It is hard to admit, even to myself sometimes, that I enjoy
rape fantasies and the thought of being sexually controlled or of controlling. Then she hastily added, This doesnt mean that I want this to happen
in reality. Thats another sphere entirely.

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Despite general reluctance to acknowledge or even become aware of


certain negative emotions, people seem to need the help provided by
interactive introspection to concentrate on positive ones as well. Almost
all information I offered in these investigations concerned negative emotions. Talking about negative emotions may be more interesting or easier.
Negative feelings are unique, disparate, and idiosyncratic (Caylin
1979:1 3); while positive emotions, other than ecstasy perhaps, are less
acute and more diffuse. Perhaps we do not talk about them because we
are not working to get over them. Or maybe we dont express them as
readily because we are afraid to be seen as rate busters or as not fitting
in because our fortune is too good or the ability to cope too expert
compared with that of the average person (Clark 1987:309).
While this orientation toward the negative was partly a result of reporting
contexts, the same concentration on negative emotions is also reflected
in literature on emotions (e.g.Averill 1980;Caylin 1979).Are we socialized
to think in negative terms when we consider emotion?Are feelings viewed
as something to getover?Given that there seems to be a tendency not
to discuss positive emotions we feel, researchers need to encourage this
reflection and discussion through systematic introspection. Introspection
may provide insight into the linkages between the positive and negative
valences of emotions and actual experiences, between what we say and
how we feel.
Many sociologists are working on understanding emotional rules (see
Hochschild 1 983, 1990),but for some people in some situations,emotions
appear to be immune to rational rules. To determine the role of
social context in emotions that appear as impulsive (Averill 1980)requires
analyzing comprehensive,introspective accounts, instead of ignoring these
occurrences. The jealousy flash I discussed in the beginning of this paper,
for example, often challenges logic, even though the emotion is based on
certain cognitions. In the same way, depression often seems to overwhelm.
One woman wrote: Cognition is pulled down into this emotional abyss
and things that you know are not true seem true.
Likewise, anger sometimes takes on a life of its own, as the experience
I had implies:
I was talking on the phone in a normal voice, which increased in loudness until,
all of a sudden, I was aware that I was yelling. I slammed down the phone and
experienced being taken over by my emotion. Later, I felt I could not have
stopped myself, even if I had wanted to.

We cannot assume that emotions are as amenable to the same logical


control as rational thinking, but this is not to say they are irrational

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Symbolic Interaction Volume 14 I Number 1 I 1991

(Hochschild 1983). What is the relationship between seemingly impulsive


emotions and social context?

Capturing the Processual Nature of Emotion


Through Introspection
Methods that require people to put their emotions in categories do not
allow for the serial nature of emotions. For example, peoples personal
stories about jealousy revealed that the jealous flash may move from shock
and numbness to desolate pain to rage and anger to moral outrage in avery
brief time (Ellis and Weinstein 1986:367). Note also my response after
the emotional outburst while talking on the phone that I described earlier:
I could reconstruct what in the conversation led to the emotional outburst.
Something he said reminded me of his passive approach to the world and all
my resentment about that spilled out. It provided a tipping point. Still I felt
shocked and wondered why I had come so unglued. Then I felt numb, yet my
heart was pounding. Then I felt morally indignant, yet embarrassed at the same
time. Finally I felt chagrined and tried to justify to myself that the person on the
other end of the line deserved this response. It was hard work because a part
of me knew he didnt.

Emotions can change drastically, even reverse themselves, and then


change back. Note my written account:
As I was walking up the aisle to get the award for my book, I felt like I would
burst with pride. Then, without warning, my pride gave way to grief. It came
from thinking of Gene, who was no longer around to celebrate this event. The
human condition, death and loss, threatened to take me over even while I was
on public display. But as soon as Istarted to talk to people, the pride returned.

