The Macro and Meso Basis of the Micro Social Order
7.6 Motivational and Emotional Dynamics in Encounters
avoid the confl ict that also accompanies breaches of focused encounters.
7.6 Motivational and Emotional
rate units and diffuse status characteristics for members of categoric units. There is both an absolute need to meet these needs that generates one level of expectations, which in turn, is quali- fi ed by implicit calculations of what is actually possible. The emerging meta- expectation states become the ones that will guide a person through an encounter. Meeting this composite set of expectations for each need state leads to positive emotional arousal at relative low levels, such as satisfaction, contentment, pleasure, whereas not meeting these needs immediately generates more intense negative emotions, such as shame if self is on the line and/or guilt if the situation was defi ned as highly moral (Turner 2002 , 2007 , 2010b ). These emotions can be repressed, but they will transmute, respectively, into such emo- tions as diffuse anger and diffuse anxiety, thereby increasing the sense of negative emotional arousal.
Even when individuals can meet expectations of the situation that have fi ltered down from macro to meso to micro encounters, the failure to meet expectations generated by transactional needs will arouse negative emotions (Kemper 1978b ; Kemper and Collins 1990 ). If negative emotions are aroused, the most likely defense mechanisms to be activated is attribution as to who or what has caused these negative feelings.
Attribution operates under both conditions of repression and transmutation, or non-repression and cognitive awareness of the painful emotions being experienced. Furthermore, as Edward Lawler ( 2001 ; see Chap. 8 ) argued, negative emotions reveal a distal bias and are pushed out beyond the encounter to local corporate unit, members of categoric units, or even further to institutional domains and the stratifi cation sys- tem. People tend not to make self or attributions to immediate others because, to do so, breaches the encounter and invites negative sanctions from others and hence more negative emotional arousal. Only when others in the local situation cannot fi ght back, as is the case with domestic abusers, will individuals make local attributions for their feelings. The cumulative result of this process is that negative emotions tend to target meso and macro structures, as well as their cul-
tures, in ways that de-legitimate institutional domains and the stratifi cation system. Thus, a society in which there is persistent negative arousal in a wide variety of encounters across a large number of corporate units embedded in institutional domains will be potentially unstable as a result of large pools of negative emotions among members of the population (Turner 2010c , 2014a , b ); if, meeting expectations imposed by micro-level culture from corporate and categoric units is diffi cult or imposes further degradations on individuals, then negative emotional arousal and its targeting of more remote structures will be that much more intense.
In general, then, failure to meet expectations of any sort causes negative emotional arousal.
The confl agration of situational expectations fi l- tering down via status to situational expectations states and expectations derived from the relative power and salience of transitional needs repre- sents one of the key dimensions generating emo- tional arousal among humans. And so, as noted above, failure to meet expectations will activate negative emotions, often made more complex by the activation of defense mechanisms that will also activate attribution processes and thereby the distal bias inherent in negative emotional arousal.
In contrast, when expectations are realized, indi- viduals will experience positive emotions but, unlike negative emotions, these reveal a proximal bias, as individuals make self-attributions or dis- play positive feelings to those in the local encounter. The result is that positive emotions have a tendency to stay local, charging of the positive emotional fl ow in interaction rituals in encounters (Collins 2004 ; Lawler 2001 ). The problem that emerges here is that if positive emo- tions stay local and negative emotions are pushed outward toward macrostructures and their cul- ture, how does a society hold together? What forces break the centripetal hold of the proximate bias and thereby allow positive emotions to fl ow outward and legitimate macrostructures, while generating commitments to these structures and their culture?
My answer to this question is that when expec- tation states associated with status and, even more importantly, with meeting transactional
needs are (1) consistently realized (2) across a wide variety of encounters embedded in corpo- rate units in (3) a large set of diverse institutional domains, positive emotions begin to fi lter out to macrostructures via the structural paths provided by successive embedding of encounters in groups, groups in organizations, organizations in communities, and organizations in resource- giving institutional domains that, in turn, are embedded in societal and even inter-societal sys- tems. In particular, I would argue that meeting needs for self verifi cation, exchange payoffs, and effi cacy dramatically increase the likelihood that the hold of the proximal bias will be broken and, as a result, positive emotions will begin to legiti- mate institutional domains and their culture as well as the society as a whole. People will develop commitments to the micro, meso, and macro structures that have rewarded them, and this even includes the meta-ideology of the stratifi cation system that generates inequalities in a society. As these processes of legitimation and commitment develop, the ideologies and meta-ideologies of macrostructures gain in power and salience.
