Emotion work and emotion rules: The case of exams

Abstract

Arlie Hochschild has shown that there is a set of rules governing most life situations concerning the emotions that people involved in these situations should experience, and particularly the optimum pitch at which these emotions should be expressed. She shows further that people who experience emotions at a pitch lower than the optimum or higher, do “work” to come up to the optimum or down to it as the case may be. The fact that some people in the same situation, experience emotions at a pitch higher than the optimum and others lower calls for an explanation. Symbolic interactionists suggest that the level of the pitch experienced by the person is a function of the extent to which self is at risk. Where the person perceives his/her self concept to be at great risk, the emotional pitch experienced will be likely to be higher than the optimum expected in the situation. Conversely, where the person perceives little risk to his/her self concept, the emotional pitch is likely to be lower than the optimum. The focus of the paper is on the “work” done by students at examination times to cope with over anxiety (i.e. higher than optimum pitch) or, sometimes, what they perceive as an abnormal lack of anxiety in themselves (i.e. lower than optimum pitch). A great number of cases will be described and classified in an attempt to formulate generalizations concerning strategies that may be applied, not merely to the examination situation, but to the wider universe of emotional situations. Hypotheses are also offered to explain why more of the emotion work done is in the direction of suppressing over anxiety rather than the opposite.