Affect Control Theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Hitlin ◽  
Sarah K. Harkness
Keyword(s):  
Control Theory ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Affect Control Theory ◽  
Affect Control ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Societal Inequality ◽  
The Empirical Analysis ◽  
Broad Overview

This chapter draws on the theoretical and methodological insights from Affect Control theory (ACT), a theory with decades of research and empirical support, to set up our cross-cultural analyses examing our theory of societal inequality. ACT is a formal mathematical theory used to examine how the various facets of social events (such as the identities and emotions) shape ongoing social action. ACT distills the representation of these various facets to their simplest, most universally recognized dimensions of meaning: evaluation (good vs. bad), potency (powerful vs. weak), and activity (fast vs. slow). ACT then provides a way of understanding and modeling social interactions so that it is possible to empirically compare the likely emotions resulting from the same types of interactions in various cultures. The chapter gives a broad overview of the theory so that the reader understands why it is useful and provides justification for the empirical analysis used in the book.

scholarly journals Do You See What I See? Testing for Individual Differences in Impressions of Events

2018 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly B. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Impression Formation ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Affect Control Theory ◽  
Affect Control ◽  
Social Events ◽  
And Behavior

Affect control theory shows how cultural meanings for identities and behavior are used to form impressions of events and guide social action. In this research, I examine whether members of the same culture tend to process social events in the same way, with a focus on U.S. English speakers. I find widespread consensus in the mechanisms of impression formation, particularly for judgments of evaluation (goodness, esteem), but also find sufficient individual differences to warrant further study for models of potency (power, dominance) and object impressions (feelings about the target of a behavior). Findings support long-standing claims that members of U.S. English language culture, especially cultural experts, tend to process social events in the same way. However, I find no significant gender differences in event processing. I close the paper by estimating and interpreting new impression change equations using methodological techniques appropriate to the degree of consensus found for each model.

Identity Meanings and Categorical Inequality

2019 ◽  
pp. 267-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly B. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Affect Control Theory ◽  
Affect Control ◽  
The People ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
The Rich

I use affect control theory (ACT) to show how we apply cultural knowledge to classify and form impressions of the people we encounter, producing inequality as widely shared cultural beliefs are translated into predictable patterns of social action. I apply ACT measurement dimensions (evaluation, potency, and activity) to show that cultural beliefs about social groups, known as “social identity meanings,” convey groups’ relative positions within systems of inequality such as race/ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexuality, religion, and social class. I find that privileged groups (e.g., whites, the rich, heterosexuals, Americans, and Christians) are higher in power (potency) but lower in status (evaluation) than other groups across dimensions of inequality. This meaning profile is shared by roles, traits, and behaviors that signify authority across diverse social domains. I consider the implications of these findings and of ACT more broadly for understanding how inequalities reflected in cultural meanings are often reproduced through interactions.

scholarly journals The Structure of Deference: Modeling Occupational Status Using Affect Control Theory

2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Freeland ◽  
Jesse Hoey
Keyword(s):  
Control Theory ◽  
Occupational Status ◽  
Meaningful Work ◽  
Occupational Prestige ◽  
High Status ◽  
Affect Control Theory ◽  
Affect Control ◽  
Cultural Expectations ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Poll Data

Current theories of occupational status conceptualize it as either a function of cultural esteem or the symbolic aspect of the class structure. Based on Weber’s definition of status as rooted in either cultural or class conditions, we argue that a consistent operationalization of occupational status must account for both of these dimensions. Using quantitative measures of cultural sentiments for occupational identities, we use affect control theory to model the network deference relations across occupations. We calculate a measure of the extent to which one occupational actor deferring to another is incongruent with cultural expectations for all possible combinations of 304 occupational titles. Because high-status actors are less likely to defer to low-status actors, the degree to which these events violate cultural expectations provides an indicator of the relative status position of different occupations. We assess the construct validity of our new deference score measure using Harris Poll data. Deference scores are more predictive of status rankings from poll data than are occupational prestige scores. We establish criterion validity using five theoretically relevant workplace outcomes: subjective work attachment, job satisfaction, general happiness, the importance of meaningful work, and perceived respect at work.

scholarly journals Can we distill fundamental sentiments from natural language use? Evaluating word embeddings as a complement to survey-based ratings of affective meaning.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin van Loon ◽  
Jeremy Freese
Keyword(s):  
Control Theory ◽  
Computational Linguistics ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Word Embeddings ◽  
Affect Control Theory ◽  
Affective Meaning ◽  
Shared Meanings ◽  
Affect Control ◽  
Text Corpora ◽  
Behavioral Method

Central to affect control theory are culturally shared meanings of concepts. That these sentiments overlap among members of a culture presumably reflects their roots in the language use that members observe. Yet the degree to which the affective meaning of a concept is encoded in the way linguistic representations of that concept are used in everyday symbolic exchange has yet to be demonstrated. The question has methodological as well as theoretical significance for affect control theory, as language may provide an unobtrusive, behavioral method of obtaining EPA ratings complementary to those heretofore obtained via questionnaires. We pursue a series of studies that evaluate whether tools from machine learning and computational linguistics can capture the fundamental affective meaning of concepts from large text corpora. We develop an algorithm that uses word embeddings to predict EPA profiles available from a recent EPA dictionary derived from traditional questionnaires, as well as novel concepts collected using an open-source web app we have developed. Across both a held-out portion of the available data as well as the novel data, our predictions correlate with survey-based measures of the E, P, and A ratings of concepts at a magnitude greater than 0.85, 0.8, and 0.75 respectively.

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