Emotional
Climate: Social Structure and Emotional Dynamics
Joseph de Rivera
The basic idea of emotional climate is
relatively easy to grasp. I have in mind an objective group phenomenon that can
be palpably sensed-as when one enters a party or a city and feels an atmosphere
of gaiety or depression, openness or fear-only, as the term "climate"
implies, I am less interested in temporary moods than in more pervasive
emotional phenomena that are related to underlying social structures and
political programs. I have in mind, for example, the climate of fear which
existed in Chile during the Pinochet regime and which has recently changed to a
climate of hope (see, for example, Becker et al., 1990).
While emotional climate is an appealing
idea, it is an idea that is relatively difficult to make into a precise concept
that can be objectively measured. How does one distinguish between temporary
moods and pervasive climates? Is an emotional climate objective or subjective?
How does a national mood differ from an individual's emotion? How can climates
be described? And how can one measure an emotional climate when people in
different neighborhoods, regions or social classes may feel quite differently?
How does emotional climate function, and how does it relate to underlying
social-political structures? I shall attempt to deal with these issues but they
are inextricably interwoven and this paper is a heuristic enterprise rather
than an attempt to answer definitely the problems that are posed.
Emotional atmosphere, climate, and culture
An emotional atmosphere or collective
mood-as opposed to an emotional' climate-pertains to the collective behavior
that a group or society may manifest when it is focused on a common event,
rather than to the emotional relationships between members of the society. Park
{1967) describes such emotional moods, when a crowd becomes a mob, or when a
group attends a funeral or a wedding, or when an entire society develops a
collective attitude.
Speaking of the development of a mob, he
notes that the attention of every individual is focused on some exciting object
or incident and then, "the excitement of every individual is intensified
by the response each unconsciously makes to the manifest interest of every
other individual. The crowd assumes under these circumstances the character of
a closed circuit, each individual responding to his own excitement as he sees
it reflected via the attitudes and emotions of his neighbor...until the crowd
is a collective unit." (Park, 1967, p. 257.) In an analogous way, a
society may become mobilized. In fact, Park notes that every society,
"faces in the direction from which the news comes," and alters its
attitude to conform to what is reported in the press. This, of course, may be
manipulated by the political leadership. Thus, Park quotes William Schirer's Berlin
Diary, "the purpose of all the ceremony and ritual of the Nazis is it
creates an atmosphere, a tension, an expectancy, which, in focusing attention
upon the things hoped for, will effectively inhibit any consideration that runs
counter to those hopes." (p. 259)
Emotional atmospheres are important in
their own right and may blend into some of the climates I shall discuss and be
reflected in attempts to measure climate. Furthermore, a shift in emotional
atmosphere may herald a change in climate. Thus, Park mentions how Franklin D.
Roosevelt's famous fireside talk of March 12, 1933 began to turn a climate of
depression into one of confidence, restored morale, and promoted unification.
However, an emotional climate is more lasting than a local emotional atmosphere
and does not simply refer to collective feeling and behavior but to how the
people of a society emotionally relate to one another-for example, whether they
care for one another or are afraid of each other. Thus, an atmosphere of joy,
or one of fear, might exist if the people of a nation focused on a common
victory, or on an impending invasion, whereas a climate of joy, or one of fear,
might exist if the persons of a nation met each other's needs or if a
repressive government planted spies among the people so that no trust could
exist.
While an emotional climate may often be
labeled by using names for emotions, such as joy and fear, we may also use
labels that directly refer to the emotional relationships that are involved,
such as hostility or solidarity. Such labels might also be used to refer to
qualities of a society's emotional culture.
However, an emotional culture is
dynamically stable. It is usually held in place by a network of socialization
practices and ordinarily only changes when a culture is transformed over
generations of people. Climates, on the other hand, are more dependent on
political, religious, economic and educational factors and may change within
the course of a single generation.
It is important to distinguish between
emotional atmospheres, climates and cultures. For example, while a people may
be united in sharing a common patriotic atmosphere, they mayor may not enjoy
the mutual caring and shared ideals that are characteristic of a climate of
solidarity, and, in either case, the culture may promote emotional independence
or dependence. However, emotional atmospheres, climates and cultures clearly
interact and influence each other. Emotional climates depend on underlying
emotional culture, and both influence, and are affected by, emotional
atmosphere. In fact, Durkheim argued that a society itself was unified by
cultural ceremonies that invoked intense emotional atmospheres (see the
interesting discussion by Fisher & Chon, 1989).
The concept of climate has been used extensively in organizational psychology in an attempt to capture important differences in organizational environments. In his analysis of the concept, Tagiuri (1968) notes that it is a molar concept (like personality) but that it is experienced as external to the actor (as part of the environment), although the actor may feel he or she contributes to its nature, and that it has a connotation of continuity but is not as lasting as culture. After surveying disparate uses of the term he concludes that it always refers to some feature of the environment that has behavioral consequences and to which people are sensitive. Noting that it is a source of behavioral variance outside of the person he defines it as, "the relatively enduring quality of the total environment that (a) is experienced by the occupants, (b) influences their behavior, and (c) can be described in terms of the values of a particular set of characteristics (or attributes) of the environment" (Tagiuri, 1968, p. 25). When applied to an organization, Tagiuri notes that climate refers to the quality of the organization's internal environment, especially as experienced by the insider, but as also relevant to outsiders.
There has been a great deal of work on
organizational climate in an attempt to find variables that can be used to
capture important differences in the environments of different organizations.
Unfortunately, 'much of this work seems to have been guided by an attempt to
focus either on objective factors (such as size, leadership patterns,
communication procedures) or subjective factors (perception of the environment
as friendly, as having high work standards, as recognizing good work, etc). The
reason for the dichotomization into objective and subjective seems clear. Some
investigators, such as Forehand and Gilmer (1964), wanted to focus on objective
measurable features that influenced behavior in important ways and could be
used to distinguish different organizations. Others, such as Tagiuri, wanted to
stress that the environment was interpreted by members of the
organizations and that the resulting perceptions would affect their attitudes,
motivation and behavior. From their perspective, objective factors such as size
or decision-making procedures were not as fruitful descriptors of climate as
perceived friendliness or openness to suggestions. Tagiuri clearly felt that
something objective was being interpreted. He states, "It cannot be a
common delusion since it must be vertically based on external reality."
