{"title":"Acting on a hunch: cybervetting and the role of emotions in job recruitment","authors":"Anna Hedenus, C. Backman","doi":"10.51952/ufqa8044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51952/ufqa8044","url":null,"abstract":"The process of recruiting new employees involves the risk of hiring the ‘wrong’ person. Systematic and extensive information gathering is therefore used to support objective and rational decisions. Today, the use of cybervetting is part of the recruitment process, but prior research shows that emotions, contrary to the ideals of ‘objectivity’, are essential for sorting and selection decisions. Based on interviews with 37 Swedish recruiters, this study demonstrates how cybervetting is motivated, restrained and directed by recruiters’ feelings about the jobseeker and the practice of cybervetting. The study findings also emphasise that recruiters believe in a ‘professional’ means of managing emotions, and the notion that certain emotions represent a tacit knowledge with an emotional foundation that is difficult to articulate.","PeriodicalId":29742,"journal":{"name":"Emotions and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2020-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47782090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why feelings trump facts: anti-politics, citizenship and emotion","authors":"M. Flinders","doi":"10.1332/263168919x15761256384386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/263168919x15761256384386","url":null,"abstract":"This article seeks to explore and emphasise the role of emotions as a key variable in terms of understanding both the rise of anti-political sentiment and its manifestation in forms of ethno-populism. It argues that the changing emotional landscape has generally been overlooked in analyses\u0000 that seek to comprehend contemporary social and political change. This argument matters, not only due to the manner in which it challenges dominant interpretations of the populist signal but also because it poses more basic questions about the limits of knowledge and evidential claims in an\u0000 increasingly polarised, fractious and emotive contemporary context. The core argument concerning the existence of an emotional disconnection and why ‘feelings trump facts’ is therefore as significant for social and political scientists as it is for politicians and policy makers.","PeriodicalId":29742,"journal":{"name":"Emotions and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1332/263168919x15761256384386","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48968955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Emotions, language and the (un-)making of the social world","authors":"F. Minner","doi":"10.1332/263168919x15663586358054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/263168919x15663586358054","url":null,"abstract":"What are the motivational bases that help explain the various normative judgements that social agents make, and the normative reasoning they employ? Answering this question leads us to consider the relationships between thoughts and emotions. Emotions will be described as thought-dependent\u0000 and thought-directing, and as being intimately related to normativity. They are conceived as the grounds that motivate social agents to articulate their reasoning with respect to the values and norms they face and/or share in their social collective. It is argued that because they are modes\u0000 of thinking, emotions generate cognitive activities that relate to the making of evaluative and deontic judgements, the utterance of speech acts, the mastering of normative concepts and the building of arguments. Furthermore, each type of emotion generates its own constitutive judgements and\u0000 structures normative thinking according to its own logic. The main thesis is that emotions provide sociological explanations for social agents’ thinking and speech, for emotions are precisely what motivate and, especially, structure normative reasoning and language. Being observable\u0000 in language, emotions allow us to explain a) how social subjects reason and argue through norms and values, and b) how social subjects through their speech acts can contribute to the (un-)making of the social world.","PeriodicalId":29742,"journal":{"name":"Emotions and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1332/263168919x15663586358054","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49413730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Theatrical manipulation and seductive sentimentality: constructions of empathy in Swedish online far-right discourse about EU-migrants","authors":"Karl Malmqvist","doi":"10.1332/263168919x15670063481536","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/263168919x15670063481536","url":null,"abstract":"Digital technologies such as online forums afford opportunities for users to circumvent and challenge feeling rules. The online far-right uses such opportunities to challenge feeling rules regarding racialised minority groups, refugees and immigrants, including rules about empathy for\u0000 such groups. However, while the disruptive features of online far-right practice are widely acknowledged, less has been written about how participants in online far-right forums actually make sense of emotional experiences, including empathy in relation to migrants. This article analyses a\u0000 Swedish far-right-dominated online discussion thread about non-Swedish EU citizens who ask for money, a group referred to in Sweden as ‘EU-migrants’. From an affective-discursive practice perspective, and focusing on metaphorically constructed interpretative repertoires, the article\u0000 analyses how participants in the thread make sense of empathy as an actual or possible emotional response to these migrants, as well as how the participants position themselves as subjects in relation to such experiences and various actors involved. The results indicate that the participants\u0000 are formulating a dual affective-discursive position. First, they present themselves as especially capable of empathic resonance and mirroring, but as righteously angered by EU-migrants’ putative attempts to manipulate this empathic capacity. Second, they disidentify with ‘Swedes’\u0000 by presenting themselves as capable of avoiding the seductive and sentimental ‘kindness narcomania’ supposedly deeply rooted in Swedish society, and thereby present themselves as a (counter-)empathic vanguard community in relation to this society. The implications of such affective-discursive\u0000 practices for far-right online and offline action are discussed.","PeriodicalId":29742,"journal":{"name":"Emotions and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1332/263168919x15670063481536","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42694090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Public and the Private Management of Grief: Recovering Normal","authors":"Ekkehard Knopke","doi":"10.1332/263168919x15668424861248","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/263168919x15668424861248","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29742,"journal":{"name":"Emotions