The Managed Heart

In private life, we try to induce or suppress love, envy, and anger through deep acting or «emotion work,» just as we manage our outer expressions of feeling through surface acting. In trying to bridge a gap between what we feel and what we «ought» to feel, we take guidance from «feeling rules» about what is owing to others in a given situation. Based on our private mutual understandings of feeling rules, we make a «gift exchange» of acts of emotion management. We bow to each other not simply from the waist, but from the heart.

But what occurs when emotion work, feeling rules, and the gift of exchange are introduced into the public world…