Structural Theorizing on Emotion &

Kemper’s Power-Status Theory of

Emotion

Junette Gonzales
Socio 248
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 connected nodes
5. equivalence – subsets of nodes that
reveal similar forms
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 reading of Durkheim,
Goffman, and Collins (2011, 2016)
10. Elementary Forms of Social Relations : status, power and reference groups
(2016, 2017)
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
 EMOTIONS
EXPECTATIONS 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 underlay the data of their field
 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.
 Social relations differ analytically, and usually empirically, from technical activity
 Social relations are constituted wholly by the power and status dimensions, thus offering a
provisional definition of power and status
 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-claiming
action
4. Claims to Insider or Expert
Knowledge
 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 Conduct
 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
13.Boasting
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 Insufficient
Own Power Safety Guilt Fear/ anxiety
Others’ Power Safety Fear/ anxiety Guilt
Own Status Satisfied, Shame/ Sadness-
Contented, or Embarrassment depression
Happy OR Anger
Others’ Status Contentment Fear Guilt and/or
and Satisfaction Shame/
embarrassme
nt
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 Love

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)
 sample of undergraduate women who were asked to describe recent events that elicited a strong
positive and strong negative emotion
 Results: both theories did well in predicting emotions, particularly along the potency and evaluation
(i.e., power and status) scales
 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:
1. Argument: there is no pure or independent altruistic motive free from
gaining rewards (status) or avoiding punishment
2. 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
3. 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