The Social Life of Emotions

This book examines the interplay of emotions and social relationships.

This book showcases research and theory about the way in which the social environment shapes, and is shaped by, emotion. The book has three sections, each of which addresses a different level of sociality: interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup. The first section refers to the links between specific individuals, the second to categories that define multiple individuals as an entity, and the final to the boundaries between groups. Emotions are found in each of these levels and the dynamics involved in these types of relationship are part of what it is to experience emotion. The chapters show how all three types of social relationships generate, and are generated by, emotions. In doing so, this book locates emotional experiences in the larger social context.