Page 103 - Essencials of Sociology

76 CHAPTER 3 Socialization

The Cultural Relativity of Morality. If babies do have an inborn sense of fairness, it
indicates that, like language, morality is a “capacity hardwired” in the brain. Just as soci-
ety lays a particular language onto the child’s linguistic capacity, so society lays its par-
ticular ideas of what is moral onto the child’s moral capacity. As languages differ around
the world, so do moralities. When people violate whatever morality they have learned, it
arouses the emotions of guilt and shame. Sociologists are studying how people’s sense of
identity is connected to morality and these emotions (Stets and Carter 2012).
Let’s turn to how we learn emotions, another essential element of who we are as
humans.

Socialization into Emotions
Sociologists have found that our emotions are not simply the results of our biology
(Hochschild 2008; Stets 2012). Like the mind, our emotions also depend on socializa-
tion. This may sound strange. Don’t all people get angry? Doesn’t everyone cry? Don’t
we all feel guilt, shame, sadness, happiness, fear? What has socialization to do with our
emotions?
Global Emotions. At first, it may look as though socialization is not relevant to our
emotions, that we simply express universal feelings. The research of Paul Ekman, a
psychologist, seems to support this idea. After studying emotions in several countries,
Ekman (1980) found that everyone experiences six basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear,
happiness, sadness, and surprise. Ekman also found that people show the same facial
expressions when they feel these emotions. A person from Peru, for example, can tell
from just the look on an American’s face that she is angry, disgusted, or fearful, and she
can tell from the Peruvian’s face that he is happy, sad, or surprised. Because we all show
the same facial expressions when we experience these six emotions, Ekman concluded
that they are hardwired into our biology.
A study of facial expressions at the Paralympics supports this observation (Matsumoto
and Willingham 2009). Upon learning if they had won or lost, people who were blind
from birth showed the same facial expressions as those of sighted people, something
they could not have learned.
Expressing Emotions: Following “Feeling Rules.” What, then, does sociology have
to do with emotions? If we have universal facial expressions to express our emotions,
then this is biology, something that Darwin noted back in the 1800s (Horwitz and
Wakefield 2007:41). Facial expressions, however, are only one way by which we show
our feelings. We also use our bodies, voices, and gestures.

Jane and Sushana have been best friends since high school. They were hardly ever apart un-
til Sushana married and moved to another state a year ago. Jane has been waiting eagerly
at the arrival gate for Sushana’s flight, which has been delayed. When Sushana exits, she
and Jane hug one another, giving out squeals of glee” and even jumping a bit.

What emotions are these people expressing? Are these emotions global? Is their way of expressing them universal?