Newsletter Spring/Summer From the Chair’s Desk 2007 Dawn Robinson Volume 21, Number 1 University of Georgia Spring is here already and I am de- Council lighted to report that the Sociology of Emotion section is bustling with Chair: activity. The committees have been Dawn Robinson hard at work generating election University of Georgia slates, awarding honors, developing [email protected] what looks to be a very exciting pro- Committee were Lynn Smith-Lovin, gram at the annual meetings, and Duke University, Peggy Thoits, Uni- Chair-Elect: engaging in exceptional scholarship. versity of North Carolina-Chapel Viktor Gecas We have lots of news. Hill, and Doyle McCarthy, Fordham Purdue University University. Spencer contributed a [email protected] The intellectual vitality of emotions tremendous amount to our intellec- scholarship is evident throughout tual livelihood as a former Chair of Past Chair: the newsletter. Section members the Section, as editor of the top Patricia Adler have published several new books journal in our field, and as an ex- University of Colorado on emotions. In addition, there are emplary scholar of emotions. We [email protected] conferences dealing with emotions miss him greatly. We will have a Secretary-Treasurer: taking place all over the world this few opportunities to honor Spencer Linda Francis year. Please take a look at new Cahill at the New York meetings. SUNY-Stonybrook work by Amy Kroska presented in There will be a special memorial [email protected] our “Emotions Research” column, session in honor of Spencer co- edited by Alison Bianchi. sponsored by the Social Psychol- Council Members ogy Section, the Sociology of Emo- The nominations committee tions Section and the Society for Jennifer Lois (Thomas Scheff, Amy Wharton, the Study of Symbolic Interaction. Western Washington University Martha Copp, Michael Lovaglia), Stay tuned for more information [email protected] chaired by David Franks, put to- about that session in the coming gether a dynamite slate of candi- weeks. In addition, as is our usual Karen A. Hegtvedt dates for this year’s election. Jan custom, we will be honoring Emory University [email protected] Stets and James Jasper have Spencer as this year’s recipient of agreed to stand for Section Chair- the Lifetime Achievement Award at Kathryn Lively Elect; Doyle McCarthy agreed to Dartmouth College stand for Council; Alicia Cast and Continued on page 2 [email protected] Melinda Milligan agreed to stand for Secretary-Treasurer. Please re- In this Issue: Newsletter Editor: member to vote. From the Chair’s Desk..………….….1 David Boyns Current Research Notes....…….….2 CSU Northridge It is with a mixture of great pleasure Student Profile.…………….…...…....3 [email protected] and poignance that I get to an- Emotions Section Awards....……..5 nounce the winner of this year’s So- Scheff on Shooting Rampages…..6 Webmaster: ciology of Emotions Section Lifetime Dominic Little Goudsblom on Shame………….…...6 Achievement Award: Spencer Cahill, CSU Northridge Emotions around the World…..….7 [email protected] University of South Florida, was se- Law and Emotions....………………...9 lected as this year’s recipient of our Section Financial Report………....16 Section Website: section’s highest honor. The mem- Emotions at the ASA.…….………..16 bers of the Distinguished Award Section Committees...……………..17 Spring 2007 1 Chair’s Desk continued from page 1 Current Research Notes our regular business meeting. Amy Kroska Kent State University We also will be honoring this year’s recipients of our Outstanding Recent Contribution Award. The In my current research I have been investigating honoree’s are: Robin W. Simon, Florida State Uni- hypotheses derived from the modified labeling versity and Leda E. Nath, University of Wisconsin- theory of mental illness (e.g., Link 1987; Link et al. Whitewhater, for their paper “Gender and Emotion 1989) using two data sources: three waves of se- in the United States: Do Men and Women Differ in mantic differential and demographic data from pa- Self-Reports of Feelings and Expressive Behav- tients and their network members in the Indian- ior.” This article appeared in 2004 in the American apolis Network Mental Health Study (INMHS) and Journal of Sociology. This year’s committee in- college student semantic differential data that I cluded Jonathan Turner and Richard Serpe and collected in the fall of 2004. Much of this work has was headed up by Lisa Rashotte Walker. Please been done in collaboration with Sarah Harkness, a be sure to come to the business meeting to see former Kent State M.A. student who is now a these honors being bestowed - along with our Ph.D. student at Stanford. In a forthcoming Social graduate student paper award, whose winner Psychology Quarterly, Sarah and I investigate should be announced soon. three issues related to labeling processes. First, we assess the construct validity of a new opera- In addition to section business, there will be sec- tionalization of the cultural conceptions of the tion scholarship and section festivities