(p. 25). However, since this external reality was defined primarily as
something to be perceived, the subsequent operational definitions of
investigators split the idea of climate into an objective or a perceived
(subjective) climate (see, for example, the review of research by James &
Jones, 1974).
Neither of these paths has proved
particularly fruitful, and organizational psychologists now seem to be pursuing
the idea of organizational "culture." Fortunately, the concept of
culture is more resistant to being split into objective and subjective
measures, but there is a price to be paid if the concept is substituted for
that of climate. A government is not responsible for its nation's culture.
Rather, it grows out of the culture. On the other hand, governments do have
some responsibility for emotional climate, and this climate, rather than
culture, is a quality of the environment which surrounds people and affects
their behavior within any given culture.
Fortunately, it is possible to define
environment in a way that does not separate its objective and subjective
attributes. Isidor Chein (1954; de Rivera, 1986) does precisely that when he
defines the "objective-behavioral" environment as a description of
the environment that would interest a psychologist who wanted to comprehend and
predict behavior (rather than a description for a geographer, politician or
auto driver). In Chein's environment there are, for example, behavioral
instigators that encourage specific activities (such as hand guns, pornographic
pictures, invitations to cultural events), goal objects that satisfy different
needs (cars, books, sexual partners), noxients (unpleasant noise, smog levels),
means-end paths (e.g., what a person needs to do to become a physician),
behavioral supports and constraints (such as the presence or absence of
training schools) and social norms and attitudinal climates that steer behavior
in certain directions rather than others (toward violence or compassion).
In this paper I shall focus on the
emotional climate of the nation-state. By a nation's emotional climate I mean
an aspect of its objective-behavioral environment. It, necessarily, affects
everyone in the environment and is a characteristic of the society as composed
of interacting persons. It may be observed to dominate the behavior of its
citizens and others subjected to its government.
If emotions were "in" a person
it would be hard to conceive how they could also be "in" a national
environment. However, the structural theory of emotions (de Rivera, 1977; de
Rivera & Grinkis, 1986) shows how emotions may be conceived as existing between
people, as various sorts of attractions and repulsions between people which
transform their bodies and perceptions. these emotions have structures which
may be specified in precise ways. From this perspective, emotions are always in
a society-though the "society" is often only two people, and may even
be reduced to one person and an imaginary other.
However, a national emotional climate is
not simply an aggregate of all the emotional relations existing within its
boundaries. Rather, we may suppose that just as the emotions of an individual
ideally function to maintain the individual's identity and values (de Rivera,
1984), the emotions of a nation may function to maintain the political unity,
or cultural identity, of the people of that nation. I shall try and clarify
this idea towards the end of this paper.
DESCRIPTIONS OF DIFFERENT EMOTIONAL CLIMATES
What sorts of emotional climates might
different nations exhibit and how might these climates be related to underlying
social, economic and political structures? Consider descriptions of some of the
different climates that have been reported in past investigations:
A climate of fear has
been described in El Salvador by Martin-Baro (1981, 1990); in Chile, during the
Pinochet regime, by Becker et al., (1990); and in Argentina, during the
1976-83 dictatorship, by Braun de Dunayevich and Puget (1989). In all cases the
fear was generated by repeated acts of violence conducted by the government or
by groups acting without government control over their activity. In fact, in
al! cases the fear appears to have been systematically cultivated by the
government in order to maintain political control. The effect of such fear is
to isolate people from one another. Any meetings of people which could
conceivably be used to organize a group that could make demands upon a
landowner, an industry, or the government are broken up; any person attempting
to organize such meetings is threatened.
Such fear does not only affect public
expressions of opinion. Once a person is suspect, his family and associates may
also be threatened. Hence, people became reluctant to express their thoughts to
anyone, or even to think certain thoughts. The presence of pervasive political
violence also has the subtle effects on people's perceptions of reality.
Martin-Baro has noted that the very idea of social reality comes into question.
A red traffic light which should mean "stop" may no longer mean stop
because it is when one stops that one is an easy target for gunfire. Hence, it
may come to mean "be careful not to stop." Becker et al. (1990)
note that the family of a person who has disappeared does not know whether to mourn
or whether mourning would! be a betrayal of someone who may still be alive;
whether to protest or whether such a protest would expose the family to danger.
Likewise, the nature of the ideal becomes questioned. Should one oppose the
government if that opposition exposes one's family to danger? However, if one
does not protest against injustice, what kind of a son, daughter or parent is
one?
Because a climate of fear isolates people
from one another, it is not conducive to cooperative activity, and governments
which resort to it usually attempt to cultivate a more positive type of
submissive behavior. Thus, Martin-Baro (1990) observes that the ultimate
objective of psychological warfare is "...not fear or terror in the face
of a cruel authority, but instead insecurity in relation to an authority who is
simultaneously powerful and magnanimous" (p. 96).
Martin-Baro asserts that this insecurity
about one's own beliefs, judgments and feelings about what is right and what is
wrong leads to a gradual acceptance of the official truth and a submission to
the established order. He, himself, was particularly concerned about the role
which religion played in this process, whether it encouraged submission or
strengthened a faith in acting for justice.
While the use of fear in order to attain
or keep political contact may appear to be a human aberration, terror has long
been recognized as an instrument for controlling alien populations. In fact,
Walter (1964) has suggested that it is a fairly common method for maintaining
political unity within cultures. He argues that political theorists have
failed to acknowledge the fact that numerous cultures have used (and are using)
random violence as a means of preventing the development of political
opposition, and that such practices are often sanctioned by the culture.
Certainly most authoritarian regimes make use of a certain amount of fear in
order to control opposition movements, although we shall see later that other
emotional forces may also come into play. However, Walter means something more
than this. He states:
The practice in authoritarian states of
punishing definite acts of resistance and breaking up organizations suspected
of sedition may be compared to a surgical procedure. In contrast, the process
of terror, in its ideal form, may be compared to a chemical procedure.