and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44428983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Forms of shame between social processes and prospects for subjectification","authors":"Lorenzo Bruni","doi":"10.1332/263168919x15669854068890","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/263168919x15669854068890","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this article is to mark an original sociological way of access to the study of shame. The main theoretical hypothesis concerns the distinction between two forms of shame: Me-shame and I-shame. After having mentioned the main sociological reflections about shame,\u0000 the author refers to G.H. Mead’s social theory’s distinction between Me and I to argue that Me-shame points out a form of shame that is sociologically relevant, objectivised and socialised, which concerns the violation of a given core of social norms. I-shame,\u0000 on the other hand, points out the subjective dimension of shame and as such it can be defined as a social compression of intersubjective sources of subjectification. Having briefly discussed the distinction between Me-shame and I-shame, the author focuses on a particular form\u0000 of I-shame called critical I-shame. After a theoretical definition, the author proposes a case study dedicated to this form, which aims to emphasise the emancipative role of shame. The case study ultimately shows how renewed recognitive social resources permit the humiliated\u0000 subject to gain access to new self-definitions and to reappropriate himself in a creatively open way of current meanings that may have taken on oppressive trait.","PeriodicalId":29742,"journal":{"name":"Emotions and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66317499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Different roads to empathy: stage actors and judges as polar cases","authors":"Stina Bergman Blix","doi":"10.1332/263168919x15653390808962","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/263168919x15653390808962","url":null,"abstract":"Using judges and stage actors as instructive polar types this article elucidates factors that influence the inclination to empathise. Both come in close contact with dramatic life stories on an everyday basis but approach empathy from contrasting vantage points: emotional distance versus\u0000 emotional engagement. Similarities between these polar types can thus disentangle some of the factors that influence professional empathic perspective taking in more general terms. It is argued that reality or fiction in itself does not promote empathy, but the presence of a complete narrative\u0000 structure which allows for personal recognition of shared attributes or experiences. In both professions the decoupling of emotions from private connotations, individual responsibility for interpretations on stage or in verdicts and defamiliarisation of private experiences can promote empathic\u0000 perspective taking whereas it is prevented by one-sided perspective taking; for example, by judicial encoding (judges) or getting stuck in private experiences (stage actors). Organisational obstacles to empathy include hierarchal work structures or a ‘teflon culture’.","PeriodicalId":29742,"journal":{"name":"Emotions and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44612933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Emotions, Media and Politics","authors":"Shalini Vohra","doi":"10.1332/263168919x15667583700179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/263168919x15667583700179","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29742,"journal":{"name":"Emotions and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47286320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Microfinance as poverty-shame debt","authors":"Susan Engel, D. Pedersen","doi":"10.1332/263168919x15653391247919","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/263168919x15653391247919","url":null,"abstract":"In an excellent anthropological study of microfinance in Bangladesh, Karim (2008: xviii) argues that it operates as ‘an economy of shame’. That is to say, microfinance is not the benign tool for financial inclusion and\u0000 empowerment that mainstream development organisations proclaim. Rather, it unintentionally (perhaps) but nevertheless actively deploys shaming techniques in order to maximise loan repayment rates. Karim, however, does not employ an explicit analysis of shame; instead she emphasises its disciplining\u0000 power for rural women in Bangladesh. Our article builds on this insight but applies a specific psychosocial approach to shame that critically examines a number of the emotion’s harmful practices and outcomes, especially when deployed within microfinance practice. It highlights that microfinance\u0000 personalises and socialises people’s debt relations, making them a matter for group concern, but that at the same time money-debt’s impersonalising nature results in coercive and disciplinary actions that would otherwise be seen as intolerable. We demonstrate how the active shaming\u0000 of microfinance participants all too often degenerates into human rights abuses, including violence. The shame of debt and the active shaming that facilitates microfinance’s high repayment rates harms the psychosocial wellbeing of those being shamed as well as their families, and can\u0000 be linked to a range of concerning outcomes including self-harm and suicide. To conclude, we explore whether the coercion by shame and shaming of microfinance may be linked to its growing use in other areas of development programming.","PeriodicalId":29742,"journal":{"name":"Emotions and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1332/263168919x15653391247919","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43916482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Honey, I shrunk the emotions’: late modernity and the end of emotions","authors":"J. Barbalet","doi":"10.1332/263168919x15662881966944","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/263168919x15662881966944","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this article is to specify the character of late modernity in terms of the emotional formations peculiar to it. Different approaches to late modernity are briefly surveyed and the argument is presented in three sections. In the first section late modernity is indicated\u0000 as a social type that can be identified in terms of its particular emotional formation. The second section outlines the institutional framework of late modernity through which it is distinguished from modernity. This is to indicate the societal source of the emotional patterns of each type\u0000 of these distinctive social formations. In the final section ego emotions are specified in contrast with those emotions that are not self-directed but outwardly directed.","PeriodicalId":29742,"journal":{"name":"Emotions and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1332/263168919x15662881966944","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47008785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}