That the same emotional processes may occur in quite different settings
even when the objects of the emotions differ becomes visible in introspective narratives. What seems to vary is the meaning attached to the emotions
and the subjects definitions of the situation (Smith-Lovin 1990). For example, narratives from my experience of dealing with death in a doctors
office surprisingly showed stages similar to those Rambo Ronai wrote
about dancing in a strip bar (Ellis and Rambo Ronai 1988). In the first
phase, we both described unreality and then multi-realities. Second, we
juxtaposed responses such as laughter and anger, expressed feelings of
helplessness and power, intensity and numbness, acceptance and denial,
fatalism and hope. Third, we used emotion work to shield ourselves from
the common thread of ambiguity in the situation. We called up other
feelings, such as anger and sincerity, to protect ourselves from our primary

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37

feeling of dread. Then we both attempted to convince ourselves that we


were not alone: All men are using all women, rationalized the stripper.
All people will die, said the soon-to-be widow. Finally, we both sought
solace in the initial ambiguity of the multi-realities we had been fighting.
It was easier to experience unrealityand conflict than to face the alternative reality.
Introspection then will allow researchers to find patterns under the observable flux. How else than through tapping the covert inner introspections of subjects as diverse as a strip-dancer and a grieving widow could
we capture similar processes undergone by the two? As we shall see in
the next section, introspection also helps in the converse attempt to
examine the complexity subsumed under the taken-for-granted order.

The Complexity of Emotions


The examples below demonstrate that emotions are sometimes more
complex than is apparent from standard methodological discovery. Emotional categories force respondents to choose from felt emotions that are
intertwined, often ambivalent, or even contradictory. Yet, in most social
science data collection, indeed, even in day-to-day interaction, we force
people and ourselves to categorize feelings.
People tend to feel different emotions simultaneously. Often these are
contradictory. One of my co-researchers described the sexual turn-on,
excitement, anger, and sense of loss she felt when her partner was having
a sexual fling with another woman. I characterized my grief as containing
both love and hate, relief, fear, and numbness at the same time. At a
doctors visit, I wrote: I was scared. How could I feel so numb and like I
was exploding at the same time? I suddenly laughed, but covered it with
a sigh. How absurd. I felt relief. A respondent practicing sadomasochism
announced: I felt repulsed and attracted at the same time. Indeed, that
is what made S and M so attractive.
One part of an emotion sometimes camouflages another. A male coresearcher recounted his feelings in an emergency situation: Ifeel adrenalin rushing. Yet overall l feel detached, alert, and calm. Rambo Ronai
( 1 987) gave an account of the same juxtaposition of emotions as she
danced in a strip bar: It is a strange adrenalin calm that has suffised my
being. It could eat me up, because it pretends to be calm when it really
is an inferno. From analytic introspection, Rambo Ronai determined that
the intensity of these contradictory feelings stemmed from occupying
competing identities of dancer and student.
Sometimes actors are forced to hold one emotion at bay while they
deal with another. A woman, who lost her husband and son in an accident,

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Symbolic Interaction Volume 14 / Number 1 / 1991

found out after the deaths that her husband had had continuous affairs
for ten years with a number of women. She said, I cannot feel grief. All I
feel is anger and hate. I guess the griefs inside somewhere, but Im not
ready to deal with it yet.
An emotional label often covers different experiences. One of my coresearchers wrote about two kinds of depression:
There is a first type, which is fused with sadness, that occurs when 1 experience
failure or loss.This sort can usually be reversed by stepping back and approaching
the issue rationally. The second type of depression usually comes on slowly
and subtly. It seems to be a combination of anxiety and gloom. Its a constant
sense of foreboding, as if the sun has been eclipsed permanently. By the time I
recognize this type of depression, I am usually sleeping twelve hours a day and
I am only comfortable when Im in bed with the cover over my head. Interaction
is very difficult because it takes so much energy and, in turn, provides unwanted
stimulation.

Introspection offers a way to delineate the various relationships between


emotional label and experience (Davits 1969).For example, we can shed
light on the elements that must be present for people to use the label
depression as well as the different experiences subsumed under that label.
Rarely do we allow for ambivalence in categorizing feelings, despite its
prevalence (Weigert and Frank 1989).In fact, for others to acknowledge
their ambivalence makes us nervous and distrusting, since consistency is
a clue we use in determining others authentic feelings and selves.
In a sensitivity training session I attended, I reported the contradictory
emotions I had and outlined the impact on my feelings of each additional
piece of information I processed about another person. One woman responded to this with, The way you change your mind constantly and the
way one piece of information can make you feel different makes me distrust you.
I was taken aback, because I was being more honest than usual about
what I was feeling and expected this to be of value. This reaffirmed for
me how much others expect us to be consistent in our feelings and admit
to the one emotion they think we are supposed to be feeling. Through
tapping ones private experience that would be negatively sanctioned if
admitted publicly, we find out how complex and even contradictory emotions are experienced.