Independent social clusters and unauthorized political associations tend to
dissolve in the medium of extreme fear. More than that, however, an emotional
environment [my italics] is created in which certain kinds of interaction
cannot take place. The first efforts from which organized opposition might
emerge are simply not made. ...the people in such an environment are
deprived...of a capacity that naturally belongs to the members of other
systems-the power of resistance. (p. 27)
Walter is clearly concerned about the fact
that any human civilization might regress to the use of terror as a substitute
for real unity. He notes:
Terror does not often stay within
boundaries, and it is rarely provincial in its impact. Now, some writers
ironically insist, it is a truly international social process, and it has
helped to universalize an emotional climate [my italics]-an
international atmosphere dominated by fright. (p. 11)
While the climate of fear described above
is deliberately created in order to maintain political control, there may also
be climates of fear created by complete political chaos. For example, in
Lebanon in recent years there has been a fear of violence that stems from so
many different sources that it is completely senseless. The important invariant
in these different types of situations of fear is that people feel isolated
from one another.
Is there an opposite to a climate of fear?
If we imagine such a climate, it would be one where people would feel free to
speak to one another, to gather into groups to publicly discuss issues, to
organize political meetings and rallies. More generally, it would be a climate
where people would trust each other and could easily cooperate with one
another, a climate of security.
A climate of security
could, conceivably, be measured by simply asking people how much they trust
each other and their government. In fact, questions on how much people trust
others were asked as part of a comprehensive study on the quality of life in
the United States in 1971 (Campbell, Converse & Rodgers, 1976). Using a
national probability sample of over 2000 people, the investigators asked (among
many other questions) the following:
Generally speaking, would you say that
most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with
people? Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful, or that
they are mostly just looking out for themselves?
Do you think that most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance or would they try to be fair?
Finding intercorrelates ranging from .49
to .53, the questions (which were answered on a 5-point scale) were combined
into a single score. While raw scores are not reported, the percentages of
people in four categories from "high trust" to "low trust"
are presented, and I believe we may consider "trust" to mean a score
of 10 or over on the above items. If so, we find that in 1971 in the United
States 57% of the people reported more trust than distrust. This suggests the
existence of a general climate of security in 1971. It would be interesting to
know what the percentages are today. I suspect they may have fallen. While
Campbell, Converse and Rodgers (1976) did not ask questions about trust in
government, they refer to a "progressive and substantial decline,"
from 1958 to 1972, in the Institute for Social Research's trust-in-government
index (Campbell, Converse & Rodgers, 1976, p. 284; and see p. 30).
Ruth Benedict (1970) and Abraham Maslow
(1971) argue that some cultures are much more secure than others. They
describe the secure cultures as much pleasanter places to live that are
characterized by a spirit of goodwill which is manifested by kindly people who
engage in a lot of cooperative, activity. On the other hand, the insecure
cultures seem full of surly, aggressive people who engage in destructive,
combative behavior and feel a good deal of anxiety.
Of particular interest is a structural
factor which appears to underlie the differences between cultures. A comparison
(Benedict, 1970; Maslow, 1971) of four secure and four insecure cultures (which
were matched along other variables) revealed one clear structural difference.
The secure cultures had customs which ensured that actions and skills that benefited
the individual also benefited the group. In' the insecure cultures, actions
that benefited the individual were at the expense of others. Benedict termed
the congruence between advantages to the individual and advantages to the
society "synergy." She points out that a state may be organized and
run so that its accumulation of power is used for the benefit of both those in
power and the general population (high synergy) or for the exclusive
advantage of those in power at the expense of most of its citizenry (low
synergy). Likewise, economic systems may be arranged in ways that create low or
high synergy. In the insecure societies the economic systems were
"funneling systems" arranged so that the rich got richer and the poor
got poorer. On the other hand, the secure societies used "siphoning"
systems that channeled wealth away from points of high concentration (often by
awarding prestige to persons who made public distributions of their wealth).
Both Benedict and Maslow appear to believe
that people are naturally somewhat selfish and that wealth and power will tend
to accumulate in the hands of those who already have wealth and power unless
some societal mechanism prevents this. Without such a mechanism the people of a
society will become involved in intense competition or hostile envy and this
will create an insecure climate. (Inversely, we might argue that if the people
of a society are accustomed to envy rather than honor those with more wealth
and power, then the society may resist economic changes that encourage private
initiative.)
Even if we assume (as I do) that people
are motivated, at least to some degree, by their caring for others, we arrive
at a similar conclusion. Clearly if a society is arranged so that caring people
lose power and prestige, then less caring and, hence, less security seems
inevitable.
It should be relatively easy to measure
whether the people of a society feel that public-spirited acts are rewarded or
punished. If one invests capital in one's country, will one receive interest or
lose one's capital? If one works for human rights, may one receive a prize or
be assassinated? If one speaks out against an injustice or hazard, will one be
honored or lose one's job?
Note that a climate of fear that is
fostered by the government of a nation in order to isolate people from
one another is related to the cultural insecurity described by Benedict and
Maslow which atomizes a society. Both may also be related to a climate
that may tend to polarize a people-a climate of instability.
A climate of
instability is evidenced whenever the people of a nation
cannot predict what will happen either politically or economically in the near
future. The situation in the Soviet Union during 1990 provides an excellent
example. People had no idea if money would retain its worth, if there would
ever be goods in the stores, if the Communist party would retain power or
disappear. Such situations make it impossible for a person to know what to
expect or what to do. In this climate one suspects there is a danger that
people will abandon freedom in order to decrease anxiety, and that people's
thinking will become rigidified as they grasp for some solution. Hence, there
would seem to be a danger of increased polarization as people lose openness to other
points of views and become fixated on particular solutions. Conversely, if a
climate of stability exists, the people of a nation may be more able to
tolerate diverse views and not run any real danger of fragmentation.
While there may well be empirical studies
of the effects of climates of instability or stability, I am not aware of them.
However, there have been a number of attempts to measure a related variable,
the degree of economic uncertainty among the public of the United States. Some
investigators have asked people about the economy and then calculated the extent
of disagreement about whether one should be optimistic or pessimistic.
Others have examined the amount of variance in expected price changes. Such
indices of uncertainty on a macro level show that the amount of economic
uncertainty in the United States evidences considerable fluctuation, and
predicts the rate of private saving. Uncertainty became notably higher in the
period 1969-1978, perhaps reflecting a disorientation about economic policy
(see Katona, 1979).
