Fri 21 Dec 2001
Good talk with hal.
Future research direction:
the potency and efficacy of ideas- comparative history of ideas.


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Thu 20 Dec 2001
Emotional control, masking displays of feeling, and denial of felt emotions occur in social situations, not to remove emotions from social life, but to achieve conformity with prevailing emotion norms.
need to get books for christmas day and new year's, when libs will be closed!!!

Behavior is driven and controlled not by emotions but by the penchant to confirm fundamental sentiments about oneself and others, to maintain identities.
http://www.indiana.edu/~socpsy/ACT/acttutorial/emotions.htm

sew up jacket zipper.

A number of features of this interpretation are worth mentioning.


A mood generates behavior that is generally consistent with the emotion label, but the tenor of behavior can vary with different partners, just as role behavior varies from one partner to another.

Behavior generated by a mood tends to reproduce the emotion that defines the mood, thereby sustaining the interpretation that one is in that mood.

Whereas people generate experiences to eliminate disturbing emotions, they conduct themselves so as to maintain moodsóno matter how distressingóbecause a mood is an aspect of identity to be confirmed.

Escape from a mood requires a redefinition of self, either as a result of experience that contradicts the mood identification or as a result of entering a new situation.
 
High deflection means things are strange, unique, singular, inconceivable. Life is stressful when it turns interminably strange, unique, singular, inconceivable.

Sociology- looking outside the individual??? How powerful is that angle? Is interesting at least.

Emotional swings, or emotional lability, are observed clinically in individuals with very negative self concepts, and that corresponds to what you see when you simulate interaction of a deviant with a normal individual. The ACT explanation is this. Individuals who understand themselves as being fundamentally bad are disposed to experience themselves as quite bad, regardless of what is happening with others. So in order to experience themselves as relatively good when social events definitely warrant a more positive impression of themselves they have to over-react emotionally, and work themselves into emotional beatitude. To experience themselves as extra bad when circumstances warrant that, they have to evoke emotional hell within themselves. Their emotions are flat in the sense that small variations--a little smile, a little frown--don't work for them.


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