Exploring Collective Emotion

1984 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 813-828 ◽  
Author(s):  
KENWYN K. SMITH ◽  
STUART D. CRANDELL
Keyword(s):  
Collective Emotion

Carnivalesque humor, emotional paradoxes, and street protests in Thailand

Diogenes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 039219212097040
Author(s):  
Janjira Sombatpoonsiri
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Collective Emotion ◽  
Ruling Elites ◽  
Public Audience

Conventional wisdom has it that street protests are typically driven by rage due to grievances perceived to inflict on a group. This emotive atmosphere can shape protest methods to be vandalistic to the point where armed attacks against targeted opponents are justified. This paper suggests that rage-influenced struggle can be counterproductive as it obstructs a movement from building a coalition board enough to challenge the ruling elites it opposes. This paper argues that carnivalization of protests can prevent this setback in two directions. First, it potentially transforms protesters’ collective emotion from rage to cheerfulness. This effect may lessen a possibility where protesters project violent revenge on those thought to represent the ruling elites. Second, while helping protesters to address sources of their grievances, carnivalesque protests create a “friendly” image that may convince a public audience outside the movement to support its cause. In assessing a political process of carnivalesque protests, this paper bases its analysis on an account of protest actions by Thailand’s Red Sunday group emerging after the 2010 crackdown.

Thucydides and Crowds

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Zumbrunnen
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Ancient Athens ◽  
Collective Emotion ◽  
Crowd Control ◽  
The Wisdom Of Crowds

This essay considers Thucydides’ treatments of the crowd or mob in the context of his analysis of democratic politics in ancient Athens. Scholars have often located in Thucydides a critique of the crowd familiar from ancient philosophical accounts of democracy and a corresponding call for leadership that amounts to crowd control. Close attention to Thucydides’ portrayal of Athenian democratic politics complicates matters. While he indeed worries about the tendency of collective emotion to overwhelm reason, Thucydides also credits the crowd with an ability to quiet itself in a manner that makes deliberation possible. This ability does not amount to full-fledged agreement with recent claims about the “wisdom of crowds,” but it does suggest that for Thucydides, democracy requires not crowd control but the painstaking building and nurturing of an always-fragile relationship between leaders and demos.

scholarly journals Collective Emotion During Collective Trauma: A Metaphor Analysis of the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 104973232110115
Author(s):  
B. Liahnna Stanley ◽  
Alaina C. Zanin ◽  
Brianna L. Avalos ◽  
Sarah J. Tracy ◽  
Sophia Town
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Collective Trauma ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Metaphor Analysis ◽  
Collective Emotions ◽  
Collective Emotion ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Insight Into

This study provides insight into lived experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Participant metaphors of the pandemic were collected by conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews ( N = 44). Participants were asked to compare the pandemic with an animal and with a color, and to provide contextual sensemaking about their metaphors. A metaphor analysis revealed four convergent mental models of participants’ pandemic experiences (i.e., uncertainty, danger, grotesque, and misery) as well as four primary emotions associated with those mental models (i.e., grief, disgust, anger, and fear). Through metaphor, participants were able to articulate deeply felt, implicit emotions about their pandemic experiences that were otherwise obscured and undiscussable. Theoretical and practical implications of these collective mental models and associated collective emotions related to the unprecedented collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.

scholarly journals National Sentiment: Nation Building and Emotional Language in Nineteenth-Century Finland

2021 ◽  
pp. 61-83
Author(s):  
Jani Marjanen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Collective Emotion ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Sentiment ◽  
The Russian Empire

AbstractDuring the course of the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century, the term “national sentiment” was coined and subsequently established in several European languages. The emergence of the term in several different languages at roughly the same time is indicative of changes both in the experiences of nationhood and of emotion. This chapter explores the development of the term “national sentiment” in Finnish public discourse and argues that it was transformed during the course of the nineteenth century. Early in the century, it denoted an individualistic feeling that romantic intellectuals hoped people would turn to, whereas it later became a description of a collective emotion. It was used to describe the atmosphere among one of the nationalities in Finland in particular, or the Russian empire in general. In this process, the term became more restrictive and lost its links to performing emotions relating to the nation.

scholarly journals Regaining In-Group Continuity in Times of Anxiety About the Group’s Future

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 311-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anouk Smeekes ◽  
Jolanda Jetten ◽  
Maykel Verkuyten ◽  
Michael J.A. Wohl ◽  
Inga Jasinskaja-Lahti ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
General Pattern ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Collective Emotion ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Group Belonging ◽  
Psychological Dynamics

Abstract. Collective nostalgia for the good old days of the country thrives across the world. However, little is known about the social psychological dynamics of this collective emotion across cultures. We predicted that collective nostalgia is triggered by collective angst as it helps people to restore a sense of in-group continuity via stronger in-group belonging and out-group rejection (in the form of opposition to immigrants). Based on a sample (N = 5,956) of individuals across 27 countries, the general pattern of results revealed that collective angst predicts collective nostalgia, which subsequently relates to stronger feelings of in-group continuity via in-group belonging (but not via out-group rejection). Collective nostalgia generally predicted opposition to immigrants, but this was subsequently not related to in-group continuity.

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