Expressive Order introduces affect control theory to lay readers of sociology, and additionally guides sociology specialists into the theory's deep structure.

Briefly, affect control theory proposes that individuals shape their social interactions so that emerging impressions reinforce sentiments about salient identities, behaviors, and settings. Emotions signal how the process of confirming sentiments is going for each individual. The theory explains behaviors, emotions, social labeling, and personality attributions in a wide variety of social contexts including intimate relations,...

Affect control theory asserts that people interpret their social experiences in such a way as to confirm sentiments they already hold about the people with whom they are interacting. This work describes a variety of tests, using both experimental and survey data, that demonstrate the accuracy of the theory's predictions of behaviour. The authors expand the theory to cover such topics as emotions, attributional processes, establishment of identity, and the impact of locations on social interaction. They also show how the theory can be explored through a powerful computer simulation that...

It is Professor Heise's premise that the psychology of affect theoretically governs common social actions, such as those of a patient toward a doctor or a mother toward a child. Human behaviour, he argues, normally promotes the maintenance of a steady emotional state. Should events produce undue strain, the individual attempts to anticipate subsequent developments, formulate a course of action and create new events designed to confirm his established sentiments. This book lays the foundation for this approach to interpreting events: it offers a mathematical model grounded in empirical...

Surveying Cultures uniquely employs techniques rooted in survey methodology to discover cultural patterns in social science research. Examining both classical and emerging methods that are used to survey and assess differing norms among populations, the book successfully breaks new ground in the field, introducing a theory of measurement for ethnographic studies that employs the consensus-as-culture model.

The book begins with a basic overview of cross-cultural measurement of sentiments and presents innovative and sophisticated analyses of measurement issues and of homogeneity among...

Expressive Order introduces affect control theory to lay readers of sociology, and additionally guides sociology specialists into the theory's deep structure.

Briefly, affect control theory proposes that individuals shape their social interactions so that emerging impressions reinforce sentiments about salient identities, behaviors, and settings. Emotions signal how the process of confirming sentiments is going for each individual. The theory explains behaviors, emotions, social labeling, and personality attributions in a wide variety of social contexts including intimate relations,...