Misery and Company: Sympathy in Everyday Life 9780226107585

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Misery and Company

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Misery and ./

Company S y m p a t h y in Everyday Llfe

Candace Clark

T h e U n i v e r s i t y of C h i c a g o P r e s s

Chicago & London

Candace Clark is professor of sociology at Montclair State University. She is co-editor, with Howard Robboy, of Social Interaction (1 992). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London 0 1 9 9 7 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 1997 Printed in the United States of America 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN: 0-226-10756-6 (cloth) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clark, Candace. Misery and company : sympathy in everyday life / Candace Clark. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-10756-6 (alk. paper). 1. Sympathy. I. Title. BJ1475.CS3 1997 177'.7-dc20 96-34946 CIP

8 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI 239.48-1984,

To the memory of Doris Eugenia Clark who gave me the pieces I needed and to Mario who held the kaleidoscope

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C O N T E N T S

Preface

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ix

2

T h e S o c i a l C h a r a c t e r of S y m p a t h y

2 S y m p a t h y G i v i n g : Forms a n d Process

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3 Framing Events as Bad Luck: S y m p a t h y Entrepreneurs 80 a n d t h e G r o u n d s for S y m p a t h y

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The Socioemotional Economy, Social Value, and Sympathy Margin 128

5 Sympathy Biography and the Rules Etiquette

of S y m p a t h y

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6 Interpreting Deviance: T h e Sympathetic Response

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7 Sympathy, Microhierarchy, a n d Micropolitics 8 Epilogue

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A p p e n d i x : Research S t r a t e g i e s References Name Index Subject Index

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299 304

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P R E F A C E

Little did I suspect when I went to visit Bernard Goldstein in Middlesex County Hospital in 1982 that I would come away with an idea that would set a long-term research agenda. Bernard, a Rutgers University professor of medical sociology, was having emergency coronary bypass surgery. Winding my way through the institutional green maze of hallways, I first found him, pajama-clad, ensconced in a semiprivate room. He was wired to monitors but chatting, reading, joking, and trying not to focus on the fact that he was the hospital’s first bypass case. After his successful surgery, he was moved to the multibed intensive care unit where space and privacy were in limited supply. Bernard’s friends and family members had arrived from around the United States and Canada. Like all the other patients’ visitors, they were permitted to see him only ten minutes every four hours. The hospital apparently believed visitors’ needs and comfort were outside their purview, since the visitors’ waiting area consisted of four or five hard plastic chairs lined against the wall of a shabby, out-of-the-way corridor. All of the visitors for all ICU patients had to wait there. They waited, and waited, and waited-for news of progress and prognoses from doctors and nurses and for their chance to offer sympathy, assurances, and cheer t o a father or a sister or a friend in the unit. As I bided my time with the rest, I began to pay attention to the conversations and actions of the little clusters of people sharing this space with me. I saw more than a collection of apprehensive, tired people. In a matter of hours, a small society had developed among the waiters, even though most didn’t know each other’s names and group turnover was high. They understood that they were linked by more than their temporary quarters and more than sadness, uncertainty, and possible loss. They shared news, intimate details of their loved ones’ conditions and life histories, information on esoteric medical matters and hospital routine, opinions about the staff, and feelings. One man covered an exhausted, finally nodding woman with her coat. Several offered to bring coffee and food to the rest. When a group was called for their ten-minute visit, they shook off their own concerns, straightened their shoulders, and forced themselves ix

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to smile. Other waiters helped them play down their own emotions so they could sympathize “properly” when they faced their loved ones. They shared an unnamed social role centered around giving sympathy. The role derives from the more central, starring role, the sick role, which Talcott Parsons (1951) described half a century ago. They were the significant others, the support network, expected to give their loved ones concern, help, and sympathy despite their own considerable worries and fears. (Hospital personnel, busy concentrating on routines and procedures, were generally reluctant to carry out sympathizing functions--or even to acknowledge their importance by providing adequate space for the people who did.) In glances, smiles, and sighs, the sympathizers tacitly acknowledged and legitimated their common role with its rules and psychic costs. I came to think of the cramped corridor as a sympathy way-station, where strangers temporarily thrown together by misfortune, with common concerns and plights, empathized and sympathized with one another even as they were waiting to give sympathy. I soon realized that receiving sympathy has its patterns and rules, too. The hospital patients, including Bernard, accepted offerings and solicitations appreciatively from close and distant relatives alike. They strained to respond appropriately to well-wishes-to exclude some cheer, hope, and bravery. Even in their misery, they took pains to validate and reassure their anxious visitors. In sum, they tried to merit the sympathy they received. Further reflection made it clear that many situations call for variants on the sympathizer and “sympathizee” roles, not just when someone is hospitalized but also during other events that disrupt or upset the smooth flow of everyday life. Death, unemployment, natural disaster, divorce, unjust treatment-all are reasons for onlookers to feel sympathy and t o do something to show the troubled they are not alone in their misery. By the same token, those afflicted with problems such as these both can expect and should accept other people’s sympathetic company. Our society has regularized and institutionalized sympathy give-and-take. As Emile Durkheim might have said, this give-and-take is part of the panoply of rituals that celebrate society and uplift and energize its members. It began to dawn on me that sympathy is an antidote to life’s misery and an important form of social interaction. Yet neither social scientists nor crisis specialists such as hospital personnel or disaster relief teams had focused much attention on its rules, interconnecting roles, or its consequences. Empirical research was definitely needed. I began with participant observation but soon saw the need for other and wider approaches. One

PREFACE

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study led to another and another until, as the methodological appendix describes, I was up to my ears in data. Misery and Company presents the findings of my series of studies and places them within the general framework of the sociology of emotions.

.

Many of the ideas developed in this book first took shape in my earlier essay “Sympathy Biography and Sympathy Margin,” which appeared in the American Journal oj” Sociology in 1987. Any project that has gone on for a decade owes a huge debt to the colleagues, students, friends, and family who have suffered through it. Of course, Bernard Goldstein suffered most severely, in providing the original focus. I hope my requests for advice along the way were less painful than the surgeon’s knife. Sherry1 Kleinman read many drafts and talked me through many snags. She also provided the journey analogy that made sense of the book’s organization. In truth, she and Carolyn Ellis made the journey with me. Carolyn also read drafts, listened, commented, and generally helped me through the lived experience of analysis and writing. Jay Livingston contributed friendship, a keen editorial pen, and the title. William Wentworth came up with brilliant insights into the links between physiology, self, and social bonds when I most needed them. Paul Williams suggested a number of factors that contribute to social and moral worth. Lynn Atwater and Howard Robboy called my attention to the pertinence for studying sympathy of their earlier work on the New York Times’s Neediest Cases Appeal, and they generally applauded my efforts. Sally Bould’s comments on family bonds of obligation and affection helped me think through matters of social exchange, as did Peter Freund’s critical perspective. Donileen Loseke volunteered t o read the entire manuscript at an early stage, and she encouraged the macrolevel analysis. David Dodd was a true fellow traveler who made the trip easier. Important ideas and support came also from Spencer Cahill, Donna Kelleher Darden, Larry DeBord, Ann Partridge Dill, Coralie Farlee, David Franks, Roberto Fransozi, Doris Gale, Judith Gerson, Arlie Russell Hochschild, David Karp, Theodore D. Kemper, Lyn Lofland, Judith Long, Meredith McGuire, Barbara Salmore, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and Carole Walker. The Kure Beach crew-Betty Whitley, Lorraine Warren, and Jean Rice-provided a sounding board, tolerance, and reassurance. Doug Mitchell, my editor, took a chance and patiently gave me time and space. I am also very grateful for Mary Caraway’s sensitive and careful manuscript editing and her exceptional creativity and concern.

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I have also had the good luck to have the enthusiastic help of many student assistants in the course of this project: Kristin Brooks, Bill Buttner, Jane Melada, Felicita Smolin, and an entire class in Graduate Research Methods conducted intensive interviews. Judith Madonia and Coleen Eisele did the bulk of the collection and analysis of data from the New York Times’s Neediest Cases Appeal. Trish Potter, Dawn Toth, Gema Diaz, and Christine Napier transcribed interviews. Loretta Norelli and Gema Diaz conducted observations. Eve Lamonte, Wanda Kosinski, Patricia Polizzi, and Elise Feller coded interviews and helped with computer analysis. Marcia Wright assisted with the coding. Kim Palmesino, Annette Pagano, Angela Colasante, Debbie McGrath, and Angela Wittik collected freewriting data. Diane Baillif and Michael Cassidy conducted written interviews. Mary Dassing and Danielle Evans undertook library research. Debra Rose commented on the manuscript. Two undergraduate classes conducted surveys. Finally, Maria Ghelli did library research and data analysis, commented on the entire manuscript, helped polish the writing, and propped me up as I approached the finish line. Funding for parts of the research came from Montclair State University’s Separately Budgeted Research Program and from the Montclair State University Alumni Association. Closer to home, my parents gave valuable encouragement and support. My parents-in-law did too. Larissa Kravanja, my stepdaughter, provided coding assistance, pats on the back, and insights beyond her years. More than anyone, my husband, Mario Kravanja-who was company in all manner of miseries, lugged bags of books home from the library, helped construct everything from reality to bookcases, read and commented on countless drafts, and refused to let me quit-made the journey possible.

To my sorrow, while I was writing this book some of those whose contributions were most significant have died: my mother, my father, Lynn Atwater, Larry DeBord, and, most recently, Bernard Goldstein. I will always miss them.

Misery and

Company

The S o c i a l C h a r a c t e r of S y m p a t h y

No quality .f human nature is more remarkable, both in i t s e r and i n its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however dgerent from, or even contrary to our own. David H u m , A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739

T

ry to imagine a society without sympathy. Suppose unsympathetic

fathers and mothers look impassively at their children’s scraped knees and bruised feelings. Friends yawn with boredom when they hear of each other’s misfortunes and upsets. No one says “I’m so sorry” or “That’s too bad.” Community members offer no condolences to the bereaved. Without mercy or consideration of extenuating circumstances, judges, bosses, and teachers hold people accountable for every action they take or fail to take. Imagine yourself a member of this group, never giving sympathy or getting any. The closest we can come to such a society outside the realm of speculation is that of the Ik, or “Mountain People,” of central Africa, described by anthropologist Colin Turnbull (1 972). After World War 11, central African governments turned the former Ik hunting areas into a protected wildlife park. They relocated the Ik from their low-lying homelands to unfamiliar hilly territory. Drought and hunting restrictions brought famine. Turnbull maintained that the Ik were once a gentle and kindhearted people; as they edged toward starvation and extinction, however, their friendship and caring for one another faded. They developed an approach to life that promoted self-concern and forbade sympathy for others. Their motto seemed to be “Who knows what the other is feeling? In each you only know your own feeling” (253). Disregarding others’ feelings meant not having to care. Some cooperative activities did continue among the Ik, or we would not even call them a society. Yet impersonal exchange principles guided cooperation: people aided others to obligate them. Consider a few specifics of Ik life. The Ik thought one-sided giving of food, water, assistance, or even sentiment to anyone, family member or foe, was a waste. The feeble and the frail were objects not of pity and care but of scorn, sniggering, and humor. “Anyone falling down was good for a laugh, . . . particularly if he was old or weak or blind” (1 13). Ik parents banished their children from their round stick-and-thatch houses at about age three; the children survived only if they found begrudging 3

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acceptance, by no means a given, among bands of their age-mates. Note the case of Adupa: The best game of all . . . was teasing poor little Adupa [who] was a little mad [because she] did not go and jump on other people’s play houses, and she lavished enormous care on hers. . . . That of course made it all the more jump-on-able. . . . [Wlhen Adupa pulled herself from the ruins of her house, crying, [the other children] beat her over the head and danced around her. (1 13-14)

Ik children were not the only ones to treat Adupa heartlessly. She eventually starved to death when her parents purposely trapped her inside a hut. Other people’s misery provided about the only source of Ik humor that Turnbull could find. In his words, “[m]isfortune of others was their greatest joy” (260). For instance, around the evening fire, [Mlen would watch a child with eager anticipation as it crawled toward the fire, then burst into gay and happy laughter as it plunged a skinny hand into the coals. Such times were the few times when parental affection showed itself; a mother would glow with pleasure to hear such joy occasioned by her offspring, and pull it tenderly out of the fire. (1 12) Turnbull begged his readers not to consider the Ik primitive, savage, and inhuman. He regarded the Ik’s blanket policy of withholding sympathy as testimony to the force of culture. Their worldview eventually gripped Turnbull himself, as he explained when he described a mountain trek with his chief informant, Atum, and Lojieri: The unpleasantness of [the trek] was somewhat alleviated by Atum’s suffering on the way up the stony trail. Several times he slipped, which made Lojieri and me laugh. . . . [I]t was a pleasure to move rapidly ahead and leave Atum gasping behind so that we could be sitting up on the [village’s sitting place] when he finally appeared and laugh at his discomfort. , . . [Later, in my compound] when I heard Atum wheezing [a greeting], I kept silent and wondered what I would eat for dinner. (216) When Turnbull found himself adopting the Ik’s worldview and mental habits, it worried him. It also impressed upon him the phenomenal power of a group’s culture to shape the very kinds of feelings and behavior many Westerners are wont to see as most “natural” and “human.” It was not just that an Ik would think, “I feel sympathy, but I shouldn’t, so I’ll sup-

T H E SOCIAL CHARACTER OF SYMPATHY

5

press it. ” The emotional habit extinguished, the automatic response to others’ misery was laughter. Images of the unsympathetic bring contemporary American’s sympathy values and practices into sharper focus. The contrasts force us t o realize that sympathy has a social life of its own. Feeling rules (Hochschild 1979) and social logics (Davis, Gardner, and Gardner 1941) provide scripts that guide people as they conduct their social life-and that, as we will see, includes feeling, showing, and getting sympathy. Interacting group members create the rules and logics-the ingredients of “common sense”and hand them down from generation to generation. Rules and logics help shape and circumscribe even the most private and interior of our mental processes. These interior processes seem natural to us, but really they are socially channeled. Contrasting American society with the Ik also helps us see that the connection between society and emotion is important and that this connection is not just a one-way street. Feeling rules and logics help shape emotions. In their turn, emotions help shape the social structure-ties that bind and barriers that separate. Sympathy is a crucial emotion that provides glue for social bonds, the building blocks of society. Among Americans, in contradistinction to the Ik, sympathy reinforces or creates social bonds. The social glue that holds people together in relationships, groups, and communities is one of sociology’s most fundamental concerns. O n the structural side of things, laws, living arrangements, and work arrangements channel people together. Culturally, understandings and prescriptions of who should be tied to whom provide more impetus. At the level of the actual bond between two people, cognitive and emotional factors come into play. People perceive that they are cast in the role of, say, spouse, co-worker, parent, sibling, or mayor. They alsofeel the ties that bind them to their spouses, other workers, children, sibs, and the electorate. The feelings might include obligation, affection, respect, gratitude, and sympathy. Obligation has probably been the most important of these emotions throughout the history of human societies, the others serving as functional alternatives. That is, if a society does not emphasize affection and sympathy, respect or gratitude may supply the glue. In an age such as ours that permits individuals much latitude in choosing social bonds, a person who does not feel such emotions for another may simply abandon the bond. Thus, without some connecting emotion, a bond can vanish into thin air. Sympathy is one of a number of connecting emotions that bond people together. It is especially important because it holds people together in times of trouble.

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CHAPTER O N E

Furthermore, sympathy flows among societal members not haphazardly but systematically. As people give and get sympathy, they define or reinforce the relations between themselves. Sympathy can connect people emotionally, or it can divide them by underlining the differences between the fortunate and the less fortunate. I t can offer a respite or change a life. In these ways, sympathy plays a part in constructing the larger social order, giving shape and substance to interaction, relationships, and social bonds.

SYMPATHY I N A M E R I C A N SEMOTIONAL ’ CULTURE In Western societies, sympathy has long been an integral and important part of how people read and react to one another. This is true for every category of class, ethnicity, age, and gender. Sympathies for those who experience misfortunes and miseries figure into our perceptions and judgments of them. Thus, sympathies color our family life, work relations, and orientations to acquaintances and even strangers. This state of affairs has probably evolved slowly. Problems once viewed as trials to be borne become “disasters” worthy of sympathy only after people have tamed their environments and competition for mere survival is not imperative, Advances in agriculture, industrial technology, public sanitation, and democratic government have rendered the most important problems of bare survival less troublesome for the majority; accordingly, day-to-day life is comparatively pleasant or at least more manageable. W e also have experienced a general philosophical shift over the last two thousand years toward humanism and the increasing worth of the individual. Especially since the Enlightenment, the spread of the belief in the sanctity of human life and the unique self distinct from family and community has provided a rationale for paying attention to individuals’ problems and their painful emotions-sadness, hurt, frustration, grief, indignation, fear, degradation, anguish, and despair. The religions and philosophies of Western culture have fostered a conception of sympathy as a worthy response to others’ misery. Certainly, some major lessons of Judaism and Christianity have focused on charity and compassion. W e admire many heroes who are highly sympathetic, selfless people-‘ ‘saints” of one variety or another. Thus, the eighteenth-century philosopher Adam Smith described sympathy as part of “human nature” in The Theory $Moral Sentiments (a precursor to his more famous Wealth .f Nations [ 17761):

T H E SOCIAL C H A R A C T E R OF SYMPATHY

7

The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without [pity and compassion]. . . . The plaintive voice of misery, when heard at a distance, will not allow us to be indifferent about the person from whom it comes. As soon as it strikes our ear, it interests us in his fortune, and , . . forces us almost involuntarily to fly to his assistance. ([1759] 1853, 3 , 48) Adam Smith spoke more than two hundred years ago for enlightened British society (see also Hume (17391 1948). As a description of all human groups, Smith’s writings fall short. They fail to account for the Ik, and they may miss the mark a bit when applied to contemporary Americans. His words do not square with evidence that, in the days when he was writing, parents in European cities were abandoning as many as a third of their children to almost certain death (Boswell 1988). This custom was apparently so widespread and taken for granted that it did not occur to most people, let alone the “greatest ruffian,” to sympathize with children commandeered for household or factory drudgery or left t o wander the streets. Much of what Smith described as the truth about the human heart, set by nature and by God, we can recognize as socially constructed patterns of behavior and feelings. These behaviors and feelings are shaped by the emotional culture-a society’s ideas, beliefs, values, expert “knowledge,’ ’ language, norms, and social roles having to do with emotion (Cancian and Gordon 1986). Recast as description of the ideal emotional culture of his time and place, Smith’s work is both insightful and useful as a benchmark of Western sympathy values and processes. How much does our emotional culture resemble the ideal picture that Adam Smith drew? Are we as virtuous and humane as Smith believed his contemporaries to be? Or, as Turnbull feared (1972, 291-95), are we, like the Ik, losing our sense of sympathy? This question probably has no empirically verifiable answer, since we have no data on sympathy levels in the past. Yet once I set myself to the task of observing the social dance of sympathy giving and getting, I could see it at almost every turn. A newspaper reader tut-tuts at reports of injustice and hardship. In casual conversation, two people engage in “compassionate conversation” (Eliot [ 18721 198 1, 435) about unfortunate acquaintances and newsworthy individuals. A friend sends a get-well card, and a neighbor comforts a recent widow. From the pulpit, a minister urges compassion and sympathy, even for those who “trespass against us.” Movie and book advertisements promise “You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! These characters will pull a t your heart-

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strings!” and people pay to sympathize. A t home, a husband and wife console each other over frustrations and slights at work, and parents sympathize with a child’s defeat at the hands of the class bully. O n the job, co-workers offer consolation for each other’s financial woes, interpersonal squabbles, commuting problems, and fatigue. O r a worker tells a sob story to elicit the boss’s sympathy and a reprieve. O n a city street, a scruffy man holding out a paper cup weaves in and out of the cars at a stoplight, beseeching driver after driver, “Open up your heart!” Sympathy-a cognitive, emotional, or physical reaching out to others-is part of the phenomenological life of contemporary Americans. To investigate Americans’ experiences with sympathy, I conducted a series of studies, both quantitative and qualitative. Some of the techniques I used, such as surveys and interviews, are rather standard. However, because many aspects of sympathy are difficult to study, I found that I needed to invent some unorthodox methods, including “distanced reading,” “intensive eavesdropping, ” and “focused conversations. ” The appendix details these methods, and I advise skimming it a t this point. Researchers studying other emotions may find it useful to study it more thoroughly. I set several purposes for my sympathy research. One was to understand how people give and receive sympathy in everyday life and the patterns that characterize the process. I also wanted to know what happens to individuals and social groups as a result of sympathy giving. Further, how do people in everyday settings define sympathy, and what vocabularies of motives do they use for giving it? How and when do people “ask for” sympathy? What happens when expectations of sympathy are unmet? I wanted my research to be a wide-ranging exploration that addressed my questions from many angles (see, e.g., Kaplan 1964; Denzin 1970; Brewer and Hunter 1989). The eclectic approach I adopted reflects this ambition. O n the quantitative side, I conducted two surveys, with a total of 1,177 adults and 60 children, in northern New Jersey. I also analyzed a sample of 175 case histories published in the New York Times’s Neediest Cases Appeal between 1912 and 1972. Qualitative data have come from several sources: (1) participant observation in a variety of settings, from sidewalks and street corners to funeral homes; (2) content analyses of novels, etiquette books, the Bible, greeting cards, and news articles; (3) indepth interviews with 65 respondents; and (4) “freewritings” of more than 50 subjects I trained to write about emotions by adapting a technique English professors developed to encourage creative writing (see Clark and Kravanja 1990). These surveys, interviews, observations, and secondary

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analyses have brought to light thousands of sympathy cases. The cases involve children and adults, men and women, intimates and strangers, people from many ethnic backgrounds, and people a t different levels of power and prestige. I analyzed these data to discover the unwritten feeling rules and logics for sympathy giving and getting that channel the flow of sympathy from one social actor to another. When and why do people owe, pay, claim, and receive this emotional resource? What are the limits to how much sympathy people can ask for? What are the limits to how much others are likely to offer? What must people do to ensure their sympathy-worthiness-their status as sympathetic characters? How do the patterns vary for different groups and subcultures? Another goal was to explain the individual and social consequences of sympathy give-and-take. How does sympathy pervade and help regulate the everyday social order of families, work groups, and communities? What happens to the power relationship between the parties? What happens when someone refuses to give sympathy or to receive it? I found few people had thought or talked much about what sympathy is or how it works, but everyone had experienced it. Among the Ik, no family members, including children, deserved sympathy. Americans, however, felt sympathy for their nearest and dearest: When I was divorced, my stepson was left in a situation that I knew would eventually cause a problem for the child, and I had no control over it. He wasn’t completely mine, so I had no control over it. The problem did come to a head and the child had to be removed from his father, because his father has an alcohol problem. He would not seek help, even though he’s highly educated. He battered him. The child was being battered. . . . I got the state involved. Presently he’s living in a foster home. He’s doing a lot better. (Interview; “Ethel Carrington,’’ thirty-six-year-old divorced African American woman, elementary education student) *

*

The sources of the quotations from my many respondents and subjects are intensive interviews, surveys, field observations, and freewritings; I indicate these sources parenthetically within the text. I have given fictitious names to nine of my intensive interview respondents, the ones whom I quote most extensively, so that readers can follow these individuals’ remarks as they appear throughout the book. I have also assigned a fictitious nameMary Smith-to one of my fieldwork subjects whom I had the opportunity to observe several times. In addition, I have substituted pseudonyms for all individuals mentioned by name in quotations from my interviewees, fieldwork subjects, and my own field notes.

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The tumor is inoperable because it’s in the middle of his liver. I guess we’ve been through twenty-nine or thirty surgical procedures in the past six months. Without health insurance, we’re really shelling o u t the money. He’s just sick about the position he’s put m e in. The poor baby, it’s so painful. H e needs m e to stay in the hospital with him. I work in the day, and then shop for things he will eat, and then go to change his dressings and suction him, and get a little sleep on a cot they p u t up for me. I want to do these things for him as long as I can manage it. 1 mean, what if it were me? (Field notes; When the source of a particular quotation is not a named respondent or not specifically indicated, readers should assume that the source is the same as that of adjacent quotations. When the information is available to me, 1 identify each of my respondents by age, sex, occupation, ethnicity, and marital status. At times I also mention other characteristics-such as parental role and former occupation-when the respondents seem strongly self-identified with those traits or when such further characterization seems pertinent or simply interesting. My purpose is to bring the respondents to life for the reader. I have more complete and consistent background information for the survey and interview respondents than for field subjects or freewriters. Data gathering in the field was necessarily limited by the particular circumstances in which I observed my field subjects. And because I wanted to guarantee freewriters the safeguard of anonymity to encourage them to give full vent to their thoughts and feelings, I did not ask them to supply background characteristics other than age and sex. Readers interested in my methodology here may wish to turn directly to the “Intensive Eavesdropping,” “Focused Conversation,” and “Freewriting” sections of the appendix. I want to make it clear that I do not consider age, sex, “race,” ethnicity, nationality, or any other of these traits to have biologically determinative significance but, rather, possible cultural or social significance. Taking a cue from Marc Zborowski’s early research, I assume that many such traits are relevant to respondents’ emotional styles. Zborowski found that among men hospitalized with conditions which produced substantial pain, those of Eastern European and Mediterranean heritage more actively entertained emotions and sought others’ emotional rewards than did men from more “stoic” white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) cultural backgrounds (1952). The types of methods I used did not result in samples that would allow me to offer a definitive replication and extension of Zborowski’s findings. However, a decade of studying sympathy leads me to believe that WASPs, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, African Americans, and other subcultural groups as well-especially in the culturally heterogeneous urban northeastern United States, where most of my data collection took place-have different approaches to emotional display and perhaps to interior feeling itself. Thus, I mention respondents’ subcultural affiliations when they are available to me. Many respondents identified themselves either with several ethnic groups or with none (e.g., “I’m just an American”), in which case I identify them by “race.” To shorten the lists of characteristics (for the sake of economy and readability), I do not specify that my respondents from Jewish, Italian, Irish, German, Polish, Eastern European, and English backgrounds are white, although all are.

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forty-year-old Italian American interior designer, discussing her husband, a fifty-one-year-oldJewish dentist)

My daughter had a problem with her eyes. The specialist explained to her how severe it would be . . . blindness, both eyes are dead. . . . I felt horrible, twisted, helpless, despair. . . . If she wanted to talk, I wa’s there to listen. Or to talk, if she wanted it. Or if she just wanted to be alone, I respected her privacy. (Interview; forty-four-year-olddivorced woman of Eastern European background, clerical worker) It’s a family member, you know. He just can’t seem to get his life going. Maybe it’s his own fault. He shouldn’t be taking drugs. But it’s family. (Interview; Italian American middle-aged woman, homemaker)

My respondents felt multifaceted responsibilities and duties to family members, including the duty to feel and show emotions such as sympathy. In contrast to the imaginary picture of a society without sympathy I painted at the beginning of this chapter, Americans do assume that parents (especially mothers) will sympathize with their children’s scraped knees and bruised feelings. Americans assume that spouses will commiserate with each other and that siblings, no matter how rivalrous, will ‘‘automatically” sympathize with one another in bad times. In our friendships as well, sympathy is an expected, almost takenfor-granted ingredient of attachment. As the proverb says, friends expect sympathy from each other when they are “in need.” A young Hispanic woman whom I interviewed provided illustration, “I may even get bored sometimes listening to someone’s problems, but I have to do it. A friend has to do it.” Another interviewee I will call “Jim Mulcahy,” a middleaged married Irish American man employed as an executive for an international textile manufacturer, noted, “I think I’m a sympathetic person, an empathetic person. At least I hope people see me that way.” Failing to sympathize from time to time, or limiting one’s sympathy only to an inner circle, is to risk attributions of coldness and heartlessness. W e have made sympathy giving a key ingredient in “niceness” and institutionalized it in the social role of the “good person.” Thus, sympathy is part of our moral code. At the other extreme from family and friends, people expend emotional energy for others they will never meet. Today millions of Americans engage in volunteer work, committing what Robert Wuthnow called “acts of compassion” (1991). We also give $17 billion a year to charities(ABC

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Nightline, 28 February 1992). Much of the motivation to help unknown others comes from sympathy. Public response to a child-abuse case in New York City in the late 1980s, for instance, stands out in stark distinction to reactions to Adupa’s death among the Ik. Sympathy for Lisa Steinberg and for her unharmed but neglected younger brother flowed not only from relatives and neighbors but also from thousands of perfect strangers learning of the incident through intensive media coverage. When 6-year-old Lisa died of head injuries inflicted by Joel Steinberg, the New York attorney who had illegally adopted her, almost 300 strangers came to the funeral service. An elderly woman mourner said, “My heart’s been broke for a solid week.” A middle-aged woman, herself a victim of battering, stated, “This thing opens a wound in me. I had to [come to the funeral] to give vent to my feelings.” One man rushed after the hearse that was taking Lisa’s body to the cemetery, shouting, “Bye Lisa. Rest in peace.” Hundreds of others sent cards and flowers. School children composed farewell letters to Lisa. Calls reporting other suspicious cases to child-abuse authorities increased dramatically. (Extracted from the New York Times, 14 and 15 November 1987) Journalists speculated that Lisa’s case elicited so much sympathy because she was white and her parents professionals. Interestingly, the wave of sympathy for Lisa seemed temporarily to spread. I t encompassed the anonymous thousands of battered children, often from less fortunate economic circumstances, who usually do not come to public attention. Even adult strangers may warrant Americans’ sympathy. I asked my respondents if they remembered any recent cases when they felt sympathy. A young Hispanic man, a systems analyst, replied, “I hear about someone who’s strung out on drugs, I feel sorry for them. I hear about the poor, I feel sorry for them. People who have AIDS. Every day I feel sympathy” (interview). “Rebecca Jones,” a divorced middle-aged woman of British descent who works as a statistical analyst, described her sympathy for people from a distant land and culture:

I felt so sorry for those earthquake victims alive and trapped in the rubble. I had an urge to leave in the middle of the night and get a plane to Mexico City to help dig people out. I found the number for Save the Children and got their address and sent a donation. (Interview) These examples offer more than verification that Americans are sympathetic. They provide implicit evidence that sympathy, like love (Berger 1963, 35-36), is a socially guided phenomenon. According t o our feeling

THE SOCIAL CHARACTER OF SYMPATHY

13

rules, victims of illness, natural disasters, and abuse, as well as errant souls who repent and people in extenuating circumstances, deserve our compassion. When appropriate feelings do not come spontaneously, we often I ‘ manage” our sympathy to fit the rules (Hochschild 1979). Arlie Russell Hochschild called this process “emotion work” (1979; 1983, 49). Consciously or unconsciously, people try to feel and show what they consider proper emotions for people of their gender, age, social class, and ethnic group. A t times, people follow sympathy rules rather cynically, engaging in “surface acting.” One listens with half an ear to a neighbor’s sad tale or sends a sympathy card to a co-worker for appearance’ sake. At other times, people engage in ‘‘deep acting,” synchronizing their feelings with the social norms. W e remind ourselves of our emotional duties and work on our feelings when they do not come automatically. W e work up and work down sympathetic feelings. For instance, we tell ourselves that we must not let sympathy for a defendant interfere with our responsibility as jurors to assign blame, even while the defense attorney is tugging on our at least look sorry-for a family emotions. Or, we try to feel sorry-or member’s concern, because we think we should. The cultural feeling rules also include specific ‘ ‘affective roles’ ’ (Sarbin 1986) for sympathetic deportment in everyday encounters. For example, almost every culture has elaborate rules for how to show sympathy to the bereaved. Orthodox Jews should provide food and companionship for family and friends who are sitting shiva, gathering a t home for several days to a week to remember, talk about, and mourn a dead relative (Pollack 1972, 1 1). WASP funeral-goers should express their concern and respect through their conservative dress, somber demeanor, and quiet words of consolation. After the funeral, as etiquette expert Miss Manners explains, friends should visit mourners to give them needed human contact. Friends should go to the mourners’ home to relieve them of the burden of going out and making efforts to uphold normal standards of public sociability (Manners 1984, 320) Of course, for every sympathizer, there is an object, a recipient, or what I call a “sympathizee.” The affective role of the sympathizee complements the sympathizer role. The term “sympathizee,” though not mellifluous, more accurately denotes the active nature of the role than the terms “sympathy object” or “sympathy recipient.” Sympathizees are usually not passive recipients. They may send out cues that invite others’ sympathy. Usually, however, they take care not to do so too often or too blatantly. A person who claims sympathy directly may appear self-pitying

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or weak (Britt and Heise 1992). Sympathizees also react t o others’ sympathy, sometimes appreciatively, sometimes with resentment or anger. People must also learn how, when, and where to claim sympathy, accept it, and decline it with decorum. The feeling rules and logics for sympathizers and sympathizees make up an elaborate etiquette, part of a “socioemotional economy,” which I will describe in later chapters. These rules and logics are more like a grammar than a set of step-by-step instructions. Societal members who follow the rules manifest feelings and actions that are infinite in variety but similar in pattern. In this book, I will document some of the patterns of sympathy give-and-take.

