Structural Theorizing on Emotion &

Kemper’s Power-Status Theory of

Emotion
Outline
I. Structural Theorizing on Emotions
II. Theodore Kemper
III. Key Ideas
IV. Power and Status and the Power-Status
Theory of Emotions
V. Status, Power and Felicity
 Structural Theorizing on Emotions
1. Social structures are generally viewed as
patterns of social relationships among
individual and collective actors that persist
over time
2. Theorizing on how social structures
determine the arousal and flow of emotions
 Social structures may be identified
as:

1.Status position
a. each position carrying cultural
contents (norms, ideologies,
values), prestige or honor,
authority and other characteristics
 Social structures may be identified
as:

2. Network
a. positions conceptualized as nodes
that reveal relationships with other
nodes
 Social structures may be identified
as:
b. the network as a whole is analyzed in terms of properties:

1.density – level of
connectedness among all
nodes
2.centrality – degree to
which connections among
nodes run thru one or few
key nodes
3.bridges – positions
connecting cliques
4. cliques – extent of overall
network reveals subsets of
high density relations among
Flow of emotions among individuals
may be determined by:

1. characteristics of status position with other

positions
2. properties of the network occupied by a
person
Known Works on the Structural
Theory of Emotions:
1. Theodore Kemper’s Power-Status Model
2. Barry Markovsky and Edward J. Lawler’s
Network Theory
3. Expectation States Theories of Emotions
4. Joseph Berger’s Affect Expectation
Theory
5. Cecilia Ridgeway’s Theory of Socio-
emotional Behavior and Status
6. Michael Lovaglia and Jeffrey Houser’s
Status-Compatible Emotions Theory
II. Theodore Kemper
Biography
1. Born: 29 December 1926
2. Emeritus Professor of
Sociology at St John's
University, New York, USA
3. One of the early pioneers
in the sociology of
emotions
4. Developed a new theory
based on power and
status
 Works
1. The relationship between self-concept and the
characteristics and expectations of significant others
(1963, 1965)
2. Work integration, marital satisfaction, and conjugal
power (1976)
3. A Social interactional theory of emotions (1978)
4. Research agendas in the Sociology of Emotions (1990,
2011)
5. Themes and Variations in the Sociology of Emotions
6. Social Relations and Emotions: A Structural Approach
7. Social structure and testosterone : Explorations of the
Socio-Bio-Social chain (1990)
8. Predicting Emotions in Groups: some lessons from
September 11 (2002)
9. Status, Power and Ritual interaction : a relational
III. Key Ideas
Key Ideas
Kemper builds upon the concept of Power and Status
(in social structures) and how these determine the
arousal and flow of emotions
1. Power – viewed as the ability to compel others to
follow one’s wishes and directives (authority, or the
ability to tell others what to do)
2. Status – relates to the giving and receiving of
unforced deference, honor and respect
(conceptualized as prestige or honor rather than as a
position in a structure)
He views the relative power and status of individuals
have large effects on the arousal of negative and
positive emotions
Human Nature
We are driven to:
Confer or give appropriate status
Expect or “claim” the same
When thwarted or opposed, use power
We do this in groups:
As we strive for equal or higher status across
groups
Commit to where we get status
Main Argument
1. Positive emotions – experienced when
individual HAVE or GAIN power and status
including:
a. Satisfaction
b. Security
c. Confidence
2. Negative emotions – experienced when
individuals LOSE power or status including:
a. Anxiety
b. Fear
c. Loss of confidence
Expectations
1. Expectations VS Reality
2. Influence the arousal and flow of emotions