Emotion Work: An Example


This section offers a preliminary investigation of emotion work to demonstrate substantive findings about emotional processes from introspective
study. It provides a glimpse of the nature and complexity of the private
aspects of emotion work and its relationship to social context. From talking

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39

to people and reflecting about my own control, I became aware that the
tremendous diversity in emotional management gets lost when we lump
people into categories and look for mean responses, or even when we
just observe behavior, since much of what occurs is internal.

Patterns in Emotion Work and Control


Questions posed to co-investigators about how people feel resulted
in answers from "I don't feel" to "I feel, and can't control it." Other reactions were:
I don't let myself feel.
I try to feel, and can't.
I feel, and try to control it.
I feel, and sometimes control it.
I feel, and can control certain emotions.
I feel, but then I control it.
I feel, and don't want to control it.
I feel, try to control, and can't.

Some people have rational control over their emotions. Those in control
may have few feelings to keep in check, as the following introspective
report from a man demonstrates:
I don't feel intense emotion. I feel emotion, but I immediately get control of it.
I try to show more affect, but I don't know how to do it.. .When you talk about
being inside an emotion, I don't know what you are talking about.. .My partner
is very emotional. I tell her to deal with it, and she just looks at me like she
doesn't understand what I am talking about. She says 1 don't really feel. Maybe
she is right.

Others may feel as much as anyone, but have strong control mechanisms
available. These may be voluntary, as another man describes: "I feel the
emotion side, then I think through the rational side. Then I talk to myself.
Often the rational side can't get through the emotional walls. There can
then be a tiny event, and then the rational side wins." Or the mechanisms
may be somewhat involuntary, as the following man implies: "I sometimes
feel an emotional chunk, but I can rationalize the shit out of it. I was
penalized for giving into emotions in the past. Now I have trouble giving
into passions."
The other end of the control continuum was expressed by a woman
who wrote:
At some point, I just give in to depression. It's as if the filters through which we
organize experience are rearranged to let through only negative events and
feelings. Trying to reorganize the experience rationally doesn't work. It's as if the

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Symbollc Interaction Volume 14 / Number 1 / 1991

40

link between the cognitive life and the emotional life is broken, because you
cant pull yourself out of it with mental processes.

Are these differences gender linked? Introspective histories might provide


an answer to that question, and point out other linkages, such as to class
structure, or to changes in structural situations. Expression of emotion, for
example, seems to change when the situation changes. Blaming structure
for the change in expression, an informant said, The problem with marriage
is once it happens youre not supposed to think or feel certain things. I
have found also that people stop talking about negative emotions when
they move into situations where they feel they are suppose to be having
positive feelings. For example, after getting married, one of my informants
stopped talking about jealousy, although previously it had been a salient
part of his relatioinship and a topic for discussion. Similarly, after a loved
one had been dead for a period of time, surviving partners admitted to
being reluctant to talk about grief. They were convinced by normative
standards that they should be over it. Sometimes these emotions break
through. Their intensity makes it important to ask how much of this emotion has been transformed by structural change (Averill 1986) and how
much of it is being hidden from self and public view.
The relationship between emotion and control is not constant even
within one person. Some people tightly control some emotions and not
others. Sometimes people, ordinarily controlled, let go of the control. One
respondent, for example, upon facing a divorce changed overnight from
her unemotional presentation to being caught up in her emotional life.
During stressful times, it is not unusual for people to lose control or
change their notion of how important it is to them. For example, several
times after my partners death, I cried in public settings. Often some small
detail was enough to cause me to lose control. It seemed acceptable to
let go. After all, this was not really me. I knew Iwas not expected to be
myself for a time after the death of a loved one.

