The meta theory of examining emotion in social relationships

The Meta-Theory of Examining Emotion in Social RelationshipsColin Wayne Leach Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut In “Social-Psychological Interventi

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The Meta-Theory of Examining Emotion in Social Relationships

Colin Wayne Leach

To cite this article: Colin Wayne Leach (2016) The Meta-Theory of Examining Emotion in Social

Relationships, Psychological Inquiry, 27:2, 113-116, DOI: 10.1080/1047840X.2016.1162129

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2016.1162129

Published online: 27 Apr 2016

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The Meta-Theory of Examining Emotion in Social Relationships

Colin Wayne Leach

Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut

In “Social-Psychological Interventions for Intergroup

Reconcil-iation: An Emotion Regulation Perspective,” Sabina Cehaji

c-Clancy, Amit Goldenberg, James Gross, and Eran Halperin

(this issue) summarize, integrate, and extend their work

regard-ing the experience of emotions in protracted intergroup

con-flicts and how such emotions might be changed (or

“regulated”) to promote peace and reconciliation With

admira-ble ecumenism, Cehajic-Clancy et al move fluidly between the

somewhat separate traditions in social, personality, peace, and

political psychology They also mix and match more generic

ideas about emotion and its regulation with the meso-level

the-ories of intergroup emotion, social identity, conflict resolution,

forgiveness, and peace and reconciliation I respect and admire

the hybridity in this work And I believe that work of this type

has the potential to use insights from one area to contribute to

other areas while chipping away at the walls (theoretical,

meth-odological, rhetorical, stylistic) that suggest that these

interre-lated areas of inquiry are somehow separate

Because their theory and research are so compelling, my

com-ments focus on some of the bigger meta-theoretical questions

that arise out of Cehajic-Clancy et al.’s hybrid approach I am

most concerned about what their approach suggests for how we

should think about, study, and intervene in emotion in

inter-group, and other, relationships I suspect that our understanding

of emotions in relationships will be less full than it could be if we

focus so much on emotions and their consequences that the

rela-tionships within which emotions are embedded fade to the

back-ground As the trite (and true) aphorism instructs us, we can

easily lose sight of the forest if we focus too closely on the trees

Echoing prevailing theories of emotion, Cehajic-Clancy et al

appear to think of emotions as “emotivational” states of readiness

to act that are each based in a unique pattern of cognitive

appraisals through which individuals have interpreted and given

meaning to issues and events At a metatheoretical level, this

view of emotion can be called cognitive in perspective—the

con-scious or unconcon-scious process of perceiving and appraising

events and their implications for us is taken as a central cause of

emotion (see Lazarus,1991) It can also be characterized as

func-tionalist in perspective—emotions exist to orient us in adaptive

ways to other people and the world at large (see Frijda,1986)

Anger

Given these assumptions about emotion in general, 

Cehajic-Clancy et al can more easily conceptualize and study an

emotion like anger as a state of agitation based in the cognitive appraisal of an outgroup as treating the individual’s ingroup inappropriately (e.g., unfairly, unsympathetically) They can also conceptualize anger as functioning to (perceptually, cogni-tively, physically) ready ingroup members to confront the out-group about its inappropriate treatment of the inout-group Partly because being treated inappropriately appears to embolden and morally legitimize strong opposition (Averill, 1982; Frijda,

1986), Cehajic-Clancy et al expect that anger fuels aggressive opposition Thus, aided by the meta-theoretical anchors of cog-nitive appraisal and functional emotion, Cehajic-Clancy and her collaborators provide us a process model of the ways in which perception of an outgroup as adversarial leads to hostile anger and thus aggressive action Because such aggression can easily be interpreted as inappropriate by its target, we can then expect reciprocated anger and aggression So we have a vicious circle of angry conflict where each group sees itself as the wronged party who must protect itself against an immoral adversary who lacks the humanity to abide by the basic rules of civility (for a general discussion, see Leach, Bilali, & Pagliaro,

2015)

There can be little doubt that the vicious circle of reciprocal anger characterizes some of the most prominent examples of intergroup conflict and violence Perhaps my description has already led you to imagine these prominent examples—Palesti-nians and Jewish Israelis, Serbs and Croats, Greek and Turkish Cypriots, the family next door As Averill’s (1982) comprehen-sive studies of the anger experience showed, anger often operates

in a vicious circle of mutual recrimination As Averill showed, anger is most typically accompanied by the impulse to verbally aggress against the believed wrongdoer or to take something ben-eficial away from them This impulse to confront is the action readiness of anger Given this, it makes sense that Cehajic-Clancy

et al use a group-based application of emotion regulation theory

to argue that interested parties can encourage the angry to break the vicious circle before the confrontational impulse is converted into the aggressive actions of oppression, war, or genocide In a clever use of social psychology’s prowess for small manipula-tions/interventions designed to have outsized effects, Cehaji c-Clancy and colleagues show that altering how ingroup members think about the outgroup and its actions can slow the turn of the vicious circle and thereby temper the anger and the likelihood of

it translating into aggression This all makes sense And I have

no doubt that it can and does happen Cehajic-Clancy et al offer plenty of evidence in this regard