Power
Expects to gain power + received power =
positive emotions (e.g. self-confidence)
Expects to gain power + did not receive power =
negative emotions (e.g. lose self-confidence,
increased level of fear and anxiety)
Expects to lose power + did not lose power = mild
positive emotions (e.g. satisfaction, gain in
confidence)
 Expectations vs Reality
EXPECTATION EMOTIONS
S REALITY
 Expectations
Status
Expects to gain status + gains status = positive
emotions + positive sentiments toward those
who gave them status
Expects to gain status + did not receive status
+ blames self = shame and sadness
Expects to gain status + did not receive status
+ blames others = anger and aggressiveness
IV. Power and Status and the Power-
Status Theory of Emotions
 Literature on Power and Status
1. Started with Empedocles: asks about the dynamic quality of
nature in Love and Strife
 Freud : Eros (life) Thanatos (death)
 emerged during a period of methodological innovation and
empirical investigation during and following World War II to
understanding military leadership
2. Principal tool of discovery: Factor Analysis
 a mathematical technique for determining underlying patterns in
large sets of observed data or co-related variables
 Developed by Spearman (1904) and later refined by Thurstone
(1934)
 used at first to study whether intelligence was unitary or
composed of different basic "factors" (e.g., verbal
intelligence, mathematical intelligence)
 became a leading method by which analysts in many
sciences explored how many factors or basic dimensions
 Literature on Power and Status
3. Carter’s seminal work
a. Answered: “What are the characteristics which can be
evaluated by observing people interacting?"
b. Factor analysis used as one method for generating a
smaller set of constructs from a larger set of observables
c. found that three dimensions accounted for the
variance in ratings of the group behavior of
college males on 19 variables
d. Despite differences in group size, tasks, social locations
of subjects, and types of measurement, they found
essentially the same three factors or dimensions:
 Prominence and Achievement
 Group Goal Facilitation
 Group Sociability
 From Carter’s Work
 Issues that arise: three constructs instead of two
 For sociological theory, we must consider:
 Division of labor
 Reproduction and parenting
 Socially constructed further specialization of tasks, with wide variation
between groups in the particulars
 Division of labor consists of a distribution of tasks, or what can be
thought of as technical activities, assigned to different actors to
accomplish the goals of the group
 Carter's Group Goal Facilitation factor accounts support the
analysis based on the division of labor
 includes traits and behaviors as: efficiency, cooperation, adaptability,
pointed toward group solution, helpful, effective intelligence, and enable
group members to recognize their function
 However, other considerations:
 humans do more than task or technical activities. They also act toward
each other—something we call social relations. This is the arena in which
the details of who gets how much of the available rewards and benefits and
by what means are settled.