Emotion Work Strategies


Introspection provides a unique way to obtain information about how
and why people manage emotions the way they do. Strategies people
choose or have available to them depend on the nature of their feeling
and accessibility and desirability of control mechanisms. For people who
feel deeply, control mechanisms are much more important than they are
for those whose feelings are less demanding and salient.
Our need for managing emotions and how we go about it, just like our
actual emotion, are not always apparent from our behavior. Some of us

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SociologicalIntrospectionand Emotional Experience

41

conceal our emotional lives as completely as possible. For example, a


friend and I acknowledged, and had our views verified by others, that
significant others saw us quite differently. She was viewed as unemotional,
detached, and rational; on the other hand, I was seen as emotional and
open. Yet, she admitted in our private discussions to being overwhelmed
by emotions and to constantly putting up shields to protect herself from
them. I feel all the time, she acknowledged. Oh, no, here it comes
again, she says to herself whenever she starts to feel the intensity of love,
anxiety, sadness, or anger. On the other hand, ordinarily I do not experience
the overwhelming feeling she describes. Instead, I seek out emotions,
constantly attempting to find new situations that produce feelings. I am
awed by them. Oh, isnt this interesting. Iwant to explore this, I am likely
to say to myself even when feeling grief. M y emotions are under control
most of the time, yet I appear emotional to others because I seek out
emotion and concentrate on removing shields to feel more.
Similarly, opposite management strategies may result from similar feelings. A co-respondent discussing control and depression said: Sometimes
life is overwhelming. I feel like Im holding on in a tornado. And, the tornado
threatens to pull off my arm if I dont let go. I get scared, let go, and go
into depression. I replied, When Im in danger of losing control, it appears
as a tornado to me, too. But, I quickly try to get control of some arena in
my life, something to hang on to, so that the tornado wont engulf me.
Both strategies, although different, protected us from the tornado, the
symbol for being overwhelmed.
Strategiesare also related to a complex interaction of sociologicalfactors
such as perception of the situation, context, history, and resources as well
as physiology and psychological make-up. While it is beyond the scope
of this paper to describe these relationships, the following examples demonstrate the importance of these factors to my respondents.
Normally, we can locate personalities and behavior of ourselves and our
friends on a continuum from emotionally up to emotionally down. Are
they usually optimistic or pessimistic? Do they laugh or complain most of
the time? The attribution of responsibility for their location on this continuum often determines the kind of emotion work people do. For example,
one respondent said her depression comes from chemical imbalance.
When she feels depressed, she goes into nothingness or looks to drugs
to alleviate the symptoms. Some see the major factor as personality. This
is just the way I am, indicated several respondents, who said they did
not try to change.
Most of my respondents, however, felt they had some choice about
their negative feelings. An extreme example came from my journal: It

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Symbolic Interaction Volume 14 / Number 1 / 1991

makes rational sense t o be optimistic about life, so I am." Trying t o muster


up the same sense of control, I worked on my depression:
I put it away, do something else, hoping some distance will help me deal with
it. Sometimes it pops back through. If I can solve a small detail, then the sadness
might not be so overpowering.

The juxtaposition of control and being overwhelmed implied in the above


example seems to be common. Note a male co-investigator's response
concerning how h e handled negative events:
I am at first taken over by the emotional side of it. It is as though a switch board
was all lit up and 1 didn't know where to plug in. This clouds problem-solving
skills. I feel helpless and hopeless. Usually I am in an isolated situation with
nobody to talk to. There is too much input. My thoughts and feelings are jumbled.
Verbalization helps. It slows down my thoughts.

Depending on features of one's emotional reality-the mode o n e enters


where concentration o n emotions predominates (Clark, Kleinman, and Ellis
1990),different strategies of emotion work might be useful. Some people
experience emotional reality as an all encompassing discrete entity, separate from cognitive reality. "I'm either in one or in the other," explained a
respondent. "Whichever one I'm in takes over. Ifind it difficult, sometimes
impossible to shift."
However, these modes overlap for others. Except for the most intense
emotional experience, boundaries between them are permeable. For
example, I move easily back and forth, even in the same encounter. Indeed,
often these modes merge so that there is n o boundary. For my co-investigator. emotion work sometimes meant changing realities: for me, emotion
work required working on the detail at hand using available cognitive and
emotional resources. In a rather detached manner, I seem to stand back
from and look at the situation 1 am in; o n the other hand, she appears
caught up in t h e moment.
A person's emotional response also depends on contextual cues. On e
respondent explained how h e reacted to perception of the situation, and
not t o the situation itself:
Sometimes you can feel blocked, depressed, and do not know which way to
turn. Your situation doesn't change, but somehow the events-they are sort of
like in a memory bank-drop into a different order, and you see things in a
different way. Suddenly you see a path you haven't seen before. Then you feel
an emotional relief, almost a euphoria, for having gotten out of the pit.