The Hardened Heart and Sympathy Logic By this time, however, the mindful reader may be demurring that Americans do not always respond or even try to respond to troubled individuals with sympathy. Looking a t what is “good for a laugh” provides some evidence for Turnbull’s fears that we are moving too far along the Ik path. What major American city can claim no citizens who make fun of “bag ladies” and the homeless? Slapstick comedians mock calamity, and practical joking carries this theme into daily life. Indeed, seq-mockery is a stock ploy of many a comedian-take, for example, quadriplegic John Callahan, whose syndicated column and cartoons make fun of the handicapped (Callahan 1992); this tactic appears to short-circuit the audience’s propensity to make fun of the comic (Potter 1988). Winners in international, business, sports, school, and social competition often feel glee at others’ misfortune-for instance, red-blooded American teenagers who laugh and cheer at another school’s defeat on the football field. It seems that people often enhance their own sense of well-being by mocking others’ misery. Turning an old locution on its head, they are saying, in effect, “There, regardless of fortune, I will never go.” It may also be that the less secure a person’s or a group’s status and self-image, the more pronounced their mockery. Thus, the emotional cultures of affluent Western countries such as our own have incorporated unsympathetic norms. For example, uncaring, ruthless types such as Dallas’s J. R. Ewing draw lugh television ratings. Note also commuters’ response to a naked man lying face down on the platform of the Times Square subway station. “[Tlhe people stepped over him to get aboard [the train]. All but one well-dressed woman. She paused to cover his buttocks with a . . . shopping bag.” The reporter suggested

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1s

that these New Yorkers were “inured to almost anything” (New York Times, 10 March 1989). Also, concentration camps such as Treblinka and Dachau provide particularly grisly examples. Not only have some Westerners proved themselves capable of genocide, many others have looked on with indifference (Hughes 1971; Goldhagen 1996; Weiss 1996). In short, there is considerable precedent for callousness alongside our compassion and charity. One reason for Americans’ lack of sympathy is the value we place on independence. In the United States, humanistic tenets have long vied with belief in social Darwinism and individual responsibility, one or the other gaining an edge at any given point. The “sympathetic” programs of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty contrast with the more unsympathetic, sink-or-swim economic policies of Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan. Edwin Muskie’s public tears of sympathy and indignation a t the press’s treatment of his wife marred his career in the 1970s, yet campaign consultants urged presidential candidates of the late 1980s to advertise their feelings for others, their “humanity” (New York Times, 28 September 1987). Perhaps in response to these urgings, George Bush, when first campaigning for president, exhorted us to be kinder and gentler. Unlike get-tough, law-and-order politicians, Mario Cuomo contended when he was governor of New York that sympathy can help control juvenile delinquency (New York Times, 10 November 1987). Thus sympathy has gone in and out of fashion with historical, philosophical, and political tides. In the early 1990s, it seemed t o be gaining favor. The New York Times declared the message of President Bill Clinton’s 1992 election to be a sympathetic one: “The American people no longer believe that compassion summons sloth, but instead have decided that stinginess twists the hearts of the affluent even as it punishes the undefended” (New York Times, 21 January 1993). O n the other hand, followers of powerful Republican Newt Gingrich apparently rejected that message, urging instead individual accountability and responsibility for one’s own lot in life. W e find sympathy fashions outside the political arena as well. Sympathetic community volunteers of one era are the “weak sisters” or “bleeding hearts” of another. “Enlightened” parents or educators of one generation “spoil” the children of the next. In the professional psychotherapeutic community today, “tough love” may be replacing more supportive therapies. Many therapists now view as “co-dependents” those friends and relatives who feel sorry for a loved one with a problem deemed an “addiction,” charging that they in fact are contributing t o that problem by being sympathetic. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, for instance, ex-

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horted bosses in a 1992 New York Times ad: “The last thing an addict needs from you is understanding. . . . You’ve got to offer the hard choice: get well or get out” (7 January 1992). O n the other hand, psychiatrist Paul C. Horton has urged therapists toward more overt sympathy and solace, which he termed the “missing dimension” in psychiatry (New York Times, 4 February 1988). Clearly, at any given time sympathy has both its proponents and opponents, and individuals can move from one camp t o another.

SYMPATHY AND

THE

S O C I A LO R D E R

Paradoxically, then, the same Americans who feel for others with troubles-even when circumstances would seem to warrant blame and punishment-also exhibit indifference, disdain, or glee-even when circumstances would seem to warrant sympathy. To say that the typical American is both sympathetic and unsympathetic raises a host of questions about when, in what situations, how, and to whom we give sympathy. How do Americans draw the line between being nice and being saps, between being compassionate and “wasting their pity”? If people can waste pity, how do they know when they are using it wisely? These questions are fundamentally sociological: they presuppose that feeling sympathy and exchanging it, rather than being “natural” or random phenomena, are patterned interactions shaped by cultural and social factors. They imply, further, that we can discover what some of those factors are. It is equally important to be aware that giving sympathy and getting sympathy have consequences for our everyday encounters, relationships, and the webs of social bonds that make up society. Giving or not giving sympathy, and receiving or not receiving it, can change the course of interactions and relationships. Sympathy contributes to the social order by connecting the unfortunate to the fortunate, by offering temporary breaks from coping with life’s difficulties, and by creating a wider circle for commentary and debate on issues of justice and morality. Sympathy transactions thus help create and re-create the structure of society.

Connection Sympathy, as I have already noted, plays a part in generating social bonds. Without the social glue that sympathy provides, social actors would be more distant from each other and more alienated from the society as a

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whole. Sympathy is not, of course, the only possible type of social glue; if it were, Turnbull would not have found an Ik society to study. Among the Ik, other practices and sentiments bound people together-for instance, even in the worst of times, obligation to repay another’s gift was expected. But both giving sympathy and getting it ideally produce “emotional energy” that people store as “resources” and carry with them from one encounter to another (Collins 1987, 199). That is, although giving sympathy can be draining, it can also energize people by drawing them out of their own troubles or giving them a feeling of pride in their altruism. Similarly, receivind sympathy can be demeaning, but it can also give someone a lift or even a “new lease on life.” Sympathy transactions also symbolize, create, or enact networks and intimacy boundaries. For one thing, sympathy indicates that a sympathizer and a sympathizee share a social bond. For another, one person’s problem gives others a chance to verbalize concern or positive feelings they normally do not express. As this happens, the social bond between them shifts from background to foreground. When sympathy giving and sympathy getting successfully combine, they connect people-they build a social bridge. If a bridge already exists, sympathy can shore it up. The bridge is assembled from two sets of perceptions, judgments, actions, reactions, obligations, expectations, and sentiments. Sometimes the bridge begins on one side of the existential space between two people, with either the sympathizer or the sympathizee serving as its primary architect. More commonly, construction proceeds from both shores at once. Sometimes the bridge does not meet in the middle, and sometimes it does. That is, the materials a would-be sympathizer provides may not be enough to “reach” the prospective sympathizee. O r , what the donor intends as a gift of sympathy may not be appreciated or even perceived as sympathy by the recipient. Also, even when both parties read what is going on as sympathy, they experience it and interpret it from their own vantage points. When their definitions of the interaction mesh, the social bridge is complete. Further, sympathy can create bridges at the experiential level, blending and merging one person’s subjective experience with another’s. For example, a white middle-aged accountant remarked, “My wife and I were definitely on the same wavelength during that time when I was sick. W e saw things together, as if we were one person” (field notes). When a person in trouble receives sympathy, he or she may experience a comforting sense of intersubjectivity, of being understood. Both sympathizee and sympa-

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thizer may feel an arc of connection, liking, or love flowing between them. Because sympathy can create social bridges and produce social bonds, a sympathy transaction may determine how the people involved will relate to each other in the future. Closeness and intimacy may surge and survive as an emotional memory, as it did for one elderly white widow I interviewed: “They were so wonderful to me when Hank died. I’ll never forget that. ” Giving sympathy to an acquaintance can escalate feelings of closeness and belonging, creating a friendship where none existed before. One young married woman, a Hispanic clerical worker, confirmed this point: “When I feel sorry for someone . . . I feel closer to the person. The closeness ,, (interview). In a similar vein, a white may not last forever, but . . . fifty-nine-year-old widowed switchboard operator said, ‘(When friends give sympathy, I feel closer to them and kind of absorb them into my family.” In fact, as the following cases illustrate, sympathy can build bridges where division had formerly existed:

A Kentucky youth, a problem drinker since high school, refused friends’ offers to drive him home from a Christmas party where he had been drinking heavily. His car strayed across the center line, killing another young driver. The parents of the dead teenager at first dedicated themselves to seeing that punishment was meted out to the drunk driver. Many months later, the dead boy’s parents witnessed the drunk driver making a speech to high-school students. In the speech, he called himself a murderer and accepted responsibility for his actions. The mother reportedly said, “He looked just like a little whipped puppy. I actually felt sorry for him.” Now the three often attend church and socialize together. (Extracted from the New York Times, 22 August 1985) Tony is a guy who’s been with the group for long time-he was one of the founders-and someone discovered that he was cheating on his Medicare cases. There was a big to-do with the IRS and the medical society and so forth. Tony was furious and kept trying to buttonhole us, you know, to defend himself to everyone. Nobody in the group would have anything to do with him. . . . But then that hurricane came along, and, uh, Tony’s house was right in the area where the flooding occurred. [When he was asked about damages], he said the government people estimated around forty thou, and the insurance company wouldn’t pay. The story went through the group that day, and by the afternoon everyone was back to talking to him and telling him they were sorry. I’ve never seen such a turnaround! . . . In the end everyone helped

THE SOCIAL CHARACTER OF SYMPATHY

19

Tony salvage himself from the Medicare mess, too. (Field notes; white middle-aged divorced physician, describing one of his partners in a group practice) When we feel it (or even feel that we should feel it), sympathy personally and palpably signals the boundaries between those who deserve and evoke our emotional gifts and those who deserve or evoke none. Sympathy plays a role in locating for each of us the line between “us” and “them.” Sympathy bonds are very abstract (so abstract as to have escaped much attention from the public or scholars). Often sympathy, the very thing forging a relationship, is almost totally symbolic. For example, feeling for people we will never know-earthquake victims in Mexico o r Japan, political targets in Bosnia, famine casualties in Somalia-may color our future sentiment for those peoples and decrease our sense of social distance from them. The disaster victim who learns of the concern of distant benefactors may similarly develop a mental tie to them. Tangible acts of assistance may accompany sympathy, but they are distinct from feelings or expressions of sympathy per se. Receiving sympathy can sometimes mean the difference between going hungry and getting a free meal. Yet the “good” done when one receives a get-well card, a hug, or a kind word is, though unquestionably powerful, more difficult to pinpoint. In fact, it is often sympathy that people want rather than concrete assistance or advice about how to solve their problems. For example, I observed an elderly white woman hospitalized with a crushed hip. She told her nurse (and everyone who came within hearing range) that she had spent a difficult night. The nurse first responded by rearranging the bedding to try to make the patient comfortable, but the woman kept complaining. Next, the nurse offered advice: “If you just eat more and take your medication, you’ll feel better.” The patient’s reaction was to repeat the details of her tortured night. Finally, the nurse responded, ‘‘I know how you feel.” “Thank you for your sympathy,” the woman said, and she immediately relaxed her taut muscles, wiped away her frown, and lay back on her pillows to sleep. Sympathetic words were the only thing that stilled the woman’s complaining (field notes). In another case I observed, a young white nurse objected that when her husband had a gallbladder attack, he and his mother had turned against her. Instead of limiting herself to a display of sentiment, the nurse had taken a more active approach, arguing with doctors and supervising her husband’s care. What her husband had

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wanted, however, was not action but expressions of sympathy (field notes). Besides ties of intimacy, sympathy also creates ties of obligation and reciprocity. Though we are sometimes loath to admit it, people often give their valuable gifts of sympathy with strings attached. What are the strings, the expectations? As I noted above, we usually expect the objects of our sympathy to prove their value to the group or the community by trying to be respectable members (Wiseman 1979). Further, sympathizers often expect sympathizees to repay them more directly, probably with emotion (gratitude, deference, or future sympathy). An elderly Italian American woman explained that a person who has given sympathy is justified in expecting returns: I’ve just lost my sisters. And I’ve had wonderful relatives and neighbors and friends. . . . My priest and all. , . . They came over here, went to the funeral parlor, sent flowers, cards, brought cakes, cookies . . . a completely wonderful way of showing their respect for me and appreciation. I’ve done the same thing for them. (Interview; former secretary, who gave her age as “ over sixty-five”) The supporters were “wonderful,” but, as she was quick to note, she had earned their support. They were obligated-tied-to her. A person who receives sympathy and does something to repay the obligation turns the original donor into a recipient and obligates him or her. If the new recipient repays, he or she obligates the new donor, and so on ad infinitum. A structure of obligation can build up over time, binding sympathizees and sympathizers in long-term relationships. Of course, the structure can disintegrate if one party does not meet obligations and the other feels hurt or betrayed. W e expect recognition of our gifts and even anticipate returns; others’ recognition and returns for our gifts bind us to each other (Hochschild 1983, 76-86). Thus, sympathy exchanges are part of a socioemotional economy-a system for distributing valuable but perhaps intangible resources-that links the members of groups, communities, and societies together in networks of reciprocal feeling and interaction. The rules and logic of the socioemotional economy give people a conception of “distributive justice” (Homans 1984,72-78), a sense of “what’s fair,” which emotions they should be getting and which they should be giving. Interestingly, sympathy often connects people asymmetrically (Clark 1990). In the first place, the sympathizee is “one-down” in relation to the sympathizer by the mere fact of having a problem serious enough to warrant sympathy. Furthermore, the sympathizee is one-down because gifts

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21

of sympathy have strings, because they obligate. The person who “owes” repayment is “much obliged” to the sympathizer until an opportunity arises for repayment-and equalization. Sometimes, the opportunity to repay never arises. In other cases, etiquette prohibits a subordinate from reciprocating equally to a superior. The parties remain unequally connected. The inequalities that sympathy symbolizes and creates lead us into the territory of emotional micropolitics (explored in chapter 7), which give shape and structure to our social relations.

Reprieve Besides cementing relationships and building network ties, sympathy contributes to social control by offering limited, temporary reprieves. I t serves as one of society’s critical “safety valves,” because the sympathizee gains a temporary release from everyday role expectations (Parsons 195 1; Coser 1956; Pratt 1981). For example, a boss gives grieving workers time off. A student who engenders the teacher’s sympathy may not have t o meet formal course deadlines. A defendant in a trial who calls forth the jury’s sympathy may escape labeling and punishment. The drunk driver described in the preceding section was absolved from blame because of others’ sympathy. Since sympathy lets people “off the hook” occasionally, it can make conforming to group norms easier and promote commitment to the group. That is, one who has gotten off the hook may feel relieved-but also grateful and obligated to keep off the hook (by conforming to group norms). As I will argue in chapter 6, in this way sympathy serves as social glue and integrative (rather than segregative) social control.

Moral Drama Finally, problems and sympathy make for drama. For the sympathizer, getting involved in someone else’s “soap opera” can provide relief from the boredom of the mundane world (Darden and Marks 1985). The sympathizer may also experience catharsis (Scheff 1979) or learn about practical solutions that someday could pay off in his or her own life. The sympathizee gets the chance to star in the drama, perhaps with supporting cast and chorus. For many people, starring roles in everyday life are rare. The drama that occasions sympathy is essentially moral. It interests o r engages us in part because it allows us to define or rehearse our notions of morality. A person coping with a problem by him- or herself may offer

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a verbal or nonverbal social monologue if anyone is there to observe it. Yet once sympathizers leave the audience, mount the stage, and enter the drama, the problem transcends the personal level. Sympathizers interpret the sympathizee’s plight within the context of cultural notions of justice and injustice, and they interpret the sympathizee’s moral worth or deservingness. Thus, sympathizing with another person’s miseries is a moralityconstructing act. Is the person a t fault or a victim? Does he or she deserve affirmation and reprieve, or not? Wider discussion of the other’s problems pulls additional sympathizers into the play and brings the moral issue to the group’s attention. If the media get involved, the drama is transmitted to the viewing public. Then the implicit questions become, Who should get our sympathies? And why? Answering these questions brings both people and principles into public discussion. Thus, everyday calamities can serve the same function as Greek tragedies. Because morality is involved, a culture’s sympathy logic is not just available and taken for granted-it is enforced. Turnbull contended that the Ik would have viewed someone who gave sympathy or expected to receive it as peculiar or bizarre. In our society, too, the group checks, evaluates, and shapes members’ proclivities to give or get sympathy. People are usually very concerned that we have the proper feelings, the appropriate emotional stance, toward others (Thoits 1985), and they make no exception for sympathy. People judge each other’s ability to assess situations and to apply sympathy logic. If someone “misjudges” others, the community-in the persons of intimates, acquaintances, media figures, politicians, and the like-calls the “sympathy deviant” maudlin and sappy or hardhearted and cruel. In other words, sympathizers are moral gatekeepers, and we want moral gatekeepers themselves to be moral. First of all, giving sympathy bestows moral worth on the recipient, and withholding sympathy denies worth. Second, because we want the sympathizer to be accountable for these feelings, the sympathizer’s moral worth hinges in part on how appropriately he or she gives emotional gifts (see Goffman 1971, 95). That is, others will view a person who grasps the culture’s sympathy logic as morally worthy. The process does not stop there. Others’ views shape our own assessments of our moral stature. Also, because we carry our society’s judges in our heads, it is not even necessary for others to react directly to our sympathetic urges and displays. W e can imagine how this one or that one would assess our feelings and actions and use these assessments to gauge our worth. Through a process involving learning, taking the role of the

THE SOCIAL CHARACTER OF SYMPATHY

23

other, and taking the role of the other toward ourselves, sympathy logic becomes a part of our internal orientation to the social world and to our own relative value in that social world. Thus, although sympathy is usually taken for granted, it is a characteristic and patterned feature of American society. Genuine sympathy costs people time, energy, and money and for that reason is a luxury that people living in conditions of extreme hardship probably cannot afford. Among the Ik of Central Africa, for example, taking the imaginative leap into another person’s misery was often out of the question. Yet Americans can scarcely imagine what life would be like without sympathy. I t provides us with social connection, occasional reprieve from role expectations, and moral drama. Without it, we would play out our daily lives in a harsher emotional climate, the air surrounding us colder and thinner.

.

My research has taught me that sympathy is an important but difficult phenomenon to study. First, much of what constitutes sympathy belongs to the interior realm of mental activity, making it hard to observe. Second, people have a great deal of trouble talking about sympathy or even defining it. Furthermore, the rules and logics for giving and getting it are largely taken for granted: they are not simple, unidimensional, or easily explained. And, third, sympathy can have differing consequences for encounters and relationships, sometimes enhancing them and at other times introducing dissension and power struggles. Thus, sympathy is a rather unruly emotion. Its patterns and paradoxes have proved hard to isolate and explain one at a time. Consequently, this book will not tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and a punch line. It does not pose a mystery and offer a solution. Although it includes historical materials, it does not start at one point in time and move forward in linear fashion. Instead, the book is a journey, and I am the tour guide. The terrain is but sketchily mapped. To explore the sympathetic aspect of human experience, we must travel on roads made of data I have collected from the mass media, greeting cards, interview and survey responses, freewritings, and observations of everyday interaction. Unfortunately, we cannot travel all the roads at once. Our route will include well-established highways that take us to the past and newer roads leading to the present. Sometimes we will twist along mountain passes with macrolevel vistas, then descend to the winding valley trails that afford close-up glimpses of microlevel sights. W e will see that roads taken by sympathizers intersect with those taken by sympathizees. Some of the roads

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we will walk down are the narrow footpaths of individual social actors, and some are the wider avenues of encounters and relationships. If I have done well as an author/tour guide, readers should recognize many points along the way. At other times, readers may take exception to an observation or an interpretation only to find it revisited and more fully explained in later sections. The reader will not get a sense of the entire territory until the end, by which time I hope to have shown many of the contours and characteristics of the social form we call sympathy. After we have explored the finely veined network of roads crisscrossing the territory, we may still not have stopped a t every possible point of interest. But we will be able to say that the journey took us beyond the interstate to many of the hamlets and coves that mere tourists never see. In this chapter I have tried to give a general overview of the terrain. I have indicated our main direction by pointing out that sympathy is social in nature, both because cultural forces define and guide it and because it has important social consequences. Chapter 2 will take us down a microsocia1 road to look at the processes involved in sympathy giving. Chapters 3 and 4 take us to higher elevations, where we can view macrosocial issues. Beginning with chapter 5 , I will direct the journey off the main highways and slow the pace so we can turn our gaze onto the sympathizee. And in subsequent chapters, I will point to the interrelations of the sympathizer and sympathizee. More specifically, chapter 2 sets forth the three important stages in the sympathizing process: empathy, sentiment, and display. My respondents’ definitions of sympathy suggest that at least two of the three stages need to be present for contemporary Americans to say that sympathy is in operation. All sympathizing requires empathy, but socially meaningful sympathy can consist of sentiment without display or display without sentiment. In chapter 2, I will also show that sympathizing is a gendered event. Surprisingly, although most women in my studies considered themselves about average in sympathetic qualities, most men considered themselves more sympathetic than other men. As is no doubt true of other emotions, men and women may understand sympathy differently and “do” it differently. Chapter 3 takes us back in time, tracking the cultural and historical trends that have altered the social logic for sympathy giving and getting. I will pay special attention to ‘‘sympathy entrepreneurs, ” including blues musicians, charity organizers, and greeting card manufacturers. Sympathy entrepreneurs attempt to call forth and direct our altruistic impulses. As a result they have increased the societal supply of moral worth (including their own).

THE SOCIAL C H A R A C T E R OF SYMPATHY

25

In chapter 4, I will explore the connections between the socioemotional economy and “sympathy margin.’’ This exploration leads to a consideration of a sympathizer’s value in a socioemotional economy. I suggest that the principles of ‘‘reciprocal complementarity’ ’ and ‘‘reciprocal beneficence” guide socioemotional give-and-take. In the course of these exchanges, people create “accounts” of ‘‘sympathy credits” for each other. To protect their own supply of emotional energy, sympathizers must limit the number of credits available in sympathy margins. Sympathizees can cash in credits, replenish them, or overdraw an account completely. The next chapter shifts back to the microsocial level, this time focusing more of our attention on sympathizees and how they get sympathy. The size of an individual’s sympathy margins depends in part on his or her “sympathy biography,” or past adherence to sympathy etiquette. I will describe four unwritten rules for getting sympathy that constitute our fundamental sympathy etiquette. Chapter 6, focusing on intentional rule breakers, charts out the role sympathy plays in integrating societal members who violate rules and laws. I will show that sympathy margins can be wide and deep enough to shortcircuit deviant labeling processes. At times, as we shall see, sympathizing promotes deviance (helping to create “career sympathizees”), but at other times it promotes integrative social control. In chapter 7, I will cover more microsocial ground and present a conceptual framework for understanding emotional micropolitics and the consequences of sympathy exchanges for the people’s “places” in microhierarchies. I will show that, by highlighting people’s problems and perhaps inadequacies, giving sympathy can demean the sympathizee. Finally, in chapter 8, I will suggest ways in which my findings can offer insights into everyday encounters and public debates. I will also suggest some likely sympathy trends that will carry into the future and raise some questions for further research. In Saul Bellow’s novel The Dean’s December, Dean Albert Corde poses a rhetorical question about sympathy: [How docs] one turn aside the force of thousands of declines or dooms or deaths and then decide, by some process of selection too remote ever to be known, to fix on certain ones? (1982, 77)

By the end of our journey, I hope to have provided some answers to Bellow’s question.

Sympathy Giving Forms and Process

Sympathy is hard to describe. It’s a feeling that something bad has happened to someone andyou share it. (Field notes: Italian American salesman in his thirties)

It’s not real9 Sympathy f y o u hear that someone has car trouble and you just say, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” You have tofollow through by oflering that person a ride. Then it’s ympathy. (Interview; divorced Irish American typist in her j y t i e s )

J

ust as there is more than one way to give love or gratitude, there are several ways to sympathize. Sympathy can be covert or overt. It can involve strong or weak emotions. It can be acute (a shortlived episode) or chronic (a more generalized, long-term orientation to another social actor). Weaving together my respondents’ somewhat imprecise definitions of sympathy, I could discern three major strands, three patterned steps in a multiphase, interactive process. All varieties of sympathy begin with empathizing, or taking the role of the other. After role taking, however, people may or may not experience sympathetic sentiments, and they may or may not display those feelings. Sometimes a sympathizer moves through all three steps, and sometimes he or she leaves one out. Relying on interviews, observations, and survey data, I will take a microlevel look at the interior thoughts and feelings and the outward displays that contemporary Americans call sympathizing. I will also report on a gender paradox: although Americans tend to view women as uniquely caring, nurturing, and sympathetic, I found only small differences between men and women in the amount of sympathy they expressed for the characters portrayed in my surveys. Moreover, most of the men I interviewed believed they were more sympathetic than most other men, while women tended to see themselves as average. Yet women were clearly more active sympathizers than men. Untangling empathy, sentiment, and display helps make sense of these incongruities.

C O N C E I V I NS G YMPATHY What do people mean when they use the word “sympathy”? If we asked the question in Ik society, we might get no answer. Because the Ik have not objectified, labeled, described, circumscribed, and provided road maps for interpreting the phenomena that we call sympathy, they might not 27

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recognize or even be aware of a sympathetic pang. Sympathy is not, then, an ordinary Ik emotion. In our own society, most ordinary people have experienced sympathy, but they probably have never thought much about it, let alone tried to give it a dictionary definition. If they had looked it up, they might have found some help in the Oxford English Dictionary (1971): The quality or state of being affected by the suffering or sorrow of another a feeling of compassion or commiseration a[.] affinity between certain things, by virtue of which they are similarly or correspondingly affected by the same influence, affect or influence one another, or attract or tend towards each other the fact or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings of another . fellow-feeling

..;

If, on the other hand, they had tried dictionaries for Romance languages such as Spanish and Italian, they would have found no help at all: n o Romance language has a word that translates directly as “sympathy”; it is necessary to use a phrase such as “Your problem gives m e pain” or ‘‘I feel for your situation.” Perhaps, though, they might have come across novelist Milan Kundera’s dissection of the term “compassion,” or “COfeeling,” the closest we can come to “sympathy” in Romance languages: All languages that derive from Latin form the word “compassion” by combining the prefix meaning “with” (corn-) and the root meaning “suffering” (Late Latin, passio). In other languages-Czech, Polish, German, and Swedish, for instance-this word is translated by a noun formed of an equivalent prefix combined with the word that means “feeling” (Czech, sou-cit; Polish, wspdlczucie; German, Mit-gefu’hl; Swedish, rned-kunslo). In languages that derive from Latin, “compassion” means: we cannot look on coolly as others suffer; or, we sympathize with those who suffer. . . . In languages that form the word “compassion” not from the root “suffering’’ but from the root “feeling,” the word is used in approximately the same way, but to contend that it designates a bad or inferior sentiment is difficult. The secret strength of its etymology floods the word with another light and gives it a broader meaning: to have compassion (co-feeling) means not only to be able to live with the other’s misfortune but also to feel with him any emotion-joy, anxiety, happiness, pain. This kind of compassion

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. . . therefore signifies the maximal capacity of affective imagination, the art of emotional telepathy. In the hierarchy of sentiments, then, it is supreme. (1 984, 19-20) As these definitions have it, sympathy is a quality, a state of being, an affinity, a fact, or a capacity. Note that while the definitions begin to point to the social character of sympathy, they tend to locate sympathy within the individual-the sympathizer, in this case-rather than locating sympathy within social interaction. Although they too tended to define sympathy from the sympathizer’s standpoint, my respondents’ views of sympathy were not very systematic or precise. Many of them volunteered that they had never tried to put it into words. Jim Mulcahy, director of sales and distribution for an international textile-manufacturing corporation, whom I quoted in chapter l , articulated the inadequacy many people felt:

This study makes you think about yourself and your approach to people. I’ll probably go back and think about this a lot. You’ve opened up some thought processes. I think that’s good because you get so caught up in everyday mundane existence that you don’t ever think about what kind of a person you are really toward others. In part because they were not used to thinking and talking about sympathy, most respondents paused, made false starts, and struggled to make their nebulous views more concrete. They were not always sure what “counted” as sympathy. When they tried to define it, they often remembered actual cases, and a whole complex of emotions, thoughts, and actions flooded back at once. For example, a single young Irish American man who works in retail sales said, “Sympathy is, uh, feeling, uh, well, like if someone’s mother dies, like my friend Tom, well, then you take it easy on him. I took him out to get his mind off it” (field notes). Also, many people reported their values and attitudes or the social logic that applies to owing, giving, expecting, claiming, and receiving sympathy. For example, when I asked for a definition, one middle-aged professional woman, a WASP, said, ‘‘I don’t believe in sympathy” (field notes). A middle-aged Polish American man who works in construction said, “I’m not a knee-jerk type, because giving sympathy doesn’t really help people” (field notes). Another middle-aged man, a Jewish college professor, said, “I don’t know, but I’d much rather be seen as a sympathetic person than as unsympathetic” (field notes).

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Among those who ventured a definition, by far the most common was “feeling sorry for somebody with problems.” In contrast to novelist Kundera, none of my respondents thought of sympathy or compassion as involving joyful emotions. Sympathy denoted troubles, plights, and misery. A young white woman said, “feeling bothered by someone’s situation and unable to get it out of your mind”; another said, “what you give when you go to a funeral.” An elderly white man said sympathy was “a sense of understanding,” and a middle-aged white woman defined it as “feeling bad for people with problems, whether you know them or not” (field notes). One middle-aged divorced woman of Eastern European parentage equated sympathy with the display of support: “I have trouble with the word ‘sympathy.’ I think ‘support’ I would prefer to hear. . . . It lets the person know somebody’s out there who cares. That’s a form of support” (interview). A respondent I will call “Goldie Blum,” a sixty-six-year-old Jewish homemaker whose husband owns an auto supply store, asked, “Is sympathetic the same as being compassionate? Well, I think of myself as a compassionate person. Not everybody might agree, but that’s how I see myself’ ’ (interview). These definitions and descriptions are neither vivid nor elaborate. Why did the respondents have so much trouble talking about sympathy? First of all, like many Americans, most were unaccustomed to talking about feelings. Despite the increased importance of inner life in the modern world, a layer of suspicion and even disapproval of emotions persists in centuries-old ideas stemming from the Greeks (Averill 1974) and the Puritans (Franks 1985). The cognitive bias of the modern workplace reinforces these feelings (Clark, Kleinman, and Ellis 1994a). W e lack both a vocabulary for and practice in conversing about emotions. The English language has only about four hundred emotion terms, many more than the Malaysian Chewong’s basic eight words but far fewer than the Taiwanese’s seven hundred and fifty (Heelas 1986; 238). And even when we do have words for emotions, the dominant WASP culture limits discussion of them, especially for men. Further, as we conceive them, emotions are just not easily definable. W e do not think about and experience emotions-from fear, joy, and anger to hope and nostalgia-as pure sentiment. Rather, we experience emotions as amalgamations of feelings and actions, thoughts and perceptions, complicated cultural rules and roles for feeling and displaying feelings, and cultural values (Lofland 1986; Clark and Kravanja 1990). Separating emotional experience from these other factors may be impossible,

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because they in part determine emotional experience. Thus few people’s descriptions of emotions are as clear, analytical, and as elegant as novelists’ and poets’. In addition, Westerners are used to thinking of emotions as interior phenomena (Lutz 1988, 56), but sympathy is not a simple emotion located only within an individual sympathizer. Sympathy is a “social emotion” (Shott 1979)-like guilt, shame, love, and jealousy-that involves and connects two or more social actors. It can come about only through interaction, real or imagined. Sympathy takes two: one person to serve as both the trigger and the object and another person to serve as the donor. Sympathy is a special type of interaction. Thus to describe it adequately, one must mention more than one person’s interior feelings for another. There are exceptions to this general statement. W e feel not only for other people but also for other species. Unlike our Western ancestors in previous ages, Americans today commonly sympathize with sentient animals-sick or brutalized pets, laboratory animals, or endangered specieswhose misery we can imagine. Charity organizers are well aware of modern-day Americans’ sympathies for dogs, cats, caged animals in zoos, laboratory rabbits and monkeys, whales, and the like. Interestingly, most Americans’ sympathy does not extend to disvalued species-ants, rats, cockroaches, snakes, or pigeons-and we have few compunctions about killing them. Occasionally people say that they feel sorry for a dying tree, a hillside ravaged by strip mining, a defunct automobile, or some other nonfeeling object; in these cases, they are probably anthropomorphizing or expressing their own sense of loss. In addition, almost everybody (at least, most of my respondents) at times feels self-pity (see also Charmaz 1980). For instance, one of my interviewees said, “I felt so sorry for myself in those days. I treated myself to little presents and ice cream” (divorced middle-aged white woman, secretary). Self-pity is possible because of the human capacity for selfreflexive thought. My respondent is, to use William James’s words, at once the “knower” and the “known” (1892, 189-226). She is both sympathizer and sympathizee. One of her “selves” is feeling for another “self.” Self-pity is not as acceptable in WASP cultures as in some others that allow a fair amount of breast-beating and spilling forth of misery. But Hallmark has recently begun marketing greeting cards that give one permission to indulge in eating chocolate, moping, and other self-oriented reactions to “the blues.” Another factor making for definitional difficulty is that while sympathy

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involves feelings about others (which I call “other-targeted emotions”), feelings about oneself (which I call “self-targeted emotions’ ’) usually arise simultaneously. Contemplating someone’s problem, a person might feel, for example, relief (“I’m glad it’s not I”), sadness and loss (“I’m going to lose someone I love and count on”), or resignation and annoyance (“This person’s problem may disrupt my life by creating more work for me,” or “Not again! I’m always having to sympathize with him”). We can see self-targeted emotions in a married middle-aged WASP professional woman’s reactions to a co-worker’s illness:

I just thought, “Oh, no. He’s had such bad luck and now this. But I don’t have the time to spend with him to cheer him up or listen to his tales of woe.” I thought, “I’m really sorry for him, but I can’t take this one on. I have to think about myself too.” I don’t know, was that sympathy? (Field notes)

A white building contractor in his mid-twenties whom I will call “Frank DeLucca” also recounted his self-targeted emotions when his grandfather and uncle died. Still single, Frank works in his family’s construction business and attends school part-time to complete his BA in psychology.