 Power
1. Ability to force others to do even when
they do not want to do it
2. With a relatively stable power structure, an
actor with more power will be able to obtain
his or her way more often and in more
domains than the other actor(s)
 Status
1. Known as authentic voluntary compliance
(status-conferral or status)
2. People willingly and gladly defer to, accept,
approve, support, respect, admire, and,
ultimately, love others without compulsion
or coercion
3. An actor with high status is one who
receives many benefits and rewards
from the other actor(s) in the relationship
 Representation of Power and Status
A and B are any two actors. Pa and Pb are A's
and B's power, and Sa and Sb are A's and B's
status
 Power and Status as Macro-
Dimensions
Power-status theory is applicable to large groups and to
interaction between large groups and to the emotions
generated both within and between large groups.
At the societal level:
Power – freedom
Status – justice
Social movements are normally motivated by one or
another of these interests (Kemper 2001)
Not as much empirical work than other small-group
settings, but considerable complexity is observed at
this level, but the essential technical activity and
power (freedom) and status (justice) factors
Relational Meta-processes
In any given relationship, one might or might
not be satisfied with his or her power or status
standing vis-a-vis the other person(s):
When satisfied – one aims to maintain that
state (status quo) to which may entail modest
adjustments of conduct
When dissatisfied— one is motivated to
change either his or her standing or the
standing of the other actor. This sets in motion
processes for the enhancement (or reduction) of
the power or status configuration of the
relationship.
 Status Deficit
Those with status deficit may engage in the
following:
1. Formal Attainment
According to
Universalistic Criteria –
enhancing status through
achievements
2. Normative Appeals –
seeking norms of fairness or
justice
3. Extreme and Dangerous
Attainments – fatal status-
 Status Deficit
4. Claims to Deep
Emotional
Experience –
raving & ranting
5. Early Adopter –
first to introduce a
high-status
practice, but may
be unpopular to
those invested in
status quo
6. Exemplary
 Status Deficit
8.Humility – in the hope of being
recognized for it
9.Victimhood and Complaints –
If victimizers are group
members, it may reduce the
victim's status even further; a
listener is a status-equal; status
superiors may be interested;
status inferiors likely to gloat
10.Jesting and Joking – a highly
desired social lubricant
11.Nostalgia Retrieval
12.Games, Contests, and
Recreational Activity
Power-Status Theory of
Emotions
Power-Status Theory of Emotions derives from
the proposition that a "large class of emotions
results from real, imagined or anticipated
outcomes in social relationships"
a. Real outcomes – happen in "real time" (i.e.,
in the immediate framework of interaction)
b. Imagined outcomes – include scenarios of
what-might-be or what-might-have-been or
are recalled from past interaction
c. Anticipated outcomes – those that are
projected as a result of future interactions
12 Possible Outcomes
A's power can rise (+), decline (-), or
remain the same (0)
B's power can rise (+), decline (-), or
remain the same (0)
A's status can rise (+), decline (-), or
remain the same (0)
B's status can rise (+), decline (-), or
remain the same (0)
 Insights
1. the multiplicity of outcomes should lessen the
complexity of human emotions
2. the complexity of interaction outcomes, gives a
useful theoretical explanation into the
question of mixed emotions or mixed feelings
and that interaction outcomes will always occur in
four different relational channels
3. one outcome is often regarded as dominant
and hence reduces any interference from any less
intense emotions that derive from what occurs in
the other three relational channel
4. emotions will be assigned to relational channel
outcomes
3 Possible Agencies and 3 Possible
Directions
1. Self
2. Other
3. Third party – might be a person, or an
abstraction, such as God, or fate, or luck,
or "the way things are”
Kinds of Emotions
1. Structural emotions – aroused by
individuals’ relative stable power and
status within social structures
2. Anticipatory emotions – aroused by
peoples’ expectations for power and
status
3. Situational/consequent emotions –
aroused by on-going interaction and
changes in individuals’ power and status;
often short-term
 Structural Emotions
Adequate Excessive Insuffici
ent
Own Power Safety Guilt Fear/
anxiety
Others’ Safety Fear/ Guilt
Power anxiety
Own Satisfied, Shame/ Sadness-
Status Contented, Embarrass depressio
or Happy ment n OR
Anger
Others’ Contentme Fear Guilt
Anticipatory Emotions
 Consequent Emotions
 Relational Channel: A's status
 B's Anticipatory Emotion: Serene confidence
 Interaction Outcome: Status loss by A
 Agent: Third Party
Structural Summary: Liking for A
 B's consequent emotion directed to parallel: Consternation,
Sadness
 B's consequent emotion directed to A: Sympathy
 B's consequent emotion directed to third party: Anger
Structural Summary: Dislike for A
 B's consequent emotion directed to parallel: Schadenfreude
(pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune)
 B's consequent emotion directed to A: Contempt
 B's consequent emotion directed to third party: Liking
Love and Liking
Unfaithful love Romantic Love