A climate of confidence
or optimism (and its inverse, lack of confidence, pessimism,
or "depression ") is often believed to underlie economic markets and
the recovery or depression of these markets. Katona (1979) presents evidence
that this belief has some validity. His index of consumer sentiment asks people
whether they personally, and whether the country as a whole, will be having
good or bad times financially in the coming year. Drops in this index
successfully forecast economic recessions (which occur six-nine months after
downturns in the index). It is important to note that this predictive ability
is not due to the successful prediction of individual consumption (which we
might expect to be better predicted by questions about intentions to buy
specific consumer items). Rather it is an aggregate macro-measure, probably a
measure of general atmosphere or climate. It is interesting that this measure
of general mood is a better predictor than questions about specific intentions to
purchase. While the latter are better predictors of individual behavior, these
individual intentions occur too late in the decision-making process to have
much forecasting power.
Confidence in the economy as measured by
Katona is probably more an atmosphere than a climate. A climate of confidence
might be said to exist when the overall economy is growing. Thus, Bensman and
Vidich (1971) note that when capital is accumulating at an accelerating rate, a
society is probably to be expansive in many different areas, so that all of its
groups will share in the expanding opportunities. In this situation, they
believe that members of groups will be more apt to compare their relative
success with their own past than to make invidious comparisons with other groups.
Thus, tensions between groups will be minimized, and there will be a climate of
self-confidence and optimism, with stress placed on individualism and the
success of individual initiative. When an economy is not expanding there will
be much less emphasis on individual initiative, and this may eventually affect
the society's culture. Note, for example, an observation by McClelland (1965):
"In India at the present time the climate of opinion is not particularly
confident...newspapers and public speeches do not yield much that can be coded
as indicating the existence of a strong climate of achievement." (p. 24)
Of course, a climate of confidence may not
only be a function of capital accumulation. It might also depend on societal
structures that reward or punish capital accumulation. For example, confidence
may depend, in part, on whether it is safe to invest in the economy of one's
own nation or whether it would be more advantageous to send money out of the
country. More generally, confidence in one's nation may depend on the extent to
which the public believes that people in general, and their government in
particular, care about the nation and its welfare rather than simply being
interested in the welfare of themselves and their families or groups. Regardless
of the underlying causes, it is clear that it is possible to measure and
compare climates of relative confidence and depression. Thus, Oettingen and
Seligman (1990) were able to demonstrate that in 1985 people in bars in East
Berlin behaved in a more depressed manner than their counterparts in West
Berlin.
A climate of satisfaction might be
inferred when there are high ratings on the aspiration scales used by Cantril
(1965). Cantril and his associates, used a self-anchored ladder scale. They
asked people to imagine the best possible future they could for themselves, and
then imagine the worst state of affairs that could occur. Then they asked their
respondents to imagine a 10-rung ladder where the top rung of the ladder
represented the best possible future and the bottom rung the worst. Finally,
the respondent was asked where he or she currently was on the ladder. Thus,
while aspirations are relative and may change, the person's current state of
satisfaction is indicated as relative to the future he or she can actually
imagine. If we average the scores of a random sample of people within different
nations, these aggregate measures could conceivably be viewed as indicating an
atmosphere or a climate of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. If we assume that
reasonable sampling was achieved, such a measure shows distinct differences in
different nations. For example, based OQ data collected in 14 different nations
between 1959 and 1962, Cantril reports satisfaction rates ranging from 6.6 in
the United States, through 5.3 in West Germany, 5.2 in Japan, 4.8 in Nigeria,
4.6 in Brazil and 4.4 in Poland, to 1.6 in the Dominican Republic (with an
average of 5.0). The rank order of the ratings in Cantril's total sample of 14
nations correlates .67 with an objective socioeconomic index he independently
constructed.
Within the Untied States, measures which
have been taken over the course of years (in 1959, 1964, 1971, 1972 and 1974)
do not show significant fluctuations in these ratings (see Campbell, Converse
& Rodgers, 1976).
It might be argued that the climate of a
nation is better measured by asking people about their aspirations for their
nation than for their personal aspirations. Cantril and his associates did
that. They followed their questions about personal aspirations by asking people
about their wishes and fears for their nation and where they saw their nation
standing on a ladder representing these aspirations. Using this measure, we
again find considerable national variation, ranging from 6.7 in the United
States, through 6.2 in West Germany and Nigeria, 5.3 in Japan, 5.1 in Brazil
and 2.7 in the Dominican Republic (with an average of 5.6). The rank order
correlation with personal ratings is .55. The correlation with the
socioeconomic index is .47.
In contrast to the measures of personal
satisfaction, averages of national satisfaction within the United States
declined from 6.7 in 1959, to 5.4 in 1971, and to 4.8 in 1974. (I am not aware
of more recent data, or data from other nations, although they may well exist.)
A climate of dissatisfaction arises
when concrete realities have not kept pace with rising expectations or when a
fall in the economy has not yet led to an adjustment of aspirations so that
people experience themselves to be on a low rung of Cantril's ladder scale. One
might expect that this sense of relative deprivation might be expressed in
changes in political leadership or in out-breaks of violence. With this in
mind, Gurr (1970) correlated Cantril's scores on degree of personal
satisfaction in different nations with his own measure of magnitude of turmoil
in different nations. (His measure was based on the proportion of the
population participating in demonstrations and riots, and the duration and
intensity of such events.) He found a strong relationship between climate of
dissatisfaction (my terminology) and magnitude of turmoil. (rho = .59, N
= 13.) (I wondered if magnitude of turmoil could be just as easily related
to objective socio-economic status but calculated a rho of only .30.)
Does a climate of dissatisfaction really
predict political turmoil? There are three important qualifications which must
be kept in mind. First, we are speaking of a collective climate and not an
individual dissatisfaction. That is, many studies do not indicate a
strong relationship between individual dissatisfaction and participation in
political violence (see Muller, 1980).
Second, adequate sampling is crucial. It
should be noted that Gurr does not include Cantril's data for the United States
in his study on the grounds that its relatively high levels of turmoil in the
1960 were due to the relatively high level of dissatisfaction in black
Americans (who he states were not sufficiently included in Cantril's sample).
Third, dissatisfaction should be measured
with regard to different standards of comparison. Campbell, Converse and
Rodgers (1976; see Chapter 6 in particular) contrast a number of such
standards. In this regard, Walker and Pettigrew (1984) have argued that
relative deprivation is particularly important when the discrepancy is based on
a comparison with another group in the society, rather than simply on what
oneself or one's own group had in the past. It was the sense of relative
deprivation relative to other groups that was related to support for Quebec nationalism
in Canada (Guimond & Dube-Simond,1983).