Consequently, the culture of macrostructures will fi lter down to meso-level beliefs about locational and diffuse status characteristics and to sets of clear and powerful expectation states at the level of the encounter. In this way, microdynamics reproduce social structures and their cultures, and as they do so, they also reinforce the culture of structures at all levels of social organization, thereby intensifying the power and clarity of expectation states operating at the micro level of social organization.
7.6.2 Receiving Positive or Negative Sanctions
Beyond the multiple sources of expectation states, the second major dimension affecting emotional arousal is sanctioning. Positive sanc- tions have the same effect as meeting expecta- tions, and the more these sanctions revolve around positive sanctions for self and identities, the greater will be the emotional arousal and the more will positive emotions fl ow through an
encounter. Conversely, negative sanctions have the same effect as failures to meet expectations, from whatever source. Negative sanctions gener- ate negative emotions that activate defense mech- anisms and the external bias driven by attribution dynamics. Thus, societies in which there is a con- siderable amount of punishment generating anger and shame will generally produce large pools of negative emotional arousal among subpopula- tions and, as a consequence, make a society less stable. High levels of differentiation of authority in corporate units, large numbers of people in stigmatized categoric units; and high levels of resource inequality as a result of discrimination denying access to resource-bestowing corporate units or to positions in these corporate units for large numbers of persons across a wide spectrum of institutional domains will all increase the rate of negative sanctioning in a society. Even when people have come to expect this fate, the sanc- tions themselves arouse negative emotions that, if suffi ciently widespread and intense, can cause confl ict and change in a society.
In contrast, positive emotions when experi- enced in many encounters embedded in corporate units across a wide range of institutional domains will have the same effects as meeting expectation states in breaking the hold of the proximal bias and leading to legitimation of, and commitment to, macrostructures and their cultures. Indeed, meeting expectations can double up and often be viewed as a positive sanction, thereby increasing the pressure to break out of the centripetal pull of the proximal bias. Additionally, the consequence will be much the same as meeting expectations, especially expectations for self-verifi cation and positive exchange payoffs because sanctions from others are always taken “personally” and seen from the identities being brought to bear by a person in an encounter. Positive sanctioning will thereby increase the power of the culture in macro and meso structures and hence the expec- tation states on individuals in micro-level encoun- ters. Once the proximal bias is broken, microdynamics become more likely to reproduce the meso and macro structures, along with their cultures, that constrain interactions in encoun- ters. Conversely, if large segments of the popula-
tion fail to meet expectations or do so only under conditions of high rates of negative sanctioning, then reproduction of the structure and culture of meso and macro structures becomes increasingly problematic, with social control at the level of the encounter revolving around constraint and pun- ishment which, in the long run, will only add fuel to the distal bias of negative emotions and de- legitimate meso and macro structures and, thereby, encourage mobilization for confl ict by those persistently experiencing negative emotions.
Ironically, there is a vulnerability built in soci- eties where expectations and receipt of positive sanctions have consistently been met over time in the corporate units of wide variety of institutional domains. The vulnerability resides in raised expectations for meeting situational expectation states, especially those from transactional needs, and for raised expectations for receipt of positive sanctions. When these suddenly do not occur, as might be the case, for example in the United States, with dramatically increasing levels of wealth and income inequality, the middle classes may suddenly experience spikes in negative emo- tions (Turner 2014); and while their commit- ments to existing institutional arrangements from past experiences may delay their mobilization for confl ict, these individuals have resources (some money, organizational affi liations, experience in social movements organizing various causes, and historically high rates of voting) to effectively mobilize once they begin to withdraw commit- ments to at least some aspect of the institutional order (Turner 2014).
7.7 Comparing Top-Down