Parent-Infant Love

Divine, Parental, or Mentor Lov

Unrequited Love Ideal Love

Adulation by Fans
 Tests of the Theory
In study one: data collected in an eight-nation study describing situations
in which they had experienced four primary emotions: joy, sadness, fear,
and anger
 two coders trained in the theory of emotions and given edited vignettes
from which labels of the emotions were removed: task was to identify the
emotion
 Coders were encouraged to think that a full spectrum of emotions was
involved
 Two coders reached 74.6% and 69.7% accuracy in their judgments
In study two: compared power-status with "normative" theory of emotions
(Hochschild 1975, 1981)
 hypotheses about males' and females' emotional experience
 Results: "Taken as a whole, our findings for emotional experience are
more consistent with predictions based on Kemper's structural theory
about emotion”
In study three: compared power-status with Heise's (1979) Affect Control
Theory (ACT)
 Research Agenda
1. Universality - power-status antecedents of
specific emotions apply universally across the
spectrum of social and demographic categories
(e.g., sex, race, ethnicity, social class, and so forth)
2. Social Relational Precedence - emotions result
from outcomes of power and status relations and
not from cultural imposition
3. Sociophysiological Integration - power and
status are linked, via emotions, to underlying
physiological processes, thus indicating a
theoretical arc between the biological and the
social
 Conclusions
1. possible to generate quite complex examinations of emotions
across a very broad spectrum of social situations
2. structural emotions - based on actors' power and status
positions when power and status actions and outcomes
stabilize into a continuing structure
3. anticipatory emotions - actors look to the outcomes of
future interactions and develop expectations, based on past
power and status outcomes and future power and status
contingencies
4. consequent emotions – when structural emotions and
anticipatory emotions provide an orienting context; instigated
by immediate interaction outcomes in power and status terms
5. These all provide a comprehensive account of emotions in
social life when looked at from a relational perspective
V. Status, Power and Felicity
Reference groups
Other actors, the ones the focal actor takes
into account
Higher status and/or power reference
groups–(e.g. parents, teachers, religious
authorities, sociometric stars) transmit the
culture of the relevant group, that is, the
norms, standards, values, ideals, and so on
that are espoused in the group
Enough that they have prescriptions for
behavior, need not be real or alive
Actor in Status-Power Theory
Each person chooses based on the context of
a history or prescriptions of the group
known to the individual
Examples:
1. Course choice vs parents’ choice - it is
only that another reference group, with its
status and power contingencies, has
become dominant
2. Moral choice – dominance of church or
society, not defined in terms of right or
wrong
Cultural Variation in the Definition
of Happiness
1. Happiness varies by culture (Pedrotti et al.
2009).
2. Chinese: product of luck and fortune
(Oishi and Kurtz, 2011)
3. Aristotle’s eudaimonia (his word for
happiness): circumstances over which one
had no control (Nussbaum 1986).
4. Current Western: actively pursued
Human Monsters
Happiness is thus only personal. It depends on
the balance of status-power outcomes (as will
be described below) and on the relevant
reference group inputs about these outcomes
and is uninvolved with the happiness of others
Because we have been trained to think so by our
reference groups, most of us would judge it a
better world if “good” people were happy and
“bad” people were unhappy
But the actualities of existence are such that
human monsters are often tolerably happy, while
their victims are extremely unhappy
 Happiness: Own Status
 Common social structural status markers like
income, education and sex are only weakly
related to subjective well-being (Argyle 1987;
Myers and Diener 1995; Watson 2000; Tay and
Diener 2011)
 Happiness is correlated positively with “number
of close friends, frequency of contact with friends
and relatives, making new acquaintances,
involvement in social organizations, and overall
level of social activity” (Watson 2009, p. 211)
 Happiness: Own Status
 Positive emotions are associated with recurring
social support and respect
 Friendships are frequently renewed by
increments of status-gain through listening,
approving, endorsing and confirming
 Happiness: materialism stands in second
place relative to experience
 Play: allows happiness to flow and gives one a
chance to be the center of attention; status can
be earned by sheer talent
 Flow/focusing on an activity: an ideal form of
status attainment (if beyond the skill, there is no
chance to earn status for successful outcome or
performance)
 Other considerations
1. Interpenetration – obtaining status only
matters when it comes from the person
one wants to receive the status from
2. Consistency – attaining status may lead
to unhappiness if it creates an
inconsistency between the levels of
status one receives from different
reference groups
3. Comparison – comparing the amount of