to enjoy in mentally ill: the affective meanings (evaluation, New York. Section day will be Monday, August potency, and activity) associated with the cultural 13. Jody Clay-Warner and Ellen Granberg, the category “a mentally ill person.” We term these Program Co-Chairs, have organized an out- meanings stigma sentiments. Evaluation (good standing section program. This year’s program vs. bad), potency (powerful vs. weak), and activity highlights the vitality of emotions scholarship both (active vs. inactive) (EPA) are the three universal within and outside of the section. A panel of won- dimensions of meaning identified by Osgood and derful scholars – Verta Taylor, Cecilia Ridgeway, his colleagues in their cross-cultural research Robin Simon, and Robin Stryker has agreed to (e.g., Osgood, May, and Miron 1975). We find assemble and discuss the various ways that emo- consistent support for the validity of the evaluation tion scholarship is emerging in important ways and potency components as measures of these throughout the discipline. There will also be a terri- conceptions. We show, for example, that stigma fic session of new emotions research. Details sentiments are related negatively to stigma beliefs about these sessions appear in this newsletter. as measured by Link’s devaluation-discrimination Our roundtables this year are combined with So- index (Link 1987; Link et al. 1997). cial Psychology, so make sure to check out the Social Psychology section roundtables for some Second, we assess the construct validity of self- exciting new emotion research as well. In addition meanings measures that are new to the labeling to the three section-sponsored sessions above, theory literature: the affective meanings associ- there is an abundance of emotions scholarship ated with individuals’ self-identities (“myself as I being presented elsewhere on the ASA program. really am”) and their reflected appraisals (“myself Carolyn Ellis organized this year’s regular session as others see me”). Using a known groups tech- on Sociology of Emotions. Another section mem- nique, our finding suggest that the evaluation, po- ber, Erica Summers-Effler, organized the regular tency, and activity of both self-constructs are valid sessions on Microsociologies this year. Stay indicators of self-meanings among both non- tuned for postings of non-section sponsored emo- patients and patients. tions related programming later this summer. Finally, we use these new measures to test the Finally, as requested by the membership at last modified labeling theory hypothesis that cultural year’s business meeting, we will be having a joint conceptions of the mentally ill become personally reception with the Social Psychology Section this relevant to individuals who have been diagnosed year on our section day - Monday, August 13. with a mental disorder. We predicted that stigma So, please come and celebrate year with friends and colleagues. continued on page 3 Spring 2007 2 Research Notes continued from page 2 Graduate Student Profile sentiments would be positively related to the cor- Allison Wisecup responding dimensions (evaluation, potency, or Duke University activity) of psychiatric patients’ self-identities and reflected appraisals. Among non-patients, by con- Allison Wisecup is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology trast, we predicted that stigma sentiments and at Duke University. Her research interests are self-meanings would be unrelated. We also pre- self, identity and interaction. She has explored dicted that the slopes for the relationship between identity ambiguity as a status characteristic, and stigma sentiments and self-meanings would be has a paper that analyzes the identity bases of significantly different for patients and non-patients. specific and global self-esteem. We find support for 13 of the 18 components to these hypotheses. We also find three cross- In previous research at the University of Iowa dimensional results that were not anticipated. We (under the direction of Dawn Robinson) and at find, for example, that the potency of “a mentally ill Duke (with Lynn Smith-Lovin and Miller McPher- person” is positively related to both the evaluation son), she experimentally explored the effects of in patients’ self-identity and the evaluation in pa- androgyny on reaction time while classifying tients’ reflected appraisals. Overall, the results words and pictures. The results indicate that the suggest that the cultural conceptions of the men- time required for classifying a physically androgy- tally ill do become personally relevant to individu- nous picture is nearly three times that of non- als who have been diagnosed with a mental disor- androgynous pictures. Further, the presence of der, but the connection is sometimes more com- an androgynous individual continues to delay de- plex than a one-to-one relationship between a cision-making on a word task even after respon- stigma sentiment and its corresponding dimension dents account for individual by classifying them as of self-meaning.