CONTACT Colin Wayne Leach colin.leach@uconn.edu Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-1020.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2016.1162129

The question for me is whether it is best to think of anger as

necessarily detrimental to relationships and thus as something

important to regulate in intergroup relationships marred by

protracted conflict Ample theory and research on anger in

interpersonal relationships suggests against an inevitable link

between anger and aggression, as the quality of the relationship

within which anger operates appears to determine its

experi-ence, expression, and consequences In fact, close, necessary, or

otherwise valued relationships can temper anger and its

trans-lation into aggression because we are concerned about the

effects that anger and aggression may have on the relationship

(for reviews, see Leach & Tiedens,2004; Parkinson, Fischer, &

Manstead, 2005) In “communal” relationships—where each

partner feels a sense of responsibility for the other’s

well-being—anger is expressed more openly and constructively and

is better understood and accepted (for a review, see Clark &

Brissette,2003) Thus, if indeed anger in protracted intergroup

conflicts tends to translate to overt hostility or aggression, this

is likely a result of the antagonistic quality of the relationship

within which the anger operates, rather than a result of the

anger alone

Anger is likely translated into actual aggression only rarely

because we are most often angry at people with whom we have

close relationships (Averill,1982) Although Averill found that

individuals who experienced anger felt the impulse to verbally

aggress against the perceived wrongdoer in 82% of instances,

only 50% of the time did people recall actually telling off the

target of their anger The impulse to physically aggress was

reported in 40% of instances but only 10% of the time did

peo-ple actually aggress physically and only about half the time did

they aggress verbally In fact, the most common responses to

anger were to calm down and to discuss the incident with a

neutral party People reported gaining from their anger

some-what more often than they reported losing something

person-ally or sociperson-ally

The metatheoretical view of anger as inherently relational

requires that theory and research on anger keep the

relation-ship within which it occurs front and center Although the

quality of the intergroup relation within which anger occurs is

rarely examined, there are several examples of relational

approaches to anger in the study of interpersonal relations For

instance, Clark and her colleagues have shown that the

experi-ence, expression, and consequences of anger is colored by

whether it occurs in the more constructive context of a

commu-nal relationship rather than an exchange relationship (for a

review, see Clark & Brissette,2003) In another example,

Miku-lincer (1998) relied on Bowlby’s notion that individuals with a

secure style of attachment to important others tend to respond

to perceived wrongs with an “anger of hope” because secure

attachment is predicated on a view of relationships as reliable

and important, and thus as beneficial and worthy of

self-invest-ment In contrast, Bowlby argued that the insecurely attached

are more prone to an “anger of despair,” as their distrust of

relationships leads them to expect little from them and to avoid

self-investment or to do so only cautiously and ambivalently

Consistent with these ideas, Mikulincer found securely attached

people to express more anger outwardly, to attribute less hostile

intent to others, and to feel more pleasant emotions along with

their anger Despite their greater outward anger and similar

impulses to aggress, the securely attached had more optimistic expectations of the other party and how the issue would be resolved and they pursued more constructive, approach-ori-ented strategies In contrast, the insecurely attached experi-enced anger less positively and expressed anger in less constructive ways Not surprisingly, the insecurely attached had less hopeful expectations about the other party and the res-olution of the conflict

In addition to clarifying why anger is sometimes hostile and destructive, a relational metatheory makes it clear that anger can also operate differently (for a general discussion, see McGuire,1973,2004) Thus, if one is interested in an alterna-tive to the anger of despair, one must understand it as rooted in insecure attachment and think about what sort of attachment could foster the anger of hope (e.g., secure attachment) Or, if one is dissatisfied with the guarded and hostile way in which anger operates in an exchange relationship, one must think about what sort of relationship could foster open and construc-tive anger (e.g., a communal relationship) Unlike Cehaji c-Clancy et al.’s advocacy for the down-regulation of anger in intergroup conflicts, a relational metatheory of anger suggests that the color and hue of anger itself can be changed by altering the quality of the relationship within which anger is embedded Efforts to promote securely attached (i.e., trusting, reliable) and communal (i.e., mutually concerned for each other’s welfare) intergroup relationships are two obvious and intriguing possibilities