status received from someone else
4. Curvilinearity – not all those with highest
status achieve highest status in the
future
5. Excess – being “endless” or extreme
good fortune may lead to despair
because there is no adequate regulation
of one’s desires
 Other considerations
6. Schadenfreude – satisfaction from the suffering
of others, which stems hate and antipathy
7. Envy – stems from one’s own status deficit; the
source of envy gains status and self-confidence
8. Social support – actual support (support given
when there is a need) has no relationship to
well-being since it shows incompetence and
one’s failings, as compared to perceived
support which one believes one can rely on
when in need
Happiness: Other Status
Family-oriented and altruistic goals led to well-being
Volunteering and giving money to someone in need
helped to realize one’s own eudaimonic goals
Loving kindness and compassion towards others
relating to status-power dynamics:
Own power – assisting members of one’s own group
supports the individual as well, through mutual
assistance in time of need (which leads to security)
Own status – status conferral based on gratitude by
immediate beneficiaries, and moral approval from
others; however, there is higher motive for helping
out than receive expressions of gratitude
Happiness: Other Status
1. Gratitude somehow removes the sense of obligation from the receiver
2. Elevation: emotional response to moral exemplars, and feeling less
selfish than previously (e.g. charity, fidelity, generosity)
3. Admiration: response to outstanding achievements or
accomplishments that display “non-moral excellence”
Altruism vs Self-Interest:
4. Argument: there is no pure or independent altruistic motive free from
gaining rewards (status) or avoiding punishment
5. Batson et.al. (1988) conducted a study where participants with either
high or low empathy either were, or were not, able to help a person
who needs help - concluded that altruism can be autonomous because
there was no proof that high empathy participants felt better when a
victim was relieved by their own action or by other means
6. However, Kemper argues that what was at stake is a willingness to
help, and not the helping itself to raise status or avoid punishment,
plus the desire to help is prescribed initially by the reference group’s
influence
Happiness: Own Power
1. Defeating an enemy elicits laughter, among other
reactions, often in the context of mocking and humor
2. Extraversion – reflects own power in part through its
being “assertive”, predicted positive emotions
(McCrae and Costa 1989)
3. Safety – emotion that should pertain largely to one’s
own power (Gable and Gosnell 2011)
4. Anger or anger-release – one may feel good to vent
upon or to strike something or someone (using own
power) in a fit of anger
5. Curvilinear relationship between aggression and
satisfaction – medium levels of aggression evoked
the highest amount of happiness (Ramirez 2005)
Happiness: Other’s Power
1. Prudence suggests that one be somehow armed against the
power of the other
2. Dependency reduction: A reduction of dependency, by
whatever means, leads to a reduction in the power of the
other (autonomy)
3. Trust – willingness to put oneself into the power of another in
the belief that power will not be used
4. Master-slave relationship: both experience some sort of
dependency towards each other
5. Sense of control – complete knowledge or understanding of
the one with greater power, with control as a variant of
power (Acitelli 1993)
6. Courage – act against the power of the other despite one’s
fear of it, one will be well-regarded for the attempt (status
and positive emotions)
 Meaning and Happiness
1. Religiosity and spirituality:
a. Provides a sense of meaning
b. Often transacted with a community (with similar status
and beliefs)
2. Meaning of meaning
a. Figuring out how the world works (Madrigal, 2013)
b. Assertion that life has no inherent meaning – existential
psychology (Park 2011)
c. Being connected to causes greater than oneself (from
Victor Frankl, concentration camp survivor)
d. Providing status to others (reference-group-prescribed
scheme or serving humanity)
3. Meaning is understandable in terms of the idealized
and often prescribed behaviors that earn status,
sociability and significant relationships
Conclusion
In respect to happiness, it is not necessarily
those who provide the rewards (deference,
respect, status, money, etc) who matter to
the actor but rather the reference group
who originally established the desire to act
in such a way as to gain status or avoid
their power
References
Jonathan H. Turner and Jan E. Stets. “Structural
Theorizing on Emotions,” Pp. 215-260 in The Sociology
of Emotions. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Theodore D. Kemper. “Ch 4: Power and Status and the
Power-Status Theory of Emotions,” Pp 87-112 in Jan E.
Stets and Jonathan H. Turner (eds.) Handbook of the
Sociology of Emotions. NY and London: Springer, 2006.
Theodore D. Kemper. “Ch 8: Status, Power and Felicity,
“ Pp. 155-178 in Jan E. Stets and Jonathan H. Turner
(eds.) Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions: Volume II.
NY and London: Springer, 2014.
Kurt Finsterbusch. “Sociology,” McGraw-Hill Companies,
Inc. NY: 2011