Psychological Inquiry An International Journal for the Advancement of Psychological Theory ISSN: 1047-840X (Print) 1532-7965 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hpli20 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 Submit your article to this journal Article views: 12 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=hpli20 Download by: [71.235.97.115] Date: 02 May 2016, At: 05:53 PSYCHOLOGICAL INQUIRY 2016, VOL 27, NO 2, 113–116 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2016.1162129 The Meta-Theory of Examining Emotion in Social Relationships Colin Wayne Leach Downloaded by [71.235.97.115] at 05:53 02 May 2016 Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut In “Social-Psychological Interventions for Intergroup Reconcil iation: An Emotion Regulation Perspective,” Sabina Cehaji cClancy, Amit Goldenberg, James Gross, and Eran Halperin (this issue) summarize, integrate, and extend their work regarding the experience of emotions in protracted intergroup conflicts and how such emotions might be changed (or “regulated”) to promote peace and reconciliation With admira ble ecumenism, Cehaji c-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 theories 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, methodological, rhetorical, stylistic) that suggest that these interrelated areas of inquiry are somehow separate Because their theory and research are so compelling, my comments focus on some of the bigger meta-theoretical questions that arise out of Cehaji c-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 intergroup, 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 relationships within which emotions are embedded fade to the background 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, Cehaji c-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 conscious or unconscious 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 functionalist 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, Cehaji cClancy et al can more easily conceptualize and study an CONTACT Colin Wayne Leach © 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC colin.leach@uconn.edu 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, cognitively, physically) ready ingroup members to confront the outgroup about its inappropriate treatment of the ingroup Partly because being treated inappropriately appears to embolden and morally legitimize strong opposition (Averill, 1982; Frijda, 1986), Cehaji c-Clancy et al expect that anger fuels aggressive opposition Thus, aided by the meta-theoretical anchors of cog nitive appraisal and functional emotion, Cehaji c-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—Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, Serbs and Croats, Greek and Turkish Cypriots, the family next door As Averill’s (1982) comprehensive 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 beneficial away from them This impulse to confront is the action readiness of anger Given this, it makes sense that Cehaji c-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 cClancy 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 Cehaji c-Clancy et al offer plenty of evidence in this regard Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-1020 Downloaded by [71.235.97.115] at 05:53 02 May 2016 114 COMMENTARIES 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 experience, expression, and consequences In fact, close, necessary, or otherwise valued relationships can temper anger and its translation 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 wellbeing—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 people 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 somewhat more often than they reported losing something personally or socially The metatheoretical view of anger as inherently relational requires that theory and research on anger keep the relationship 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 experience, expression, and consequences of anger is colored by whether it occurs in the more constructive context of a communal relationship rather than an exchange relationship (for a review, see Clark & Brissette, 2003) In another example, Mikulincer (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-investment 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 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-oriented strategies In contrast, the insecurely attached experienced 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 resolution 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 alternative 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 cClancy 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 psychological concepts—like anger, aggression, conflict, and reconciliation—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 emotion 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 emotion rather than as part of their foundation By thinking about anger as a singular emotion with a singular cause, singular experience, and singular motivational signature, Cehaji c-Clancy and colleagues seem to endorse a natural kinds metatheory of anger that pushes the intergroup relationship to the background instead of viewing protracted intergroup conflict as the soil in which hostile and destructive anger may best grow Guilt (and Shame) The relational view of emotion that I am contrasting to the prevailing, natural kind, view of emotion has a set of similar impli cations for all of the emotions that Cehaji c-Clancy et al discuss as central to understanding and intervening in protracted Downloaded by [71.235.97.115] at 05:53 02 May 2016 COMMENTARIES 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-criticism for acknowledged moral wrongdoing As such, guilt is believed to be closely linked to the impulse to apologize, compensate, 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 logically implied by these appraisals and the psychological and visceral 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 expressions 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 Heatherton (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 reconciliation, given its basis in the acknowledgment of personal wrongdoing 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 relationships (see also Clark & Brissette, 2003) Although their view was taken to be one of guilt in general, it was in fact a theory 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 reconcile 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 relations, guilt tends to have only small to moderate links to wanting 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 depression and other psychopathology In short, guilt often appears to be very similar to the presumably more destructive self-critical 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 prevailing theory allows, as shame is tied to both approach and 115 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 functions 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 orientation 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-criticism 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 inconsistent and contradictory findings regarding the emotion’s link to motivation, intention, and behavior I see the value in Cehaji c-Clancy et al.’s examinations of how affirmation of the individual self can reduce the psychological 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 perpetrators 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 feelings like guilt and shame to be generally linked to the motivation, intention, 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) Emotions 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 malleable, somehow suggest that the in-group’s moral failure, the ingroup’s moral character, or the intergroup relationship itself can be improved (see also Leach et al., 2015) 116 COMMENTARIES Downloaded by [71.235.97.115] at 05:53 02 May 2016 Conclusion 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 practice As McGuire (1973) argued in response to previous claims of crisis, it is in actuality an issue of metatheory As long as psychological 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 flummoxed by the inevitable inconsistency of empirical observation So too will we be frustrated by the multitude of competing theories 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 Cehaji c-Clancy et al offers us a range of interesting and important observations of how emotions like anger, guilt, and empathy 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 determine 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 arguments 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 References Averill, J R (1982) Anger and aggression: An essay on emotion New York, NY: Springer-Verlag Barrett L.F (2006) Emotions as natural kinds? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, 28–58 Baumeister, R F., Stillwell, A M., & Heatherton, T F (1994) Guilt: An interpersonal approach Psychological Bulletin, 115, 243–267 Clark, M S., & Brissette, I (2003) Two types of relationship closeness and their influence on people’s emotional lives In R J Davidson, K R Scherer, & H H Goldsmith (Eds.), Handbook of affective sciences (pp 824–838) Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press Frijda, N H (1986) The emotions London, UK: Cambridge University Press Gausel, N., & Leach, C.W (2011) Concern for self-image and social-image in the management of moral failure: Rethinking shame European Journal of Social Psychology, 41, 468–478 Iyer, A., & Leach, C.W (2009) Emotion in inter-group relations European Review of Social Psychology, 19, 86–125 Lazarus, R S (1991) Emotion and adaption New York, NY: Oxford University Press Leach, C.W., Bilali, R., Pagliaro, S (2015) Groups and Morality In M Mikulincer, P.R Shaver, J.F Dovidio, & J Simpson (Eds.) APA handbook of personality and social psychology, Vol 2: Group processes (pp.123–149) Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Leach, C W., & Cidam, A (2015) When is shame linked to constructive approach orientation? A meta-analysis Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 983–1002 Leach, C W., & L Z Tiedens (2004) A world of emotion In L Z Tiedens & C.W Leach (Eds.), The social life of emotions (pp 1–16) New York, NY: Cambridge University Press McGuire, W J (1973) The yin and yang of progress in social psychology: Seven koan Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 26, 446–456 McGuire, W J (2004) A perspectivist approach to theory construction Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 173–182 Mikulincer, M (1998) Adult attachment style and individual differences in functional versus dysfunctional experiences of anger Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 513–524 Minow, M (1998) Between vengeance and forgiveness: Facing history after genocide and mass violence Boston, MA: Beacon Press Parkinson, B., Fischer, A H., & Manstead, A S R (2005) Emotion in social relations Cultural, group, and interpersonal processes New York, NY: Psychology Press ... 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. .. studies of guilt, anger, empathy, and other emotions, as rooted in particular types of intergroup relationships that determine the shape of the emotion and thereby its likely role in individual’s intergroup... Conclusion 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,