Display Rules - Emotions and Social Influence

Emotions and Social Influence

The socialization of emotional expressions can be categorized by many features pertaining to negative and positive effects. These effects can be processed by both explicit and implicit influences pertaining to affective and cognitive responses to certain feelings. Ekman and Friesen (1975) have suggested that unwritten codes or "display rules" govern the manner in which emotions may be expressed, and that different rules may be internalized as a function of an individual's culture, gender or family background. For instance, many different cultures necessitate that particular emotions should be masked and that other emotions should be expressed drastically. Emotions are viewed as "bidirectional processes of establishing, maintaining, and/or disrupting significant relationships between an organism and the (external or internal) environment". Likewise, emotions have significant consequences which are determined by interpersonal and communicational oppressions. This can have a dramatic effect on emotional expressions that can influence the founding of interpersonal relationships; as well, the social environment can influence whether one controls or displays their emotions.

Contained by cultures are also gender-related rules for different ages that administer various frequencies of particular expressions. In addition to these, many attain personal display rules, which according to Malatesta and Haviland (1982) are expression codes that are idiosyncratic to an individual and, it is assumed, learned in the context of a particular family or experience. These are types of patterns which have developed affectively through social and familial circumstances to provide similar expressive behaviors to those they adopted it from. Gender also plays a role in display rules and how emotions are expressed. Males are more likely than females to reveal their emotions during frazzled and frightened times. Females on the other hand display their emotions more frequently under many circumstances regarding feelings caused from various emotions. However, both sexes in general due to human nature and the way we have socially developed, regulate emotional displays in an intellectual sensitivity to others assessments. This is done in regards to amalgamation or fitting into the prevailing societal formation which surrounds our environment.