Together, these qualifications suggest
that studies should be conducted on the climates of dissatisfaction in
different groups of people within the same nation. It may also be
important to distinguish between aspirations and entitlements, between what one
would like to have and what one ought to have. It may be argued
that it is when people fail to get what they believe they ought to get
that a climate of dissatisfaction turns to hostility.
A climate of hostility appears
to occur when segments of a population are disappointed in a very
particular way. George Kelly (1965) postulates that hostility occurs when there
is evidence that disconfirms the system of beliefs upon which a person's
actions have been based. The hostility is an attempt to extort evidence to
maintain the belief system rather than suffer its loss. Barrington Moore (1978)
has described this process in Germany in the 1930s. People who did everything
they believed they should do-worked hard, saved money, followed the rules-found
themselves poorer each year because of inflation. He presents evidence which
suggests that such people became the basic popular support for the Nazi party.
I am unaware of evidence that similar
processes were involved in the build-up of racial tensions in Kampuchea, or the
extent to which they have been an emotional support for ethnic tensions in
other regions. However, we would suspect that climates of hostility exacerbate
ethnic tensions and are intertwined with the processes of accelerating violence
described by Staub (1990).
While we often think of climates of
dissatisfaction and hostility as being the opposite of a climate of
satisfaction, the fact that groups often become polarized suggests that a more
important contrast may be with a climate of solidarity.
A climate of solidarity
occurs when people feel themselves to be interdependent
parts of something greater than themselves. Hence, they are willing to sacrifice
for a greater good and take pride in this sacrifice. Williamson (1989) points
out that this sort of feeling existed in Great Britain during the Second World
War and, for a while, transcended class conflict and led to a willingness to
care for the needs of strangers. A climate of solidarity may be essential for
great national efforts but may be difficult to sustain. Thus commenting on
problems faced by leaders of the Russian revolution, Kennon (1960, p. 181)
observes:
The fact is
that with the end of civil war and foreign intervention, a significant change
had entered into the feelings of the people: the sort of change which
invariably occurs after the dramatic and heroic moments of history. The spirit
of sacrifice was giving way to lassitude, weariness with causes and ideals, a
yearning for return to the reassuring preoccupations of private life. Just as
the human individual cannot maintain the heroic tone beyond a certain point in
personal life, so a collective body of mankind has limits in its ability to
live heroically. There comes a time when people want to eat and sleep and mend
their clothes and think about their children.
While it may not be possible for such a
climate to last for longer than a few years, it may be essential for the
maintenance of unity when a nation is faced with a threatening situation. Such
a climate seems related to climates of hope.
A climate of hope is
conceivably indicated by comparing a people's degree of present and past
satisfaction with how satisfied they expect to be in the future. Cantril (1965)
and his associates took such measures. After people had stated their hopes and
fears, and indicated their present position on this ladder
of aspiration, they were asked where they (or their country) would be in five
years. Clear differences were obtained in different nations. For example,
looking at past, present and future personal ratings we find for the United
States 5.9, 6.6,7.8; for West Germany 4.1,5.3, 6.2; Japan 4.6,5.2, 6.2; Nigeria
2.8, 4.8,7.4; Brazil 4.1,4.6,7.3; Poland 4.0,4.4,5.5; Dominican Republic 1.6,
1.6,5.8. Note the general feeling of optimism. For the sample of 14 nations
there is an average shift up from the past to the present of 0.8 and from
present to future of 1.9. Note also the possibility of a dangerous
over-optimism in Nigeria, Brazil and the Dominican Republic.
I am not aware of any systematic attempts
to use these measurements to predict political events, or of repeated
measurements in countries other than the United States. However, two observations
suggest both the possible uses and the possible limitations of the data.
In 1961, following the Cuban revolution,
rumors of a possible intervention by the government of the United States led
Cantril to give the United States Government data which suggested that the
Cuban population would not support an attempted invasion. The data gathered a
year before (15 months after Castro gained power) indicated high current and
anticipated satisfaction ratings compared to the past. (The ratings were 4.1
[past], 6.4 [present], 8.4 [future]). While there is no evidence that the data
influenced debates about the subsequent, abortive, invasion attempt: it seems
clear that there was not much popular support for overthrowing the regime at
that time.
In 1962, the Nigerian data showed a high
degree of satisfaction and hope following the nation's independence in 1960.
There is no hint in the ratings that in less than three years tribal tensions
would erupt into a military coup leading to disastrous tribal divisions and civil
war. This fact suggests that measures of national satisfaction reflect an
optimism or pessimism that is only useful for relatively short-range
prediction.
Ideally, a measure could be constructed that
would probe more deeply into the structural factors that underlie national
emotions so that it would be more a measure of climate than mood. The Nigerian
data may give us certain hints about how to do this. For example, in spite of
their optimistic ratings, when people stated their major fears for their
nation, 51% mentioned political instability and 23% national disunity. This may
be compared with the 6% who mentioned political instability and the 5% who
mentioned national disunity in Egypt, and the complete lack of concern in the
United States for instability and only a 1% concern for disunity. It would
seem, then, that there is evidence of an underlying climate of instability in
the Nigerian data but that a mood of national optimism prevented this from
being reflected in the quantitative ratings.
On a deeper, more structural level, a
climate of hope, as opposed to one of despair, is related to the fundamental
morale of a nation and whether it can maintain its ideals in the face of
adversity. In Kurt Lewin's (1948) classic analysis of morale, he suggests that
morale is high when a people has the ability to maintain a tension between
hoped-for ideals and actual reality. If people simply think in terms of what is
ideal, or expect that these hopes are about to be realized, they are out of
touch with the grit of real political and economic reality, with difficult
compromises and with work that needs to be done. Hence, while feelings may be
optimistic, the high morale is only apparent. If people abandon the ideal and
live only on the plane of current reality, they become too resigned to work for
the ideal, or too cynical to care, and simply look out for themselves. From
Lewin's perspective, the extremely high figure ratings given by the Nigerian
people might be taken to indicate low tension and, hence, a type of low morale.
Of course, a drop in political participation may also indicate decreasing
morale and a climate of alienation. However, it should be possible to develop a
positive measure of morale, a more direct measure of the tension between ideal
and real. I will not attempt to do that in this paper because there are more
general problems of measurement that must be examined.