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Sociological Introspection and Emotional Experience

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Another spoke of the impact of his perception on the seriousness of the


event:
When something negative happens.. .the inner voices speed up and are too
fast for me to make logical decisions .... But the more serious the event, the
sooner my thinking slows down. My moves and recall are clear, efficient, and
deliberate.

When respondents describe details of specific occasions, it provides an


opportunity to understand the connection they see among perception,
context, and emotional control. For example:
My girlfriend and Ihad an argument. She left the house to go to work. Immediately
I felt the urge for my sexual fetishes. I hadn't felt this for a while. I wondered
why now. Then I remembered that I used to feel that way when my mother
would leave me and I realized I felt scared of being abandoned. Iwas afraid my
girlfriend wasn't coming back. And I knew my fetishes wouldn't leave me.

History also influenced current coping techniques. What has worked in


the past tends to be repeated. For example, I wrote:
When I feel frustration, I have learned to let myself feel another emotion, such
as anger. It has worked befcre. Last night I let myself feel angry and screamed.
It cleared out my head for my rational processes to take over. It gave them room
to start solving the root of the frustration and slowed down the thoughts and
visceral reactions.

Introspective stories from self and others will allow social scientists to get
information about the processual complexities of emotions, such as those
described briefly above. This information will make it possible to re-evaluate
the relationship among "true" emotions, stance toward emotion, emotion
work strategies, and control.

CONCLUSION
In this paper, I have built a case for looking at emotion as a product of
the individual processing of meaning as well as socially shared cognitions.
I have argued that we need to underrtand the complexity of the lived
experience of emotions and consider sociological introspection as a
technique for doing so.There is risk in studying emotion only as behavior
that is socially constructed. Writing about feelings as though our behavior
is all that matters (Bedford 1986) ignores the finding that many Westernized persons regard inner experience as just as important, if not more

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Symbolic Interaction Volume 14 / Number 1 / 1991

so, than our outer display (e.g. Davis 1983). In treating emotion as a
product of context (Bedford 1986), management (Hochschild 1983), or
culture (Solomon 1984), social scientists also must take into account
the individuals private role in the interpretation of processual emotional
details that are both determined by and, in turn, aggregate to action
and feeling.
To bring emotion into the sociological study of human behavior (Ellis,
forthcoming), we have to address the descriptive and analytical task of
precisely detailing the moments in the complex process through which it
is experienced. Otherwise, it isnt the whole of emotion we are bringing
into our sociological studies, but a severed, edited version of emotion. As
we saw in the last part of this paper, theorists thus far have underestimated
the complexity and ambiguity of the emotional process. Asking ourselves
and our subjects to process out loud-to acknowledge the complexity
of feelings at any one time and elaborate the details of feelings in the
order they are experienced-will provide details about possible connections of whats out there to whats in here.
Particular sociologists may well choose not to focus on the private and
felt aspects of emotion. But if the field as a whole ignores lived experience,
our interpretations of emotions will be as incomplete as was our understanding of social life before we took emotions into account. And, the
tendency will be to discuss emotions as rational constructions that can be
explained by simplistic rational models of human behavior.
Why have sociologists neglected the intersection of internal and social
experience of emotions? Perhaps this is partly a result of turf-defense and
boundary-maintainingmechanisms. Admitting to the internal role of emotion might be viewed, however erroneously, as challenging the basic social
constructionist position that emotion is socially determined. Acknowledging the physiological feeling of lived emotion might threaten to give its
study over to the psychophysiologists. Likewise, describing the subjective
aspects of emotion may appear to place the study of emotions more
accurately under the auspices of cognitive psychology. In looking at the
feeling aspects of emotion, sociologists are also reminded that they lack
methodological techniques to handle feeling in all its richness and depth.
This suggests, then, that the arts and humanities with their more intuitive
and less rigid scientific approaches to human experience might be the
best arena in which to study emotions.
Sociologists studying emotion are only now fine-tuning how to study
emotions. Thus far, the methods available have determined the questions
asked and the answers given. Many sociologists turned initially to familiar
surveys and questionnaires to ask subjects to account for how they remem-

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Socio/ogicalIntrospection and Emotional Experience