My first feeling was feeling sorry for myself because . . . I was close to them. I thought, “NOW what am 1 going to do?” you know, ’cause I was used to having them around. I was at a very young age. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it at first, because it was very strong. Then after a while, I figured, “Well, the loss isn’t to myself. What about his wife, everyone else?” And you take that into consideration as you realize exactly what it all means. (Interview) Because self- and other-targeted emotions frequently arise together, respondents often had difficulty sorting them out. After I weeded out statements about cultural values, feeling rules, and self-targeted emotions, I also saw that people experienced sympathizing not as a single, simple emotion but as a variable, multifaceted emotional worry, complex. Sympathy can consist of a variety of sentiments-fear, sadness, or indignation-over another’s plight or painful emotions. These feelings range in intensity from weak to strong, from twinge to gutwrenching shock. And they do not always come up neatly, one a t a time, but rather may occur sequentially or in emotional blends. Consider, for example, the description that statistical analyst Rebecca Jones, who is

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white, middle-aged, and divorced, gave of her sympathy for a young single woman who had experienced a contraceptive failure: I felt, I don’t know, just so bad for her in so many ways. Interviewer: Can you describe how you f e l t inside?

So many feelings. First I felt, it wasn’t her fault and her parents kept blaming her for it, saying she did it to shame them. The creeps! So she had to live with that. And think of what she suffered herself, physically and emotionally, even without their scorn. Worst of all, what is she going to do with the baby? How is she going to deal with the trauma of giving it up? What is this going to do to her life?

These words show an emotional complex that includes several distinct but concurrent emotions directed at both the young woman and her parents. Above all, my respondents’ explanatory difficulties showed that sympathy is a process-a process with more than one possible pattern. Looking at how their explanations got tangled up allowed me to clarify that process and distinguish its three major steps or components. Cultural expectations guide people through each step, but the expectations are different for men and for women.

STEPSI N

THE

S Y M P A T H Y - G I V IPNRGO C E S S

The process of sympathy giving has three components, each of which is also a complex process: empathy (or role taking), sympathy sentiment, and display. These components provide critical ingredients and methods for building the bridge between sympathizer and sympathizee. The process of empathizing yields a survey of the setting, sympathy sentiment the pilings, and display the girders and cement. Some of my respondents described empathy (e.g., “I understood exactly what he was feeling,”), some sentiment (‘‘I had a sinlung feeling of despair”), some display (“YOU go to a funeral to show sympathy”), and still others, like the respondent I call “Sam Duschek,” the total package of empathy, sentiment, and display. Sam, a married fifty-six-year-old salesman of Russian and Yugoslavian descent who works in a toy and stationery shop, reported, “A friend of ours, a young fellow, died of a heart attack. . . . I felt terrible for him and the family. I felt shocked, surprised. I wrote the widow a note.” People mentioned empathy and sentiment more frequently when they were think-

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ing about the sympathy they gave. When they talked about the sympathy they received, they typically mentioned the empirical evidence, the signs and symbols that constitute display. In many of the cases that my respondents included in the category of sympathy giving, one component, either display or sentiment, is absent. Empathy is a necessary precondition for both sympathy sentiment and display. However, sympathy giving can consist of empathy plus sentiment with no display-what we might call “covert” sympathy-or empathy plus display with no sentiment- “surface” sympathy. When respondents tried to conceptualize sympathy, they usually envisioned first an ideal form with all three components. They hemmed and hawed, immediately revising their statements, because they were also aware that sympathy does not always involve both display and sentiment. To see why this is so, let us look more closely at the three components of sympathy.

Empathy To feel for someone else’s misery, one must first, of course, gauge what it is. A type of mental interaction must occur, an imaginative leap into the minds of others, which involves what Max Weber called verstehen (Weber 1947, 87n.), George Herbert Mead called “taking the attitude of the other” ([1934] 1962, 366; see also Shott 1979), and Thomas Scheff termed “outer search” (1 990, 55). One pays attention to others and notices when they fall into situations or experience painful emotions deserving of sympathy (Smith [1759] 1853; Scheler 1954; Mead [1934] 1962). This experiential process of “reading” others, crucial to the larger sympathy process, is what I am calling empathy. Other writers have used the term “empathy” in a broader sense that encompasses what I consider separately as sympathy sentiment. However, following Mead, Werner Stark, and Melvin J. Lerner, I am limiting its meaning to role taking. Social scientists disagree on the usage of the concepts of empathy and sympathy. The early social philosophers Adam Smith ([1759] 1853) and David Hume ([1739] 1948) used them interchangeably. Susan Shott did also at times, although at one point she distinguished “affective empathy” (what I am calling sympathy) from “cognitive role-taking” (here included in empathy) (1979, 1329). Erving Goffman wrote of sympathy as an empathic orientation to another, as in “he was in sympathy with her” (1 971, 66). Many contemporary psychologists have used the term ‘ ‘empathy’ ’ to refer to what I call sympathy sentiment (see Hoffman 1978), and social

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psychologists Robert H. Lauer and Warren H. Handel used “synesic roletaking” (1983). My terminology follows that of Mead ([1934] 1962, 298303, 366-367), Stark (1978, 27), and Lerner (1980, 77), all of whom spoke of sympathy, but not empathy, as involving sentiments. My terminology allows for the distinctions I believe my respondents intended. As I will make clear later, empathy alone is necessary but not sufficient for sympathy. For instance, a parent disciplining a child or one worker winning a promotion over another may empathize with the other’s situation but neither feel nor show sympathy sentiment. Turn-of-the-century writers such as George Herbert Mead, John Dewey, William James, and Charles Horton Cooley argued that the ability to empathize, to take the attitude of the other, was the unique human capacity that made sociation possible. More recently, Daniel Goleman called empathy “the fundamental ‘people skill’ ” (1995, 43). To align our actions with others’ or others’ actions with our own, we put ourselves in their positions. One thing these writers did not stress was that there are actually several varieties of empathy. Empathy is not monolithic because human beings experience, or read, the social world in more than one way (see Clark 1989b; Clark, Kleinman, and Ellis 1994a). To begin with, an actor may operate at either a “solo” or a “joint” level of experience. A t the solo experiential level, one focuses attention on the self and experiences oneself primarily as separate from the other actors in an encounter. For instance, solo empathy can be useful for manipulating others: etiquette expert Miss Manners advises parents to tell their “uncivilized” children that one side benefit of empathizing is getting others to do what you want (Manners 1984, 242). A t the group, or joint, experiential level, the awareness of self fades, and one experiences intersubjectivity, a sense of merger with the group. For example, sports spectators may watch a game with an awareness of their separateness from the crowd (at the solo level), or they may “lose themselves” (move to the joint level) when an exciting play occurs and the crowd leaps to its collective feet. Or, a spouse may be operating at the solo experiential level when considering what to do about a problem a t work but shift to the joint level when his or her spouse starts a discussion of how to deal with their child’s problem. When an actor empathizes with others at the solo level, he or she is operating mentally “at a distance” from them and their troubles. In this type of empathy, the empathizer holds an outsider perspective on the others’ situation. W e can see solo empathy in this example reported by Jim Mulcahy, who works in New York City:

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I’m walking over to the bus terminal one night and there’s a guy, basically a derelict, lying on the sidewalk with his head bleeding and two policemen within ten feet of the guy. I go over to the policemen and I say, “Hey, you’ve got a guy lying over here and he could be bleeding to death. Aren’t you going to do something?” . . . I didn’t go over there and lean down and try to dress his wounds. I did something, but not a real positive something, for him. Did I think about him five minutes later? Probably not. Jim Mulcahy did not enter into direct interaction with the bleeding man, nor did he covertly connect with the man’s pains or fears. Instead he viewed his plight from a distance. However, when one person empathizes with another a t the joint level, he or she loses the sense of separateness from the other. “I” becomes part of “we.” One woman, an Italian American clerical worker who had never married, explained her tendency to empathize “jointly”: “When I hear someone’s problems, I feel as if it would be my own troubles” (interview). Another woman, whom I will call “Robin Adams,” a white thirty-threeyear-old married head bookkeeper for a country club, also illustrated: she said, “I love people, and I always try to put myself in their shoes. You know, if they have a problem, it bothers me because I wouldn’t-I don’t think I’d want to be them” (interview). Furthermore, whether one’s experiential level is solo or joint, reality readings may be cognitive, physical, or emotional-or some combination of these. Sociologists have tended to conceptualize perception, social perception, and role taking as solely cognitive phenomena (Scheff 1990), but we are increasingly recognizing that such a tendency leads to distorted views of human experience (Wentworth and Ryan 1992). Rather, human beings’ perceptual apparatuses-their brains-constantly register cognitive, physical, and emotional readings of themselves and their environment, including other people. Thus we can empathize with others cognitively, physically, and emotionally. These three modes of expcriencing usually operate in concert, but wc can isolate them both theoretically and in my interviewees’ accounts of role taking. In distinguishing among these types of empathy, I am not referring to types of interactional cues the other is sending out-cognitive cues, physical cues, or emotional cues-but to the empathizer’s own cognitive, physical, and emotional readings of the other’s cues, Cognitive empathy involves the thought or recognition that another person is in difficulty. For example:

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The other day I was reading a story in a women’s magazine about little babics left abandoned, and I was just feeling sorry for the babies because, I said, these women are leaving these babies in trash cans. But then I felt sorry for the mothers because they had their reasons for doing it. (Interview; thirtythree-year-old married Hispanic woman, teacher’s aide) Reading about these plights gave the woman a cognitive picture of what the children and mothers were going through, a picture that allowed the sympathy process to unfold. Physical empathy is like a sound striking a “sympathetic chord” and setting piano strings vibrating. Witnessing another person’s laughter, grimaces, or sobs can evoke one’s own smiles, winces, or tears. For example, an elementary-school teacher said, ‘‘I have a very low tolerance for any kind of suffering in others[;] , . . when I see them suffering, tcars comc to my eyes” (interview; married thirty-eight-year-old white woman). A fifty-one-year-old white woman who works as a secretary used almost identical words to describe herself (interview). Consider also the words of a twenty-two-year-old single woman, a doctoral student at an Ivy League university:

A friend of mine from college passed away, and I felt sympathy for her boyfriend, who was at the scene of the accident [and]witnessed her passing away. I knew him, too. I felt sad and pain for him. I guess I just tried to imagine what it would be like if I was him, and I felt at times sick to my stomach, and like, if I were in his shoes, I could see myself feeling depressed, wanting to cry a lot. (Interview) And a Jewish man, a married middle-aged college professor, said, “For me, it’s the sight of blood. You may think you only have a scratch, it’s nothing, but I’ll be dying inside if you’re blccding” (field notes). Finally, emotional empathy occurs when one person’s initial perception or grasping of another’s trouble occurs primarily through his or her own emotions. One may feel emotions appropriate to the other’s plight, perhaps emotions the other is feeling-for instance, worry, indignation, or, as one young white man described, “I had a sinking feeling of despair when I heard him telling what had happened” (field notes). An elderly Italian American woman described her emotional response when she listened to her friend talk about her problems: “She’s a little on the hypo side. Hypochondriac. . . . She talks quite a bit. I t makes me feel kinda sad, internally sad.” This speakcr is the same former secretary, quoted in chapter 1 , who

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explained how sympathy she had given eventually returned to her. She went on to describe her sympathetic nature: “I’m sympathetic when people have problems. I feel as if it would be my own troubles. You know what I mean. I can’t explain it to you. It’s hard to explain. But I do” (interview). A homemaker, a married forty-eight-year-old white woman, said, “I feel for other people. I can put myself in their place t o some degree. I think I’m tuned in to other people, too. I think I have a good feel for what other people are feeling” (interview). In everyday life, these three ways of experiencing others-however distinct they are analytically as three types of empathy-may occur sequentially or all a t once. The respondent I call Rebecca Jones reported a case that illustrates their fusion:

A mutual friend had told me Betty had cancer, so I decided I had to visit her. Before I went, 1 had been in a pretty good mood, but after I left I had a headache and I was depressed-but it really didn’t have that much to do with Betty’s problems. Well it did, but it’s hard to explain. See, Betty has the kind of a face with a built-in frown even when she’s not unhappy. And when she is unhappy or stressed, the frown is stronger. I realized after I left that I had been giving her such concentrated attention that my face was taking on her frown. Of course I could also tell she was anxious. You could just feel the tension in the air. This woman experienced her friend cognitively, emotionally, and physically. It might seem that we should use the term “empathy” only when we are referring to an emotional experiencing of another, since we are speaking of empathy as a component of sympathy and sympathy as an emotion. In fact, emotional empathy, registering another’s situation through one’s own emotions, may lead quickly to sympathy sentiment, but it is not necessary for the sympathy process. Empathy usually begins cognitively and may never become physical or emotional, as Scottish philosopher Adam Smith argued long ago. He described empathy as a cognitive precursor to sympathy: he claimed that sympathy arises not so much from our feeling with the others’ inner feelings, nor even from the sight of another’s emotional “ expression-a sorrowful countenance” or lamentations-as from our conception .f the situation that occasioned the person’s feelings and expressions ([1759] 1853, 6-7). Here is his version of how empathy and, subsequently, sympathy sentiment come about:

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[Tlhe spectator must, first of all, endeavour as much as he can to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home to himself every little circumstance of distress which can possibly occur to the sufferer. . . . He must . . . strive to render as perfect as possible that imaginary change of situation upon which his sympathy is founded. (22) Note that Smith’s sympathizer, by cognitively creating the prerequisites for feeling, is engaging in emotion work. One of my respondents, more conscious of how she produces empathy than most people, echoed Smith:

If you have a problem and you come to me, I won’t just push you away or make it seem that it’s not important. I try to listen to you. . . . I try to put myself in that person’s situation or that person’s shoe. I just picture in my mind how it would be if that problem ever came to me. (Interview; married Hispanic woman, age thirty-four, payroll supervisor) In everyday life, people do not always put this unique capacity for role taking to full use. Few of us regularly “endeavor as much as we can” to empathize with everyone else. What is more, not all of us succeed in empathizing even when we try. A host of individual and societal factors operates to impede role taking. Empathizing takes effort and skill. It is often easier not to try but to rely, instead, on perceptual shortcuts, such as stereotypes, projections of what our own feelings would be, or constructions that make other people and their situations un-sympathy-worthy. The motivation to empathize varies from one person to another and from one situation to another. For instance, one man I interviewed, a forty-one-year-old manager of systems engineering, deplored his fellow managers’ lack of motivation to empathize in the workplace. When I asked him if he remembered any situations in which he sympathized with someone but others did not, he said,

A lot of these things happen at work. I see some people at work who are in management positions who don’t regard people’s feelings very much, and I think it’s just awful. It’s really a shame. If managers did take those things into consideration, people would do more work for them. (Married man of Eastern European background) Furthermore, even when people are motivated to empathize, their perceptions of others’ plights and reactions can be inaccurate, since empathic ability also varies. For example, Thomas, Franks, and Calonico (1972)

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found that higher-status people (adults and men, in their study) were less able to role take than lower-status people (children and women). Probably the lower-status people had a greater need to role take (to adapt to the demands of those higher in status and power) and were therefore more practiced at it (see also Merton 1957, 350; Goleman 1995, 97). In this instance, the need, or motivation, to empathize increased empathic ability. Often we are better able to empathize with others with whom we share liking or aJection. Novelist George Eliot’s narrator in Middlemarch asserted that “amiable vanity knits us to those who are fond of us and disinclines us to those who are indifferent” ([ 18721 1981 , 62). One of my interviewees explained the obverse point: “If there’s someone I don’t like and something happens, I have to convince myself that I should pay attention to her concerns’ ’ (forty-nine-year-old divorced white woman, administrative assistant in an engineering company). The other person’s characteristics may also affect how much we empathize. Adam Smith ([1759] 1853) and his colleague David Hume ([1739] 1948) believed that empathy comes more easily for others who are similar to us in nationality, ethnicity, and social status. Conversely, we may make little effort to empathize with the problems of the poor, drug addicts, prostitutes, and others to whom our society accords low esteem. Also, empathizing with another’s troubles-especially empathizing emotionally-may be easier if one has experienced a similar problem oneself, as politician Jesse Jackson has pointed out. Jackson accounted for his sympathy for drug addicts by recalling his own brief dependence on a painkiller after surgery: “Why am I so sympathetic and empathetic? Because I was trapped for a moment myself” (New York Times, 19 April 1988). Many of my interviewees echoed this theme-for example, “Being a parent myself, I can empathize with the father in that story,” and “There but for fortune I would go today.” Again, Jim Mulcahy also illustrated:

My mother passed away two weeks ago and there was an outpouring of sympathy-mass cards, flowers, food. People are willing to do whatever you need-walking the dog, anything. I’ve just finished writing a lot of letters thanking these people. . . . I don’t usually write a lot of letters. This week a guy down the street died, and while I was writing thank-you letters, I just sat down and wrote a note to his wife. Having just gone through this situation, now I’m more cognizant of it. I felt better for having done that. I know how it felt for me to get the letters and hopefully she appreciated it too.

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O n the other hand, when we have not experienced a similar problem, we may read a situation cognitively but fail to view it as a problem. Sam Duschek provided an example when he described his reactions to his mother-in-law: “Sometimes I’m angry with her [for complaining], and sometimes I’m not. I’m not old, and I overlook the fact that I’m not old, so I don’t understand. But I know I’m going to get there.” Modernity has also made empathizing more difficult. In a small, tradition-based, agricultural society, more people share similar everyday circumstances than in an urban, industrialized society. In the United States, the extensive division of labor and substantial geographic, residential, occupational, and age segregation means that people located in a circumscribed social world may have little contact with people from other classes, regions, ethnic groups, religions, or ages. As evidence of this fact, even in our “ mass society” taste and style subcultures survive (Goffman 195 1 ; Bourdieu 1984). Furthermore, our social institutions (e.g., hospitals and sheltered workshops) often isolate people precisely because they have problems that might warrant empathy (e.g., illness, physical and mental disabilities, and addiction). Once they are isolated, we have difficulty empathizing with them. Thus, it is often hard for moderns t o imagine the difficulties of dissimilar others, even when they involve such universal problems as death and loss. The poor may underestimate the pain that unemployment produces for the middle classes, and the middle classes may have no understanding of the devastation of unemployment for the poor. Catholics may have trouble understanding the Jewish concept of guilt, and Jews the Catholic concept of sin (Rothbell 1996). Children may have little grasp of the elderly’s plight, and adults may have forgotten the suffering one can experience in the classroom and the playground. Even if empathic effort, ability, and success vary, people in Western societies expect each other to try. In the chapters to come, I will pay a great deal of attention to the emotional culture’s feeling rules calling for altruism and sympathy. Here I will simply note that the Bible promotes putting ourselves in our brother’s place, and popular proverb and song call on us to walk a mile in another’s shoes. Manuals for improving husband-wife and parent-child relations advocate communication and listening (Ryan, Wentworth, and Chapman 1994). These are exhortations to be empathic. In face-to-face relationships especially, family members, co-workers, and friends expect us to pay attention to their lives, scanning them and their verbal, and especially nonverbal, cues for signs of trouble

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(Goffman 1983). In a study of how people come to be viewed as healthy or sick, David Locker discovered that women often serve as “health monitors” for their families. Locker found that women felt an important part of their duties as mothers, spouses, children, and friends was to keep a constant vigil, monitoring others for physical and emotional changes, symptoms, and problems. Further, when a woman missed early signs of a spouse’s mental breakdown or symptoms of a mother’s illness, physicians, nurses, and neighbors chastised them. Others held them responsible for failing to read the cues that all was not well (1981, 62). One reason we expect people to empathize stems from a complementary set of expectations for those who have problems: we discourage people experiencing problems from making direct and obvious bids for attention, understanding, and sympathy for themselves. If a person cannot advertise his or her own plight without seeming self-pitying or self-serving, how are others to know? One possibility is that a “sympathy broker” or agentsuch as a relative, friend, lawyer, news writer, or charity organizer-act as an intermediary, carrying information about one person’s problems to potential sympathizers. Musician Bob Dylan provided an example of sympathy brokering in his song about boxer Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, accused of robbery and murder. In part because of the attention generated by Dylan’s song, Carter was eventually released from prison. Another reason the group promotes empathizing with others is to ensure that each social actor will have the “proper” feelings toward all the other members of the group. A person who “misfee1s”-that is, one who feels sympathy for someone who does not “deserve” it or feels no sympathy for someone who does-evokes group members’ negative emotions. An emotional deviant may be judged harshly in everyday conversation and gossip, possibly viewed as dangerous or insane (Thoits 198S), and pressured to adopt appropriate emotional orientations to others. To take the proper emotional stance toward others and avoid negative reactions, one must pay attention to them.

Gender and Empathy Westerners expect women as a category to be empathy specialists (Parsons and Bales 1955; Kanter 1977; Miller 1986; Cancian 1987; Chodorow 1978; Graham 1983; Hochschild 1983; DeVault 1991). In a discussion of factors promoting gender differences in the ways people experience reality, my colleagues and I addressed this issue.

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43

As Lever ( 1 976) discovered, little girls’ play activities-house, dolls, dressup, tea party, and the like . . . teach them to attend to their own and others’ feelings. Girls often play at nurturing roles such as mother, nurse, or hostess. . . . [Gilligan] argued that girls learn to operate with an ethic of care, focusing on how people feel about what is going on and wondering if anyone is getting hurt. . . . As adults, women tend to take care of emotions for the society. . . . Students are more likely to assume female rather than male teachers and professors will listen to and understand their personal problems. The female physician, often a specialist in Ob/gyn or pediatrics, is supposed to have extraordinary bedside manner. Workers expect the female executive to be sensitive to their working conditions and care about their personal lives. Women who do not show the proper nurturing and sensitivity may be considered “iron maidens” (Kanter, 1977). . . . As a consequence of all these factors, many women . . . keep their emotional antennae up at all times. (Clark, Kleinman, and Ellis 1994b, 156-57) Westerners not only expect women to scan others for signs of problems, we also sanction them negatively when they do not. David Locker makes this same point about women’s roles in personal relations, as we have just seen in the previous section. Furthermore, women are more likely than men to experience the world from the joint reality level, which facilitates empathizing. Through the life cycle, women tend to operate as members of relationships rather than as solo actors, what Edward Sampson called “ensembled individualists” (1988). For example, Catherine Riessman (1990) found that even after divorcing, ex-wives were more likely than ex-husbands to worry and care about their former spouses. Some women have learned so thoroughly to put others first that they find they cannot develop a solo perspective even when it is in their interests to do so. For instance, abused women often take their partners’ viewpoint rather than their own (Denzin 1984b). Despite the special expectations we have for women, however, the rules calling for social actors to empathize with each other also apply to men. The evidence for this point is chiefly negative. That is, men who do not empathize cause hurt feelings, especially among their wives. For example, in an interview an Italian American middle-aged sales representative complained about her husband’s lack of awareness of her difficulties. I’m coming home from work, cooking dinner, cleaning the dishes, washing clothes, making lunches, and not going to bed until one in the morning, and then getting up at six. . . . Sometimes I think my husband should feel sorry

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for me because I do everything and he doesn’t. He just goes to sleep. I get annoyed, and I tell him. I wake him up and tell him how I have to cook and clean and wash dishes, and I’m tired. This woman wants her husband’s empathy and sympathy. In a slightly hostile manner, she actively makes him aware of her situation and the fact that he ignores it. In sum, although the extraordinary human ability to empathize varies in its accuracy and completeness, we expect each other t o try. However accurate or inaccurate the empathizer’s definition of the situation, it drives the sympathy-giving process. But it is only a beginning step, a sighting across the existential gap, a glimmer of a bridge. For sympathy to come about, empathy must combine with either sentiment or display, or both, as we will see below.

Sentiment Once a person empathizes with someone who has problems, feelings can arise that orient or connect the observer to the other. Other-targeted emotions corresponding specifically to the other’s hurt or anguish or worry are what I am calling “sympathy sentiment.” (Theodore Kemper [ 19781 calls other-targeted emotions in general “extrojected emotions”). It could also be called “metasentiment” : sentiment about the sentiment one believes someone else is or should be feeling (Norman Denzin [1984a] uses the term “meta-feeling” in a different sense, t o refer to feelings about one’s own feelings, or interpreted emotions). When one’s empathic reading of the other is emotional or physical rather than cognitive, sympathy sentiment arises more readily. Sympathy sentiment varies in intensity, of course, and it also varies in type. The sentiment can be simple (limited to feeling concern for the other) or complex (involving, say, feelings of concern and righteous indignation). As I noted previously, it can exist on its own or overlay self-targeted emotions of loss, frustration, and the like. Sympathy can also be of the short-term, acute variety (e.g., for someone who is experiencing a sudden problem such as an auto accident or a financial reverse) or long-term and chronic (e.g., for someone who lives in poverty or has a permanent disability). Both types can occur simultaneously, too, as in the case reported by one white middle-aged woman:

My husband’s sister . . . has muscular dystrophy. She went to college, and she dated a lot of men her age, but it never seemed to work out. And finally

SYMPATHY GIVING

45

she meets this older man, he was ten years older, and he married her, knowing her situation. And now he died of cancer. It just boggled my mind how life is. . . . Every time I think about it, even at work, my tears, uh, I would just cry about it. I feel bad. (Interview; secretary) Here we see deep, simple sympathy sentiment for her sister-in-law that is both chronic and acute. Finally, one can feel eitherfor another or with another. Rebecca Jones’s wave of sympathy for Mexican disaster victims illustrates sentiment f o r others. Alternatively, two people living through the same problem (e.g., parents who lose a child) can feel with each other’s emotion (Scheler 1954). This last variety of sympathy was, however, rarely reported in my interviews. Of course, empathy does not invariably produce sympathy sentiment. Even when people empathize with someone, they can feel emotions quite incompatible with the other’s. First, they can feel glad, rather than sorry, about another person’s plight. For example, glee over an enemy’s or a competitor’s undoing requires empathy, just as sympaduzing does. The German word schadenfreude denotes just such glee. Remember also the Ik, who felt delight rather than sympathy when an elderly person fell down or a child crawled into the campfire. And a torturer may (or perhaps must) read another’s pain but have feelings of approval about it. Second, it is also possible to empathize with someone and simply feel nothing for that person, as does Esther Greenwood, the protagonist in Sylvia Plath’s autobiographical novel, The Bell jar:

It was Buddy all right. He told me that the annual fall chest X-ray showed he had caught TB and he was going off on a scholarship for medical students who caught TB to a TB place in the Adirondacks. . . . I had never heard Buddy so upset. He was very proud of his perfect health. . . . I told Buddy how sorry I was about the TB and promised to write, but when I hung up I didn’t feel one bit sorry. I only felt a wonderful relief. I thought the TB might just be a punishment for living the kind of double life Buddy lived and feeling so superior to people. And I thought how convenient it would be now I didn’t have to announce to everybody at college 1 had broken off with Buddy and start the boring business of blind dates all over again. ([1963] 1971, 58-59) Although Esther could describe Buddy’s “upset” in the most vivid terms, his problem did not engage her emotions. In the case cited previously in which Jim Mulcahy asked two police officers to help a man bleeding on

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the sidewalk, the officers had a similar response: “They said, ‘Is he bothering you?’ I said [to myself], ‘Oh, shit!’ To them I said, ‘No.’ So they said, ‘Why don’t you just be on your way?’ These other people I thought should have some feeling for him had zero feeling. ” Another respondent, a twenty-nine- year-old Hispanic computer programmer whom I will call “Juan Carvajal,” provided a further example of empathy that did not produce sympathy: This morning my wife was telling me she’s having problems with her eyes. And I said, “Well, what do you want me to do? You’re going to see the doctor.” And she says, “You don’t feel sorry for me because you don’t care for me. I say, “You’re seeing the doctor. What do you want me to do? I’m not a doctor. So go ahead and do what you gotta do, and tell me what the results are, and then we’ll take it from there.” (Interview) 3 ,

Juan cognitively understood that his wife felt distress, but he refused to “ waste” effort in feeling sympathy. A third alternative to sympathy sentiment involves feelings of disgust, dislike, or disdain that may accompany empathy when people “believe in a just world” (Lerner 1980) or “blame victims” of unhappy circumstances (Ryan 1976). I found examples among respondents who had faced and surmounted similar problems themselves. For instance, a divorced middleaged WASP professional woman, a survivor of several major illnesses, said: “If I could live through it, so can they” (field notes). Listen also to a fiftythree-year-old African American woman employed as a private “sitter” in a nursing home: I don’t feel nothing for anyone on welfare. As a divorced woman, I worked two or three jobs cleaning people’s houses then taking care of invalids. I put all three of my girls through college doing this work. I’ve been in this nursing home twenty-three years. And, see this check? Even now, every Thursday night I go to a woman who’s in bed and stay in her home with her. So I don’t understand how people can go on the dole whatsoever. (Field notes) This type of response is the opposite of Jesse Jackson’s sympathetic reaction to people coping with drug addiction, a problem he had overcome. The concept of “belief in a just world” is sufficiently important to the understanding of sympathy to merit further explanation. As chapter 3 will make clear, sympathy sentiment generally arises when one perceives that something negative and unjust-“bad luck’ ’-has happened to a worthy person. “Belief in a just world” is a mental set that entails evaluating

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47

people as unworthy simply because their circumstances are bad. Melvin Lerner (1980) directed a series of experiments and surveys over a twentyyear period in which he found that about two-thirds of all his respondents used this perceptual shortcut. For example, in an elaborate experiment, Lerner and Carolyn Simmons (1 966) asked several groups of students participating in a required psychology experiment to observe another student who supposedly would receive painful electric shocks (the experiment was even more complex than I am reporting here; see the original article for complete details). When the students arrived a t the lab, the researchers singled out one of them (really a confederate) and “convinced” her to be the one to receive the electric shocks. She pretended that she did not want to undergo the painful shocks but that she would do so to give the other students a chance to complete their part of the experiment and thereby earn points toward their grades. In effect, the confederate agreed to be a martyr for the group. After she left to go to another room, the experimenters asked the students to rate her in terms of how much they liked her, how attractive they thought she was, and how similar she was to them. The students gave her “ average” ratings and indicated they thought she was pretty much “like ,, me. Then the experimenters told the subjects to watch the confederate receive the shocks on a live TV monitor. Actually, the experimenters had previously videotaped the confederate pretending to suffer agonizingly from the shocks. The students saw only the dramatization-apparently quite realistic and riveting. Most of the students experienced the victim’s ‘‘suffering’’ emotionally and /or physically. After showing the videotaped scene, the experimenters gave some experimental groups a chance to compensate the victim for her suffering. They announced that there was a little cash that could be used t o pay her, if the other students voted to do so. Invariably the majority voted to compensate the victim. Then they completed the rating forms again. However, other experimental groups were given no opportunity to compensate the victim; they were simply told to fill out the second rating form immediately after viewing the videotape. In the groups that compensated the “hapless” victim, students’ ratings of her did not change much. However, in the “no compensation” groups, two-thirds of the students gave lower ratings of her likability and her attractiveness than they had before and rated her as less “like me.” Lerner and Simmons concluded that principles of cognitive consistency

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motivated their subjects: those who viewed the confederate positively (as “worthy”) and the plight negatively (as “bad”) experienced an unsettling state of cognitive inconsistency, or “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger 1957). One way to escape dissonance and create cognitive balance was to perceive the plight as not so bad. The “compensation” groups could readily do so, but the “no compensation” groups could not. Another way to avoid tack that twodissonance was to perceive the confederate as unworthy-a thirds of the “no compensation” subjects took. In short, many “no compensation” subjects unwittingly changed their perceptions of the confederate’s value to make them fit with her unfortunate circumstance. In the end, one set of subjects avoided sympathizing because they had already offered compensation, the others because they viewed the victim as unworthy. Based on this and other studies, Lerner concluded that many people think in just-world terms and that the just-world mind-set is part of their psychological makeup (1 980, esp. ch. 10). While this interpretation is partly accurate, it could go further. What social scientists have called “cognitive dissonance” is often really what I would call “emotional dissonance” (two or more emotions in conflict) or 11 cognitive-emotional dissonance” (cognitions and emotions out of alignment). However, whether we are talking about cognitive, emotional, or cognitive-emotional dissonance, its discomfort alone probably does not produce consistent reactions in everyday life. Psychological theories cannot entirely explain how people give and withhold sympathy, because macroand microsocial factors are also at work. Either before or after dissonance occurs, culturally available justifications and logical propositions shape perceptions. In the United States, the just-world mental set combines with prevailing beliefs and taken-for-granted constructions. For example, in many everyday situations people blame victims (Ryan 1976). People often blame rape and sexual-abuse victims because a vocabulary of emotional motives, a ready-made logic, is already available to cover cases in which men attack women (Calhoun, Selby, and Warring 1976; Scroggs 1976; Hopper 1983; Pugh 1983; Shotland and Goodstein 1983). The same is true for constructions of ethnic minorities and the poor (Ryan 1976). Also handy to mitigate sympathy is the cultural notion of the “accident prone.” The respondents in my survey used many of these emotional vocabularies of motives. Some stated that the hurricane victims in my vignettes should have “known better” than to buy a house in a storm zone, that the assaulted woman had probably “led on” her attacker, that the drinker was weak or immoral, or that the ill-advised employee had “asked for

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trouble” (for full vignettes, see appendix). Although these plights could have been grounds for sympathy-and many did respond with sympathysome respondents embroidered the story, pulling in generic, prefabricated details that reduced the characters’ worth to fit their unfortunate plights. For these respondents, withholding sympathy was the ‘‘logical’’ reaction. I t is not that one “personality type” perceives victimization accurately and is sympathetic, while another, unsympathetic, type is perceptually lazy or misperceives and distorts things. All of us a t one time or another take perceptual shortcuts that keep us from sympathizing with others. Part of the reason has to do with the costs. Sympathizing takes energy and time (Smith [1759] 1853, 63, 65). It requires us to focus attention on someone else. It is often painful, involving both distressing emotions and inconsistent cognitions of injustice befalling an innocent person. Another part of the reason is the considerable social pressure and support in our society for giving and withholding sympathy ‘‘appropriately.” By now it should be clear that people do not always feel for others when they empathize with their plights. Thus, they may have to engage in emotion work when they believe sympathy is due. Adam Smith’s spectatorsympathizer described above works hard at the process of imagining the other’s situation; he or she also, according to Smith, may work hard to feel some semblance of the other’s feelings, even if they are only “shadow feelings” that do not match those of the troubled person. “ W e may even inwardly reproach ourselves with our own want of sensibility, and perhaps . . . work ourselves up into an artificial sympathy” ([1759] 1853, 65). One of my interviewees illustrated Smith’s point: I know someone who never has any money but also in my opinion doesn’t work hard enough, so I find it very hard to be sympathetic. . . . It’s a family member. . . . I try not to be judgmental and try to give sympathy even if it’s maybe not heartfelt. You know, you have to learn to do that. (Married Hispanic secretary in her thirties)

Emotional reactions to another’s plight are often mixed or ambivalent. When my survey respondents explained their responses to vignettes of people in plights, one fifth listed reasons both for feeling and for not feeling sympathy. For instance, “They probably shouldn’t have bought a house in a hurricane zone, but all their savings were down the drain”; “The woman shouldn’t have spoken to a man in a bar, but no one deserves to be beaten, no matter what”; and “I feel sorry for Steve because he’s in the grip of alcohol, but he should get help.” The word “but” signifies mixed emo-

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tions. Some respondents acknowledged reasons for not giving sympathy but dismissed them, and some acknowledged but dismissed reasonsfor giving sympathy. Their statements illustrate deliberative and interpretive processes, and they show that these processes do not always produce a single, unified emotional reaction. Thomas Scheff’s work on interaction and interpretation in the microworld provides some concepts that can help explain further how empathy and sympathy sentiment link together. His model recognizes the importance of nuance and allows for an almost infinite number of outcomes. A t the same time, it rests squarely on the assumption that culture and social structure shape the interpretative process. Scheff contended that beyond the world of appearances, which he calls the “explicate order,” lies a much more massive “implicate order” of unsaid, implied, suggested, or vaguely hinted at messages that the social actor can only infer (1 990, 27). To make sense of an event, people must take into account both the explicature and implicature. W e do so, Scheff argued, by engaging in a process called “abduction.” Abduction involves a lightning-quick shuttling back and forth between “outer search” (observing outer signs in others’ behavior and demeanor) and “inner search” (imagining and framing the event within its present context, and its extended context, and also against what could have happened) (1990, 39). That is, outer search involves reading cues available from interaction, while inner search entails bringing memory, emotion, cognition, imagination, and years of experience with a society and its culture t o bear on the matter at hand. The actor creates a mental picture of the immediate context of an event and its “extended context,” including all that has transpired between the actors in the past and the present. The actor also imagines “counterfactual” aspects, or what could have occurred but did not and all that might unfold in the future. Further, the actor imagines the other’s inner search processes and how they relate to his or her own. Thus, in Scheff’s words, “Each interpretation of meaning presupposes both the history of the whole relationship and the history of the whole society insofar as it is known to the interactants” (1 15). Emotions play a vital part in inner search, orienting self to others and self t o self. Also, just as human behavior and interaction are highly improvisational, so inner search is flexible and improvisational. The searcher categorizes and makes links and associations freely and openly, seemingly without rules. Because of such inner and outer searches, social actors “get a feel” for each other’s situations.

