Speaking from the Heart: Gender and the Social Meaning of EmotionWho is called "emotional"? And what does it mean? How do we know that a person is "speaking from the heart"? The prevailing stereotype is that she is emotional, while he is not. In Speaking From the Heart, Stephanie Shields uses examples from everyday life, contemporary culture and the latest research to illustrate how culturally shared beliefs about emotion are used to shape our identities as women and men and she exposes the historically shifting and tacit assumptions these beliefs are based on. Everything from nineteenth century ideals of womanhood, to baseball and the new man is considered in the context of how emotion effects our everyday lives. Shields argues that the question of anger is the fundamental paradox in the emotional female/unemotional male stereotype: the stereotype of emotionality is female, but the stereotype of anger, a prototypic emotion, is male. Why is it that anger, which is so often portrayed as childish (peevish, irritable, testy, sullen, cranky, touchy, irked), and the essence of the apparently uncontrollable, irrational character of emotion, is masculine? Is there a difference (either conceptually or behaviorally) between masculine anger and the anger of immature tantrums? Is anger, in fact, viewed as emotionality when displayed or experienced by adult men? Stephanie A. Shields is Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She served as Director of Women's Studies at the University of California, Davis and more recently at Penn State. Her research and numerous articles address the intersection of the psychology of emotion, the psychology of gender and feminist psychology. This is her first book. |
Contents
That vivid unforgettable condition | 1 |
When does gender matter? | 21 |
Doing emotiondoing gender practicing in order to get it right | 43 |
Sentiment sympathy and passion in the late nineteenth century | 69 |
The education of the emotions | 89 |
Ideal emotion and the fallacy of the inexpressive male | 117 |
Emotional female angry male? | 139 |
Speaking from the heart | 169 |
188 | |
208 | |
Other editions - View all
Speaking from the Heart: Gender and the Social Meaning of Emotion Stephanie A. Shields No preview available - 2010 |
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adults African American aggression American androgyny anger angry appropriate emotion authenticity bedrock beliefs beliefs about emotion boys capacity chapter child cognitive competitive sports concept concerned context defined described discussion double bind emotion beliefs emotion stereotypes emotion-related emotional competence emotional display emotional experience emotional expression emotional intelligence emotionality entitlement everyday example facial expression father Fatherhood feelings felt emotion female feminist focused gender and emotion gender differences gender stereotypes gender-coded gendered emotion girls identified identity individual intensity interaction interpersonal Jerry Maguire judgments manly emotion masculine inexpressivity masculinity and femininity men's notion nurturance one's passion pattern person Peter Stearns popular practice pretend play psychology questions racial ethnicity relationships research participants response rience Robert Elsmere role romantic love Saarni self-report sense sexual Shields situation social social constructionism Socrates specific emotions standards status tears Terman theme theory tion traits typical understanding weeping woman women
Popular passages
Page 196 - Quarterly, 3, 253-258. Harris, AC (1994). Ethnicity as a determinant of sex role identity: A replication study of item selection for the Bern Sex Role Inventory. Sex Roles, 31(3/4), 241-273.