45

bered having experienced the researchers own preconceived category


of some particular emotion in the past. This then explains the prior concentration on individual emotions. For example, Jaremkoand Lindsey ( 1979)
and White ( 198 1 ), among many others, studied jealousy that way. Social
constructionists have added participant observation and intensive interviewing as a way to study emotions. This means we now can focus on
emotional display, rules, and management of display (Hochschild 1 983).
Others have combined self stories, participant observation, and phenomenological interpretation (Denzin 1987). which provides a new level of
understanding the lived experience of emotions.
Still, most methods available to sociologists focus on the rational order
in the world. Surveys, questionnaires, and laboratory observations of emotional feelings tell us about the surface public self (Goffman 1959;
Hochschild 1983). Even participant observation and phenomenological
study are rational, cognitive searches for order (Douglas 1977: xiii). Without
examining the lived experience of emotion in individuals and across collectives, we are forced to talk of spiritless, empty husks of people who
have programmed, patterned emotions, and whose feelings resemble the
decision-making models of rational choice theorists. Introspection will
allow us to study emotions as they are experienced without using models
that have rationality built into them.
Introspection permits us to prompt and collect our own and other
peoples stories about the lived details of socially constructed experience.
To stay as close as possible to the details reported, introspection is best
presented as narrative text (Ellis forthcoming; Sarbin 1986; Wood 1986).
Such accounts will provide a stimulus for discussing issues of the relationship between presented text and feelingkhought and for comparing experiences across groups and culture.
While this paper has argued for the legitimacy of systematic sociological
introspection on self and with others, the development of this technique
will have to be the joint effort of a large number of people in many disciplines over a period of time. Meanwhile, the argument I am making here
about the fit of the method to social constructionist inquiry, along with the
demonstration of the kind of information we can obtain from introspection,
will serve to arouse an audience for the method.
Systematic sociological introspection provides a way to look at the lived
experience of emotions, but it requires that we as sociologists recognize
and study our own emotions and those of our subjects/co-researchers.
Since reflexivity-thinking and feeling as a subject about oneself as an
object-is so distinctively human, its place in emotion warrants consideration for a systematic study.

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Symbollc lnteractlon Volume 14

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/ Number 1 / 1991

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to David Franks. I also acknowledge the following people who assisted
with former drafts of this article: Patricia Adler, Peter Adler, Gerard Brandmeyer, Candace Clark, Norman Denzin, Harvey Farberman, Michael Flaherty, Candace Hinson,
Arlie Hochschild, Danny Jorgensen, Doug McAdam, JohnMcCarthy, Marilyn Myerson,
Marco Orru, Naomi Rosenthal, Lynn Smith-Lovin, JimSperry, and Judith Tanur.

1 . Denzins (1984, 1985, 1987) work is an exception in its emphasis on the lived
experience. Following Derrida ( 1978), Denzin ( 1988) takes the position that one
cannot study lived experience directly, but can study only the texts that express
that lived experience.
2. For example, Armon Jones ( 1986: 46) approaches emotions from a constructionist
and phenomenological perspective, but then concludes that emotion can be
adequately characterized without appealing to qualia or to physiological factors
as necessary constituents of the total emotion event. She reaches this conclusion
because she sees subjective feeling as implying irreducibility and having individualistic implications (see also Harre, 1986).
3. Camic ( 1986) discusses the exclusion of the concept of habit by sociologists as a
result of their revolt against behaviorism. He notes that sociologists rejected the
Watson approach that made habit virtually everything in social life ( 1072). But,
instead of restating the position that habit is a part of social action, they then
rejected habit completely. The same is true of introspection.
4. Cooley ( 1 926), in particular, advocated sympathetic introspection, a process by
which one comes to understand others by sympathetically ascribing to them ones
own response in similar situations. Compare also Diltheys ( 1 900/1976) symbolic
understanding; Webers ( 1949) verstehen; Maclvers ( t 93 1 ) sympathetic reconstruction; Schwartz and Schwartz ( 1955) sympathetic identification; and
Znanieckis ( 1934) humanistic coefficient among others.
5. See, however, Evert and Bijkerk ( 1987) where the therapist and patient introspect
about their experiences in therapy.

REFERENCES
Adler, P. and P. Adler. 1980. Symbolic Interactionism. Pp. 20-6 1 in Introduction to
the Sociologies of veryday Life, edited by jack Douglas et al.
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