PROBLEMS OF MEASUREMENT
We conceive of emotional climate as an
objective fact. Hence, it may be best to ask questions that encourage
respondents to focus out on the social world rather than in upon their
feelings. Even so, in attempting to measure an objective emotional climate we
must deal with the fact that people with different personalities (optimists and
pessimists, repressors and sensitizers, etc) and people in different positions
within a society (the elite, the upwardly mobile, the poor, members of a
minority group, etc) may well perceive the climate differently. Furthermore,
people may be afraid to say what they really think, or may say what they
believe the other wants to hear, particularly when a climate of fear exists.
It should be relatively easy to control
for personality differences by averaging scores and using adequate sampling
procedures, and it may be possible to sample segments of the population who are
expected to tell the truth. Journalists, for example, although they might
hesitate to be identified, occupy a role where honest reporting is expected (by
contrast with politicians). And mothers may openly speak of fears for their
children without threatening the unity of the state, since such fears are
understood to be part of the mothering role.
However, controlling for the perceptions
of people in different social positions poses a challenging problem. For
example, Payne and Mansfield (1973) show that persons who are higher in an
organization's hierarchy tend to perceive the organization as more
equalitarian, open-minded and friendly than persons who are lower. We could, of
course, take stratified samples and use aggregate measures, but we are not
necessarily interested in an average perception so much as the best estimation
of what we take to be an objective phenomenon. If, for example, one group
within a society was feeling very satisfied and perceived an emotional climate
of increased opportunity, while another group was feeling despondent and
increasingly frustrated, we would not be interested in averaging their scores
but in estimating the degree of the polarization that was obviously developing.
Because of all these factors, it seems
desirable to develop observational as well as survey measures. On the
individual level, there are several interesting behavioral indicators of
emotional state. Generosity increases with happiness; size of handwriting and
speed of talking decrease with depression, etc. It would be interesting to see
if we could construct behavioral indicators of emotional climate. For example,
a climate of fear should be reflected in an increased isolation of people.
Within any given nation this might be relatively easy to measure. In Spain, for
instance, people gather outside to talk; however, during the Franco
dictatorship this custom notably diminished.
If at all possible it would be desirable
to have some sort of standard measures that could be used in different nations,
and this suggests that the survey situation itself might be used. For example,
when a climate of fear is pervasive it has been noted that people fail to
answer more questions, particularly ones that might reflect on the government.
In repressive climates people may even avoid talking about schools-or anything
that may have to do with governmental policy. By arranging questions so that
they increase in sensitivity, patterns of avoidance might be easily noted and
rated. Triandis (personal communication) has suggested that response latency
might also be used to indicate the presence of fear in sensitive areas.
Journalists know what issues are
off-limits and cannot be discussed in print within their own country. In Turkey
in 1989 one could not mention the fact that a Kurdish ethnic group existed; in
Mexico one could not criticize any President who was in office. These limits to
free speech in the press always indicate sensitive political problems that
bound the region of freedom within any given nation. Such restrictions,
together with records of the killing of journalists, provide objective data
that can be correlated with the perception of an emotional climate of fear.
Conversely, an increase in a climate of
mutual caring might be reflected in a greater openness with a stranger like a
pollster. If, for example, an interviewer gave an opportunity for a respondent
to volunteer an opinion about the head of the national government, or to sign a
petition in favor of improving prison conditions, one might adduce behavior
that would indicate a caring climate.
Is there really an emotional
climate in a nation or are there actually many-differing from neighborhood to
neighborhood, from class to class, from one ethnic group to another? Certainly,
there are important local climates. Consider this, for example, variations in
the general feeling of trust that existed in the United States in 1971.
Previously, we noted that the level was high 57%. However, Campbell, Converse,
and Rodgers (1976) report that, while 63% of white respondents reported trust,
this was true of only 28% of black respondents.
In a similar vein, Chein's data (see de
Rivera, 1986) demonstrated that 83% of New York City's heroin addicts came from
only 15% of its census tracts. His analysis convincingly demonstrates that some
neighborhoods have far more anomie (in Durkheim's sense) than others. Likewise,
Bensman and Vidich's (1971) analysis of the effects of economic fluctuations
shows how certain economic expansions and contractions may have a different
impact on different social groups, leading some to become self-assured and
future-oriented, while others become depressed or resentful. Given differences
in emotional climate within a nation, are we justified in speaking of a
national climate?
In one sense we clearly are not. In fact,
people need to be made more aware of climatic differences and governments need
to address them. In another sense, however, the very existence of a national
government organizes a national climate that impinges, for good or ill, on
local climates. The real question appears to be how to distinguish it from
local climate and how to measure the extent of its impact. At least three
possibilities seem worth exploring.
(1) Questions could be asked specifically
about the nation, and answers could then be compared to questions which focus
on the person's neighborhood or on personal life. In fact this was done in
Cantril's (1965) study when people were first asked for their personal hopes
and fears and then, separately, asked for their hopes and fears for the nation.
When this is done, most people seem to evidence relatively little connection
between the personal and national. Thus, in Cantril's study correlations
between personal satisfaction and satisfaction with the nation ranged from .08
in the United States to .40 in Nigeria. Reflecting upon the United States data,
we note that internal warfare has not occurred in over 100 years, that a
large-scale economic upheaval has not occurred in over 50, and that violent
crime and unemployment have been fairly well isolated from most people's lives.
Hence, many people may be unaware of how much their personal welfare depends on
the welfare of the nation.
Certainly a lack of connection seems
demonstrated whenever measures are taken separately. In Cantril's study, the
1959 U.S. sample shows 48% of people mentioning peace as a hope and 51%
mentioning war as a fear for the nation, but only 10% mentioning an improved
international situation as a personal hope, and only 24% mentioning the
international situation as a personal fear. (Health and the state of the
economy are much more important-mentioned by over 50%.) Compare this with the
Polish data in 1962 where peace was mentioned as a personal hope by 20%
and war as a personal fear by 62% of the sample. One might be tempted to
use the comparison between national and personal as a measure in its own right,
except that in the Yugoslavian sample only 7% mentioned peace as a personal
hope (in spite of the fact that Yugoslavia, like Poland, had recently suffered
war).
