Speaking from the Heart: Gender and the Social Meaning of Emotion

by Stephanie A. Shields

Overview

Who is called "emotional"? And what does it mean? How do we know that a person is "speaking from the heart"? The prevailing stereotype is that she is emotional, while he is not. In Speaking From the Heart, Stephanie Shields uses examples from everyday life, contemporary culture and the latest research to illustrate how culturally shared beliefs about emotion are used to shape our identities as women and men and she exposes the historically shifting and tacit assumptions these beliefs are based on. Everything from nineteenth century ideals of womanhood, to baseball and the new man is considered in the context of how emotion effects our everyday lives. Shields argues that the question of anger is the fundamental paradox in the emotional female/unemotional male stereotype: the stereotype of emotionality is female, but the stereotype of anger, a prototypic emotion, is male. Why is it that anger, which is so often portrayed as childish (peevish, irritable, testy, sullen, cranky, touchy, irked), and the essence of the apparently uncontrollable, irrational character of emotion, is masculine? Is there a difference (either conceptually or behaviorally) between masculine anger and the anger of immature tantrums? Is anger, in fact, viewed as emotionality when displayed or experienced by adult men? Stephanie A. Shields is Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She served as Director of Women's Studies at the University of California, Davis and more recently at Penn State. Her research and numerous articles address the intersection of the psychology of emotion, the psychology of gender and feminist psychology. This is her first book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521004497
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/10/2010
Series:	Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	230
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Stephanie A. Shields is Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at Pennsylvania State University. She has been Director of Women's Studies both at the University of California, Davis, and at Pennsylvania State University, and was founding director of the Consortium for Women and Research at UCD. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the American Psychological Society and a charter member of the International Society for Research on Emotions. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on human emotion, the psychology of gendeR, and women in American Psychology. This is her first single-authored book.

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. That 'vivid, unforgettable condition'; 2. When does gender matter?; 3. Doing emotion/doing gender: practising in order to 'get it right'; 4. Sentiment, sympathy, and passion in the late nineteenth century; 5. The education of the emotions; 6. Ideal emotion and the fallacy of the inexpressive male; 7. Emotional = female; angry = male?; 8. Speaking from the heart; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"This fresh analysis...is important for anyone interested in gender or emotion, in the past or present."
—Susan J. Matt, Weber State University, Journal of Social History


"[A]n engaging, illuminating, and panoramic book. Speaking from the Heart is filled with provocative insights."
—American Journal of Sociology


"This is an extraordinarily well-written book....Excellent interdisciplinary scholarship, intelligent theoretical analyses, and lucid writing...make this book an important piece of scholarly work in the field of psychology and related disciplines."
—Sex Roles


"Shields presents a persuasive case for the dual social construction of gender and emotional expressivity. Regardless of one's theoretical perspective, this book is important and recommended for lower- and upper- division undergraduates, graduate sudents, and researchers interested in the study of emotion."
—Choice


"One doesn't often come upon this type of scholarly book. Stephanie Shields has succeeded in writing a book that is intellectually challenging, refreshing and inspiring...[A] fantastic book that I would like to recommend strongly to anyone interested in emotion, in gender, or both."
—Psychology of Women Quarterly

From the Publisher