How does occupational identity shape emotional experience? Prior work has largely framed occupation and emotion either in terms of how differences in occupational status structure the experience of powerful, negative emotions or how cultural norms enforce types of acceptable emotional expression in workplaces. Complementing this work by using an identity-centered approach, this paper asks how being in one occupational identity versus another influences the emotions one is likely to experience in everyday life. I argue that one’s occupational identity generates daily interaction sets with typical others, which create opportunities for identity maintenance and confirmation. Affect Control Theory predicts that when individuals confirm identities within an interaction, they will experience the characteristic emotion of the identity. Using data from the General Social Survey’s 1996 emotions module, I find support for the hypothesis that individuals will report experiencing emotions that are closer in cultural meaning to the characteristic emotion of their occupational identity more often than emotions that are more different in cultural meaning. I additionally explore how this relationship depends on the social location of the individual. I find that this relationship is stronger for men, those with higher income, and more educational credentials.
AverettC.HeiseD. R. (1987). Modified social identities: Amalgamations, attributions, and emotions. The Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 13(1–2), 103–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/0022250X.1987.9990028
2.
BoyleK. M. (2017). Verification of self using a mathematical theory of identity, feeling, and behavior. Sociological Forum, 32(3), 659–680. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12353
3.
BrashearsM. E.Aufderheide BrashearsL.HarderN. L. (2020). Where you are, what you want, and what you can do: The role of master statuses, personality traits, and social cognition in shaping ego network size, structure, and composition. Network Science, 8(3), 356–380. https://doi.org/10.1017/nws.2020.6
4.
BrennerP. S.SerpeR. T.StrykerS. (2014). The causal ordering of prominence and salience in identity theory: An empirical examination. Social Psychology Quarterly, 77(3), 231–252. https://doi.org/10.1177/0190272513518337
5.
BrooksM. E.KristensenK.Van BenthemK. J.MagnussonA.BergC. W.NielsenA.SkaugH. J.MaechlerM.BolkerB. M. (2017). GlmmTMB balances speed and flexibility among packages for zero-inflated generalized linear mixed modeling. The R Journal, 9(2), 378–400. https://doi.org/10.32614/rj-2017-066
BurkeP. J.StetsJ. E. (2009). Identity theory. Oxford University Press.
8.
CollettJ. L.LizardoO. (2010). Occupational status and the experience of anger. Social Forces, 88(5), 2079–2104. https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2010.0037
9.
EkstrandM.DammanS. (2016). Front and backstage in the workplace: An explorative case study on activity based working and employee perceptions of control over work-related demands. Journal of Facilities Management, 14(2), 188–202. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFM-10-2015-0029
10.
FineG. A. (1996). Justifying work: Occupational rhetorics as resources in restaurant kitchens. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41(1), 90–115. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393987
11.
FreelandR. E.HoeyJ. (2018). The structure of deference: modeling occupational status using affect control theory. American Sociological Review, 83(2), 243–277. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418761857
12.
GiddensA. (1986). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. CambridgePolity
13.
GoffmanE. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Doubleday.
14.
HarlowR. (2003). Race doesn’t matter, but. . .”: The effect of race on professors’ experiences and emotion management in the undergraduate college classroom*. Social Psychology Quarterly, 66(4), 348–363. ProQuest central; SciTech premium collection. Sociological Abstracts. https://doi.org/10.2307/1519834
HeiseD. R.MacKinnonN. J. (2010). Self, identity, and social institutions. Palgrave Macmillan.
18.
HeiseD. R.Smith-LovinL. (1981). Impressions of goodness, powerfulness, and liveliness from discerned social events. Social Psychology Quarterly, 44(2), 93–106. https://doi.org/10.2307/3033705
19.
HeisigJ. P.SchaefferM. (2019). Why you should always include a random slope for the lower-level variable involved in a cross-level interaction. European Sociological Review, 35(2), 258–279. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcy053
20.
HochschildA. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press.
21.
KemperT. D. (1978). A social interactional theory of emotions. Wiley.
22.
LewisK.KaufmanJ.GonzalezM.WimmerA.ChristakisN. (2008). Tastes, ties, and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook.com. Social Networks, 30(4), 330–342. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2008.07.002
LivelyK. J.PowellB. (2006). Emotional expression at work and at home: Domain, status, or individual characteristics?. Social Psychology Quarterly, 69(1), 17–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/019027250606900103
25.
MacKinnonN. J. (1994). Symbolic interactionism as affect control. State University of New York Press.
26.
MartinP. Y. (2003). “Said and done” versus “saying and doing”: Gendering practices, practicing gender at work. Gender & Society, 17(3), 342–366. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243203017003002
27.
MilesA. (2014). Addressing the problem of cultural anchoring: An identity-based model of culture in action. Social Psychology Quarterly, 77(2), 210–227. https://doi.org/10.1177/0190272514524062
28.
PhelanS.KinsellaE. A. (2009). Occupational identity: Engaging socio‐cultural perspectives. Journal of Occupational Science, 16(2), 85–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/14427591.2009.9686647
29.
PierceJ. L. (1995). Gender trials: Emotional lives in contemporary law firms. University of California Press.
RobinsonD. T. (2014). The role of cultural meanings and situated interaction in shaping emotion. Emotion Review, 6(3), 189–195. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073914522866
32.
SchollW. (2013). The socio-emotional basis of human interaction and communication: How we construct our social world. Social Science Information, 52(1), 3–33. https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018412466607
33.
Smith-LovinL. (2007). The strength of weak identities: Social structural sources of self, situation and emotional experience. Social Psychology Quarterly, 70(2), 106–124. https://doi.org/10.1177/019027250707000203
34.
Smith-LovinL.RobinsonD. T. (2006). Control theories of identity, action, and emotion: In search of testable differences between affect control theory and identity control theory. In McClellandK. A.FararoT. J. (Eds.), Purpose, meaning, and action: Control systems theories in sociology (pp. 163–188). Palgrave Macmillan US. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10809-8_7
35.
Smith-LovinL.RobinsonD. T.CannonB. C.ClarkJ. K.FreelandR.MorganJ. H.RogersK. B. (2016). Mean affective ratings of 929 identities, 814 behaviors, and 660 modifiers by University of Georgia and Duke University Undergraduates and by Community Members in Durham, NC, in 2012-2014. University of Georgia. http://research.franklin.uga.edu/act.
StetsJ. E.CastA. D. (2007). Resources and identity verification from an identity theory perspective. Sociological Perspectives, 50(4), 517–543. https://doi.org/10.1525/sop.2007.50.4.517
38.
ValentinoL. (2020). The segregation premium: How gender shapes the symbolic valuation process of occupational prestige judgments. Social Forces, 99(1), 31–58. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soz145
39.
WalkerM. H.LynnF. B. (2013). The embedded self: A social networks approach to identity theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 76(2), 151–179. https://doi.org/10.1177/0190272513482929
40.
WilliamsC. L. (1992). The glass escalator: Hidden Advantages for men in the “female” professions. Social Problems, 39(3), 253–267. https://doi.org/10.2307/3096961
41.
WilliamsC. L. (2013). The glass escalator, revisited: Gender inequality in neoliberal times, SWS feminist lecturer. Gender & Society, 27(5), 609–629. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243213490232
42.
WingfieldA. H. (2009). Racializing the glass escalator: Reconsidering men’s experiences with women’s work. Gender & Society, 23(1), 5–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243208323054
43.
WisecupA.RobinsonD. T.Smith-LovinL. (2006). Sociology of emotions. In BryantC.PeckD. (Eds.), Handbook of 21st century sociology (pp. 106–115). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
