Are Emotions Really Fully Socially Constructed?

Are Emotions Really Fully Socially Constructed?

In my opinion, the most engaging part of Jaggar’s article Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology was his section titled “Emotions as Social Constructs.”  Jaggar begins by introducing the possibility that emotions may be instinctive and biologically determined.  This idea claims that we all feel emotions, and these feelings are individually independent of any other person’s emotional experiences.  Next, Jaggar refutes this position and reveals his belief that emotions are actually socially constructed.  He gives several reasons for his belief.  First, he explains that children are “deliberately” taught appropriate responses to various situations (Jaggar 171).  Jaggar continues by explaining how children also are taught appropriate and inappropriate ways to express their emotions to these specific situations.  These responses and emotional expressions can also vary across cultures; similar to the cultural relativist view in ethics.  Jaggar also deduces that emotions involve judgments, which necessarily require concepts (171).  This framework, he declares, can be seen as socially constructed ways of organizing and making sense of the world (171).  This leads Jaggar to conclude that “individual experience is simultaneously social experience” and, inevitably, emotions are social constructs of cultural experience (172).  While reading this section, several things came to mind.  First, I agreed with both viewpoints.  The biological instinctive reactions vary between people, but also most of us channel those feelings into socially (and culturally) accepted actions.  I agree with all of what Jaggar has to say about emotions being socially constructed, except for when he says that the first view is “quite mistaken” (171).  I started thinking about individuals who suffer from emotional and social disorders.  For instance, someone with Bipolar Disorder has a difficult time absorbing cultural norms when reacting emotionally.  Their genetic makeup is different and causes them to experience the severity of emotions in different ways than you and I.  Additionally, people struggling with anger management seem to experience non-socially constructed emotions.  These people have been brought up in a culture similar to anyone else and thus have been taught the appropriate responses to different actions and appropriate ways to express their emotions.  However, they fail to comply with these socially accepted standards.  I am not sure if my analysis on these people is correct or not; maybe the only difference is that people with anger management have a lack of self-control.  Nevertheless, their intense emotional feelings could be a product of their biologically instinctive makeup.  In conclusion, I believe that our emotional feelings are a direct result of our biological genetics mixed with social construction.  I find it hard to believe that someone such as James Holmes (killed people in the Colorado movie theatre) could be the product of socially constructed emotional expressions and reactions.