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Gender and Sentiment Despite the evidence from previous studies of actual and mock juries showing that men and women had similar reactions to defendants and plaintiffs in the courtroom setting (Hans and Vidmar 1986), I was nonetheless surprised to discover that my respondents’ deliberations did not seem to vary much by sex. Americans tend to believe that women are “by nature” more sensitive, understanding, and compassionate than men. Indeed, “sympathetic” is a trait listed in the “feminine” column of the most widely used sex-role inventory in the social sciences (Bem 1974). As I noted above, previous research has found women to be more involved than men in caring, nurturing, and parenting roles that call for empathy and sympathy sentiment-in the home, in friendships, and in the workplace. Some Americans have argued that men should not take on the “sentimental,” sympathetic work of the society because they are, compared to women, temperamentally or morally unsuited for it (Wolf 1990). As it turned out, the women who responded to my surveys and interviews gave evidence of much compassion. However, most of the men did too. In my interviews, I asked people, “DO you consider yourself a sympathetic person?” and “Do you think you are more sympathetic or less sympathetic than most women/men?” Most of the women saw themselves as sympathetic, but as no more or no less sympathetic than other members of their sex. For example, the respondent I call Goldie Blum, who described herself as “compassionate,” remarked, ‘‘I wouldn’t say ‘more.’ I would like to hope that I’m average.” In marked contrast, the majority of the men thought they were more sympathetic than most other men. For example, a thirty-one-year-old single “English and Italian American’ ’ teacher who rated himself as more sympathetic elaborated: I’ve worked with children. I found that after maybe three or four years in education that I’m not like my friends. You know, they say let’s go out drinking or let’s do this, and I’m still thinking about the kids when I’m out having fun. They view things differently. Like, “Why do you care?” or “Why do you bother?” But I do care.

An older man, Sam Duschek, said: I’m kind of a softy. Things bother me. I find other men are kind of hard towards the same subjects that I’m soft on. They don’t have the same feelings about maybe even children and people they work with.

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CtlAPlER TWO

Although Sam feels he is alone, he is not. A young man, a married Hispanic computer analyst, also reported: I’m more sympathetic because I take everything to heart. I show m y emotions very easily. I cry, which is not your typical male.

Thus, men tended to see themselves as uniquely sympathetic compared to the rest of their sex. This was not the gender picture I expected to find. In my surveys, I also found that men and women differed little in the sympathy they expressed. As the reader may recall, I presented four vigncttes (with two versions each) to a sample of 1,177 adults in northern New Jersey. In the vignettes, a hurricane severely damages a family’s house, a man assaults a woman, a spouse’s drinking problem beclouds a couplc’s future, and a supermarket manager catches an employee stealing food (complete texts of the vignettes can be found in the appendix). I asked rcspondents to indicate how sorry they felt for the vignettes’ characters and what parts of the story made them feel the way they did. More than measuring the respondents’ actual sympathy levels, I intended t o tap their perceptions of the culture’s normative sympathy logic through this procedure. Men expressed somewhat less sympathy than women did for the “ Browns,” whose house was demolished by a hurricane; for the woman assaulted and left for dead; and for the employee caught stealing. However, men tended to express a little more sympathy than women for the plight of the young law student whose drinking caused career and family problems, although not for the student’s spouse or father. In short, the differences were small and not always in the direction one might have predicted. Table 1 shows the combined responses to the two versions of the hurricane vignette. We can see that only 15 percent of the men and 6 percent of the women in this subsample said they were “not sorry at all” for the Browns, leaving 86 percent of men and 92 percent of women either “ somewhat sorry” or “extremely sorry” for them. Women were more likely than men to say they were extremely sorry (Somers’ D = +O. 19)’ but I did not find much evidence for the stereotype of the coldhearted man who holds everyone to account for their predicaments and difficulties. Holding age, occupational prestige, marital status, and “race” constant,*

*

The technique 1 used was Multiple Classification Analysis, a nonparametric analogue

of‘regression analysis for nominal-level variables. Because a large number of survey respondents reported no particular ethnic identification or more than one ethnic identification (as I noted in chapter l ) , I could not examine the statistical effects of ethnicity beyond classifying

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Table I Percentage Distribution of Sympathy Scores, Hurricane Vignettes, for Adults, by Sex (N = 226)

Men (%)

Women (%)

Both (%)

Not sorry at all

15 0

6 2

10 1

Somewhat sorry

41 12

28 20

34 16

Extremely sorry

33

44

39

Total

n = 101

n = 125

N = 226

Note: In the original surveys, the only reference points listed on the continuum were

“Not sorry at all,” “Somewhat sorry,” and “Extremely sorry.” Some respondents checked areas on the continuum between these points. Percentages do not always total 100 percent because of rounding.

the mean sympathy score for men was 3.48 (out of a possible 5 points, with 3 signifying “somewhat sorry”), for women, 3.82. Both these averages are above the “somewhat sorry” level. The hurricane stories elicited higher sympathy scores from both men and women than any other vignette, a point I will return to in chapter 3. Turning to the subsample of respondents who reacted t o the vignette of the assaulted woman, as table 2 shows, men were again slightly less sympathetic than women (Somers’ D = 4-0.12). Men were twice as likely as women (17 percent versus 8 percent) to say they were not sorry at all for the assaulted woman in the vignette. The mean sympathy score for men (adjusted for the effects of age, occupational prestige, marital status, and race) was 3.39, compared to 3.72 for women. These average sympathy scores were slightly lower in both cases than for the hurricane vignette but still well above the “somewhat sorry” level. When I examined the written responses to the vignettes describing the spouse whose drinking was causing career and family problems, I found that both men and women were likely t o be at least somewhat sorry rather than not sorry at all. However, men had slightly higher average sympathy scores than women. Taking into account factors such as marital status, respondents by “race.” To ensure sufficient numbers in the categories of race, I also had to remove respondents who reported their racial background as other than white or African American when I included race as a variable in the Multiple Classification Analyses.

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Table 2 Percentage Distribution of Sympathy Scores, Assault Vignettes, by Sex

(N = 346) Men (%)

Women (%)

Both (%)

Not sorry at all

17 3

8 3

12 3

Somewhat sorry

37 10

38 10

38 10

Extremely sorry

33

41

38

Total

n = 156

n

2

190

N = 346

Note: In the original surveys, the only reference points listed on the continuum were

“Not sorry at all,” “Somewhat sorry,” and “Extremely sorry.” Some respondents checked areas on the continuum between these points. Percentages do not always total 100 percent because of rounding.

Table 3 Percentage Distribution of Sympathy Scores, “Steve” and “Mary” Problem Drinker Vignettes Combined, by Sex (N = 274)

Men (%)

Women (%)

Both (%)

Not sorry at all

40

45

43

Somewhat sorry

36

39

38

Extremely sorry

24

16

20

Total

n = 126

n = 148

N = 274

Note: So few responses fell between the three labeled points on the survey that I did not use all five levels of sympathy in analyses of the problem drinker vignette. Percentages do not always total 100 percent because of rounding.

race, and religion, men’s average sympathy score was 2.66, compared to 2.44 for women. Table 3 shows that male respondents were a little more likely than the females to say they were extremely sorry for the character and less likely to be either somewhat sorry or not sorry at all (Somers’ D

= -0.08). Table 3 combines responses t o both the “Steve” and “Mary” versions of the problem drinker vignette. But when I looked only at the respondents presented with a story in which Steve was the problem drinker, I found women were relatively unsympathetic. More than half the women (5 1 per-

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cent) said they were not sorry at all for Steve, more than for any other vignette. In comparison, among those who received the version of the story with Mary as the problem drinker, 37 percent of the women were not sorry for her. The corresponding figures for men in these two subsamples were 41 percent not feeling sorry for Steve and 40 percent not sorry for Mary. A t the other end of the scale, men were more likely than women to say they were extremely sorry for Mary (32 percent versus 24 percent) and extremely sorry for Steve (1 5 percent versus 9 percent). These findings indicate that men have more sympathy than women for a problem drinker, especially for a woman who has trouble with alcohol. O n the other hand, women had higher average sympathy scores for the problem drinker’s spouse than men did. Women who responded to the version in which Mary was the spouse were more sympathetic than men (39 percent versus 26 percent said they were extremely sorry [Somers’ D = +0.20]). When Steve was the spouse, there was a smaller difference in men’s and women’s sympathy (Somers’ D = +O.lO), but both sexes were highly sympathetic. Almost half the women and 40 percent of the men were extremely sorry for Steve. In contrast, the problem drinker’sfather elicited much less sympathy from either men or women. For “Steve’s father,” women were only slightly more sympathetic than men: more than half of both sexes said they were not sorry at all. For “Mary’s father,” respondents in general had more sympathy, and women were a little more sympathetic than men (Somers’ D = f0.09). The last set of vignettes described a supermarket worker (either “Michael” or “Susan”) who was caught taking home an overshipment (either with or without the advice of a co-worker). Women were more sympathetic to the worker’s plight than men, but not by much (Somers’ D = +0.06). Table 4 shows that just over half the women (a total of 51 percent), but only 43 percent of the men, were at least somewhat sorry. Taken at face value, all these findings suggest that certain plights evoke both women’s and men’s sympathies, and usually women’s a bit more than men’s. However, survey research is notorious for problems of reactivity, namely, respondents reacting to the very fact of being studied. One such problem is “social desirability response set” (Crowne and Marlowe [ 19641 1980): to give socially desirable or socially expected answers, some respondents may intentionally or unintentionally misreport their feelings. Given current gender norms, it is more likely to be the women in the sample who overstated their sympathy and the men who understated theirs. If so,

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Table 4

Percentage Distribution of Sympathy Scores, Employee Theft Vignettes, by Sex (N = 329) Men (%)

Women (%)

Both (%)

N o t sorry at all

52 4

47 2

50 3

Somewhat sorry

37 1

45 2

41 1

Extremely sorry

5

4

5

Total

n = 165

n = 164

N = 329

Note: In the original surveys, the only reference points listed on the continuum were “Not sorry at all,” “Somewhat sorry,’’ and “Extremely sorry.” Some respondents

checked areas on the continuum between these points. Percentages do not always total 100 percent because of rounding.

there may be even less of a gender difference in sympathy sentiment than the survey elicited. Also, men and women were quite similar in the types of vignette characters they felt sorry for and in their stated rationales for sympathizing or not sympathizing. Among these survey respondents, then, reported sympathy sentiment varied little along gender lines, disconfirming the stereotyped images of sentimental, sympathetic women and stony, unfeeling men. The preponderance of my data shows that, regardless of gender, Americans are in the habit of empathizing and feeling sympathy sentiment. On those occasions when sympathy sentiment occurs, the sympathizer experiences a connection to the sympathizee. Now a blueprint for the bridge exists, at least in the sympathizer’s mind. But it is the expression of sympathy-sympathy display-that provides the bridge’s girders and concrete. Displaying sympathy brings the recipient fully into the action. The recipient may contribute materials of his or her own and may experience a parallel sense of closeness and connectedness. W e cannot fathom everything that goes into this construction process without considering sympathy display in some detail.

Display Sociologically, showing sympathy is as important a part of the sympathygiving process as feeling it. Without display, the emotion is a social out-

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come but not a social force. Showing sympathy literally forces people to interact. Because it is emblematic of a social bond, it often creates social integration and promotes solidarity (Collins 198 1; Boden 1990). Thus the community or group has a stake in promoting sympathy exchanges through customs and rituals, such as sending condolence and get-well cards. Also, although much sympathy display occurs in “backstage” regions (Goffman 1959), it is more public than interior sentiment alone would be. Because at least one other person can see a display, the group has a much easier time legislating display than sentiment. Others can observe a person making a display, judge its appropriateness, and register their approval or disapproval. In the traditional European societies that laid the foundations for American society, the taken-for-granted logic for when sympathy was due usually centered on status relations and honor (Pitt-Rivers 1966). I t included very specific, concrete rituals for showing sympathy for a limited number of plights, especially a relative’s death. The logic did not give much weight to the intensity or sincerity of a particular person’s feeling for the bereaved. The community, not individuals, specified (and enforced) the ritual displays. Sentiment was supposed to follow actions. In peasant societies of Eastern Europe, for example, village women visited all those who were recently widowed and spent time with them as they grieved (Znaniecki [1936] 1967). Not to do so impugned the widow’s honor and invited a loss of honor for oneself. In Cameroon today, people deliver sacks of grain t o those who have lost a family member (Shanklin 1987). The amount of grain one owes depends on one’s status vis-A-vis the survivors. One owes, say, four sacks of grain to a bereaved uncle or aunt, three sacks to a bereaved cousin. Relatives who are further removed warrant less, and nonrelatives get nothing at all. Choosing not to take grain t o a relative would signify estrangement. At the same time, in tradition-based societies people who lacked honor could not count on receiving sympathy from anyone no matter what their plight. Traditional Greek reactions to rape victims provide an extreme example. Custom and even law permitted a father or brother to kill an unmarried woman who had been raped (Safilios-Rothschild 1969). Because her dishonor and shame carried over to the rest of the family, the patriarchs preserved family honor by eliminating her. Her anguish, fear, or shame did not evoke others’ sympathy, at least not enough sympathy to spare her life. These days, sympathy display rules are not so clear-cut. The modern era has brought a decline in public rituals for showing sympathy and offering

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help. With urbanization and suburbanization, funerals are less likely to be community events, the friendly hands of Allstate rather than neighbors help disaster victims rebuild, and government programs and organized charities have replaced much of the personal distribution of largesse. For individual sympathizers, institutionally backed display rituals have given way to i l rules” in the Wittgensteinian sense (1958, 230). That is, as in a game of chess or baseball, the context limits an actor’s alternatives, but the next move can be one of many. Today display is supposed to represent genuine sentiment. Thus, we do not expect people to follow sympathy formulas blindly. Instead, we believe, they should match displays to feelings-after figuring out what they “really feel” (keeping in mind, of course, what feelings are appropriate for particular plights and particular people). Also, they should tailor displays to the recipient’s likely reaction. The donor, before deciding on a course of action, should empathize again in imagination to anticipate how the recipient might read various gestures of sympathy. This is not to say that today’s sympathizers are more genuine, sincere, and thoughtful than those of other societies or other eras, but only that they are subject to being judged on the sincerity and individuality of their performances. People today may have more trouble deciding when and how to sympathize than people a century or more ago did. “Mary Smith’s’’ case shows how complicated and confusing the new situation can be: My best friend’s father was dying. I called her in Canada several times. I wanted to do something special and unique-not just what everyone else would do. So she got fifty cards, and if I sent one, that would make fiftyone. She’d read it and say, “Very nice,” and put it away with the rest. I wanted to do something more personal, so I called. She called me when she got back to town and asked if I had sent a card. I thought, “Oops, I’ve done something wrong.” And then I thought, “But I did more than that! I called and spent time thinking about what would be the best thing to do and say.” So I said, “No.” And she said, “Oh, I got a card just signed Mary. It must be from Mary Davis, not you.” She was wanting to thank me if I’d sent it. And I was wondering if I’d done something wrong. It all turned out OK, but I still wondered if I’d done the wrong thing not sending a card. But I decided it was OK. I also like to wait a while and do something that shows you’re still thinking about the person. So later 1’11 send her a card when she hasn’t got fifty coming all at once. (Field notes; young, single WASP college professor)

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The etiquette for giving sympathy is no longer spelled out anywhere in an easy-to-follow set of steps. Mary Smith regrets the fact, but believing in the social logic that inner feelings should drive display, she also welcomes the opportunity to personalize her emotional offerings. W e have come to believe that the depth and sincerity of a sympathy giver’s inner feelings should count. While it would not have been socially “logical” for a Polish peasant in 1850 to refuse to visit a widowed sister whom she did not like, it might be today. Taking individual sentiments and preferences into account is more likely to “make sense.” “Obligation” has become something of a dirty word (although its motivating power, its push, remains), and individual sentiment is supposed to drive emotional display rather than the other way around. Status, honor, and custom exert some influence on our sentiments and emotional gifts, but we are less prone to recognize or admit it. Sometimes, of course, shows of sympathy are uncalled for. First, showing sympathy could give offense by reminding the troubled of their situation, implying that they cannot solve their problems by themselves, and questioning their independence (deliberately putting others down in this way is an issue I will discuss further in chapter 7). As one interviewee stated explicitly, “There are times to show sympathy and times to keep it inside. You don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings.” Another respondent illustrated what can happen when people do not withhold sympathy:

I guess I was cordial enough at the time to the people [who said they felt sympathy] but angry inside that I couldn’t say what I wanted to say, which was, “Leave me alone. You couldn’t possibly-you really couldn’t understand how I feel. Your display of sympathy is not accepted as genuine.” I think it’s a really hard feeling to put into its place. A lot of times when people say that they’re sorry, and you really suffered a tragedy, you feel like you want to say, “I don’t believe you, because you couldn’t possibly feel close enough to me to understand how I truly feel. If you did, you wouldn’t need to say what you’re saying. You could just leave me alone or talk about other things or show me rather than tell me. (Interview; WASP thirty-threeyear-old married woman, secretary for a large insurance claims department) Second, a fairly widespread belief asserts that giving sympathy can damage the recipient. As one young man, a single Italian American salesperson, said in an interview, “I think that too much sympathy and sorrow doesn’t help anyone get back on their feet.” Juan Carvajal, the computer programmer who did not offer sympathy to his wife, also explained that showing

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sympathy could cause recipients to wallow in pity and not try to solve their problems. His strategy is, therefore, as follows: What I try to do is see if people can get out of their particular situations by themselves. If they can’t, I will try to help them in any way I can. But I won’t come to their rescue as soon as I see they’re having a problem. . . . I don’t like giving sympathy to people. Withholding a display of sympathy when it is called for, however, invites interactional problems. Outsiders may criticize the errant sympathizer. The person in trouble does not know if the other cares and thus may have difficulty deciding how close the relationship is. Remember that Juan Carvajal’s wife accused her nondemonstrative husband of not caring about her. Even when people claim they do not want sympathy, withholding it may create tension, as one young woman learned the hard way: I remember what happened to me once when I didn’t express sympathy. A friend of mine’s mother died last year. Sally-my friend-called me up to tell me. Of course, I was uncomfortable, and I didn’t know what to say. You know how awkward those things are. So when she told me not to send a card or flowers, I was relieved. In fact, she said for me not to bring it up. Well! Did I ever get in trouble! I did what she said and didn’t mention it. When I saw her a while later, she told me that she harbored a lingering resentment against me because I hadn’t done anything when her mother died-especially since I had known her mother. I really learned my lesson! What lesson was that?

To always give sympathy when someone dies. (Field notes; WASP single woman in her thirties)

Sally’s right to sympathy for her mother’s death was, in her eyes at least, great enough to outweigh her own denials of need. The respondent’s lack of display threatened the bond between them. The most direct method of conveying one’s sympathy is saying so. One respondent explained that he wrote personal notes to friends and relatives when they were experiencing distress. However, expressing sympathy can be difficult, as writers for Hallmark Cards, Inc., attest: At times like this Words cannot say The things we’d like them to.

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Sam Duschek, the fifty-six-year-old salesman quoted previously, also explained: When somebody tries to give sympathy, 1 don’t think you know what actually to say. . . . The words just aren’t the right words for what you want to say. You say, “I’m sorry,” and that’s it. . . . I have a lot more feelings than a lot of men that I know of. . . . I’m kind of a softy. Things bother me, . . . but I always have the personal problem of saying what I feel.

And a white middle-aged widow,

a switchboard operator, said:

I can’t really just say, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I can feel it more than I can say it a lot of times. (Interview) Fortunately, when words fail us, w e can resort to our culture’s panoply of symbolic objects and gestures for conveying sympathy:

08-the-rack sentiments in greeting cards I got four or five get-well cards and sent him one every couple of days. (Interview; Rebecca Jones) ofleerings My neighbor died, and I didn’t know what to do. Do you send a card? Do you send flowers? So I discovered that you can give money to the library to buy a book in their name, and that’s what I did. (Field notes; middle-aged married Italian American woman, teacher) We just gave a donation to the family, and that’s all we did. sent them a personal check. (Interview; Sam Duschek)

. . . We just

My husband has been working so hard. I feel so sorry for him. I’m going to cook him a steak. (Field notes; Hispanic woman in her twenties, in grocery store) Friday night, I spent seventy-five dollars on my friends to go to New York and see the Bill Cosby show. Now, they have a child and her parents refused to drive out to Long Hills to babysit for the baby. So we had to find two other people to go to see the [performance] with us. . . . We felt so bad that they couldn’t go, and I especially felt so bad that she couldn’t go-she never goes anywhere-that Barry and I had bought Zack a bottle of wine here to have a drink before we went. We gave him the bottle of wine and a flower to take to her, because 1 felt that bad they couldn’t go. (Interview; Robin Adams)

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prayers All we can do now is pray. (Field notes; middle-aged white woman in hospital waiting area) tolerance There are things she wants done right away. . . . But there are times it does make me angry. Then I feel sorry for her because she’s old. You gotta go along with it. (Interview; Sam Duschek) “time of’ Of course, I didn’t expect her to come in to work under the circumstances. (Interview; Jim Mulcahy) easing of pressure You tell your team not to have a blowout. If you’re five goals ahead, that’s enough. No double digits. You don’t want to kick [the other team] when they’re down. Well, some coaches do, but it doesn’t fit with American values. You feel for those guys. You wouldn’t say, “I feel sorry for you,” but you’d hold back, send in your scrubs, waste time-even if it means your own kids don’t rack up their personal stats. (Interview; “Eric Dietz,” divorced white middle-aged high-school teacher and soccer coach) visitations We had to go to Long Island. There were no two ways about it. (Field notes; married middle-aged Jewish woman, political science professor) You go to a wake to show . . . sympathy to the relatives. Even if [the deceased] is not someone you were close to. It’s not as much sympathy as if you were more touched by the person’s death, but it’s sympathy. (Interview; separated Irish American computer technician in his mid-thirties)

listening She wanted to talk to George and myself, and we just sat there for a couple of hours and we let her just talk, express her feelings. (Interview; married Hispanic woman in her forties, personnel worker)

A card is so impersonal. I have to call her to see how she’s doing. (Field notes; white middle-aged woman, secretary) gestures, facial expressions, and soothing touches I just put my arms around him and patted him. (Field notes; young African American mother, discussing her son)

I took her hand and squeezed it. No one could see. (Field notes; middleaged white woman, nurse)

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rr

composure work” We ask surgery patients if they’re anxious. Then I tell them, ‘‘I’ll be with you. You can hold my hand if it hurts. It won’t take long.” (Straws et al. 1982, 266; quoting a young nurse, a woman) help I give advice. (Interview; married Hispanic woman in her thirties, personnel

worker) She was out for several months, and I just took over her work. I never thought about it, I just did it. (Interview; young single man of English and Italian parents, school teacher)

As some of these comments imply, people often take pains to decide upon an appropriate form of sympathy display, mulling over the situation or discussing alternatives with family and friends. When is a comment or a look enough, when is assistance in order, and when is an offering required? And, how much help, how large an offering, is appropriate? The college professor I call Mary Smith described her deliberations in an unusual case: I got a Bitnet from Terry with some information I had asked her for, and she also said that her father had been very ill and finally died. It was the first time I’d ever gotten news like that by computer. So I sat right down at my computer and Bitnetted her back. But then I thought, “IS that enough?Should I also send a card?” I don’t want her to think I don’t care. (Field notes)

It is perhaps little wonder that florists, fruit basket companies, and greetingcard shops stay in business. Not only do they prepackage sentiments that can be difficult to display. They also, analogously to fast-food restaurants, offer “fast communication” that saves the sympathizer the time and trouble of putting emotions into his or her own words (Kravanja 1993). Ironically, many a modern sympathizer culls through shelves of mass-produced messages to select one that best expresses his or her “unique” inner sentiments. These kinds of sympathy gestures and symbols can be given impersonally, from a distance, but some require face-to-face interaction. Face-toface sympathy display is much harder to pull off and sustain. The sympathizer must coordinate words, gestures, facial expressions, offerings, and perhaps even his or her costume into an internally consistent front and

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keep a performance going over time. The performance must strike the appropriate note; that is, the actor should align the performance with the recipient’s persona, condition, and mood. Problems can arise if the sympathizer, for example, becomes tongue-tied and cannot find the proper words, lets unsympathetic thoughts or feelings slip out, fails to control or hide self-emotions (e.g., sadness, worry, or impatience) that upset the recipient, or begins reliving his or her own past illnesses, losses, or problems and becomes distracted. A recipient may interpret a deficient performance as a snub, an excessive performance as a put-down. The appropriateness of a display of sympathy depends on many factors. Particular plights call for different types of display. Losing a family member or contracting a serious illness requiring hospitalization calls for flowers, cards, calls, and visits. However, some equally serious problems-for example, being fired from one’s job or undergoing an unhappy divorcecall for behind-the-scenes tolerance, knowing glances, and “time off” or “ time out,” since public gestures could occasion more shame or embarrassment than the sufferer already feels. In general, though, as social logic dictates, the more serious the problem, the greater and more costly the display should be. In intermediate cases, complications may arise when a sympathizer misgauges how painful a problem is to the sympathizee. Respondents repeatedly mentioned feeling anger and resentment when others showed too much sympathy for what they believed were insignificant troubles. For example, Jim Mulcahy said, “It wasn’t the end of the world. How dare she treat me like an incompetent! I love traveling! I like San Francisco and Chicago! But they would go on pouring out the sympathy every time I went on the road.” Respondents also reported feeling “hurt” or slighted when others underdisplayed sympathy they thought they deserved. For example, one young white clerical worker, the mother of two children, did not speak to her parents for years after they failed to sympathize enough during her divorce. The closeness of the relationship also factors into the display equation. Usually, as prevailing rules have it, the closer a relationship is, the larger one’s expenditures of time, effort, and money should be. A family member should not merely send a card if a visit or some personal assistance is feasible. Intimates cannot ignore many problems that outsiders can, as the etiquette expert Miss Manners points out: “Whining . . . is banned from social events. . . . Whining is properly directed only at one’s intimates” (1984, 320). Intimates, she implies, must listen sympathetically to each other’s repeated tales of woe. Also, deeper and more sincere sympathy

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displays are due the closer and more significant the relationship (see also Hochschild 1983, 6 8 ) . Sympathy recipients evaluate a sympathy gesture relative to the sympathizer’s ability to give. They recognize the extent of a sympathizer’s financial and emotional resources. For example, a prosperous boss should not send a hospitalized worker the least expensive card or bouquet possible, but someone who is unemployed, even if a family member, does not have to give expensive offerings. In a similar vein, those who have their own troubles do not have to expend large amounts of emotional resources to display sympathy. However, people do judge some displays to be too small. They may take a too cheap sympathy display-too cheap for the circumstances, the relationship, or the sympathizers’ means-as evidence of insincerity, and insincerity can threaten a bond. Insincere sympathy displays are, however, quite common. Showing genuinely felt “deep” sympathy is one thing, but all of us sense we must occasionally show sympathy when it is not genuine, when we do not really feel it. For example, one of my interviewees, a thirty-eight-year-old married man, a WASP who is a vice president of manufacturing, said that he visited his bereaved aunt because his mother told him he had to. When Sylvia Plath’s character Esther Greenwood dishonestly told Buddy she was sorry about his TB, she was automatically displaying surface sympathy to follow the cultural rules for sympathizing with a sick boyfriend. Some readers, especially those of us in modern, individualistic societies, might argue that feigned sympathy is not really sympathy at all. But we should consider that even an empty display is not valueless. People with problems might prefer sincere sympathy, but they also expect and even depend on others’ not so deep expressions and emotional “white lies.” Feigned sympathy is more meaningful to the recipient than no sympathy display whatsoever (see Baron 1988). Showing an emotion without feeling it signifies at least that the emotion is due to the other person, and this “dueness” is a considerable gift in itself (Hochschild 1983, 18). Furthermore, what begins as mere display may lead to true sentiment. As Emile Durkheim argued long ago, rituals generate emotion. Florian Znaniecki’s early research on Polish immigrants provides us with an example: [Almong [Polish]peasants, when a relative comes to sympathize with a widow in her bereavement, she persuades her to talk about the deceased, extol his virtues, recollect various episodes of their conjugal life . . , ; in a word, she

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induces her to show in detail what the loss means to her . . . so that the friend can both understand the loss from the point of view of the widow and actually sorrow with her. ([1936] 1967, 540-41) The relative, responding to traditional cultural norms for when and how to express sympathy, set in motion the process that created the appropriate feeling. Display not only led to increased empathy, it also begot sentiment. Half a century later and half a world away, Miss Manners concurred with Znaniecki. She had received a letter from the parents of a seven-yearold boy who refused to let him visit an injured friend because the son wanted to gawk. In a section of her book titled “When Form Precedes Feeling,” she dissented from the boy’s parents: Miss Manners disagrees with your decision not to allow your child to visit his friend because his motives were not noble. Send him off with strict instructions to pretend to be sympathetic with the illness, but apparently not unduly curious. (Some interest in the nature of the illness is usually agreeable to patients.) Perhaps his sympathies will truly be aroused. (1984, 322)

In the interest of manners, however, even if the chld’s sympathy did not well up, Miss Manners contended: he still will have done better by his friend than he would have by ignoring the friend. Form comes first[,] . . . and while one hopes that feeling will follow, going through the form well without it is more acceptable . . . than eschewing the form because the feeling is not there. (1984, 322)

I suspect that when she calls for form to take precedence over feeling, Miss Manners is a lonely voice in our “authentic” society. However, her analysis of the consequences of following form is insightful. She echoes Georg Simmel(l971, 40-43, 385-86): following form can generate emotional content. Thus, engagmg in approved emotional display is one way to do sympathy work. To the extent that modern-day Westerners reject ritual sympathy displays, we are discarding a tool for emotion work.