In contrast to a relational view, generic notions of anger conceptualize and study the emotion as if it can operate in

an idealized social vacuum that can only ever exist in the rarefied world of pure theory divorced from the social and the psychological of human experience and behavior (see Leach & Tiedens, 2004) Pure theory may work for physical concepts, like light, matter, and energy But social and psy-chological concepts—like anger, aggression, conflict, and rec-onciliation—must be analogous to social and psychological reality to maximize their explanatory use (McGuire, 1973) The emotion scholar Lisa Feldman Barrett (2006) has been making a similar point of late, in somewhat different terms She has argued that an implicit metatheoretical view of emo-tion as “natural kind” concepts (like carbon, or energy, or neurons), has led emotion theorists and researchers to unnecessarily reductionist views of emotion that view their sociality and their psychology as superficial add-ons to emo-tion rather than as part of their foundaemo-tion By thinking about anger as a singular emotion with a singular cause, sin-gular experience, and sinsin-gular motivational signature,

 Cehajic-Clancy and colleagues seem to endorse a natural kinds metatheory of anger that pushes the intergroup rela-tionship to the background instead of viewing protracted intergroup conflict as the soil in which hostile and destruc-tive anger may best grow

Guilt (and Shame)

The relational view of emotion that I am contrasting to the pre-vailing, natural kind, view of emotion has a set of similar impli-cations for all of the emotions that Cehajic-Clancy et al discuss

as central to understanding and intervening in protracted

intergroup conflict Take guilt as another example Guilt has

received a great deal of attention among those interested in

intergroup reconciliation and reparation mainly because the

prevailing view of guilt is that it is a dysphoric state of

self-criti-cism for acknowledged moral wrongdoing As such, guilt is

believed to be closely linked to the impulse to apologize,

com-pensate, or otherwise make restitution to those harmed by

one’s wrongdoing Thus, as with anger, the emotion of guilt is

thought to be based in a set of essential cognitive appraisals

and is thought to function to ready one to act in the way

logi-cally implied by these appraisals and the psychological and

vis-ceral processes that they cause The tradition of social

psychological work on group-based guilt that began in earnest

in the last 1990s and early to mid 2000s was probably borne

out of the several notable examples of politicians and other

prominent leaders like the Pope identifying their ingroup as the

perpetrator of historical wrongdoing and expressing remorse,

regret, and sometimes guilt about it These emotional

expres-sions were sometimes, only sometimes, joined by apologies,

promises of compensation, and wishes for forgiveness and/or

reconciliation (see Minow,1998)

Attention to the reparative powers of group-based guilt was

probably also rooted in an influential conceptualization and

review of evidence on guilt by Baumeister, Stillwell, and

Hea-therton (1994) In their “Inter-personal Approach to Guilt,”

Baumeister et al (1994) explained why guilt about the harm

done to others should motivate efforts at repair and

reconcilia-tion, given its basis in the acknowledgment of personal

wrong-doing and the empathetic concern for the harm done to others

What many of us missed in the translation of Baumeister et al

to intergroup guilt, however, was their theoretical and empirical

emphasis on guilt in close and important interpersonal

rela-tionships (see also Clark & Brissette, 2003) Although their

view was taken to be one of guilt in general, it was in fact a

the-ory of guilt in the particular kind of relationships in which we

could reasonably expect guilt to be most constructive and most

benevolent Here again, a somewhat implicit metatheoretical

focus on an emotion in a particular kind of relationship was

taken to be a generic theory of the emotion that should apply

to all kinds of relationships

As I and colleagues have argued elsewhere, the empirical

links between group-based guilt and wanting to repair or

rec-oncile tend to be small and thus nowhere near the large links

that the prevailing view of guilt expects (for a review, see Iyer &

Leach,2009) Even in close and important interpersonal

rela-tions, guilt tends to have only small to moderate links to

want-ing to repair or reconcile (see Baumeister et al.1994; Frijda,

1986) In fact, a great deal of research on guilt shows it to also

be linked to wanting to avoid, withdraw, and otherwise escape

self-recrimination or recrimination by others (for a review, see

Gausel & Leach,2011) This is part of the reason why chronic

or generalized feelings of guilt have long been linked to

depres-sion and other psychopathology In short, guilt often appears

to be very similar to the presumably more destructive

self-criti-cal emotion to which it is often contrasted—shame (for reviews,

see Gausel & Leach,2011; Iyer & Leach,2009; Leach & Cidam,

2015) Shame, like guilt, appears to have a more complicated

link to action tendencies, motivation, and behavior than

pre-vailing theory allows, as shame is tied to both approach and

avoidance of failure (Gausel & Leach,2011) In fact, in a recent meta-analysis of 71 published studies of episodic shame, Leach and Cidam (2015) found the empirical link between shame and the constructive approach orientation of self-improvement and pro-sociality to range from positive and large to negative and large