In the Campbell, Converse & Rodgers
(1976) study on the quality of American life, when people were asked to rate
the importance of 12 different domains of life, 62% rated "a good country
to live in-a country with a good government" as extremely important. This
proportion is larger than for most domains and is exceeded only by health,
marriage and having a good family life. However, when people rated how
satisfied they were with their life as a whole, their general ratings were not
highly predicted by their satisfaction with national government. (They were
predicted by satisfaction with family life, marriage and financial situation.)
Since satisfaction with health was also not very predictive, the investigators
note that "...these domains are hard to rate as unimportant when attention
is drawn to them in a hypothetical or abstract sense. Yet when no malfunctions
on either domain are vitally intruding on the daily lives of most of our
respondents, they are easy to take for granted and hence show very little
impact on the sense of well being" (p. 86). In line with this relative
separation of national and personal life, we saw earlier that people in the
United States evidence less and less optimism about the nation but continue to
feel optimistic about their personal lives.
Thus, when we ask separate questions about
the nation and personal life, there is relatively little connection. The
emotional climate of the nation seems far less influential than the emotional
climate of one's home.
(2) Questions might be designed which ask
a person to relate his or her personal life to the national atmosphere. Answers
could then be compared from one region to another. By designing questions which
specifically ask people to relate their personal life to the national climate
in concrete ways, we might raise the level of awareness about how national
climate impacts the climate of one's neighborhood, family or personal life. We
might, for example, ask a question such as "When you think of yourself as
a person 'who lives in (or is a citizen of)-what are your wishes and hopes for
the future of yourself and your country?" We could then empirically
ascertain the percentage of people who mention national as well as personal
concerns. This is certainly an aspect of the emotional climate of
responsibility or alienation in its own right. If desirable, we could
distinguish between economic, political and social climates by inquiring, for
example, "When you think of your economic future in [name of nation] and
the economic future of [name of nation], what are your wishes and hopes for
yourself and the nation?"
Alternatively, one could begin by asking
direct questions which reflect on the emotional climate of one's neighborhood
(e.g., "Would you say that most people in your neighborhood can be
trusted, or is it better to be very careful in dealing with them?";
"What are the opportunities for work around here?") and then inquire
into the perceived relationship between that climate and the national climate
and government (e.g., "Does the government effect that in any way?").
It would then be interesting to compare the perceptions of people in different
regions.
(3) Questions might be asked about how
people perceive the climates of different areas or groups. Usually, problematic
regions-ghetto areas, prisons, refugee camps-are hidden, and distinct ethnic or
class neighborhoods are isolated from one another by almost invisible
boundaries. An important aspect of national climate may be the extent to which
groups are isolated or integrated and how aware most people are of the
emotional climate of the different groups, how accurate their perceptions are,
and the extent to which they can empathize with the viewpoint of other groups.
While it would appear difficult to design questions that could separate
knowledge from stereotypes, a good beginning might be made by simply asking
people to draw crude maps of their own city and note districts within which
they would feel uncomfortable, insecure or afraid, and then comparing their
descriptions of the emotional climate in these regions with the actual
descriptions of the inhabitants.
While I have described different types of
climates, it might be desirable to use these types to anchor the ends of
different dimensions, which could then be used to characterize climate.
We might, for example, describe a nation's climate by using dimensions such as
those shown in Table 1, where the first two dimensions describe how the people
of a society relate to one another and the latter describe how the people
relate to their ideals. Possibly such dimensions should be treated as
underlying structural factors that influence what type of emotional climate
will prevail at a given time. In any case they may provide the flexibility
necessary for the description of complex climatic conditions and changes.
While these dimensions are not completely
independent of one another, I believe they cannot be collapsed without
losing descriptive power. For example, hostility and fear often co-exist, but
intergroup hostility may exist without there being an overall fear of the
nation's government. Conversely, an overall climate of fear may prevent
intergroup hostility from coming into existence. Likewise, security (in the
sense of political freedom) often goes along with solidarity, but there are
situations where one is present but the other is absent.
EMOTIONAL CLIMATE AND POLITICAL UNITY
While simple societies may be held
together by emotional dynamics that unify a single group of people, it may be
argued that most modern nation-states, and certainly all complex civilizations,
are only possible when diverse groups of people are held together. That
is, modern civilization depends on groups of different peoples working
together, rather than fighting each other out of mutual distrust, and while
such groups can be artificially held together by the force of conquest, they
will split into fragments unless there is some inner coherence, a feeling of
unity.
Examining history with this idea in mind,
Dennison (1928) distinguishes between two major sorts of civilizations:
patriarchal and fratriarchal. (Earlier , matriarchal forms did not develop
beyond the tribal level of organization.) He argues that each of these types
requires a different sort of emotional culture and if this culture is
neglected, or not cultivated by appropriate societal mechanisms, the unity will
disappear and the civilization will disintegrate. (There are, of course
interesting mixtures of these forms. For example, Dennison saw the Chinese clan
system as having a strong fratriarchal unity but the Chinese national government
as patriarchal with a tenuous emotional unity.)
The unity of a nation state may be related
to the various dimensions of emotional climate previously articulated:
When a climate of solidarity exists
because the people of a nation share a set of ideals, respect a common
authority or are fighting a common enemy, there is a clear sense of national
unity. However, this mayor may not involve the security which permits a
tolerance for diversity. To the extent that solidarity is based on enmity or on
a respect for authority that is mingled with fear, there will be strong
conformity pressures that will hinder expressions of ethnic diversity and true
individuality. Becker's (1968) ideal of maximum individuality within maximum
community can only exist to the extent that there is also a climate of security
which permits the expression of both group and individual differences. And this
can coincide with a climate of solidarity only to the extent that people care
about one another and share some similar national ideals (see de Rivera, 1989).
In the absence of this caring, and of
societal structures that reward persons who contribute to the welfare of the
nation, a government will resort to varying degrees of intimidation in order to
maintain control. Then, some degree of fear will be present, often masking
intergroup conflict.
Intergroup conflict is always a potential
threat to unification regardless of whether ethnic,
familial or class conflict is involved. If a climate of dissatisfaction exists
and there is enough security, a political group will organize to address the
problem. This will be relatively easy to accomplish if there is confidence in
the society and the political group addresses their dissatisfaction as a
systemic problem that requires some structural change. However, if
circumstances lead the political group to portray the problem as caused by
some other group, a climate of hostility will arise and polarization will begin
to occur. Then civil war may ensue, or one group may seize control of the
government and create a climate of fear in order to isolate people and prevent
political opposition.