Gender and Sympathy Display Untangling the three components of the sympathy-giving process-empathy, sympathy sentiment, and display-helped me make sense of the gender paradox that my surveys and interviews uncovered. Much of the sociological research on gender in the past few decades would suggest that our culture’s gender ideology imbues all three components of sympathy giving.

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My respondents, both men and women, were more likely to complain about men’s lack of sympathy. Yet I found little evidence of gender differences in the propensity to feel sympathy sentiment. I believe we can account for these unexpected findings by distinguishing between sentiment and display, between feelings and the symbolic gestures that demonstrate connection and build bridges between people in times of trouble. Except in the confines of the home, we usually expect o r require boys and men not to display sympathy. Even a slight betrayal of sentiment evokes ridicule or condemnation in some settings. For instance, teacher Eric Dietz contended that boys comfort each other when they get hurt on the playground, but only up to age six or seven. After that, showing sympathy for someone else (especially for a “minor” or “routine” problem) is as much evidence of being a “sissy” as crying over one’s own injury. Another man’s words illustrate a similar theme. Back in high school, when cliques, groups of students, were the “in crowd,” and some guy wasn’t attractive or athletic, there was a tremendous amount of pressure to ridicule that guy, even openly in front of him. It also happened

in the army, ridiculing the guy who can’t keep up. Bothered me in high school. It bothers me now. I thought that their feelings should be protected somehow from the group. In these particular cases, the individuals weren’t savvy enough or talented enough to defend themselves. I wondered what happened emotionally inside. I tried to call the ridicule, and say, “Take it easy,” but it didn’t work. (Interview; thirty-eight-year-old married man, WASP, vice president of manufacturing) In the adult worlds of business, sports, politics, and the like, this rule may carry over. Consequently, men’s sympathy tends to be passive or covert. For men, sympathy often stops with empathy and sentiment, and display is often minimal. For girls and women, few such restraints on expression and display exist. To the contrary, women are encouraged to do much of the private and public sympathy work-funeral work, sickbed work, listening, tongue clicking, and ritualistic feeding-often as agents acting for their husbands and children. More people have an opportunity to see women’s sympathy, and few people (especially other men) witness men’s sympathy. Pluralistic ignorance flourishes, as each man believes he is the rare exception. The cultural fiction emerges that men are not sympathetic. Let us look further into the gendered nature of sympathy display rules.

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Masculine Sympathy rules. Many men perceive that their occupational worlds, from which they derive much of their self-esteem (Schwalbe 1986, 1988), prohibitfeeling sympathy sentiment, much less displaying it. Sam Duschek, the toy salesman quoted earlier, elaborated: When you work with people, like, take most major companies or bosses and stuff, they don’t seem to be sympathetic toward the person in the company who’s been working with them, that they know. It’s a hard type of thing. There’s no sympathy at all. They don’t have no feelings whatsoever. . . . I think money just comes in place of it. You know that feeling of togetherness . . . where the boss says, “Hey, this guy’s having a tough time and maybe I can help him out”? It’s just not there. No matter how big the company is or how small. Maybe there’s a small portion that feel sympathetic. When Sam himself was passed over for a promotion, he found his employers insensitive.

I thought I finally reached the rainbow, after forty-one years of hard work and dedication to the company, and it didn’t work out that way. . . . My bosses should have shown understanding, but they didn’t. . . . I felt that I was kind of let down or something. [Chokes up] Gee, I really felt hurt. I felt that everything I ever put into the company kind of went down the drain, sort of like all my years were wasted. I felt anger and disappointment. It kind of makes you feel like there’s something missing, that these people just have no feelings towards you. Another man, a middle manager who had been fired, said: Thirty years I put in. Then, just like that, they told me to go. They had no feeling for me at all. I guess they’re not supposed to. (Interview; older Jewish widower) And another man summed up the general rule: There’s no room for softies in the business world. You have to be hard, hard, hard. (Interview; mamed white middle-aged sales representative) Some occupations may discourage open sympathizing more than others. Studying socialization into the social work profession, Loseke and Cahill(1986) found that the most important, defining characteristic of professionals was an altruistic, sympathetic worldview. Male and female practitioners adopted such a worldview, but more women than men choose social work as a career. At the other extreme, in the male-dominated world

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of police work, toughness, a denial of emotionality, and an adversarial stance toward both the general public and wrongdoers are paramount (Hunt 1985; Stenross and Kleinman 1989). A thirty-eight-year-old Irish American teacher described the effect on her husband, a policeman: “He may be a little harder than he was. I think that he may have developed a stronger opinion over the years. He has a lot less sympathy for people after being lied to and seeing people do wrong all the time” (interview). Further, Diana Scully’s research on the socialization of obstetriciangynecologists (1 980) revealed a medical-school culture that fostered a detached, unsympathetic view of their patients as teaching resources. In this male-dominated field, even female physicians found themselves adapting to this culture. Among my respondents, one of the few men who said he was not a sympathetic person (and less sympathetic than most men) attributed his remote emotional stance in part to his job as a state ranger. Being in law enforcement, you can’t feel sorry for everybody, because you have a job to do. There’s times when you have to write summonses, you have to make arrests. You can’t feel sorry for people because they broke the law, and now they have to face the penalty. Have you changed since y o u became a law enforcer?

Yeah, definitely. I was this way before, but not as much. (Interview; single twenty-nine-year-old man of Irish and Scottish descent) For many men, work and sympathy display simply do not mix. Each man tends to perceive the others as unsympathetic and to consider that as perfectly appropriate when there is a job to be done. A complex set of assumptions-what could be called a “male sympathy logic’ ’-underlies the sometimes severe limitations on American men’s sympathy displays in the workplace. Any or all of the available arguments listed below can feed into a “decision” to withhold display (and perhaps even sentiment): In the work arena, cognition is appropriate, emotion (thought to be the opposite of cognition) is inappropriate, and people who show emotions are ineffectual. People create their own problems and the troubled are not worthy of sympathy (a tenet of social Darwinism, long a mainstay of the American business mentality). Individuals’ problems should take a backseat to the needs of the organization.

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Tender emotions are feminine, and showing them is emasculating. Showing sympathy and softness makes the sympathizer vulnerable; if the sympathizee later takes advantage, the sympathizer feels betrayal and becomes a fool or a “sucker.” Showing sympathy might encourage a recipient (especially if an underling) to wallow in self-pity and discourage him or her from finding solutions to problems. Because of their personal characteristics, circumstances, or past histories, some people are not worthy of sympathy; one should withhold sympathy until verifying the individual’s worthiness. One can exercise altruism in impersonal ways and channel aid through “experts” (e.g., charity organizations such as the United Way), who can insure recipients’ worthiness. Personal socioemotional chores can be delegated to women, who are probably better at handling them anyway (e.g., men may assume women secretaries can send flowers and cards for bosses, women nurses can console patients and their relatives, and women professors can counsel and advise troubled students). The common theme in these assumptions is that men should avoid the logical error (a kind of “type 1 error,” or accepting a false premise) of assuming sympathy is due when it is not. It is not only the case that men acquire these assumptions from various agents of socialization as they are growing up. It is also true that as a man deals with people in the everyday world of the corporation or the factory, both men and women judge his emotional performance and the appropriateness of his emotional reactions. On the basis of the assumptions detailed above, people often judge harshly a man who gives sympathy when it is not necessary or not due. Furthermore, men know people are likely to judge them, and they allow for probable judgments as they do emotion work. However, while they may try not to show it too often, most men feel sympathy sentiment anyway. Consider one older businessman’s comments: They sent that guy packing just like that! He had a wife and two little kids. I know he’s a little odd, but I felt sorry. Of course, I couldn’t let anyone else know that. They’d think I wasn’t much of a man. (Interview; white sixty-two-year-old married man, sales representative)

The vice president of manufacturing quoted previously explained that he tried to contextualize his sympathy:

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I’m more sympathetic than most men. Outside the job. I don’t bring a lot of sympathy to the job. (Interview; married thirty-eight-year-old WASP) But habits of the job can become habits of the heart. Some men come to distrust all tender emotions. Newspaperman Brent Staples described his father as such a man. My father was part of what a woman I know describes as “the C.I.A. of Emotions,” that group of men for whom love is a covert activity. From these men, rebuke comes easily. But praise, if it comes at all, comes in roundabout ways, sometimes even through strangers. . . . He never said as much as “good job” when I made the dean’s list. Years later, I found that he’d carried my grades in his wallet and showed them to strangers at truck stops. A few days ago, I learned that he thought my birth year lucky and played the numbers with it every day. (New York Times, 19 June 1994)

Consistent with Scully’s research, Smith and Kleinman (1989) found that medical interns developed the habit of responding cognitively rather than emotionally in their hospital work and repressed or hid emotional expressions. They said they found it difficult to “switch gears” once they came home to their families and communities (1989, 65-66). Also, according to a New York Times story, some rap musicians commenting on the daily transition from job to family said they were “struggling to leave their gangsta personae at the front door and walk through it as caring fathers” (14 September 1995). Recall also the state ranger who claimed that he was becoming increasingly less sympathetic a person the longer he worked in law enforcement. A WASP thirty-three-year-old married woman noticed the same thing happening to her the longer she worked as a secretary in a large insurance claims department: The more and more you operate in business, the less sympathetic you are to people. Most women haven’t had a lot of experience in a job that requires either aggression or a lot of self-direction. In my job you can’t afford to be emotionally connected to all the people that you meet. So it probably reduces that side of me. (Interview) Again, my respondent Jim Mulcahy made this point explicit: “I spend most of my life a t work, so you’re gonna find the situations there, and you’re dealing with those people who have a big impact on your life, and probably your dealings there come back on your family life and personal life. Maybe in some cases you do go too hard-nosed.’’

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Furthermore, many men hide evidence that they themselves have problems which would call forth others’ sympathy. In Judith Cook’s study of parents who had lost a child, many fathers reported that they either got involved in work or physical tasks so they did not have t o feel emotions at all or that they dealt with their emotions alone (1988,299). One man, for instance, said he went into the garage to cry. Another man, a fifty-two-yearold Italian American pediatrician I interviewed, told a similar story: I have a colleague whose child is gravely ill, whose wife is not well, but you’d never know at work. He never mentions his problems. He’s a real stand-up, strong guy. I love that. . . . I lost sons, newborn babies of my own-three of them-and people never knew. I just went about my everyday business and didn’t take time off from work.

Robin Adams’s husband, Barry, who worked as an actor and bartender, did not broadcast his feelings during his father’s illness and death. Robin recounted her husband’s silence in approving tones. Barry’s father was dying of cancer and was in the hospital for six months and developed problems. My husband had hassles about getting to work and one of the one days he could see my father-in-law was on Sunday. He never told the person where he worked that his father was even in the hospital until he died. I married a good guy. He just said I’m sorry I showed up late for work, and nobody ever knew. [Laugh] Among my respondents, men were more likely than women t o state that they kept quiet about their problems and that they gained approval for doing so. Following this rule, Jim Mulcahy advised a self-pitying coworker: I remember a guy down in the dumps because he was passed over for a promotion-he had twenty-two years to my three in the company. I remember him hovering next to the building like he wanted the protection of the building. I said, “Stand up straight. Do something. Take a big stride. Pump yourself up a bit.” I guess I do that.

Besides concealing their sympathy and their problems, men delegate much off-the-job sympathy to women. In funeral homes, for example, I noted that couples often came to services together. After the service, however, it was women who usually approached the bereaved family members and offered words of consolation, hugs, and even tears. Men more often hung back, sometimes standing at the rear and chatting quietly together

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waiting for their wives to discharge the family sympathy duties. As my questioning brought out, many men believed that being present symbolized their sympathy and support and the situation called for little else in the way of display. Women performed the more active sympathy duties for the family. For instance, the teacher I call Eric Dietz claimed, “I never know what to say or what to do. Women just naturally know how to do that.” Lacking practice in displaying sympathy, some men may never develop the skills to do it. Feminine Symputhy rules. Our cultural expectations for women emphasize

the empathic “monitor” role (Locker 1981) and the ready display of sympathy. Americans expect women more than men t o have a “relational” view of life (Gilligan 1982). Thus, they expect women to empathize more, have stronger sentiments, “try on” others’ thoughts and feelings, and block “selfish” thoughts in order to enter more completely into someone else’s experience at all steps of the sympathy process. W e take for granted women’s generosity of spirit and expect them to display more sympathy and display it more often than men do, especially in the family. the least prestigious jobs In the work world, I also found women-in and in the most-listening to people’s problems and offering sympathy. For one thing, women are more often found in jobs that require sympathy and caring: homemaker, schoolteacher, social worker, nurse, support staff, and flight attendant (Hochschild 1983). People also expect women who “ occupy male’’ jobs to enact their roles with more concern and caring than their male counterparts (Kanter 1977). I observed several women who seemed to use sympathy as a standard conversation starter. They would mention a co-worker’s recent problems and ask for a progress report, offering sympathy and concern if the problem persisted and sympathetic relief if it were over. One woman, a white middle-aged secretary, greeted each worker who approached her desk in a half-hour period with a concerned, sympathetic opening: [To a woman executive] I was so sorry to hear that you were ill last week. [To another secretary] Is your daughter getting better after her accident? I felt so sorry for her! [To a man in his sixties] I hear you had an accident on highway X. Were you hurt? It’s just terrible that you won’t have your car for a week! [To a man in his thirties] Hello, Mr. Z. Are you feeling better today?

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The woman’s co-workers, irrespective of their location in the firm’s hierarchy, appeared to appreciate her efforts and to want to talk further about the problems she had brought up. The secretary, like many other women, avoided making ‘‘type 2 errors” (rejecting true premises), or assuming sympathy is not due when it might be. By offering everyone sympathy, she did not overlook any legitimate claims. Among my respondents, women’s explanations of every part of the sympathy-givingprocess tended to focus more on action than the men’s explanation did. Rather than viewing men as more instrumental and women as more emotional, as Parsons and Bales (1 955, 305) did, I believe men and women are instrumental at dgeerent tasks. Women are usually more instrumental than men in emotional matters. It was almost always women who emphasized that sentiment is not enough, that sympathy requires time and energy to listen, display one’s own sad or angry emotions, think about and talk through solutions, make offerings, and the like. Thus, women not only tended to play a more active role than men in comforting the bereaved at funerals. They also bought more of the sympathy cards (women buy 85 percent of all greeting cards [Hirshey 1995, 27]), most probably ordered more of the flowers for hospital patients, and certainly listened to more of their friends’ sad tales. Their very descriptions were more “active” than men’s descriptions. For example, compare (‘Yourheart just goes out to those poor little children,” to “Ifelt for him” (emphasis added). Women also tend to be more (‘joint,” or social, sympathizers, while men tend to experience sympathy (and also other emotions) “ S O ~ O ” (Clark 1989b; Clark, Kleinman, and Ellis 1994a, 1994b). Empathizing and feeling sympathy sentiment have the potential to pull a person into the social, or joint, reality level, but this does not always happen. Men often reported that they experienced their feelings privately. For example, one white middle-aged married sales representative said, “I didn’t tell him what I felt when his son died, but I felt it just the same.” When I asked people to describe what they had done in particular instances to show the sympathy they felt, many men said, simply, “Nothing.” Some seemed surprised at the question, as if to say, ‘‘I’ve never thought about showing sympathy!” Women’s descriptions were much more likely to indicate that they sympathized actively and at the joint level. Also, women were more likely than men to report that they wanted their partners to do the same. For example, a twenty-nine-year-old white working-class homemaker and mother of two described her resentment toward her husband’s passive, solo style of sympathizing,

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I’m not feeling well, you know, I have a real bad cold and I just got over bronchitis, which the doctor said almost turned into pneumonia. I just got rid of it about a week ago. Now I have h s one back again, so now I have to go back. And I’m trying to be Super Mom and Super Housecleaner. I got no reaction from anyone, no help with anything. . . . I want to tell [my husband] to go jump in a lake. I don’t like him much at all when he’s not sympathetic. When he’s sick, I have to be Miss Sympathy and give him all the attention, like “Oh, I’m so sorry you don’t feel good,” and all this. I just get so sick of doing that. When I’m sick, it doesn’t matter. I still have to do everything I have to do. I walk around like I’m dying. “Oh, gosh, I’m so tired.” And he’ll say, “If you don’t feel good, just leave that until tomorrow.” So I still have to do it, just wait an extra day. So now we don’t talk much, just kind of stay away. He stays away from me because he knows, “Don’t say anything to her because she’ll go off the wall.” (Interview) In her interviews with women having extramarital affairs, Lynn Atwater found many similar marital problems. She described this type of relationship as an “emotional blood bank” with women repeatedly giving emotions but getting little in return (1982, 6 3 ) . Contractor and psychology major Frank DeLucca’s comments about his Italian father and Swedish mother exemplify gendered sympathy patterns. Have y o u ever had someone show y o u Sympathy or feel sorqy f o r y o u when y o u didn’t want it?

My mother did that a lot. . . . Minor things, even like in football or if I didn’t get a job that I wanted. I had my own frame of mind set up that if I didn’t get this, I was going to go on and do something else-I had a whole plan. I’d come home and [she’d] say, “Well, did it happen, did you take care of it?”, and I’d say “No, it didn’t work out.” And before I got the words out of my mouth-that “All right, I’m going to go on and do this next thing”-it would be, like, “Well, don’t worry about it. Sit there, we’ll give you something to eat.” Well, you know, things aren’t to that extreme. You know, there’s no machine guns around here. I mean, I’m on my next move. How did y o u feel inside?

I was furious. But she was thinking it was only because of the hardship that I was becoming annoyed. So no matter what I’d say, “Don’t worry about it, it’s not like that, leave me alone!” I would get very annoyed, she’d be thinking, “Poor soul” and putting another plate of spaghetti down. Ugghh, that pissed me off. . . .

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Have you ever felt that someone else should have shown you Sympathy and understanding, but that person did not? I used to think at times my father should have, when things didn’t work out. I don’t know, as the father figure. My mother often said, “Don’t worry about it,” where he wouldn’t. He would say, “Oh, all right.” It was the right thing to do, and I’m sure he knew that. In his situation, the right thing to do was say, “Oh, don’t worry about it and keep going.” Not to have my goat up over it, just to get up and keep going. Can you describe how you felt inside? I felt, “What an idiot!” You know, I mean, he can’t even say anythng? But I didn’t want him to. I guess I wanted him to because he didn’t. And yet if he had, I would’ve been, “What is everybody getting so uptight about? What’s wrong, don’t you think I can manage on my own?” Did your relationship with your father change? Um, yeah, I guess it would change me or bring me to positions where I thought, “Well, I’m going to show him that I can.” So, I wouldn’t be mad with him, I’d be very short, . . . to deprive him of information that I think, you know, he might be very interested in. I’d be very short with him so that I could develop a plan and a means that I would accomplish what I wanted to do. And then, if he said to me, “How’d it go?” I’d say, “Well, what did you expect, of course I did it.” Very short. “Well, I heard you got the job.” “Don’t be ridiculous, it’s nothing to talk about, of course I got it.”

As a youth, Frank resented his father’s ostensible lack of interest and concern, and he resented his mother’s inaccurate definitions of his feelings and her knee-jerk displays of sympathy. Each parent followed a sympathy formula, a set of rules whose assumptions lie in gendered feeling rules. Neither parent adapted the formula much to the particulars of a local case. The mother fed her children in any situation that could call for sympathy. The father, reminiscent of Brent Staples’s father, did n o t alter his no-show formula, even when another son returned from Vietnam shell-shocked. [My brother] was very inward, he didn’t want to talk to anybody, he stayed in his room, he drank a lot at night. My father was like, “Get a job. You’re else was there and loafing around. So you’ve had hard times-everybody they’re okay.” It got to the point where it went on for years. . . . So everybody else is also starting to say, “Look at this kid, I think he’s just trying to loaf around now.” But my opinion was, no one’s bothering to find out what the problem is. Everybody’s saying it’s wrong, . . . everybody knows

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there’s a problem, everybody knows he shouldn’t be doing that, but what are you doing about finding out why? What are you doing to take care of it? Calling him names, saying “Get up, don’t stay here anymore,” I think that accomplishes nothing.

As he constructed his personal philosophy of sympathy, Frank decided that true, accurate empathy is an important element. But he also decided ultimately that his father’s formula was “correct,” primarily because it had been effective in his own case in getting him to do what was necessary to improve his lot. As short as he was with me, I wanted to be with him in situations of his interest. I figured that that was the way out. But it wasn’t. I realized that he was short with me at times when he found out things that were negative, only because that’s the best way-to harp on something that’s wrong. He knew I could accomplish much more, that [any problem I had] wasn’t major in the scope of things, but I didn’t realize that yet. But I did soon after. As I grew up, I realized that, sure, some things bring you down, but you’re going to hang in there and keep working on it, not get sympathy.

Frank was obviously an active agent in his own emotional socialization, giving a great deal of thought t o the meanings and consequences of sympathy display. He believed that his father felt for him covertly and internally strategized over the proper means of helping. Frank finally joined the “C.I.A. of Emotions,” adopting a “masculine” philosophy: displaying sympathy interferes with functioning. Although unquestionably thoroughly deliberated, Frank’s logic might be “wrong.” Would he have become mired in self-pity if both parents had been sympathetic? He believed he would have had more independence and gumption if both parents had been unsympathetic. But, could he have started over so quickly if his mother appeared uninterested too? He did not recognize that her sympathy, juxtaposed on his father’s sternness, had perhaps helped him. Further, he did not recognize that, had she been as unsympathetic as his father, he might have labeled her a callous shrew. Right or wrong, however, his gendered assumptions will guide his own future sympathy transactions.

Symputby double binds. One consequence of the gender differences I have been describing is that people value an emotional gift differently if it comes from a man or a woman. Since people do not expect men to give open,

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effusive displays of sympathy, the slightest glance, the weakest gesture carries more weight than a woman’s. A man’s show of sympathy is a benefaction; a woman’s sympathy is owed, expected. Ironically, then, those who do the most sympathy work receive the least credit and may even be teased or ridiculed for being too sensitive and sentimental. For example, Robin Adams noted, “I always make excuses for other people, like ‘Well, maybe this happened to them. Well, maybe that happened to them.’ I’m very sympathetic, I really am. My husband always says I take the side of the friendless all the time instead of looking at things realistic.” Thus the woman’s double bind: if she withholds sympathy displays, she is a “bitch”; if she shows sympathy, she is feminine but too sentimental and too emotional to be a reliable, impartial, effective social actor. These views add even more weight to the male strategy of covert sympathizing. A man’s sympathy displays “count” more because they are rare. At the same time, however, he often cannot afford to provide the evidence that would contradict the assessment that he is an unfeeling “bastard.” Thus, the man’s double bind: if he withholds sympathy displays, he is masculine, powerful, and valuable, but hard-hearted and cold; if he shows sympathy, he is too soft.

This chapter has launched us on our journey by tracing sympathizers’ routes through empathy to sympathy sentiment and display. W e have seen that sympathy giving begins with cognitive, emotional, or physical empathy, that is, in one way or another taking the role of the other. Empathy allows one to grasp the outlines or the details of the other’s situation. The resulting image may lead one no further, or it may lead one to experience emotions antagonistic to the other’s-glee at the other’s misfortune or satisfaction that the other deserved what he or she got. In either case no sympathy exists. However, empathy may lead to feelings corresponding to the troubled person’s sadness, indignation, or feelings of loss. These corresponding feelings I have called sympathy sentiment. Some sympathy stops here. Men especially tend to experience sympathy at a solo, rather than a joint, level. They do so because our masculine sympathy logic, pervading the workplace and spilling over to the neighborhood and the family, predicts negative consequences for both sympathizer and sympathizee if men express sympathy too openly. Having little opportunity to display or receive sympathy

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from other men, many men are unaccustomed to expressing it and often rely on women to do it for them. That men feel sympathy more than they show it explains a paradox evident in my interviews: in pluralistic ignorance, most men tended to believe that they were more sympathetic than most other men. Empathy, with or without sympathy sentiment, may also lead t o symbolic displays-words, looks, gestures, gifts, or aid-that express one person’s sympathy to another and erect a t least a momentary bridge between them. But women more than men tend to stress sympathy display and the emotional intersubjectivity that it creates. Our culture’s feminine sympathy logic predicts negative consequences for women who do not show such tender emotions openly. Both deep and surface sympathy can serve as materials for building social bridges. Genuine overt sympathy (empathy PIUS sentiment PIUS display) is more costly to the sympathizer and more appreciated by the sympathizee. It goes further toward strengthening interpersonal bridges. Even if people condemn it, however, surface or feigned sympathy (empathy PIUS display with no sentiment) is much in evidence. Surface sympathy can help generate sympathy sentiment. Failing that, it at least attests to the existence of norms governing when and t o whom sympathy is “due.” The bridge it creates may be a rickety one, but it is passable, and it keeps people connected.

Now that we have looked at what contemporary Americans characterize as sympathy, in chapter 3 we will venture along a road that takes us into the past. W e will begin by aslung a macrolevel question: What kinds of misery warrant sympathy, and who shapes the definitions? W e will trace cultural definitions of sympathy-worthy plights, championed by a variety of “sympathy entrepreneurs,” to their roots in the rise of humanism and concern for the individual and the introduction of scientific and socialscientific explanations of the world around us.

Framing E v e n t s as B a d Luck Sympathy Entrepreneurs and the Grounds for Sympathy

I believe I’m m y mother’s bad luck child. I believe, darlin’, I’m my mother’s bad luck child. I declare, I have so much trouble here, baby, 000 Lord, I believe I may do out o f s y l e . Big Bill Broonzy, “My Lust Goodbye to You, ” 1940

lues music chronicles the everyday trials, troubles, and heartaches of post-Civil War generations of African Americans who have struggled to survive in a society stacked against them. Although the lyrics of the early blues songs were laden with in-group slang and innuendo, American and European whites long ago became their major audience (Evans 1989, 998). A few rural Southern whites such as singer Hank Williams have written country blues, and several generations of rock musicians, from Elvis Presley to the Beatles and beyond, have recorded blues songs as well. Everyone, it seems, has had the blues. Everyone can connect emotionally with some of this music’s messages of adversity-love gone wrong, financial hardship, death of a loved one, drudgery, cooled friendships, dashed hopes, run-ins with the law or the boss, or an accumulation of troubles that seem to rain down interminably from a storm front stalled just overhead. Listen, for instance, to Jazz Gillum’s lyrics: Since these hard times have got me, I’ve been runnin’ from door to door. Since these hard times have got me, I’ve been runnin’ from door to door. I ain’t got no bed to sleep in, I’ve got to sleep on the doggone floor. Well, there’s hard times here, and it’s hard times ev’rywhere I go. Well, there’s hard times here, and it’s hard times ev’rywhere I go, I’ve got to make me some money, So I won’t have these hard luck blues no more. Have you ever dreamed you were lucky, and then woke up cold in hand. Have you ever dreamed you were lucky, and then woke up cold in hand.

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Well, you dreamed you had a dollar, And your woman’s got another man. (“Woke Up Cold in Hand,” 1962, in Shirley and Driggs 1963, 261-62) Most of us are also familiar with the emotions of the blues. They include feelings of loss, loneliness, despair, disappointment, humiliation, indignation, and being misunderstood. They also include longing for love, safety, vindication, or renewed dignity. When Jazz Gillum sings of hard times or B. B. King laments, “The thrill is gone away for good,” they invite the audience to empathize, to cross the emotional bridge spanning the gap of time, space, and consciousness between them. In the contemporary United States, people trying their best to cope with the problems and pains that bring on the blues “deserve” sympathy sentiment and perhaps display. When “there’s nothing left for me, I’m full of misery,” as Billie Holiday sings, “I’ve got a right to sing the blues” (emphasis added). Blues music provides a basic compendium of many plights we consider legitimate grounds for sympathy. Themes in film, newspapers, literature, and other popular media do so as well. Collectively, these sources reveal a part of today’s implicit, taken-for-granted social logic for owing and giving sympathy to others. My interviewees’ reports of instances in which they felt sorry for others corroborate this sympathy logic. At its core is the idea of bad luck. Americans believe it makes sense to sympathize when someone experiences bad luck, but what makes up bad luck is not always obvious. For a person to be considered unlucky, his or her plight must fit prevailing standards of direness-that is, it should be considered sufficiently harmful, dangerous, discrediting, or painful. The plight also should fit within the parameters of luck or fate, not personal responsibility. Moreover, the plight must be bad and unlucky for those with the person’s particular set of gender, age, social class, and other characteristics. For a variety of reasons I will spell out in the coming chapters, a person experiencing bad luck may not evoke others’ sympathy, and one occasionally gets sympathy without bad luck being at issue. But bad luck is usually a necessary precondition. Blues musicians and others in the popular media who comment on trouble do more than passively indicate cultural definitions of sympathyworthy bad luck. They also actively encourage and instruct societal members to take a particular emotional stance toward those they define as vic-

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tims of bad luck. In so doing, they serve as a particular type of “moral entrepreneur” (Becker 1963, 147-63): what I call “sympathy entrepreneurs. Since biblical times, sympathy entrepreneurs have advocated successfully that dozens of new plights be considered grounds for sympathy. Because sympathy and morality interlink in many ways, expanding the mainstream conceptions of what constitutes valid grounds for sympathy increases the society’s fund of moral worth. This chapter maps some of the macrolevel features of American’s sympathy logic, the vocabulary of motives that includes ideas about the plights that merit sympathy, the kinds of people who deserve our sympathy, and the spirit in which we should give our gifts of sympathy (as well as what we can “logically” expect in return). It focuses on the changing cultural grounds for sympathy and the sympathy entrepreneurs who have helped frame those grounds. 9 ,

T H ELOGIC O F BAD L U C K In intensive interviews I asked my respondents to describe recent instances in which they had felt sorry for others and occasions when others had given them sympathy. When I looked at what had triggered sympathy, I discovered dozens of plights. The inventory encompasses all of those enumerated in blues lyrics (e.g., poverty, a partner’s infidelity, death of loved ones). It includes illness (including “functional” or behavioral illnesses such as alcoholism and drug use), physical or mental disabilities or deformities, injury, and pain. The respondents also mentioned war trauma, sexual abuse, physical abuse, crime victimization, disaster victimization (e.g., by earthquakes, hurricanes, or airplane crashes), homelessness, infertility, divorce (or loss of “partner”), discrimination (e.g., in jobs or housing), political victimization (e.g., liberties abridged by tyrannical government), role strain (e.g., single parenthood), unwanted pregnancy, physical unattractiveness, car accidents, car trouble, house trouble (e.g., leaky roof), insensitive parents, ungrateful children, social ostracism, loss in competition (e.g., sports or job), depression, fear, public humiliation, accidental embarrassment, fatigue, bad judgment, ruined vacations, boredom, and discomfort (e.g., enduring heat, cold, or traffic jams). This list of problems is long, much longer, I suspect, than in previous centuries. Some of these plights are permanently life altering, some tempo-

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rary. Some involve physical pain, some emotional distress. What these seemingly disparate problems have in common is the underlying element of bad luck, or victimization by forces beyond a person’s control. In fact, bad luck in general is cause for complaint, as we saw at the beginning of this chapter in Big Bill Broonzy’s song “My Last Goodbye t o You.” But what criteria do Westerners use to determine which plights are bad and unlucky? A plight is bad when it is not just “natural” or “normal” and when it consists of relative deprivation rather than deprivations that everyone faces and no one notices. Thus, definitions of badness are not universal. O n the contrary, they change with social and economic conditions. As the standard of living in Western societies has risen, standards of deprivation have increased in tandem, adding to the grounds for sympathy. No matter how bad people consider a plight to be, however, if the sufferer, the social actor, has caused it, others may not sympathize. A plight is unlucky when it is not the result of a person’s willfulness, malfeasance, negligence, risk takmg, or in some way “bringing it on him or herself.” Since the degree to which a person is responsible for his or her difficulties can vary, responsibility is an important factor in assessing sympathyworthiness. (Big Bill Broonzy disclaimed responsibility for causing his troubles by declaring he was born unlucky, a situation he could hardly control.) Recent trends in cultural conceptions of causality, which I will outline below, have altered our understandings of luck and responsibility. Thinking about the socially constructed nature of bad luck turns our attention to the people and groups actively engaged in the particular work of bad-luck construction. W e can better recognize and understand changes in Westerners’ notions of both badness and luck by looking at some of the sympathy entrepreneurs who have figured in those changes,

Sympathy Entrepreneurs Cultural notions of what makes a plight and which plights deserve sympathy do not arise out of thin air; instead, as we have seen, these notions are often promoted and brokered by sympathy entrepreneurs. Tying into, expanding, or changing existing grounds for sympathy, sympathy entrepreneurs actively seek to convince the public t o empathize with and feel for others, either intimates or strangers, who find themselves in particular plights. The social actors who serve as sympathy entrepreneurs reinforce

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and clarify various long-standing grounds for sympathy or propose and lobby for the adoption of new grounds. Previous writers have tended to think of moral entrepreneurs as social actors who-like the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement (Gusfield 1969), proponents of antidrug legislation (Becker 1973), and Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) (Gusfield 1980)-operate in the realm of censure, attempting to dictate which acts and people are immoral and therefore deserving of the good citizen’s indignation and wrath. It is, however, just as reasonable, in my estimation, to view those who operate in the realm of sympathy, attempting to direct our altruistic sentiments, as moral entrepreneurs. Of course, they are sometimes the same. For instance, MADD directs our ire toward the drunk driver and our sympathy toward the victim. Some sympathy entrepreneurs are volunteers motivated by their own concerns and passions, seeking little in the way of personal compensation from the public; others are the owners o r employees of big businesses that stand to profit from societal members’ sympathetic displays; and yet others (e.g., charity organizers) may be motivated by concern and are making a living in the process. Sympathy entrepreneurs may encourage us to sympathize at either the microlevel (e.g., to send cards and flowers to friends) or the macrolevel (e.g., to give money or volunteer time for abstract causes). In either case they are helping set the cultural parameters of what we recognize as plights. Examples of sympathy entrepreneurs are easy to find in today’s society. I have already mentioned blues musicians and MADD. In addition, we can think of the greeting-card industry as a variety of sympathy entrepreneur. This industry provides (and urges consumers to purchase) handy, readymade sympathy sentiment not only for loss of a loved one-the traditional condolence card-but also for many other occasions including illnessthe get-well card. Greeting cards are inexpensive-‘ ‘mere tokens”-and often only accompaniments for more substantive gifts. Perhaps for that reason sociologists have largely ignored their symbolic and ritual importance. Yet for many occasions a card has become the minimum gift today’s citizen expects from family and friends (Kravanja 1993), a more tangible way t o “reach out and touch someone” than a telephone call. Hallmark’s painstaking investigations into Americans’ emotions and emotional culture (Hirshey 1995) help ensure that cards speak to us and for us. The tremendous success of the greeting-card industry (over $7 billion in cards each year sell to

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Americans alone [McGough 19861) qualifies it as a cultural force. Greeting cards help spell out why and when we need to offer reminders of social cohesion-and furnish a convenient means for doing so. Unlike other conventional gifts (e.g., flowers or food), the substance of a card is words, and words make messages overt. To the extent that Hallmark, American Greetings, and Gibson have convinced the public to buy and send cards offering sympathy messages for particular plights, they have helped concretize those plights as sympathy-worthy (these three companies control 85 percent of the greeting-card market; Hallmark is the clear front-runner with 42 percent of the market, American Greetings has 35 percent, and Gibson 8 percent [Hirshey 1995, 221). The public long ago accepted Hallmark’s suggestion to send cards t o show we “care enough” for friends and family members when they are, among other things, sick or bereaved. Recently Hallmark has also introduced cards for less traditionally card-identified plights, such as being a child of divorced parents, having an overly demanding boss, sitting home alone on Saturday night, and spending excessive amounts of time doing the family shopping and banking. One card in this new “coping” genre offers sympathy and advice in self-indulgence for one who is “down”: Cover:

(Cartoon character sitting in easy chair, looking in mirror, holding bowl of popcorn and becr or soda can, two empties on the floor beside bag of chips. Dog and cat lie listlessly on the floor beside chair.] Feeling down? Do what I doInside:

Mope around the house and feel real sorry for yourself. Another coping card shows a pigeon-toed, dejected cartoon cat with a black cloud over its head: Cover:

Feeling Down? Inside:

This calls for nothing less than an entire bag of O R E 0 cookies to be eaten in one sitting.