Rather than ignoring the apparent heterogeneity in shame and guilt’s links to constructive approach orientation to failure,

in Leach and Cidam (2015) we used a relational meta-theory of emotion to generate a theory of why the link should sometimes

be positive and sometimes negative Inspired by McGuire’s (1973, 2004) perspectivist metatheory, we eschewed “simple and sovereign” theories that assume that each emotion func-tions to orient people to the world in one way and instead argued that shame and guilt cannot be understood outside of the context in which they occur Thus, we theorized that shame should be most positively linked to a constructive approach ori-entation when the precipitating failure could be construed as

more reparable This is also the context where shame and guilt

should be least distinguishable in experience and in their links

to motivation, intention, and behavior In contrast, we reasoned that shame should be most negatively linked to a constructive approach orientation when the precipitating failure could be

construed as less reparable This is the context in which shame

should be most distinct from guilt, as the more intense self-crit-icism of shame appears to be more labile than guilt Treating the contextual factor of more versus less reparable failure as essential to our understanding of shame and guilt enabled us to explain empirically what would otherwise appear as inconsis-tent and contradictory findings regarding the emotion’s link to motivation, intention, and behavior

I see the value in Cehajic-Clancy et al.’s examinations of how affirmation of the individual self can reduce the psycho-logical threat of ingroup wrongdoing in ways that better enable individuals to feel guilt, regret, or even shame about it

I also recognize that positive intergroup contact can increase the degree to which members perceive their ingroup as perpe-trators of wrongdoing, and thus serve as an effective means of increasing guilt, regret, shame, and the like However, I am not sure that there is good reason to expect self-critical feel-ings like guilt and shame to be generally linked to the motiva-tion, intenmotiva-tion, or behavior to right the wrong Guilt and shame are highly aversive states of dejection that appear to be more specific, cognitively and socially elaborated, forms of sadness (see Gausel & Leach,2011; Iyer & Leach,2009) Emo-tions in the sadness family tend to be low in arousal and action potential; they are demotivating Thus, there is little reason to expect guilt and shame in isolation to move people

to apologize, compensate, or improve themselves after moral failure From a relational perspective, guilt and shame may be most reasonably expected to orient people to a constructive approach to outgroups if the moral failure that precipitated the emotion is somehow taken to be reparable Otherwise, what can feeling bad about it do? Thus, it is entirely possible that interventions like self-affirmation, positive intergroup contact, or even messages that the outgroup is morally mallea-ble, somehow suggest that the group’s moral failure, the in-group’s moral character, or the intergroup relationship itself can be improved (see also Leach et al.,2015)

In many ways, the question of whether emotion in intergroup

conflict can be examined independently of the quality of the

intergroup relation itself parallels current discussion of how

psychology, and all behavioral science, treats inconsistency in

observations (across individuals, contexts, methods, and

researchers) Some people call this inconsistency a replication

crisis Others call it a moral crisis of questionable research

prac-tice As McGuire (1973) argued in response to previous claims

of crisis, it is in actuality an issue of metatheory As long as

psy-chological theory and research is guided by metatheory that

aims to state in the most general, decontextualized terms, the

generic effects of constructs such as emotion, we will be

flum-moxed by the inevitable inconsistency of empirical observation

So too will we be frustrated by the multitude of competing

the-ories that all aim to differentially conceptualize the generic

effects of constructs such as emotion without accounting for

their competitor theories or specifying why or when any given

theory may apply best (McGuire,2004)

The impressive array of theory and research presented by



Cehajic-Clancy et al offers us a range of interesting and

impor-tant observations of how emotions like anger, guilt, and

empa-thy can be regulated to reduce hostility and move groups in

protracted conflict closer to peaceful coexistence and perhaps

even reconciliation My hope is that the value of their careful

and concerted work is increased even further if we understand

their studies of guilt, anger, empathy, and other emotions, as

rooted in particular types of intergroup relationships that

deter-mine the shape of the emotion and thereby its likely role in

individual’s intergroup orientation In this way, McGuire’s

“perspectivist” meta-theory, whether applied to emotion in

intergroup relations or anything else, changes the nature of

scholarly debate Rather than enter into interminable

argu-ments over which theory and observations are right and which

are wrong, scholars instead attempt to gauge which theory is

right when and for whom Thus, instead of arguing that anger

is not hostile and aggressive and thus detrimental in protracted

intergroup conflicts, I suggested that anger is most likely to be

so when it occurs in insecure, untrusting, and antagonistic

intergroup relations with little prospect for improvement

Instead of arguing against the idea that guilt is empathetic and

thus beneficial to protracted intergroup conflicts, I suggested

that guilt (and shame) are most likely to be beneficial when

they occur in close, important, and trusting intergroup relations

where it seems clear that the precipitating moral failure and/or

the intergroup relation damaged by it can be repaired As important as emotion regulation is to our psychological and to our social life, it is difficult to imagine anything more important than relationship regulation Relationships are the be-all and end-all of emotion It is only by understanding emotions in their relational context that we will ultimately understand the implications that emotions have for the relationships in which they operate

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