The latter chain of events is precisely
what happened in Chile during the period 1970-1990 (see Silva, 1991).
Fortunately, enough solidarity and caring persisted in the Chilean climate to
permit a change of government in 1990 and the beginning of a new climate of
hope and confidence. In 1991 this climate could be contrasted with the climate
of despair in Argentina or Guatemala, or with the climate of hope without
confidence in Mexico.
I hope that we can begin to measure these
emotional climates with objective precision, that these measurements will prove
to have a certain predictive power, and that they may aid the people and
governments of different nations to choose policies that will result in ideal
climates rather than those dangerous to our human potential.
Becker, D.,
Lira, E., Costillo, M., Gomez, E. & Kovalskys, J. (1990). Therapy with
victims of political repression in Chile: The challenge of social reparation. Journal
of Social Issues, 46, 133-149.
Becker, E.
(1968). The Structure of Evil. New York: The Free Press.
Benedict, R.
(1970). Synergy: Patterns of the good culture. American Anthropologist, 72,
320-333.
Bensman, J.,
& Vidich, A. (1971). Business cycles, class and personality. In J. Bensman
& A. Vidich (Eds), The New American Society: The Revolution of the
Middle Class. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.
Braun de
Dunayevich, J., & Puget, J. (1989). State terrorism and psychoanalysis. International
Journal of Mental Health, 18(2), 98-112.
Campbell, A.,
Converse, P. E. & Rodgers, W. L. (1976). The Quality of American Life:
Perceptions, Evolutions, and Satisfactions. New York: Russell Sage
Foundation.
Cantril, H.
(1965). The Pattern of Human Concerns. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press.
Chein, I.
(1954). The environment as a determinant of behavior. Journal of Social
Psychology, 39,115-127.
Denison, J. H.
(1928). Emotions as the Basis of Civilization. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons.
de Rivera, J. H.
(1977). A Structural Theory of the Emotions. New York: International
Universities Press.
de Rivera, J. H.
(1984). The structure of emotional relationships. In P. Shaver (Ed.), Review
of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 5: Emotions, Relationships,
and Health. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, pp. 116-145.
de Rivera, J. H.
(1986). The "objective-behavioral" environment of Isidor Chei. Environment
and Behavior, 18, 95-108.
de Rivera, J. H.
(1989). Love, fear, and justice: Transforming selves for the new world. Social
Justice Research, 3, 387-426.
de Rivera, J. H.
& Grinkis, C. (1986). Emotions as social relationships. Motivation and
Emotion, 10, 351-369.
Fisher, G. A.
& Chon, K.-K. (1989). Durkheim and the social construction of emotion. Social
Psychology Quarterly, 1-9.
Forehand, G. A.
& Gilmer, B. (1964). Environmental variation in studies of organizational
behavior. Psychological Bulletin, 62,361-381.
Guimond, S.
& Dube-Simond, L. (1983). Relative deprivation theory and the Quebec nationalist
movement: the cognition-emotion distinction and the personal-growth deprivation
issue. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 526-535.
Gurr, T. R.
(1970). Why Men Rebel. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Heelas, P.
(1989). Restoring the justified order: Emotions, injustice, and the role of
culture. Social Justice Research, 3, 375-386.
James, L. R.
& Jones, A. P. (1974). Organizational climate. Psychological Bulletin, 8,
1096-1112.
Katona, G.
(1979). Toward a macropsychology. American Psychologist, 34, 118-126.
Kelly, G. A.
(1965). The threat of aggression. Journal of Humanistic Psychology,
195-201.
Kennon, G. F.
(1960). Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin. Boston: Little
Brown.
Lewin, K.
(1948). Time perspective and morale. In K. Lewin (Ed.), Resolving Social
Conflicts. New York: Harper, pp. 103-124.
Martin-Baro, I.
(1981). La guerra civil en El Salvador. ECA. Estudios Centros americanos, No.377-388,
pp. 17-32.
Martin-Baro, I.
(1990). Religion as an instrument of psychological warfare. Joumal of Social
Issues, 46, 93-107.
Maslow, A. H.
(1971). The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. New York: Viking.
McClelland, D.
(1965). Achievement motivation can be developed. Harvard Business Review, 43,
178.
Moore, B.
(1978). Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt. London:
Macmillan.
Muller, E. N.
(1980). The psychology of political protest and violence. In T. R. Gurr (Ed.), Handbook
of Political Conflict. New York: Free Press, pp. 69-99.
Oettingeri, G.,
& Seligman, M. E. P. (1990). Pessimism and behavioral signs of depression
in East versus West Berlin. European Journal of Social Psychology, 20,
20-220.
Park, R. E.
(1967). On Social Control and Collective Behavior. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Payne, R. L.
& Mansfield, R. (1973). Relationships of perceptions of organization
climate to organizational structure, context, and hierarchical position. Administrative
Science Quarterly, 18, 515-526.
Silva, P.
(1991). State, political change and social justice in Chile. Paper presented at
the 3rd International Conference on Social Justice Research, Utrecht, The
Netherlands.
Staub, E.
(1990). Roots of Evil. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Tagiuri, R.
(1968). The concept of organizational climate. In R. Tagiuri & G. H. Litwin
(Eds.), Organizational Climate: Explorations of a Concept. Boston:
Harvard University, Graduate School of Business Administration, pp. 11-32.
Walker, I. &
Pettigrew, T. F. (1984). Relative deprivation theory: An overview and
conceptual critique. British Journal of Social Psychology, 23, 301-310.
Walter, E. V.
(1964). Terror and Resistance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Williamson, B.
(1989). Review article: Sentiment and social change. Sociological Review, 37,
128-141.
A preliminary draft of this chapter was
discussed at a workshop on emotional climate sponsored by the Clark European
Center in Luxembourg on July 12-14, 1991. I would like to thank the
participants for their helpful commentary.
Table 1
Relation to others |
|
|
Fear (isolation) |
Security (trust) |
|
Hostility (polarization) |
Solidarity (willingness to sacrifice) |
|
Relation to
ideals |
|
|
Dissatisfaction |
Satisfaction |
|
Despair |
Hope |
|
Depression |
Confidence |
|
Stability |
Stability |