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(Let me know if you need help.) Yet another card, carmine red with peach and cream roses, allows the purchaser to lengthen the period for offering sympathy to the bereaved: Cover:

Hoping Time Has Eased Your Sorrow Inside:

With sympathy and with the hope that time has helped you find The strength and comfort that you need to bring you peace of mind. Colorful, eye-catching cards beckon from store shelves, in effect instructing us in the occasions and “nonoccasions” that call for adding some more glue to our social bonds. While the greeting-card industry encourages displays of sympathy in personal relationships, some sympathy entrepreneurs call on people t o offer sympathy (and aid) to strangers facing certain plights. One example is the New York Times’s annual Neediest Cases Appeal, begun over eighty years ago by the newspaper’s editor, Adolph Ochs (see Atwater and Robboy 1972). The Neediest Cases Appeal describes much more drastic and uncommon plights than those included in sympathy cards. Initially the Neediest Cases Appeal presented, during the Christmas season, the one hundred families or individuals in the New York area whom the editor judged to be most in need of-and worthy of-readers’ contributions. In fifty or so words per case, the writers packed heartbreaking details, For example, in 1912, the year of the first appeal, readers were presented with case 40, a fatherless family living in “the abysses of despair and impoverishment.” The widow’s baby had died of diphtheria in the first year of its mother’s widowhood, and one of the remaining five children had contracted infantile paralysis; the other children, none over thirteen years of age, could not yet work to contribute to the meager amount their mother earned as an office cleaner. By 1922, each story indicated how much money the case family needed. One story introduced the R. family, also fatherless. Mrs. R., a laundress, wanted to keep her six sons, aged

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four to seventeen, whom she called “the best boys in the world.” Only one, a mechanic’s apprentice, was old enough to work to supplement his mother’s earnings, and the family needed $670 for necessities (case 55). That same year, the Times presented the case of Janet and Marjorie, two “beautiful little girls” who needed $600 to cover food, clothing, shelter, and all other necessities because their parents had abandoned them. Both had infantile paralysis. The disease had crippled one of the girls, “a blueeyed, black-haired 4-year-old,” and she needed an operation (case 63). Thus “introduced,” the “neediest” were no longer strangers. Readers responding t o their plights sent contributions earmarked for particular cases. The Times thus acted as a direct sympathy broker, an intermediary between particular unfortunates and particular readers. Interestingly, Ochs wrote that personal sympathy was an improper motive for giving money to others. Unworthy characters, con men who preyed upon Christmas season generosity, could easily bamboozle ordinary citizens into helping them. Therefore, he explained, the Times acted together with “scientific” charity workers to handpick needy people who could best benefit from assistance (Atwater and Robboy 1972; see also Loseke and Fawcett 1995). Ochs’s motivation in presenting his hundred worthiest, neediest cases may have been to increase donations to the poor. His editorials seemed to be parrying the excuses for not donating that the social Darwinists among his middle- and upper-class readers were likely to make. He may have believed he could best overcome readers’ resistance by allying himself with professional charity “experts’ ’ and portraying only the direst, most wretched of cases. On the other hand, it is possible that Ochs himself subscribed to the turn-of-the-century philanthropic ideology propounded by the likes of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller (Brown 1979). This philanthropic ideology promoted elitist political and economic philosophies that championed those who ‘‘pulled themselves up by their bootstraps” as much as it promoted helping the needy. Whether Ochs was trying to convince his readers to be more magnanimous or more shrewd and calculating in their almsgiving, he effectively acted as a sympathy middleman, a sympathy entrepreneur par excellence, steering the public’s sympathies as he saw fit. In recent years, the New York Times’s sympathy brokering has become more indirect. Writers for the appeal merely invite readers to donate funds to one of eight charity organizations (e.g., the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New

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York, and the Community Service Society of New York). Today these charities help people similar to the ones described individually in the pages of the Times; each case chosen for print stands for hundreds if not thousands of others. Acting as either a direct or an indirect broker, the Times’s Neediest Cases Appeal has always worked by evoking sympathy. Despite Ochs’s injunctions to his readers not to act on emotions, his appeal writers have from the outset used words and phrases designed to tug a t readers’ heartstrings. To gain a better understanding of how these writers did so, two of my students, Coleen Eisele and Judith Madonia, and I analyzed a sample of 175 cases. First, we randomly chose 25 cases per year from the years 1912 (when the appeal began), 1922, 1932, 1942, 1952, 1962, and 1972. After 1972, the Times no longer listed 100 particular cases, thus our coding could not go beyond that year. W e did, however, collect all the cases for the years 1982 and 1992 and selected cases from other years from 1985 to 1996. W e read them closely t o verify that trends apparent in the coded materials had continued. W e found that, as they told the neediests’ stories, the writers had selected and woven together particular elements of the cases that contributed to their sympathy-worthiness. The stories are so formulaic that the writers might as well have been following a rule book of “routine procedures” (Tuchman 1978) for eliciting sympathy. In the details they included, as well as those left unsaid, the writers embedded an implicit set of criteria for defining legitimate plights. To deconstruct the writers’ formulas, we coded the cases for a total of 5 38 variables. First we coded the characters’ demographic traits, their housing conditions, several dimensions of their plights, and the types of remedies the Times advised for them. Then we coded each story for the presence of one or more of 65 sympathy-evoking words, such as “forlorn,” “pitiful, ” ‘‘tragic,” “wretched,” “inconsolable,’ ’ ‘‘shattered, ’ ’ and “ shivering.” W e also looked for 38 indicators of bad luck-for example, the death of foster parents, accidents or illnesses, cutbacks in government aid, and crime victimization. Finally, we coded for 65 types of descriptions that conveyed the characters’ worth, for instance, “hardworking,” “Girl Scout,” “valiant,” “wants to improve,” and “devoted to family.” In the early years of the century, poverty was the key criterion for inclusion in the Neediest Cases Appeal. All the cases were destitute. They were orphaned children or indigent elderly. They were long-suffering,

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hardworking, thrifty mothers struggling against poverty and disease to rear children alone because of a husband’s death or desertion (never divorce). They lived under “frightful stress and deprivation” in the “dregs of poverty. ’ ’ Some faced ‘ ‘actual starvation. ’ ’ Children were ‘ ‘delicate, ’ ’ ‘frail,’ ’ and “enfeebled.” One early story in the appeal described two children, aged eight and five, whose father had disappeared and was “wanted by the police” and whose mother was “irresponsible and incapable” : Both are thin and undersized. Their color is a sickly pallor. Phillip has enlarged glands. Laura has been suffering from rickets and needs an adenoid and tonsil operation. They are very shy and docile, hardly daring to speak above a whisper and entirely lacking in animation. They have no relatives, and except for their devotion to each other, have been entirely cut off from human sympathy. Kindness and proper care might effect a transformation in them. Amount needed, $600. (Case 86, 10 December 1922) In another large family, the father was “inhumanly brutal” to the children. If these phrases were not enough, the Times printed sketches contributed by Norman Rockwell and other artists of thin, afflicted, desperate cases. Also, headlines cried out for readers’ concern: “Bit Her Nails to Stop Hunger,” “Husband Became Insane,” ‘‘Five Girls and Mother Deserted,” “Tainted with Tuberculosis,” and “Blind Woman’s Pencil Selling.” In editorials, the Times reminded readers of their duty to be compassionate and charitable during the holiday season. Thus, the appeal provided heartrending stories, graphics, and direct admonitions to sympathize. The tone of the appeal has changed but little over the decades. In 1942, “David M.” was described as a “homeless 3-year-old.” His father had deserted the family before David was born, and his mother was responsible for her own invalid mother. “By drudging early and late [Mrs. M.] managed to care for her mother, pay the baby’s board [at a boarding home] and hold on to her dream, until the rising costs of wartime pinched into her wages. . . . Reluctantly, she decided to give up her boy, and her dream, believing others would give him what she could not” (case 18). The same year, the appeal featured forty-year-old Lawrence M., an artist “trying to rebuild a life in which one dream after another has collapsed” (case 100). The 1952 appeal asserted, “It is that vast inner need which sets the Neediest apart. They are the elderly people, ill and bewildered, who have no one to take a sympathetic interest in their problems, . . . They are the unhappy children of disorganized or broken homes about whom nobody

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cares and who are drifting toward delinquency and crime. They are the mothers-and the fathers-struggling alone t o bring up their families, so exhausted from overwork and worry that they are at the point of collapse” (New York Times, 2 1 December 1952). A case selected for the 1962 appeal was that of Donald B., age eighty-five, and Louise B., eighty years old, an invalid for ten years. “Mr. B. was her devoted nurse. He also did the marketing, cooking and cleaning. Then Mr. B. developed a heart ailment. . . . [Hlis condition is growing worse and the doctor says Mr. B. is not going to be able to continue his wife’s care. . . , Funds are asked for the services of a sympathetic counselor who will stand by this stricken couple at this difficult time” (case 3). Other cases that year included the L. family, whose home was pervaded by “an air of bleak futility’’ when Mr. L. became unemployed and his wife overwhelmed with the burden of caring for the nine children (case 47), and Ronald A., twenty-six, “fighting so hard to keep the home going for his wife [in need of surgery] and their four children [one of whom needs an eye operation to save her sight] that he has pushed himself beyond endurance” and needs “guidance until he is again able to stand alone” (case 60). Cases today still face dangerous and debilitating plights-death, mental and physical illness, disability, poverty, unemployment, loneliness, exploitation, and abuse. Furthermore, writers still describe these plights in impassioned terms. In fact, we found that the average number of sympathyevoking words included in the stories increased between 1912 and 1972 (the correlation between number of sympathy words and year is fairly strong: Pearson’s r = -I- 0.47, p < .OOl). A close reading of appeal stories after 1972 suggested that this trend continued. For example, in 1985, Philip Coltoff, executive director of the Children’s Aid Society, wrote in the Times of “[flamilies haunted by hunger, living in housing that is unsafe, dilapidated, devoid of light, heat, water and fit only for the superabundance of rodents that share their wretched quarters” (15 December 1985). A neutral account might have substituted “hungry” for the words “haunted by hunger. ” “Devoid of light, heat, water” could become “without utilities,” and “fit only for the superabundance of rodents” could be phrased “ in need of an exterminator.” “Wretched” could be left out altogether. Nor was Coltoff alone in his sentimentality. That same year Joyce Phillips Austin, of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, described a mother of four who was “warehoused” in a “dank old hotel,” living “in constant fear of her children being bitten by rats” (New York Times, 8 De-

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cember 1985). And a Times newswriter related the story of a five-year-old whose mother had died and who wished “Mommy would come back from Heaven.” The writer noted that the thirty-three-year-old mother, perhaps aware of her impending death, had written in her last Valentine’s Day card to her husband: “Listen for my love, for it lingers from within. Yours forever, Honey” (8 December 1985). In the 1991 season, the appeal spotlighted the case of a recent Russian immigrant family which was “destitute” because the father had been murdered within weeks of their arriving in Brooklyn. It also described an elderly, incapacitated woman “growing old in isolation.” She said she was proud of herself for having paved the way for her children, but their success and their busy lives had left her “ very, very lonesome” (20 January 1992). The 1993 appeal also told of misery and suffering. Slum residents fought rats and “filth that creeps in from the street.” A sixteen-year-old “risk[ed] getting shot as he walk[ed] home” from school and had to lie on his apartment floor during shootings outside to avoid being hit by ricochets. A grieving two-time widower was “haunted by death.” And for a political refugee who had been “haunted” by anti-Semitism in Russia, the “last straw” came when “thugs in Belarus toppled a monument marking [his father’s] grave . . . and spray-painted it with swastikas’’ (5 December 1993). These are very emotional descriptions that beg the reader to sympathize. Furthermore, the appeal has continued to make the connection between the holiday season, sympathy, and aid : Whatever our creed or faith, there is a great need in this season to live it, to open our hearts, to help fill the deep needs of others less fortunate than ourselves. One way is to support the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. (8 December 1985). The examples of the Neediest Cases Appeal and the greeting-card industry illustrate intentional and unintentional attempts to school Westerners in sympathy giving. Many other people and groups also, wittingly or unwittingly, have promoted plights as sympathy-worthy . Long ago muckraking journalists such as Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair and the naturalist novelists, including Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser , urged sympathy for the classes of people maltreated in the new industrial order. Today, television talk shows expose private lives and tortured existences, sometimes inviting us to sympathize with incest victims, abused women, the overweight, and even various criminals-and this is just one day’s agenda for one New York show. Bumper stickers, such as three I observed recently

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on a red Saab that passed me on the highway, counsel other motorists on sympathy for animals: “Compassion’s in Fashion: 0 Fur,” “Liberate Laboratory Animals,” and “Respect Animals, Don’t Eat Them.” Even sociologists promote sympathy by describing the lives of the poor, the stigmatized, and the oppressed and the social forces shaping their lives. Other sympathy entrepreneurs include religious leaders, social movement activists, civil rights leaders, social workers, novelists, journalists, photographers, filmmakers and television producers, songwriters, physicians, members of the gay community urging sympathy for AIDS victims, psychologists, and politicians. These sympathy entrepreneurs are often competing with each other to capture the public’s imagination, manage their sentiments, and perhaps make money. Of course, there is no guarantee that sizable portions of the public will adopt the views that particular sympathy entrepreneurs set forth. In the current debate over abortion, for example, some follow sympathy entrepreneurs who side with the unborn, and some follow those who side with the woman experiencing an unwanted pregnancy. If sympathy entrepreneurs are to be effective, they must try to be compelling. Being compelling means evoking the public’s emotion. Most organized charities, for example, hire advertising firms to put across their messages. Doing this emotional labor, advertisers have created now-familiar images that pervade the culture, some captured in heartrending photographs: the Easter Seal ‘‘poster child,” bedraggled dogs and cats scheduled for destruction (one such poster reads: “Young, Injured, Abandoned. Please Help”), and the homeless woman bundled in layers of old clothes, pushing all her possessions through the city streets in a shopping cart. Thus, a special category of social actor serves as sympathy entrepreneurs, generating and shaping images to evoke our compassion. As they have reinforced the existing sympathy logic and stretched it in new, humanistic directions, they have helped institutionalize specific plights. Looking at the particular plights they have promoted gives us some valuable insights into American culture.

Plights W e can trace many ideas about which plights are bad enough to warrant sympathy to religious origins and specifically to that most enduring of advice books, the Bible. The prophets, Jesus, the disciples, and other biblical figures were sympathy entrepreneurs, eliciting both public wrath for those

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who harmed others and sympathy for the victims of misfortune. However, much has changed in the ensuing centuries. Westerners have experienced extraordinary increases in levels of comfort, health, safety, education, governmental protection, and leisure. For all the holes that exist in our societal safety nets, only the most abject of today’s poor experience anything akin to the everyday living conditions people tolerated two thousand or five hundred, or even one hundred years ago. Yet sympathy is more common, not less so. Through the centuries, sympathy entrepreneurs have pressed for new grounds for sympathy giving, and the public has taken up many of them. When we compare the religious teachings of the Old Testament with those of the New Testament, we find evidence of new trends in sympathy logic. The Old Testament urged concern for people in a limited number of plights. King Lemuel, for instance, ordered his followers to feel and show compassion and altruism toward people facing a number of different circumstances : Give strong drink to one who is perishing,

and wine to the sorely depressed; When they drink, they will forget their misery, and think no more of their burdens. Open your mouth in behalf of the dumb, and for the rights of the destitute; Open your mouth, decree what is just, defend the needy and the poor! (Prov. 31:6-9 New American Bible) These plights-death, illness, oppression, and poverty-remain at the core of grounds for sympathy today, but more have been added. In the New Testament, Jesus repeated the exhortation to pity people who have suffered a lack of health or wealth, but he added sinners to the list. For example, lepers (formerly thought to be immoral people upon whom God visited the disfiguring condition) and prostitutes were due compassion. In Jesus’ view, sinners were not to be condemned simply because they had fallen in with bad company, succumbed to the devil, or failed to “see the light” in the past. His teachings were pleas to avoid labeling people as deviant and thereby to avoid placing them outside the community’s moral boundary. Thus, the eye-for-an-eye philosophy of the Old Testament gave ground to a more compassionate worldview.

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Modern-day sympathy entrepreneurs are still impressing on us the sympathy-worthiness of centuries-old problems. They have also widened the boundaries of these plights to include more of their minor aspects. For example, the death of a friend or acquaintance outside one’s inner circle of intimates may warrant sympathy today. Psychologists have encouraged concern for schoolchildren who hear from the media about wars and disasters or whose classmates or teachers die or suffer serious illnesses; thus, grief counseling has been added to the school’s tasks. Also, poverty and deprivation are much more broadly defined today, and politicians can make election-day hay urging sympathy (and perhaps self-pity) for the middle classes. Civil rights groups have expanded conceptions of oppression and injustice beyond slavery and genocide to include everyday affronts and slights as well. By and large, sympathy entrepreneurs have subtly shifted the sympathy grounds from the plights themselves and the physical suffering they may entail to people’s emotional suffering. Adam Smith said as much in the eighteenth century: “We sympathize with the fear, though not with the agony, of the sufferer” ([ 17591 1853, 36). As the self has increased in importance, people’s inner sentiments have come to matter more. Painful feelings such as despair, sadness, fear, humiliation, loneliness, and even guilt are important and sympathy-worthy, perhaps even more so than bodily pains and material plights. Modern sympathy entrepreneurs have also taken up the causes of old situations newly interpreted as plights. Many of these plights have to do with notions of cruelty. For example, since the Enlightenment, legal reformers have slowly but surely convinced the public that convicted criminals subjected to “cruel and unusual punishment” should get sympathy. For centuries prisoners were summarily crucified, drawn and quartered, dismembered, or tortured with little thought for the inhumaneness of such actions. Nowadays we extend sympathy even to those who have trespassed against society. Following a similar logic, others have urged sympathy for animals treated cruelly (a previously unthinkable notion but now a sympathy commonly inculcated in children via books such as Black Beauty and L a d ) and for abused children. Children beaten by their parents, patrons, or employers did not receive much sympathy until the nineteenth century (Gordon 1978; Ari& 1962; Zelizer 1985). The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, modeled on the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, began a moral campaign for children’s rights and an expansion of

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the definition of what constitutes cruelty and abuse. More recently, pediatricians and radiologists have entered this moral arena (Conrad and Schneider 1980: 163-66). Today, of course, child abuse evokes enormous public concern. Also until recently woman battering was considered within normal bounds and attracted little sympathy unless it was “extreme.” Today, feminists and the battered-women’s movement have succeeded in persuading the public (and police officers) to regard as abuse non-life-threatening and repetitive acts of brutality and have expanded the category to include verbal abuse and mental cruelty as well (Loseke 1992; Mills and Kleinman 1988). The media have also taken up this issue, for instance in the made-for-TV movie The Burning Bed, in which a battered wife retaliates by killing her husband, an act today’s audiences applaud. And a 1994 network news program sympathetically portrayed a group of women, known as the Framingham Eight, sentenced to a Massachusetts prison for killing their abusive husbands or boyfriends (see New York Times, 20 July 1994). Increasingly, as in the widely reported case of Lorena Bobbitt, who castrated her abusive husband, today’s juries are sympathizing with abused wives who strike back, finding them not guilty (New York Times, 22 January 1994). Going further, sympathy entrepreneurs have also pointed out many distinctly modern difficulties that merit sympathy-stress, identity crises, bureaucratic red tape, the higher risk of crime victimization, isolation in old age, the rising divorce rate, and the shifting arrangements of broken or “reconstituted” families. For instance, one contemporary problem receiving attention from feminists and sociologists is the working wife and mother’s “second shift,” her extra burden of household labor (see, e.g., Hochschild 1989). Though today’s wife and mother may put in fewer hours at backbreaking tasks than women did a century or more ago, she spends much more time on the second shift than does her husband. Compared to him, she is overworked, and as Hochschild found, her feelings are hurt by it. Besides sociologists and feminists, the popular press has also taken up her cause, as has Hallmark, which markets greeting cards offering sympathy for the modern woman often pictured as frazzled or collapsed amid the chaos in her (not her husband’s) house. In the Neediest Cases Appeal also, new grounds for sympathy have been added over the years. Whereas poverty was the key plight in the beginning years, new problems began appearing in the 1940s and 1950s, such as loneliness, grief, anti-Semitism, and urban dangers. Not until the

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1970s did alcoholics and people “suffering from” addictions and mental illnesses begin to appear in the rosters of the neediest cases. Changing suggestions for how to aid the neediest also reflect conceptions of plights. In the early years, all cases needed money. Yet by 1952, with Social Security and governmental public assistance programs in operation, the New York Times recommended money for only one of the twenty-five cases in our sample. In the 1962 and 1972 cases, we found no recommendations of money. Instead, writers pushed for job training, job placement, and budget planning. Midcentury appeals also saw increasing endorsements for psychological counseling, including intense therapy, grief counseling, and substance-abuse counseling. Occasionally writers also suggested that a case needed “understanding” or advice. Implicit in these more recent suggestions for aid is the idea that poverty is not a unidimensional, easily solved problem-and that perhaps it is not even the most important problem people could face. The underlying logic for reframing cruelty, abuse, injustice, and other age-old conditions as sympathy-worthy, and the logic behind sympathizing with the newly recognized problematic situations, is the logic of individual importance, or humanism. Abetted by the New Testament and the forces of modernism-population growth, urbanization, industrialization, and a vastly fractionated division of labor-humanistic trends have continued over the past two thousand years, inclining us t o look upon more and more situations as bad for the individual. Two humanistic trends that have colored our notions of badness are changing views of the self and the concomitant rise in the importance of individuals’ emotions. With respect to changing views of the self, Emile Durkheim maintained that the remarkable splintering of the division of labor that accompanied the transition from traditional t o modern society produced individuation, a lessening of the degree to which society envelops the individual ([ 19331 1964, 297). Adding to this observation, Erving Goffman argued that the rise of individualism has led to the equivalent of a “civil religion” in which the self is central, possessing “a small patrimony of sacredness” (1971, 63). We have expanded individual rights greatly and extended them to more categories of people. Our everyday rituals and ceremonies-from forms of greeting and leave-taking to respecting each other’s social spaceexalt individual privacy, self-determination, self-realization, and the self in general (Goffman 1967). We even have a magazine called SelJ In most premodern societies people do not conceive of the individual as having a

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self separate from family and community, but in America today we can hardly think of people without their unique egos, personalities, or selfconcepts (see, e.g., Elias [1939] 1978, 245-52). The self is important, often more important than custom, duty, and obligation t o others. What is more, the self is fragile. It may be that the fragmented, fastpaced, media-driven lifestyle of the postmodern era is hazardous to the self, generating high levels of uncertainty, self-doubt, depression (Karp 1996, 6, 10-1 l ) , and “ontological insecurity” (Giddens 1984, 62). It appears that, while citizens of earlier eras were articulated into society via the family and other primary groups, today’s citizen more often faces society on his or her own. In the context of the increased importance and possibly increased fragility of the self, sympathy entrepreneurs have been able to direct our sympathies toward cases in which individuals’ rights are abridged or elements of self are threatened. Many situations newly interpreted as plights are of this variety. W e can find evidence of the rising importance of the individual in the Neediest Cases Appeal. In the early years of the appeal, the New York Times framed cases in familial terms, usually asking for funds to keep families together (see also Atwater and Robboy 1972), whereas in later years the appeal also requested funds for interventions to aid individuals. A second trend relates to the first. The escalating individuation and individualism Durkheim and Goffman described have colored our approach to emotionality. Premodern societies differ from modern societies in the amount of attention accorded to individuals’ emotions. When the individual was not as important as the community, individuals’ emotions were not very important. In complex societies, in contrast, the individual’s “psychic life” is freer to develop on its own, separate from the “collective personality” (Durkheim [ 19331 1964, 345-48). Not only do social actors develop inner, psychic lives, they also deem these inner lives important and valuable (Gagnon 1992; Elias [1939] 1978). W e believe that people’s innermost feelings motivate their behavior and that this is as it should bepeople should pay attention to their emotions and (to some degree) follow them. Thus we believe people should pursue happiness, marry for love, and protest that which provokes their righteous indignation. Having fun and feeling good are duties, not cause for guilt. In contrast to the Puritans, who expected parents to ignore their children’s emotional well-being in favor of building character and enforcing codes of propriety (Gordon 1978, 131-35), we expect today’s parents to empathize with their children’s

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painful emotions and attempt to instill positive emotions. One such positive emotion is pride-once considered a deadly sin. Many emotions disapproved of in the Middle Ages or distrusted by the Puritans have become acceptable in postindustrial societies. Of Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Seven Deadly Sins, we still discourage the behavioral sins of sloth and gluttony, but we often excuse, justify, and even cater t o the mental states of pride, envy, covetousness, anger, and lust. Paradoxically, the more important a society considers emotions, the more it may require emotion management or “affect control” (Elias [1939] 1978). First of all, the greater the freedom individuals have to develop their own inner, psychic lives, the greater the societal concern over keeping mental life within bounds. Also, as Norbert Elias illustrated in his history of manners, the evolution of “civility” and “courtesy” (e.g., refraining from replacing gnawed bones back in the communal bowl and spitting or blowing one’s nose at the table) reflected an increased concern for others’ sensibilities ([1939] 1978). In the interest of not causing others emotional distress, civility calls for keeping many of one’s own emotions private. But privatization does not mean emotions are insignificant. O n the contrary, we have come to see people’s emotions as valuable windows on their “authentic” or “true” selves. Our private emotions are so important that many contemporary citizens spend a great deal of time and money (their own or insurance companies’) to visit therapists who help them deal appropriately with their emotions. Thus, modern societies have simultaneously privatized and capitalized emotions. In this new emotional culture, both the emotions people direct toward themselves (e.g., pride, shame, loneliness, fear, and sadness) and those they direct toward others (e.g., awe, hate, gratitude, and sympathy) carry more weight than they used to do. Emotional ties between people have become more important, and gifts of sympathy more valuable. Because of these trends, the grounds for sympathy in modern societies encompass a wider range of painful emotions and emotional complexes, such as “adolescent identity crisis,” “burnout,” and “midlife crisis.” For example, the theme of a case in the 1991 Neediest Cases Appeal was self-emotions. A quadriplegic girl, living with her mother and siblings in a cramped slum apartment, dreamed of returning to an expensive summer camp for handicapped children where the previous year she felt her self-esteem rise for the first time in her life. Recall also Donald and Louise B . , the elderly couple in the 1962 appeal described as needing “sympathetic counseling”

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to help them with the psychological pain of failing health, confinement to a nursing home, and impending death. One of my respondents went so far as to state that she felt sympathy for anyone, man or woman, who was unhappy, whatever the plight: “It doesn’t have t o be something that makes me unhappy. Whatever makes them unhappy” (interview; white forty-fouryear-old divorced woman, clerical worker). Thus, contemporary Americans’ sympathy logic permits many more legitimate grounds for getting sympathy than our ancestors’ sympathy logic did, and sympathy giving is a more important part of everyday interaction. Although life is in many ways easier and safer than ever before, many problems that once would have been considered trivial are now considered bad. However, without the element of fate or luck, the direst of plights may not elicit sympathy. Luck plays a key role in our sympathy logic.

Luck versus Responsibility The language Americans use to talk about problems places them either in the realm of inevitability, chance, fate, and luck or in the realm of intentionality, responsibility, and blame (see also Wuthnow 1987). Although some problems, appearing to involve a mix of both luck and responsibility, are hard for onlookers to classify, people tend to perceive others’ problems as falling closer to one end or the other of a luck-responsibility continuum. (Of course, we should bear in mind that because many of us engage in black-and-white thinking, our perceptions and attributions do not always accord with “reality.”) O n one end of the continuum, a blomeless problem is one that fate, the “system,” or another person causes. W e view the individual who experiences a blameless problem more as acted upon than as an actor. W e say a blameless problem “plagues,” “befalls,” “besieges,” “ails,” or “happens to” a social actor. For instance, my respondents described a marriage that “turned out bad,” an illness that “struck,” and a relative’s firing from her job that “hit her like a ton of bricks.” In the words of the Neediest Cases Appeal, people are “haunted” by death, anti-Semitism, and hunger, or they are “victims” of neglect and urban decay. A person perceived to be a victim is highly sympathy-worthy. In contrast, at the other end of the continuum, describing a blameworthy problem, people say the actor “makes” him or herself sick, “amasses” debts, or “gathers” problems. A person “gets into” or “asks for” trouble, perhaps by taking risks.

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The sympathy a person feels is contingent on where on the luckresponsibility continuum he or she assigns the other’s problem. If one person believes the other has acted intentionally or failed to fend off, guard against, or even foresee a problem, he o r she owes the other less sympathy. For example, a young divorced WASP man noted, “If someone goes sluing and breaks a leg, I ask you, how much sympathy can you feel?” (field notes). Similarly, a blind divorced white psychotherapist in his late forties was unsparing in his interpretation of attorney Anita Hill, who accused Supreme Court justice nominee Clarence Thomas of having previously harassed her sexually:

I felt sorry for Clarence Thomas. I felt that the whole dung was bizarre. I felt that he was being railroaded by somebody who was out for her own gain and who presented herself as a victim but who really made a choice [to put up with Thomas’s sexual comments]. By implying that she didn’t make a choice, she gave up a lot of her power. I didn’t feel sorry for her, but I did feel sorry for him. Not that I thought he should have been a Supreme Court justice, but because the whole dung got out of control. (Interview)

The respondent felt no sympathy for Hill because she had “made a choice.” His sympathies went with Thomas, whom he viewed as an unlucky victim. In their appeals for the public’s sympathies, sympathy entrepreneurs and brokers often emphasize the element of luck. For example, many blues songs make the luck theme explicit, as did “bad luck child” Bill Broonzy. Another blues song complains, “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all,” Also, to increase public sympathy for AIDS patients, fundraisers and public health workers have tried to counteract a common focus on drug users’ and gay men’s “risky” behavior. By shifting attention t o people who need blood transfusions, spouses of AIDS sufferers, and babies born to AIDS-infected mothers, they emphasize that the condition could strike “ordinary, innocent” people (Conrad 1986). The Times’s Neediest Cases Appeal also stresses luck in many of its stories. For instance, in the 1912 appeal, Mrs. A. and her daughter, once in “luxurious circumstances,” were forced t o sell “every remnant of their former plenty” because Mr. A. had died and left them penniless (case 30). Also in that year, a mother of five girls was forced t o leave her job because the children had contracted mumps and the house was under quarantine for weeks (case 35). In the 1922 appeal, a carpenter, “fell over unconscious at his work’’ (case 85), and “six children were always well clothed and

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Table 5 Mean Number of Words Indicating Case Characters’ “Luck” by Year, New York Timer Neediest Cases Appeal (N = 175)

Year

Mean n “Luck” Words Der Case

Standard Deviation

n Cases

1912

1.20

0.76

25

1922

1.76

0.88

25

1932

1.84

1.11

25

1942

2.08

1.04

25

1952

2.76

1.33

25

1962

2.20

1.19

25

1972

3.24

1.51

25

fed until two years ago, when the father was struck down by a falling derrick. . . . He may never be able to work again” (case 80). In 1972, eight-year-old Jackie was “born deaf and retarded,” and sixty-year-old Jennie T., providing care for her widowed father, “slipped on the ice and broke her hip.” The implication in all these cases is that when bad luck befalls worthy people, we owe them sympathy. Through the century, as table 5 shows, the Neediest Cases Appeal’s references to factors we consider indicative of “luck” have actually risen steadily (the correlation between the number of “luck” words and year 0.44, p < .OOl). Whereas early writers menis sizable: Pearson’s r = tioned injuries, malnutrition, and physical and mental illnesses as reasons f o r poverv, later writers presented illnesses as grounds for readers’ sympathy in and of themselves. Writers have increasingly attributed problems to aspects of the entire social structure such as the economy, government programs, and job markets. Also, victimization and abuse have become much more common themes. I also found evidence for the connection between luck and sympathy in my survey data. Recall that each of the 1,177 adults and 60 children in the survey read one of four vignettes, each of which pictured a “bad” situation: the Browns lost their home and possessions in a hurricane (all of the children received this vignette); a woman was assaulted and left for

+

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FRAMING EVENTS AS BAD LUCK

dead; a law student began drinking and failing in school, thus threatening his/her marriage; and a grocery store employee was caught stealing. The degree of luck versus responsibility varied from story to story. (Although, as I mentioned earlier, I varied one or more of the background characteristics of the vignette characters to form different versions of the vignettes, for the present discussion I am grouping the data by major vignette type only.) At one extreme, the hurricane victims were least able to control their predicament. The woman who was assaulted and the spouse who developed drinking problems represented increasingly higher levels of possible control over their situations. At the other end of the responsibility continuum, the employee who stole an overshipment of chickens was the most culpable. The more the plight involved luck, the more sympathetic the respondents’ reactions. As the characters’ own actions became more central to their problems, the proportion of respondents who felt “somewhat sorry” or “extremely sorry” steadily decreased. As table 6 shows, all of the children and 89 percent of the adults reading the hurricane vignette were at

Table 6

Percentage Distribution of Sympathy Scores for Vignette Characters (N = 1,235)

Hurricane

Assault Vignette

Vignette (%)

(56)

Problem Drinker Vignette

(3

Employee Theft Vignette

(3

Under age

Over age

0

10

12

43

so

0

1

3

0

3

28 5

34

38

16

10

38 0

41 1

Extremely sorry

67

39

38

20

S

Total

n = 60

n = 226

n = 346

n = 274

n = 329

18 (%)

N o t sorry a t all

Somewhat sony

18 (%)

Over age 18 (%)

Note: In the original surveys, the only reference points listed on the continuum were

“Not sorry at all,” “Somewhat sorry,” and “Extremely sorry.” Some respondents checked areas on the continuum between these points. Percentages do not always total 100 percent because of rounding.

