Feeling Rules

Feeling rules research papers focus on the psychological aspects of the theory behind what are known as "feeling rules". Paper Masters custom writes all research on psychological theory associated with feeling rules.

Feeling rules are emotional norms and refer to beliefs about private feelings in the following aspects:

• The appropriate range
• The Intensity
• The Duration
• Targets of private feelings

Display rules regulate the range and intensity of emotional behaviors. Social situations have latent feeling rules: Socially shared rules about feeling Rules apply to the direction and duration of a feeling.

Feeling rules show that the individual is social Feeling rules are evident in social exchanges, where gestures of feeling are measured against a prior sense of what is owed and owing in feeling. We often talk about feelings or those of others as if rights and duties applied directly to them. We talk about having the right to feel angry at someone, or that we should feel grateful. We might feel that a loss should be felt more (feeling bad because we don't feel worse).

Cultural Rules

Cultural feeling scripts are available to guide our feelings, and we draw upon those scripts in understanding our feeling, working on our feeling, and expressing our feeling to others. Very often there is a contradiction between what we understand we should feel and what we actually feel, and this serves to underscore what the norms for feeling are. We are most aware of feeling rules when our feelings are wrong for the situation, and at those times when our feelings are out of line we work to change our feeling. Examples of feeling rules A student about to graduate feels anxious and depressed, but feels that they ought to be happy and that they "owe" this happiness to their parents for making graduation possible. The young graduate does the "surface acting" of an emotive display or the deep acting of trying to feel what is expected. If feeling rules are effective, then the graduate succeeds in actually changing what they feel.

In your research paper on feeling rules, you may use the example of a bride on her wedding day. First the bride has to rely on a cultural understanding of what feelings can be felt; pre-acknowledged, pre-named and pre-articulated and available to be felt.

HOW STRUCTURE SHAPES FEELING RULES

Conventions of feeling (what one is supposed to feel) are used in social exchange between individuals. Individuals make gestures and exchange feeling according to a sense of what is owed and owing. Ideologies dictate what the feeling rules are - the sense of rights and duties of feeling depend on structure and hierarchy. Feeling is hierarchical. Dominants often know little about subordinates because they do not have to. Subordinates on the other hand must attend to the feelings, moods, and behaviors of dominants because their livelihoods and lives depend on it. Who provides what emotional labour for whom, under what conditions, and with what consequences?

Inequality is generally reflected in the distribution of emotional supporting work and the suppression of negative feelings that result from inequality. When do feeling rules change? When ideologies change. When an individual changes an ideological stance, new rules come into play that dictate how the individual reacts to situations emotionally. There are contending sets of feeling rules and situations are framed differently, with different feeling rules, depending on changing ideologies. (e.g. domestic labour: is a man "owed" thanks for participating in domestic work, or taking care of his own children? Does a woman naturally perform the emotional work that is part of domestic work, as an act of love?)