EMOTIONS ARE SOCIAL

In this paper, I question the assumption that emotions are first and f oremost individual reactions, and suggest instead that they are often best viewed as social phenomena. I show that many of the causes of emo tions are interpersonally, institutionally or culturally defined; that emotions usually have consequences for other people; and that they se rve interpersonal as well as cultural functions in everyday life. Furt hermore, many cases of emotion are essentially communicative rather th an internal and reactive phenomena. Previous research has often undere stimated the importance of social factors in the causation and constit ution of emotion. In conclusion, I recommend that existing cognitive a nd physiological approaches to emotional phenomena be supplemented or supplanted by social psychological analysis.