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least somewhat sorry for the main characters, as were 86 percent of those who received the assault vignette, 58 percent of those with the problem drinker vignette, and 47 percent of those with the employee theft vignette. Interestingly, though, even the thief rated sympathy almost half of the time. The respondents’ written comments showed even more clearly the significance of luck. Those who did not sympathize focused on the characters’ actions or negligence and minimized the part luck played. For instance: They were stupid to buy a house in a storm zone. (Hurricane vignette; bank officer, thirty-seven-year-old married man of Eastern European descent) She probably led the guy on, maybe dressed provocatively. She was probably looking for action-and found it. She deserves everything she got. (Assault vignette; insurance salesman in his fifties, white)

I can’t feel sorry for someone who keeps drinking when he sees that his life is going down the drain, (Problem drinker vignette; divorced white secretary in her mid-thirties)

This person was stealing and cheating both the store and the distributor. Therefore, why feel sorry for him? (Employee theft vignette; elderly white widow, retired nurse) For the unsympathetic, then, responsibility was the most critical issue. In contrast, those who did sympathize tended to ignore the characters’ responsibility and emphasize either luck or loss: The Browns were innocent victims of nature. (Hurricane vignette; Jewish man, married, thirty-six-year-old prosecutor)

No matter how careful one is in the city, the possibility of being attacked always exists. (Assault vignette; twenty-three-year-old single Italian American woman, auditor) He had everything to look forward to, and now his marriage and his career are about to be ruined. (Problem drinker vignette; middle-aged married white woman, secretary) Everyone does it, but this poor guy just got caught. (Employee theft vignette; nineteen-year-old single male, African American college student)

F R A M I N G EVENTS AS BAD L U C K

I05

Most of the plights people experience in everyday life are multifaceted, involving a mix of luck and responsibility. They also vary in severity. Thus, observers may be ambivalent. At the least, they must weigh responsibility against luck and against severity. Some of my ambivalent survey respondents who ultimately sympathized explained that the severity of the problem outweighed the characters’ culpability (e.g., “She probably shouldn’t have talked to the guy in the bar, but no one deserves to be beaten” and “He shouldn’t have stolen the chickens, but his family must have needed them badly”). Another tack was to locate responsibility for the plight elsewhere (e.g., “He shouldn’t be drinking, but his father was putting a lot of pressure on him”). O n the other hand, ambivalent respondents who concluded that sympathy was not in order sometimes viewed the plight as not so bad (e.g., I < The Browns lost all their possessions, but their family was drawn closer together”). More commonly, those who in the end were unsympathetic believed the characters got what they deserved (e.g., “It’s terrible what she [the assault victim] went through, but she probably led him on”). Some of the nonsympathizers took perceptual shortcuts (Ichheiser 1970). For example, people appraising a troubled individual could view the person and his or her plight through the distorted lens of a cultural stereotype 1‘ (e.g., She [the supermarket employee] is a lower-class person, and the lower classes do not want to work; therefore, losing her job is her own fault”). They could project their own thoughts, feelings, and motives onto the other (e.g., “I would not worry in a situation like that, so the father should not be worried; the situation is not serious”). In many cases, the fact that an individual is a victim of bad luck is enough t o reduce that person’s worth in the onlooker’s eyes (e.g., “She was assaulted, but she was probably a hooker”). This last type of perceptual shortcut was described in chapter 2 as “belief in a just world.” To counteract “belief in a just world,” sympathy brokers may stress a sympathizee’s worth. For instance, to contribute to the neediests cases’ sympathy-worthiness, New York Times writers have emphasized four key characteristics that point to worth. Of the cases and stories included in our sample, some mentioned no “worth” words; the highest number of occurrences was twelve. The most commonly and consistently mentioned characteristic throughout the century has been devotion to family. The second most common theme has been industriousness (e.g., the cases “had always worked,” “wanted to work,’’ or were “hardworking”). Third was

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Table 7 Mean Number of Words Indicating Case Characters’ “Worth” by Year, New York Times Neediest Cases Avveal (N = 175)

Year

Mean n “Worth” Words per Case

Standard Deviation

n Cases

1912

2.96

1.10

25

1922

3.08

1.73

25

1932

4.20

1.66

25

1942

4.40

1.94

25

1952

3.64

2.38

25

1962

2.52

2.00

25

1972

3.28

3.17

25

determination to overcome one’s problems (e.g., “undaunted,” “indomitable,” “brave,” and “a fighter”). Fourth was lack of sin, a theme especially emphasized in the early years (e.g., the characters avoided drinking, divorce, and frivolity). Two trends are evident in table 7, which shows the mean number of “worth” words mentioned in each year. First, references to worth followed a curvilinear pattern. Indicators of worth were less frequent in the earliest appeals (191 2 and 1922) and again in more recent appeals (1962 and 1972). Worth was stressed most often in the middle years between 1932 and 1952. Second, and perhaps more telling, the steadily increasing standard deviations indicate that as the decades went by, the stories were less uniform in the number of times they referred to worth. That is, early stories seemed to make brief, obligatory references to worth. Recent stories were more likely than those in the early years to stress worth either greatly or not at all. This difference suggests that in later decades the cases could elicit public sympathy because they were unlucky, or worthy, or in great need. The data from my surveys and interviews suggested that weighing responsibility or unluckiness is a judgmental task that adults are more ready to engage in than children are. The children in my survey responding to the hurricane vignette focused almost exclusively on the “badness” issues of loss and danger. Adults responding so strongly and nonjudgmentally

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might be seen as emotional deviants. Unlike adults, the vast majority of the children did not consider how blameworthy the Browns might have been but explained their reactions in terms of the concrete facts of loss. They were concerned that the Browns “have nowhere to live, and on top of that they have children to worry about” (white fourteen-year-old boy), that ‘‘they lost all their possessions’’ (twelve-year-old Hispanic girl), o r that ‘‘one of them could’ve gotten killed” (thirteen-year-old African American girl). Indeed, none of the children even commented on the risks the Browns had taken when they bought a beach house. Similarly, in Bernard Goldstein and Jack Oldham’s study of children’s perceptions of work, the children were more sympathetic toward unemployed and striking workers than adults were (1 979, 57-58). These findings suggest that children are taught t o temper their emotional reaction to others to include the responsibility factor. They learn their culture’s precepts for when to laugh at other’s problems and when to cry: we owe fewer tears when actors are responsible for their plights. Television programs, children’s literature, and other popular media brim with messages about the luck / responsibility dichotomy. One variety of humor involves playing with this distinction. For example, for almost half a century I Love Lucy viewers have roared along with the laugh track at Lucy and Ethel, and sometimes at Ricky and Fred, architects of their own misfortunes. Authors of children’s literature such as Kenneth Grahame describe the antics of bungling, imprudent, or simple characters, like Toad in The Wind in the Willows, who get themselves into trouble but do not understand how they have done so. Tongue in cheek, Grahame compares Toad’s ever more troubled life with “the days before misfortunefell upon him” (1933, 176; emphasis added), inviting young readers to chuckle at Toad’s witlessness in believing that he had not brought on his troubles himself. Readers learn to moderate their sympathy for complicit characters such as Toad. Through such humor, the popular culture also imparts lessons about taking responsibility for one’s own behavior. Although our literature and media help preserve and pass on conceptions of luck, several recent trends, stemming in large part from modern science (including the social sciences), have altered these conceptions in complicated ways. New conceptual models from scientific professions permit us to view more people as blameless rather than blameworthy, but other new models affix blame on some people formerly considered “innocents.” Let us look more closely at these new ideas. First, as religious doctrines have declined, medical and psychothera-

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peutic precepts have provided new models (and a more sympathetic view) of behavior formerly construed as deviance that merited ostracism or punishment (Conrad and Schneider 1980; Freidson 1970; Illich 1976). Since World War 11, a variety of behaviors such as drinking alcoholic beverages, children’s hyperactivity, eating disorders, learning disabilities, and addictions have come to be defined as illnesses (in DSM-III, the third edition of the government-sponsored Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) rather than sins, failings, or illegal acts, Framed as “sick,” people who in previous eras might have found themselves excommunicated from religious bodies or locked up in jail normally evoke more sympathetic treatment, often a t the hands of medical workers rather than church elders or judges (Conrad and Schneider 1980). In this regard, in a study of residents of a battered women’s shelter, Ferraro and Johnson (1983) found that some abuse victims used a medical construction that allowed them to sympathize with their violent partners. Especially in the early stages of battering relationships, women often described their mates as charming, charismatic, and lovable but “destroyed by disease” such as alcoholism or mental illness. In one woman’s words, “I thought I was going to be Florence Nightingale. He had so much potential; I could see how good he really was, and I was going to ‘save’ him. . . . I never criticized him, because he needed my approval” (Ferraro and Johnson 1983, 329). This Florence Nightingale felt sorry for and protected her “sick” husband, at great personal expense. To be sure, illness labels can be stigmatizing and modern medical treatments for behavioral conditions-primarily drugs and psychotherapyconstitute efforts a t social control (Freidson 1970; Fibrega 1974). But we undertake medical interventions with the view that the sick person is a victim, not a perpetrator, acted upon rather than a responsible, culpable actor. Recent controversy over adding to the DSM-IV three new psychiatric disorders-masochism, or “self-defeating personality disorder” ; rape; and premenstrual syndrome-points out the power of a medical label. Opponents of the additions have argued that the first two designations would promote sympathy (and form the basis for legal defenses) for womanbatterers and rapists, while the last would stigmatize women with menstrual problems (New York Times, 19 November 1985). These opponents appear to be arguing that illness labels work differently depending on the gender of the person being labeled. Illness categories occupied primarily by men confer reprieve, while categories applied chiefly to women underscore weakness.

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109

The new medical models are finding their way into the popular media and into “common sense” (see, e.g., Reverby 1972; Room 1975). Earlier in this century, the New York Times’s annual listings of the one hundred neediest cases never presented a sympathetic view of a person who drank or used drugs. Recent appeals, however, have featured a heroin-addicted, sometimes abusive mother and a man whose problems stemmed from alcohol and drug use (New York Times, 5 December 1993). Occupational groups such as social workers, psychologists, and probation officers, attempting to borrow status from the medical profession (Chalfant 1977), have adopted and adapted medical models, helping spread them more widely throughout the society. So too have many of the “twelve-step’’ programs, modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous, which frame their members as victims of substances or inner demons, in need of constant monitoring. The number of such programs has grown remarkably in the past few decades, now including Alanon (for relatives of problem drinkers), Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, and dozens of others. An estimated 15 million Americans attend weekly support groups for addictions and abuses (Hirshey 1995:24: see also Wuthnow 1994 for an analysis of support groups). As a result, the number of sympathy-worthy plights has mushroomed. Responding to this development, Hallmark, whose researchers estimated the number of family members and friends of people “in recovery” at 100 million in 1989 (Hirshey 1995, 24), has begun marketing a line of recovery cards offering ‘‘Support and Encouragement’’ for people struggling to overcome these new maladies. A t the same time, however, the medical profession has also introduced new standards of responsibility that serve to shrink the realm of luck. Medical research has identified many risk factors associated with certain “lifestyle’’ behaviors such as smoking, drinking, using addictive drugs, eating fatty foods, being overweight, failing to exercise, failing to wear seat belts and bicycle helmets, and many more. These highly publicized findings have encouraged widespread admiration for the cautious who follow “responsible” lifestyles and equally widespread condemnation of those who do not (Glassner 1988). Because so many risk factors have been identified, leading a responsible life is difficult. Humorists have noted that the morally correct modern citizen could spend most of his or her waking hours jogging, working out at the health spa, keeping track of sports equipment and bicycle helmets, bathing, brushing and flossing teeth, reading labels to determine if foods include carcinogens or other health hazards, attending therapy sessions to

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overcome dangerous addictions, buckling and unbuckling seat belts, keeping up with the reports of what is and is not healthy, and cooking lowfat, low-salt, low-calorie, low-meat meals. Humorous comments aside, in the United States-where Puritan influence lingers-one’s reputation may depend on complying with the new fitness codes. What is more, media-circulated standards of attractiveness reinforce the concern with ‘ ‘fitness.” This trend toward the medicalization of deviance is perhaps a continuation of views propounded by early philanthropic robber barons. E . Richard Brown (1979) argued that the industrialists who financed and promoted the professional dominance of allopathic medicine at the begmning of the twentieth century sought to sell the public on the idea that the individual’s health was of paramount importance, more important than events transpiring a t the societal level. A populace caught up in concern over health, they reasoned, would have less time and attention for questioning the existing class system and challenging the status quo. In the early decades of this century, when allopathic physicians were discovering spectacular cures for acute conditions by applying the germ theory of disease, the “correct” approach was to trust one’s health to medical practitioners (Parsons 1951). As the limits of germ theory have become apparent and cures for chronic conditions continue to be remote, the medical profession has turned attention increasingly to fitness and the patient’s responsibility to prevent illness. The emphasis on health has shifted slightly to a fixation on one’s own body (Glassner 1988). These countervailing trends have made for a certain amount of confusion and ambivalence toward people whose plights result from their engagement in unhealthy behaviors. In previous eras, heart attack victims would have been thoroughly sympathetic characters while heavy drinkers were outcasts. Today, heart attack victims who are overweight, sedentary, smokers, and/or drinkers may be viewed with a certain amount of indifference if not disdain because their malady is no longer understood as primarily a matter of luck. But drinkers may warrant more sympathy today. For example, one story in the 1993 Neediest Cases Appeal features someone the Times calls “Raymond Lopez,” a man undergoing the “slow, often fragile process called ‘double recovery.’ ” As a teenager, Mr. Lopez “had already begun a slide into alcoholism,” combined with gambling and organizing gang activities. “He also suffered from bouts of manic depression.” As the newswriter constructed the story, Mr. Lopez did not “drink,” rather,

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111

he “slid into alcoholism.” His antisocial behavior was something he “suffered from,” as he suffered from “mental illness” (New York Times, 5 December 1993). It seems likely that many citizens today would have little sympathy for Raymond Lopez if it were not for the sympathetic “spin” which the medicalized view of his behavior permits. Medicine and psychology are not the only professions to influence modern conceptions of bad luck. An understanding of the part social structures play in generating some of the personal troubles people face is also finding its way into the common consciousness. Sociologists, aided by economists, political scientists, urban planners, and social workers, have promoted this macrolevel standpoint. As Howard Becker (1 967) noted several decades ago, sociologists have tended to identify with the “underdog.” This is especially true of those who have followed the theories of Marx and Engels (Marx 1956), C. Wright Mills (1956), and other conflict theorists. By bracketing official versions of reality and crediting the accounts of underlings and the “unrespectable” (Berger 1963), sociologists have been able to document ways in which racism, the class structure, patriarchy, the legal system, the mass media, and other systemic societal features circumscribe individuals’ life chances. These views remove some blame from individuals for their plights and attribute responsibility to modern-day equivalents of fate: ‘‘self-fulfilling prophecies’ ’ (Merton 1957) and the “opportunity structure’’ (Cloward and Ohlin 1960, 175-77). For instance, one of my respondents, a divorced forty-nine-year-old WASP administrative assistant, invoked sociological concepts to explain her sympathy for a co-worker: He comes from a European macho background. He’s got a violent temper and he flies off the handle. Then I will fly off the handle and then try to remember this is a man who has to earn a living, has a wife, and that he’s on!, a product OJ his upbringing and his role models, and that’s the way men are supposed to act. . . . So I usually try to take his side when people are talking about how rotten he is. I think I feel sorry for him because he has such a narrow view. He doesn’t know how to handle anything except one way: you’re either happy or you’re blowing your stack. (Interview; emphasis added)

The more we view a person as a victim of impersonal systems, inexorable processes, or a blocked opportunity structure, the less their personal culpability, the greater the element of impersonal luck, and the more likely we are to sympathize.

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Sociologists are wont to lament the public’s disregard of structural views, and indeed Americans have been prone to take an individualistic, psychological stance when judging others’ situations. However, as more and more Americans are exposed to higher education where subjects such as sociology, economics, and political science are taught, they increasingly encounter structural analyses of individuals’ plights. There is evidence that the message is taking hold in some quarters. Again, the Times’s Neediest Cases Appeal provides examples. In a 1985 story, Philip Coltoff, executive director of the Children’s Aid Society, explained that teenagers can be “confused by the pressures that make them vulnerable t o drug and alcohol abuse, accidents and suicides, venereal disease and premature pregnancy” (New York Times, 15 December 1985). “Pressures,” rather than disregard of legal and moral dictates, are t o blame for these children’s plights. He also noted that problems can so “overwhelm” parents that they abuse their children. In another story written for the 1985 appeal, Monsignor James J. Murray, of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, asserted that the city’s poor are “[v]ictims of contemporary urban life” who are ‘ ‘impoverished by illness, economic discrimination and life circumstances’ ’ (New York Times, 8 December 1985). Joyce Phillips Austin, of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, laid the problems of the homeless and the poor to economic trends such as the lack of affordable housing and high teenage unemployment rates among black and Hispanic youth (New York Times, 8 December 1985). Recall also that the 1991 appeal put the blame for an elderly woman’s loneliness on the busy, modem world that kept her children’s lives awhirl. Thus, modern professions from medicine to sociology have introduced a number of concepts and theories that have influenced our ideas of what counts as bad luck. Overall, the trend has been toward regarding more situations as unlucky, either because we have more liberal definitions of badness or because we are more likely to believe that the impersonal forces of illness and social organization are the causes of people’s woes. On the other hand, the fitness movement and the promotion of scientific evidence of lifestyle risk factors in illness have muddied the definitional waters. Recognizing plights that are legitimately sympathy-worthy is, then, a complicated business. Although I have tried to indicate some of the complexities, my observations so far have not taken account of the fact that contemporary sympathizers tend to link some plights with particular social positions. I discovered that Americans have fine-tuned the concept of bad luck for people in specific ascribed or achieved statuses.

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T A I L O R I NPGL I G H TFSO R P A R T I C U L ASTATUSES R Bad luck is not, in the public’s eye, universally bad. Americans consider some situations bad for the middle classes but not the wealthy or the poor, bad for children but not the middle-aged or elderly, bad for women but not men (and vice versa). What people view as bad for the handsome, wealthy, or famous may not be the same as for more ordinary citizensor for the ugly, the homeless, and the humdrum. From my interviews and observations, I extracted a number of competing rules for determining what plights were unlucky for members of a category: The special deprivation principle. For example, many Americans believe it is worse for a woman than for a man t o experience relationship problems, but worse for a man than for a woman to have career or job troubles. 2 . The special burden principle. Members of some categories are required to perform valuable, unique, and difficult tasks. Those who must struggle to do so deserve sympathy for their efforts. For instance, physicians may merit sympathy when they deal with life-and-death situations, men may deserve sympathy when they strive to climb the career ladder, and women may deserve sympathy for problems with pregnancy and childbirth. 3 . The “balance of fortune” principle. People who lead more pampered lives than the average citizen-for example, celebrities, the wealthy, and the powerful-do not deserve sympathy for occasional reverses. For instance, during the 1994 major league baseball strike, players forfeited from six hundred to thirty-one thousand dollars per day, the latter representing the per diem salary of New York Met Bobby Bonilla, the highest-paid major-league player that year. Yet players were careful to point out in the media that they were not going to suffer financially (New York Times, 10 August 1994). Claiming hardship would not have entitled them to sympathy, because many people feel that professional athletes are not only well paid and esteemed but they also get to “play games” for a living. Many in the public believe that these advantages are enough to cushion the privileged and celebrated in times of trouble. 4. The vulnerability principle. Americans tend to view some catego1.

I14

5.

6.

7.

CHAPTER THREE

ries (e.g., women, the elderly, and especially children) as fundamentally weak or, in some situations, helpless. As George Herbert Mead contended, “Helplessness in any form reduces us to children, and arouses the parental response in the other members of the community to which we belong” (I19341 1962, 366-67). For example, in the first half of the twentieth century, sympathy for the “weaker sex” may have been part of the motivation for socalled protective legislation, which excluded women from many strenuous (but high-paying) jobs. As I will argue in chapter 7, the truly dependent have less to lose by accepting sympathy. Giving sympathy to them may not be insulting, since they are already one-down. The potential principle. Some categories of people (e.g., children and geniuses) have not yet received their “allotment” of opportunities that could allow them to “make something of their lives,” whereas others (e.g., the elderly and the disabled) have limited potential left. Respondent Sam Duschek, describing his reactions to a neighbor’s fatal heart attack, illustrated this principle: “I kept thinking about the years that he had left and all of a sudden they were gone. They were just wiped out. All of his years. He was only thirty-nine years old. I kept thinking about all the time he had left t o enjoy life and stuff to look forward to.” The special responsibility principle. Members of some categories are expected to have special knowledge or awareness, while those in other categories are not held responsible for these areas. For instance, women are deemed responsible for knowing how to take care of children properly; men are not, and they deserve sympathy when put in charge of children. Also, adults are held responsible for risk taking because they should know better than t o engage in foolish behavior, but children may not be held responsible and may receive sympathy when they have brought about their own problems. The social worth principle. Following this principle, which foreshadows issues of primary concern in chapter 4, people view some categories of social actors as more valuable, worthwhile, or important than others. In Pierre Bourdieu’s words, people in valued categories possess “cultural capital” (Bourdieu 1977, 1990; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). For instance, the educated are thought

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to contribute more to society than the uneducated and are therefore more deserving of others’ emotional gifts. Looking over the new and newly framed plights listed previously, we can see that many of them concern special problems of women, children, and minorities, categories that have steadily gained legal and social rights. For example, when women were perceived as less valuable than they are now, they did not merit much sympathy for putting up with worse conditions than men (see, e.g., Mill [ 18691 1909). The just-world issue is also relevant here: people sometimes devalue those who are vulnerable and view them as unworthy or worthless precisely because of their vulnerability. As egalitarian views spread, however, we may expect t o see a less gendered distribution of sympathy, with women evoking sympathy for plights (such as physical abuse and job discrimination) that would previously have roused none. One or more of these seven principles seemed to guide my respondents’ unique reactions to men and women, children and the elderly. Unfortunately, I do not have systematic o r adequate data on people in other categories. However, the evidence regarding age and sex speaks to the viability of these principles for reckoning how much sympathy is due to members of a particular category.

The very young and the very old share several problems (e.g., higher rates of illness and economic dependency than the middle-aged), but they do not receive sympathy for the same plights in equal measure. Americans’ sympathies seem to flow most readily to children. For one thing, we do not hold children accountable for their actions to the same degree we do adults because we believe they are inherently unable to make rational behavior choices that might prevent problems. W e generally consider children helpless, noncompetent, innocent, inexperienced, and naive. Juveniles receive special treatment at law-although, ironically, this treatment is sometimes more severe than treatment of adults. Furthermore, contemporary Americans have come to see children as inherently worthy (AriAs 1962; Zelizer 1985). Their lives not yet lived and their destinies unfulfilled, children have a great deal of “potential.”

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It seems almost any grounds are sufficient to elicit sympathy for these fragile and precious creatures. Reports of child abuse are more newsworthy and tend to be written in more concerned tones than accounts of adult-toadult violence. As Sudnow’s research showed (1967), nurses and emergency-room workers were more distressed and went to greater lengths when they had children rather than adults as patients. One of my interviewees, a forty-eight-year-old Filipina pediatrics nurse, noted that her unit had a high turnover rate because her colleagues often felt emotionally “overloaded” when children died. “Ethel Carrington,” one of my respondents, also illustrated this point, Ethel, a young divorced African American woman, had worked as a medical technologist before she returned to school to train for teaching. Diagnosed with cancer and lupus, she was undergoing chemotherapy. She denied the need for sympathy herself, but she said she felt especially sorry for the children she encountered every week in the oncologist’s waiting room. In contrast, reactions to the elderly in Western societies present incongruities. The elderly are often as frail, vulnerable, poor, and dependent as children. At least since the passage of Social Security legislation in the 1930s, Americans have believed that the elderly deserve to rest in dignity after putting in decades of hard work. Even those elderly who have not led such upstanding lives may gain some sympathy from others on the basis of age alone. For example, a judge sentencing the seventy-six-year-old convicted racketeer Joseph Gallo, counselor to the Gambino crime family reputedly headed by John Gotti, announced in court, “It is not easy to sentence an old man” (New York Times, 10 February 1988). In my surveys, I attempted to determine how the age of a troubled person would affect the amount of sympathy respondents voiced. Half of the respondents received the hurricane vignette about the Browns, “in their late sixties,” who bought a “retirement” house “which their grandchildren can visit.” The other half received a version identical in all respects except that the Browns were “in their late twenties” and bought a house “where they can raise their children.” When I described the Browns as older, the respondents were somewhat more likely to sympathize with the Brown’s loss-the hurricane destroyed their house. Because I did not ask my respondents to compare their sympathy for older and younger people directly, I have examined the comments of the two subsamples t o help me guess at the underlying logic they followed. Some of those who received the story of the Browns in their late sixties remarked sympathetically,

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they can’t start over again,” “they have so little time left,” and “they worked so long to get their little house.” O n the other hand, reactions to the Browns in their late twenties included comments such as “they have their whole lives ahead” and “they’ll just have to rebuild.” Yet compared to traditional societies, the American youth culture disvalues old age and the aged. Because they have little or no “potential” left in the eyes of other societal members, the elderly may evoke sympathy for fewer of their plights, especially illness and death. One of my respondents disapproved of this fact: “

One thing that bothered me most when my mother was so ill was everyone asking how old she was. They implied that if she were old it was OK for her to die. If she had been younger, they would have felt more sympathy. (Field notes; married French Canadian woman, retired secretary) Another respondent, an Indian restaurant owner in his mid-twenties, described a contrasting case in which a motorist hit an elderly woman: The old lady, she was in her eighties or something, was hurt. And then two days later she died! The man came to the insurance agent’s office trying to figure out what to do. He only had about two to three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of insurance, and you can bet the old lady’s family is going to sue for a million a t least. I felt so sorry for the guy. He said he couldn’t sleep, he was a nervous wreck. He could just see himself losing everydung.

did you feel about the woman who was killed? Oh, she was old already. Who knows what she was doing in the street. It’s the guy I feel sorry for. (Field notes) How

Also, a married Jewish chiropractor in his mid-thirties admitted, when I asked if there were certain types of people for whom he had more sympathy than others, One of the reasons I set up practice in this area is because I wanted to avoid having a lot of older patients. I like to be optimistic rather than sympathizing with people’s problems. I guess I really don’t have a lot of sympathy for anyone, but younger people don’t ask for it so much. It’s hard for me to sympathize with older people because they complain a lot. They seem to think they have a right to get sympathy for every little ache and pain. I just ,, tune them out and nod my head and say, “Yes, Mr. - every so often. (Field notes)

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O n the whole, then, American culture today appears to encourage less sympathy for the elderly than for children, even if they experience similar plights. The elderly may be unfortunate and vulnerable, but they have lower social worth and potential. Children have high social worth, potential, and vulnerability and often are not held to adult standards of responsibility.

Gender Westerners’ centuries-old cultural patterns of differentiation based on sex have faced considerable challenges since the rise of humanism and, particularly, feminism. The collision of traditional and modern ideologies has resulted in a larger number of sympathy-worthy plights for women than for men. Traditional values incline us toward sympathy for women on the grounds that they are weak, vulnerable, dependent, and emotionally sensitive and have special burdens (e.g., childbearing). This same value system pictures men as tough, strong, and capable. I t therefore encourages little sympathy (at least little overt sympathy) for men, even when they must shoulder special burdens such as providing for their families. In fact, following traditional logic, offering a man sympathy could be insulting because it points out his failures or vulnerabilities, thereby threatening his masculine image as strong, competent, and in command of his own destiny. Egalitarian values espoused by feminists and other social reformers encourage sympathy for women, who are victims of patriarchal social arrangements in the home, the community, and the labor force. In this view, little sympathy is due men, who are privileged at best or perpetrators at worst. In other words, in the context of egalitarian values, the “balance of fortune” principle prescribes less sympathy for men than for women. Indeed it is rare today to find sympathy entrepreneurs urging a sympathetic stance specifically toward men. Notable exceptions are ‘‘Iron John,” who champions the cause of men trapped in the strong, silent masculine role, facing pressures to compete and accumulate possessions for their families and cutting themselves off from their emotions and from each other (Bly 1990), and organizers of the Million Man March on the nation’s capitol to highlight the problems of African American men. In addition, some sympathy-worthy plights receiving public attention are more common among men than women, for instance, war trauma, homelessness, alcoholism, drug addiction, AIDS, “reverse discrimination,’ ’ and midlife crisis. However, if women were to experience these plights, they also would

FRAMING EVENTS AS BAD LUCK

I19

be legitimate candidates for sympathy, perhaps more sympathy than men. Sympathy entrepreneurs more commonly deplore problems usually experienced by women, for instance, the second shift, premenstrual syndrome, job discrimination, entering the labor force after spending many years as a homemaker, spouse abuse, sexual harassment, incest, date rape, and rape. Furthermore, in everyday encounters women are freer than men to receive sympathy. For example, greeting cards offering sympathy for everyday hassles are targeted in almost every case at women-the secretary with a dictatorial boss, the mother with rambunctious children, the housewife with ceaseless errands to run, and the lonely “single girl.” Presumably, people could express sympathy for men who have problems with bosses, children, errands, and loneliness, but there are no ready-made cards to help them do so. I t is difficult to imagine men sending or receiving one of Hallmark’s coping cards. Of course, many women do not buy or send these cards either. But I found far more women than men in everyday interaction personally expressing the sentiments the cards distill. Thus, sympathy-worthiness may be connected to the propensity to be “nice,” caring, and sympathetic toward others. I 1 Niceness” entitles one to others’ generosity of spirit. When I examined my interview and survey data to see whether my respondents followed gender patterns in defining sympathy-worthy plights, I found evidence of both traditional and egalitarian notions of gender. From the interviews, I learned that respondents tended to believe that women are due more sympathy, and for less serious plights, than men are. Also, the particular grounds for sympathy varied depending on one’s sex. I asked, l i What circumstances would usually lead you to feel sorry for a woman? For a man?” A handful responded that they would make no distinction, explaining that “it wasn’t fair” to apply a sympathy double standard. For example, a divorced white middle-aged woman who works in personnel said, “There isn’t anything that would make me feel more sorry for one ,, sex, and an electrical designer, a twenty-five-year-old single man of Italian and British descent, said, “I think there’s a difference, but I’m not so sure if there should be a difference or not.” In fact, many of the predicaments the respondents listed appeared both on the list of sympathy-worthy plights for men and on the list for women: death in the family, terminal illness, having a child with a serious illness or disability, alcoholism, being left by a spouse, and job problems. Director of Sales and Distribution Jim Mulcahy, quoted in earlier chapters, illustrated: “I don’t distinguish between men and women. Except I feel sorry for a woman who has to do something

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beyond her physical capabilities, like changing a flat, but also for an elderly man in that same spot.” However, the majority of both men and women indicated they tended to feel sorry for women more often and in a wider range of circumstances than for men. Fourteen percent listed no grounds for sympathy for men, and 14 percent explicitly stated that they tend not to feel sorry for men. For example, a married white middle-aged woman who is a teacher said, “TOme men are usually stronger. I don’t feel sorry for them” (interview). And the elderly respondent I call Goldie Blum joked, “I don’t know that I’m capable of feeling sorry for a man.” She went on to say, “I guess I’d feel sorry for poor health, some kind of physical or medical situation. Naturally, I think, women are more sympathetic to women. They understand them a little better.” In contrast, no one said he or she would not feel sorry for a woman, and almost everyone specified unique grounds for women. Several invoked the “vulnerability principle” when describing women-for example, “Women face more hardships,” and “It’s not chauvinistic, I’m not saying women are inferior, but physically she can’t do anything about [a problem such as abuse].’’ Altogether, as Table 8 shows, respondents listed more sympathy-provoking plights for women than for men (a total of 160 for women versus 131 for men). Women’s special problems with pregnancy, miscarriage, and childbirth received a few mentions, but by far the most frequently listed plights for women (26 percent of the total) could be grouped together as marital or relationship problems: a physically abusive, unfaithful, domineering, irresponsible, and/or unappreciative partner. Common causes for sympathy also included, among women respondents especially (but not solely), the extra housework, child care, and other nurturing duties women performthe special responsibility of the “second shift.” In addition to problems in an ongoing relationship, about 15 percent of the plights listed had to do with men endin# relationships, especially when children were involved. Both men and women mentioned job discrimination (which robs women of their potential accomplishments and rewards) as grounds for sympathy for women (10 percent of the total number of women’s plights). Plights occasionally mentioned as grounds for sympathy for women included being raped or harassed, caring for aging parents, and depression. Turning to the plights that would evoke sympathy for men, we see that only about 9 percent of the plights listed had t o do with marital problems and another 7 percent with being divorced. Respondents appeared to view relationship problems as less serious for men than for women. The

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I21

most common grounds for sympathy for men, mentioned by 54 percent of the respondents, had to do with either men’s special responsibilities or special deprivations. Jobs (e.g., trouble getting one or keeping one) headed the list, followed by the financial burdens of providing for a family, and not achieving career goals or getting promotions. Interestingly, another 17 percent of the respondents mentioned men trying to do something and failing. Respondents occasionally mentioned problems such as drinking, drug use, having one’s pride damaged, or inability to compete in sports. It seems clear that, although some of the interviewees believed it was unsuitable, a double standard does exist. Many of the plights they deemed sympathy-worthy particularly for men or for women are tied to traditional notions of men’s and women’s differing emotional concerns and, ultimately, to the familial division of labor of recent history. I also wanted to find out whether respondents would express more sympathy for a man or a woman facing identical plights. Two of the vignettes in my survey allowed me to compare reactions to men and women of equal social-class, marital, and age status. As noted in chapter 2, I prepared two versions of the problem drinker and employee theft vignettes, varying the sex of the main character. Half of the respondents who received the problem drinker vignette read about Mary as the problem drinker and Steve as the supportive spouse, while half read about Steve as the problem drinker and Mary as the supportive spouse. Similarly, I identified the supermarket employee caught stealing as either Susan or Michael. Because many Westerners hold women to higher standards of morality than men (Douglas 1983), one might expect women t o elicit less sympathy than men when they violate moral codes by engaging in excessive drinking or stealing. As I mentioned in chapter 2 , this was not the case. For the problem drinker vignette, both men and women were more likely to say they were extremely sorry for Mary (32 percent and 24 percent, respectively) than for Steve (15 percent and 9 percent, respectively). Similarly, the employee theft survey showed that Susan elicited slightly more sympathy on average than did Michael.* This was true regardless of whether the

* Adjusting for the effects of the respondents’ background characteristics through MCA (Multiple Classification Analysis), the average sympathy scores in the co-worker condition were 2.02 for Michael and 2.16 for Susan (out of a possible 5; grand mean = 2.06). In the worker alone condition, the average sympathy score for Michael was 1.91, for Susan 2.19. Making same-sex comparisons, we find that the average sympathy scores were higher for Michael in the co-worker rather than the worker alone condition but higher for Susan in the worker alone rather than the co-worker condition.

