bout feelings: the way we wish we felt, the way we try to feel, the way we feel, the way we show what we feel, and the way we pay attention to, label, and make sense of what we feel. The sociology of emotions supplements and deepens theories about how people think or act. Emotion is defined as an awareness of four elements that we usually experience at the same time: (a) appraisals of a situation, (b) changes in bodily sensations, (c) the free or inhibited display of expressive gestures, and (d) a cultural label applied to specific constellations of the first three elements. A feeling, in contrast to an emotion, is less marked by bodily sensation; it is a milder emotion. Emotion functions as a sense; thus, emotion is a part of our sentient nature. Within the context of the uncertainty that characterizes a person's perception of her or his standing in a society, one important clue is how we feel.
Three predominant models of emotion are present in the literature--the organismic, the interactional, and the social constructionist. The major difference between these models is the significance accorded in them to social influence. The social constructionist models accords the greatest level of importance to social influence, followed in order by the interactionist model and the organismic. The organismic model posits that social influences enter in only to elicit feeling, and to regulate expression. The interactionist model builds on the base of the organismic model to posit that social factors enter not simply before and after but interactively during the experience of emotion. Thus, the interactionist model recognizes more points of social entry than are recognized by the organismic model (Hochschild, 1990, p. 119). According to the interactionist model, other social factors help to shape feeling as feeling is being experienced by a person (Gordon, 1985, p. 130). As emotions are conceived in the interactionist model, social f...