Table 0

Sympathy-Evoking Plights by Sex of Sympathizee and Sex of Respondents (Responses

= 291; Cases = 63) N

Sex of Sympathizee Sympathy for a Man Plights

Frequency

% Responses (n = 131)

Men (n = 26)

Sympathy for a Woman % Cases (n = 63)

Frequency

Mentions by Respondents

~

%Responses (n = 160)

%Cases (n = 63)

For Man

For Woman

Women (n = 37) For Man

For Woman

0

Job or career problems

22

17

35

0

0

0

9

0

13

Money problems

8 4 0 0 11 15 6 7 10 5

6

13

3

2

5

3

5

2

3

6

16

10

25

1

1 9

3

7

0

0 0 17 24 10 11 16 8 0

6

4

10

0

2

2

5

0

2

0 0

4

3

Job discrimination Loses job Harassment Tries to accomplish and fails’ Death of spouse Death of child Death in family, other Illness Drinking/drug use

0

8 11 5 5

7 4

0

0

10 1

7

Spouse abuses

3

2

Spouse ignores

0

0

Depression Marital problems Raising children alone

1

1 0

0

0

0

3

11

7

17

8

0 5

8 7

10

6

16

3

3

3

7

6

4

10

3

3

4

10

6

3 9

6

16

3

1

7

1

1

2

1

0

4

1

4

2

6

0

1

0

3

16 2

22 6

14 4

35 10

2 1

5 0

18

11

29

1

5 1 4

8 0 2

17 5 14

1

1

2

0

0

0

1

Problems with children

4

3

6

Father is distanta

1

1

Divorce

8 0

6

Rapedb Reproductive problemsb

0

2 13 0 0

Unwanted pregnancyb

0 0 0

0 0 0

8 0 17 5

0

2 1

0

0

1

0

0

3

0 0

0 0

1

0

Not athletic enough”

0 4 4

0 0 0 6

Not masculine‘

2

2

Unemotional”

2

Too emotional” Falsely accused”

2 1

Has to ask women out”

1

1

131

100

Cannot have childrenb Care of elderly parents‘ Housework, child careb Raised to be dependentb Mechanical problems‘ Pride is damaged“

Total responses

5

13

2

2

2

0 11

0 27

0 3

0 7

1

5

3

8 3

0

2

0

3

0 0

2 0

0

0

0

1

0 0 0

2

0 3

1 0 0 0

1 1 1 2 1

2 2

2

1

3

0 0 0 0

3

2

5

0

0

0

0

1

0 1 0 2 3 0

0

0

3

0

1

0

3

0 0

0

1

0

1

0

2

3

0

0 0

0

0

0

2

0

2

3

0 0 0

2 1

0

0

2 2

0 0 0

0

1

0 0

0

0

1 52

0 56

0 79

0 0 104

3 3

6

0 160

102

5

2

-

10

-

9

-

16 14

-

No plights listed “No sympathy for men”

9

-

14

-

Same plights for man as for woman’

6 0 10

’Problem mentioned as grounds for sympathy for man only. ‘Problem mentioned as grounds for sympathy for woman only.

0

6 6 4

-

0

4 0

-

1

-

3

5

0

-

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respondents received a vignette including a description of a co-worker’s approval of the theft or a vignette in which the employee acted alone. In both cases, Susan elicited slightly more sympathy than Michael. In both comparisons, then, the more sympathetic character was the woman. However, one might expect women to elicit less sympathy than men when they fulfill the role of supportive spouse. Doing so is expected rather than evidence of uncommon virtue. Data from the problem drinker survey supported this point. When Mary was the supportive spouse, 39 percent of the women and 26 percent of the men reported feeling extremely sorry for her; whereas when Steve was the supportive spouse, 49 percent of the women and 41 percent of the men said they were extremely sorry for him. Most men and women reported feeling more sympathy for the problem drinker’s spouse than for the drinker, but their sympathy was stronger when the spouse was Steve rather than Mary. Although the differences in responses to male and female characters were small, they suggest that both men and women consider the gender issue as they make judgments. Ironically, it is likely that women’s increased value in modern humanistic society accounts for two countervailing trends: that women are receiving extra sympathy and that sympathizing in general is becoming more egalitarian. This observation points up important links not only between sympathy and bad luck but between sympathy and moral worth.

BAD L U C K ,S Y M P A T H YA ,N D MORALWORTH It may seem a trivial matter to give a smile, a hug, a brief “I’m sorry,” a donation, or assistance to someone facing bad luck. However, focusing on sympathy logic helps us see that these activities have decidedly moral repercussions. As Robert Wuthnow argued, “Having a realm governed by intentionality is essential to the concept of moral responsibility. Having a realm of inevitability is equally important because it limits this responsibility to manageable proportions. It defines areas over which one has no control and, therefore, cannot be held accountable” (1987, 77). Giving o r withholding sympathy concretizes or reifies the moral worth (or lack of worth) of the recipient. A gift of sympathy is testimony t o the recipient’s deservingness. In addition, if given appropriately, sympathy is evidence of the sympathizer’s worth: he or she is a nice, good, humane, o r just person.

FRAMING EVENTS AS BAD LUCK

I25

Furthermore, sympathy entrepreneurs have attempted to extend the existing social logic and spread the mantle of morality more widely to cover new sympathizees, new sympathizers, and themselves. They create a halo of worth and morality around the unfortunates who fall into certain plights, or at least offer a way of understanding them that absolves them from blame. Many of the images sympathy entrepreneurs craft and promulgate underscore the dual criteria of badness and luck. They also conceal or camouflage sympathizees’ unattractive aspects that might bother potential sympathizers. The images are ideal types or stereotypes. One consequence of the stereotypes is confusion and disaffection among sympathy workers in the “trenches”-in hospitals, soup kitchens and women’s shelters. The battered-women’s movement, for example, has promoted an ideal-typical image of the abused wife as passive and meek, a loving mother, a teetotaler-in short, a pure victim. As Demie Kurz (1987) and Donileen Loseke ( 1 992) have noted, hospital employees and shelter workers are often put off when a demanding, gruff, aggressive, or drunk woman shows up to claim services. Simplistic stereotypes and ideal types do not always hold up in the light of everyday experience, but they serve quite well to elicit impersonal and abstract sympathy-and charity donations. Sympathy entrepreneurs also define as worthy those people who take moral altruistic stances toward certain plights. At the same time, the sympathy entrepreneurs may enhance their own moral worth by associating with avowedly selfless campaigns. Such actions sometimes have a material payoff, for example, when the moral entrepreneur makes a living as a charity fund-raiser or a greeting-card designer. Sympathy has become big business. Thus, sympathy entrepreneurs offer prescriptions for increasing the total supply of moral worth in society as a whole by broadening the grounds for sympathy. Sympathy entrepreneurs help create moral boundaries distinguishing the sympathy-worthy from those undeserving of sympathy, which can translate into material boundaries distinguishing the provided for from the passed-over when help, connection, and reprieve are meted out. Emotions like sympathy are not only socially shaped, they also shape social relations. As the contrast between our society and the Ik points up, the consequences can be profound. b

We have seen that the social logic surrounding sympathy giving in Western societies has changed through the ages. Especially since the Enlightenment,

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the climate of beliefs and values has become ever more conducive to sympathy. The spread of beliefs in the sanctity of human life and the unique self separate from family and community provided a rationale for paying attention to individuals’ problems and their painful emotions. Standards of living have improved, but the conditions of life in large-scale, fast-paced, mediasaturated postindustrial society create their own problems of ontological insecurity. Science and the social sciences have provided new conceptions of bad luck and new rationales for sympathizing. For example, the modern professions of medicine, psychology, and sociology have offered unique explanatory models of the world that have changed the way we view human responsibility and culpability. From these vantage points, some former ‘‘misfortunes” we now see as self-induced, but many conditions and problems once considered matters of individual responsibility we now deem misfortunes. With both the leisure and the rationale in place, sympathy entrepreneurs-such as songwriters, charity organizers, and the greeting-card industry, as well as social reformers, religious leaders, media “personalities,” and others-have flourished, and the grounds for sympathy have proliferated. The United States probably has been slower than other Western countries to incorporate sympathetic stances into government policies, given the popularity of countervailing social Darwinist beliefs that people get what they deserve in the “just world.” Nevertheless, at both the societal and the face-to-face levels, Americans espouse and enact a liberal or even “socialistic” sympathy logic: morally worthy, deserving people should get sympathy for “bad luck,” plights ranging from loss of a loved one t o illness, from victimization and cruelty t o everyday hassles. Compared to past centuries, Americans today tend to feel and show more sympathy, both informally in everyday encounters and formally through volunteer organizations, charities, and government. They also expect to get sympathy for a host of problems large and small, old and new. Although the grounds for sympathy have multiplied, they are not and cannot be boundless. In the abstract, we sympathize with those who are victims of bad luck, serious plights that they have not brought on themselves. Yet, what we think of as unlucky situations are rampant, and social actors must ignore some of them to conserve their emotional resources. W e have already seen that notions of bad luck are not applied universally but fashioned to fit occupants of particular social positions, such as

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children and the elderly, men and women. O n the next leg of our journey we will examine additional social logics that help people conserve their sympathy. Chapter 4 introduces two concepts that help explain how Americans limit sympathy, socioemotional economy and sympathy margin.

T h e S o c i o e m o t i o n a l E c o n o m y , Social V a l u e , a n d Sy m p a thy M a rg i n

fl we had a keen vision and feelins of all ordinary human l f e , it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die

of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1872

T

he predisposition to sympathize with others is not a necessary part of social life. Some societies, like the lk, are quite different from our own in this regard. Anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes discovered a pattern somewhat similar to the lk among the impoverished inhabitants of the Alto do Cruzeiro region in northwest Brazil. Life there “resembled nothing so much as a battlefield or an emergency room in a crowded inner-city hospital’’ (1992, 404). Existing on the verge of starvation themselves, mothers often did not feel sympathy for their infants and children, especially the weakest and least likely to survive. Because tears were thought to slow a dead infant’s journey to heaven, the community condemned grieving at burials. Scheper-Hughes was disturbed by their impassive, almost nonchalant reactions t o their children’s malnutrition, illness, and even death. Her book Death without Weeping describes her attempts to understand and accept the apparent callousness she witnessed. She concluded that both saudade (“sadness felt inside, in the heart and chest of the person” [440]) and pena (“regret for the pain of the one who must suffer” [440]) were luxuries for a people living in the midst of death. “In a world of great uncertainty about life and death it makes no sense at all to put any one person-not a parent, not a husband or lover, and certainly not a sickly toddler or fragile infant-at the center of anything” (403). The women, themselves malnourished, bore as many as ten, eleven, or more babies. Less than half survived. Mothers could not afford to become attached too soon, to mentally “adopt” their infants as their own. Instead, they viewed infants as animate objects, not yet persons with whom they could empathize or sympathize (410). Thus, Alto mothers generally did not take the sympathetic view toward younger children that modern Westerners do. Yet ScheperHughes also found that mothers became attached t o particular children, especially “older babies, toddlers, and nearly grown children, those who had been expected to live and in whom the woman had dared to trust . . . and to love” (41 1). For these children, they felt saudade and pena. 129

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Reading Scheper-Hughes’s account, I was reminded of George McCall’s argument about reciprocity: ‘ ‘[llnvestment is a ubiquitous and powerful bond between persons. When someone has expended . . . scarce resources . . . in establishing a relationship, he cannot afford to throw them away without realizing substantial returns” (1 970, 8). Establishing relationships, with all that entails, requires emotional energy that the Alto women could not afford to squander. They needed returns on their emotional investments. Scheper-Hughes seemed ambivalent on this point. O n the one hand, she called “cost-benefit analyses” a “distortion” and claimed that “Brazilian women do not keep a balance sheet on their offspring” but try to raise as many children as “God sees fit to send them” (1992, 402). At the same time, she stated that “the limited material conditions of their lives make this ideal impossible, a contradiction of the reality in which they live and reproduce” (402; emphasis added). Ideally, they would have liked to “adopt” their infants. In reality, they simply could not endure such an emotional drain. Although patterns of sympathy in the Alto do Cruzeiro contrast in many ways with those of modern aMuent Western societies, ScheperHughes’s account illustrates many of the points I want to make about how people limit their sympathy. She shows that sympathizing is not an automatic response to all “bad luck,” because sympathy is scarce and valuable. As Jacqueline Wiseman noted, ‘‘Charity and compassion are not available in unlimited supply, the Bible notwithstanding. Like so many other strong emotions, compassion cannot be called forth on every possible occasion without exhausting the giver” (1979, 242). Even in Western societies, sympathy is a kindness, an emotiopal gift. When a sympathizer is sincere and displays sympathy thoughtfully (or conceals it, depending on the situation), it has considerable significance. First, it costs the donor time, effort, and emotional energy. As Arlie Hochschild explained, feeling and showing emotions is work (1 983). Second, sympathy rewards the recipient by symbolizing and building connection, offering reprieve, and confirming the sympathizee’s social value. Giving such a gift is a highly symbolic act that typically follows exchange principles, especially when the parties involved have ongoing relationships (see, e.g., Simmel 1971; Mauss [ 19251 1954; Lkvi-Strauss 1969; Gouldner 1960). Donors feel they have a right-and control and limit their gifts. perhaps an obligation-to Thus people usually sympathize only t o (I point, a common theme among my respondents. For example, they said, “I can just give someone

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so much sympathy”; “I’m very sympathetic if you have trouble, but not for too long”; “At some point, people have to get on with their lives”; have and “I really felt sorry for him at first, but enough is enough-you to draw the line somewhere.” Beyond that line, many Americans believe, giving sympathy is an imposition, a counterproductive interactional strategy, or both. In this chapter I will begin to tackle the question of how Americans allocate their scarce sympathy. First I will set the stage by describing my conception of a “socioemotional economy,’’ a system of give-and-take within which people negotiate many aspects of identity and social worth. Then I will focus on “sympathy margins,” my term for accounts of “sympathy credits” people create for each other to call on in times of trouble. I will try to show that people limit sympathy depending on what they know, think they know, or suspect about a person’s social value. Social value entitles a person to sympathy margins. The greater one’s social value, the wider and deeper the margins others create for him or her. My ideas owe much to the works of George Simmel (1950), Alvin Gouldner (1 960, 1973), Peter Blau (1964), Julian Pitt-Rivers (1 966), Barry Schwartz (1 967), Claude Lkvi-Strauss (1969), Jacqueline Wiseman ( 1 979), Arlie Hochschild (1983, 1989), and Pierre Bourdieu (1990) and t o their endeavors to capture the social logics underlying give-and-take in everyday life. Using data from my interviews and observations as well as descriptions offered by novelist George Eliot, I hope to show that these logics also apply to sympathy give-and-take.

T H ESOCIOEMOTIONAL ECONOMY To modern-day Americans, the word “economy” usually signifies paychecks, interest rates, supply-and-demand principles, markets, and the host of other institutions and activities centered on making and spending money. But the Random House Dictionary (1973) tells us the word has a more general meaning: “an organized system or method” for “management of the resources of a community.” Important as it has become, money is only one resource that people need and want. From relationships, membership in communities, and even brief encounters, we derive other valuable resources-among them love, attention, company, gratitude, sex, esteem, help, and sympathy. These

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socioemotional resources contribute to identity and emotional satisfaction, helping to ward off the late-twentieth-century malaise that Anthony Giddens called existential anxiety, or ontological insecurity (1991, chap. 2). These resources too make up the core of an economy-a socioemotional economy. Although initially I had not directed my research at the socioemotional economy, studying sympathy forced me to consider the wider system within which sympathy interchanges take place. I saw that emotional giveand-take is both a goal and the primary medium of the socioemotional economy. Help, attention, affection, and other behavioral gifts are often most important for the positive emotions they symbolize and generate (see also Wentworth and Yardley 1994 on this point). The rules and logics of the socioemotional economy include, for example, how and when spouses should “pay” each other gratitude (Hochschild 1989), the conditions in which a parent should display patience instead of anger toward a child (Stearns and Stearns 1986), and how much company loyalty a worker should feel and show (Whyte 1956). The socioemotional rules and logics suggest what resources people should give and take from others to be considered “good,” “nice” people. Interacting group members produce and reproduce these constructions, clarifying and negotiating them in moral action and moral talk-e.g., about who owes what to whom, or who has collected “too many” resources. As they do so, they are participating in the socioemotional economy. Although the socioemotional economy is distinguishable from the monetary economy, at many points the two intertwine (e.g., see Boulding 1973). Societies develop patterns for distributing monetary and socioemotional resources because these resources are valuable and scarce. That is, one person cannot give, without significant personal loss, all the money, attention, and emotions that others would accept. Thus people limit their expenditures of both types of resources, and they do so in patterned ways. As with money, we usually give and take nonmonetary resources in accord with exchange principles. While Americans freely admit that exchange principles guide the monetary economy, we often deny that they are applicable to the give-and-take of socioeconomic resources-a denial that leads us to overlook key features of both economies. We miss nonmarket features of the monetary economy and marketlike features of the socioemotional economy (Collins 198 1 ; Dressel 1988). These cultural inclinations have carried over to sociologists. Sociolo-

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gists today often denounce exchange theory and economic analogies (see, e.g., Collins 1981; Mitchell 1978; and Scheper-Hughes 1992). Critics claim that exchange theorists are unduly influenced to see everything in economic terms, perhaps because capitalism has distorted their perceptions of everyday life. Some view exchange theories of the “cost-benefit analysis” variety as tautological: since anything a person considers valuable may constitute a reward and anything odious may constitute a cost, it is impossible to specify costs and rewards ahead of time and equally impossible to test the theory. Other critics claim that people are kind, nice, loving, or helpful because they want to be and that they do not engage in “cost accounting” when they are being altruistic. Unfortunately, the critics fail to take into account the anthropological and historical record: principles of exchange long predate the money economies of modern societies (Ldvi-Strauss 1969; Georg Simmel 1978). Thus money economies are probably based on earlier exchange arrangements. The critics also fail to explain why some people “want” to be altruistic and others do not. Also, how are we to understand the cases in which people expect returns for their gifts and get miffed or outraged when their calculations tell them that appropriate returns have not materialized? Finally, the critics fail to account for the universal process of turn taking, confirmed by conversation analysts (Boden 1990). As Scheff has noted, turn taking begins in infancy, as infants and their mothers take turns attending to each other (1990, 79). Turn taking is the basis for communication, sharing, and many other phenomena that make human society possible. It is the essence of social exchange. Thus I propose that it is important to modify and specify exchange theory in the light of empirical data, rather than dismissing it entirely. The main problem, I believe, is with our commonsense conception of social exchange. We do tend to think of it as involving a mechanical costbenefit analysis based on strict accounting principles. Of course, we can picture many cases that contradict this conception. Alvin Gouldner’s work provides a starting point for expanding and elaborating exchange theory, bringing it more in line with social reality. In his writings on exchange patterns in human societies, Gouldner (1973) described three distinct exchange principles, or logics: complementary role requirements, reciprocity, and beneficence. As Paula Dressel (1989) pointed out, social actors may apply any of the three principles to the give-and-take of valued emotions. First, the principle of complementary role requirements, common in

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traditional societies (especially those based on feudalism and paternalism), holds that people should give to others because their social roles obligate them to do so. Following this logic, a patriarch owes financial support to his family, and family members owe the patriarch obedience and respect. O r a mother owes love, loyalty, and sympathy to her children, and children owe mothers love and appreciation. Presumably, if social actors in all statuses fulfill their roles adequately, everyone will receive adequate care. A second exchange principle, reciprocity, holds that people who give are entitled to returns, perhaps even a “profit.” This principle predominates in the money economy, where those who give labor are entitled to pay, and those who pay others are entitled to their labor. As George McCall argued, reciprocity also can foster social relationships (1 970). Applied to socioemotional resources, the logic of reciprocity justifies both giving to others who have previously given t o us and expecting others to return our gifts. For example, a person expresses liking and concern to a friend as long as the friend repays, perhaps with gratitude, liking, or respect. O r , a psychotherapist exudes concern while the client is paying the bill. Reciprocity principles often generalize beyond two actors (LCvi-Strauss 1969, 1974). Thus, a person who receives valuable resources from another may repay directly or by contributing to his or her children, friends, or even to community charities. My respondent Jim Mulcahy provided an example. For years he had contributed his efforts to his town’s volunteer fire department. He expected repayment, not to himself, but to his son. When my son had that eye accident and he was in the hospital for three weeks, he never got a thing from the [volunteer] fire department. I was upset because usually they’re very good a t doing this. They send something or they go visit.

. . . I didn’t want to ask for sympathy even though it wasn’t for me

personally but for Randy. It would transcend to me in some way or other.

Third, the beneficence principle calls for giving to others who are in need, whatever their statuses or their abilities or inclinations to reciprocate. If everyone followed this principle, when one was in need oneself, beneficent others would offer adequate support. The principle of beneficence, or altruism, is the logic we consider ideal today for the socioemotional economy. This principle had gained currency by the time of the New Testament, As we saw in the last chapter, the New Testament advocated some situations newly conceived as sympathy-worthy plights. I t also provided a simplified “socialistic’’ vocabulary of motives for giving to others: people

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should contribute according to their ability to give. Many stories related in the Gospels, for instance, tell of Jesus explaining t o somewhat confused followers that their compassion should extend to wrongdoers, the despised, and people with no means ofrepaying them-especially if these people were believers, part of the community of the faithful. He offered a new, straightforward construction for gift giving that linked the macrolevel (God) and the microlevel (humanity): God takes pity on you, and you should take pity on your neighbor. The following verses from Luke illustrate this new view: Whenever you give a lunch or dinner, do not invite your friends or brothers or relatives or wealthy neighbors. They might invite you in return and thus repay you. No, when you have a reception, invite beggars and the crippled, the lame and the blind. You should be pleased that they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid in the resurrection of the just. (Luke 14:12-14 New American Bible) The faithful follower, the “just,” should not give to those who can offer restitution but to those whose lots are too miserable to allow them t o reciprocate. (Note, however, that the promise of resurrection can be a reward.) Following this logic, one should give others help, support, and positive emotions whenever they are, say, sad or pained or in need of reassurance. Recognizing the variety of distinct exchange logics permits a more sophisticated and accurate model of social life. Rather than positing that all social exchange proceeds on the basis of reciprocity, Gouldner’s model makes it obvious that some societies and subcultures prefer one principle to others. It also allows us to conceive of members of a particular society following one principle on some occasions and other principles at other times. It also begins to suggest that people blend exchange principles, for instance, complementarity with reciprocity or reciprocity with beneficence. Data from my studies of sympathy suggest that such blends guide the socioemotional economy. Before I explain my thinking on this issue, however, it is important to consider the significance of obligation for understanding social exchange. Obligation is critical for social exchange. The socioemotional economy (or any other economy, for that matter) would not work if people did not feel obligation to others. Obligation can be more than a rule one must endure or an onerous burden imposed from the outside. It is also an inner

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sense of what one owes to someone else, an emotional push or urgency to give to another what is due. Obligation’s Latin root, ligare, means “to tie,” although common usage today seems to underplay or ignore the feeling of commitment that the word originally denoted. An “I don’t owe” feeling is the antithesis of the felt sense of obligation. Together, obligation and ‘‘I don’t owe” feelings provide important emotional underpinnings for the human sense of fairness or justice. Depending on their exchange logics, people may feel obligations to role partners, to individuals who have given to them in the past, or to anyone in need. Of course, they believe others have obligations to them as well. People often look for evidence that others are heeding an inner sense of obligation rather than giving “empty” or “surface” performances. Hochschild’s conclusion that Americans want others’ “authentic” and “genuine” sentiment corroborates this point (1983, 190-94). If we believe that obligation motivates a person to fulfill his or her responsibilities to others, we can feel trust in that person. Trust is a basic ingredient-perhaps the most important ingredient-of social order (Collins 1982). When social actors internalize cultural values and rules, they accept those rules as the basis for self-judgment. When they internalize exchange rules, they “take on” certain obligations in more than a cognitive way. For example, one of my respondents explained that as a friend he has to listen to his friends’ sad tales. Remember also the sympathetic wife whose dying husband was accumulating massive medical bills and had no insurance to cover them. She could have been angry or resentful, but she was not: “I have to be there for him,” she said (field notes), Another woman I observed, a Hispanic wife and mother of three who worked as a domestic, fretted on the bus ride home from her job: “I have to have dinner ready at six o’clock, and this bus is broken-down. What will I do? The bus has to get going again! I have to feed them!” These women’s words, tone, and manner confirm the motivating power of obligation. In this sense, then, obligation has the force of emotion. I view the felt sense of obligation as a social emotion (Shott 1979). It motivates people to give to others and is, therefore, an important ingredient promoting the group and conformity to its norms. When people do not follow through on their felt obligations, they may feel guilt, another emotion that promotes conformity (Shott 1979). A person could not feel guilt over letting others down if he or she did not feel obligated to them. Thus one emotionobligation-spurs people to give each other socioemotional resources.

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Exchange in the Socioemotional Economy It is unlikely that any society or even a particular economy within a society operates purely on a single exchange principle. In our society today, all three logics coexist, sometimes harmoniously and at other times dissonantly. People might not be able to articulate which logic(s) they are following, but their feelings about how fairly they are treating others and how others are treating them provide clues. The exchange logic a person considers appropriate and fair at a given moment depends on such factors as (1) the person’s location in societal subcultures and social statuses, (2) the other party’s social location, (3) the resources they are exchanging, (4)the circumstances, and (5) the history of the relationship. Of course, the other party may have a different sense of which principle is appropriate. Americans expect reciprocity to prevail in the monetary economy. Yet exchanges in that economy are not as straightforward as we often assume. When social actors engage in the monetary economy, they do not exit entirely from the socioemotional economy. Dealings with co-workers, business partners, advisers, salespeople, and the like are seldom completely instrumental. Furthermore, socioemotional skills can translate into money, either directly (e.g., in emotional labor [Hochschild 19831) or indirectly (e.g., when a pleasant, “nice” person wins a job or a promotion over an unpleasant person). That is, people can exchange “feeling currency” (Hochschild 1983, 78) for other types of valued resources. In the socioemotional economy, the picture is even less clear. In the West, working-class families follow the complementarity principle more than middle-class families do (Rubin 1976). Also, some religious groupssuch as Habitat for Humanity, whose members, including former president Jimmy Carter, donate their time and skills to build houses for the poorobserve rules of beneficence more strictly than others. Furthermore, whatever one’s social class, complementary role requirements may guide interaction with some people (e.g., family members), reciprocity with others (e.g., clients, co-workers, or strangers), and beneficence with yet others (e.g., disaster victims). Over the course of a relationship, a person may follow one principle at some times (e.g., beneficence when catastrophe occurs) and another principle at other times (e.g., reciprocity in everyday conversations about minor problems). Or, a person may follow different principles depending on the nature of the gift, be it money, goods, o r emotion. Sometimes people approach socioemotional exchange as a I 1 mixed-motive game” (Goffman 1983; 5), following more than one logic

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at once. An individual may also unintentionally and unconsciously switch from one logic to another in midstream (e.g., from beneficence t o reciprocity with a friend, or from complementarity to reciprocity with a spouse)and back again. Of course, switching can cause confusion and hamper interaction. Usually, however, social actors observe similar exchange rules and logics. Interaction is relatively smooth, relationships persist, and social order is preserved. In the socioemotional economies of modern Judeo-Christian societies, complementarity and reciprocity have given ground to the logic of beneficence, at least as far as our values and rhetoric go. The Old Testament made principles of reciprocity explicit. As the two passages below explain, withholding emotional gifts from people in bad times could have negative consequences :

If you remain indifferent in time of adversity, your strength will depart from you. Rescue those who are being dragged to death, and from those tottering to execution withdraw not. If you say, “I know not this man!” does not he who tests hearts perceive it? He who guards your life knows it, and he will repay each one according to his deeds. (Prov. 24:10-12 NAB) He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will himself also call and not be heard. (Prov. 2 1 :13 NAB) People who failed to live up to these feeling rules could expect punishment in this world and the next. Yet Old Testament writings also explained that God visits calamities such as leprosy and famine on sinners. Some plights were thus evidence of people’s wickedness, and “He who condones the wicked . . . [is] an abomination to the Lord” (Prov. 17:15 NAB). Since both the hard-hearted and the softhearted were promised divine retribution, the would-be sympathizer faced some ambiguities. Nevertheless, the reciprocity principle was a salient feature of Old Testament writings and presumably of life in those times, The New Testament spotlights compassion and features a shift toward

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beneficence as the exchange logic of choice. The rise of beneficence coincides with the rise of the individual, the civil religion of self, and the increased importance of emotions. These days, most of us believe people should base their actions on authentic feelings rather than on the logic of formal obligation stemming from status relationships, social contracts, and “the authority of custom” [Durkheim [1933] 1964, 2971. W e also expect “authentic” feelings to flow altruistically. Westerners are more likely now than in previous centuries to believe that people should give socioemotional gifts with no expectations of return--“no strings attached.” W e think I I it is better to give than to receive,” and some people feel guilt o r embarrassment when they receive presents or kindnesses from others even though such gift are logically due. W e apply the beneficence principle t o gifts of tangible property, and it is even more important for abstract gifts such as emotions. In reality, however, many social actors who believe they follow beneficence principles when they make emotional gifts are deceiving themselves (see Scheff and Retzinger 1992, 92, on self-deception). It is common for people to claim they do not want or expect their role partners’ gifts but to feel hurt or angry when the others actually pay attention to such claims and do not deliver the goods. These feelings of hurt and resentment point to underlying expectations based on complementarity. Also, principles of reciprocity, perhaps not owned up to in polite company, may lurk beneath the surface. When things go wrong, when someone who owes us returns for past gifts does not pay, we may feel slighted or unfairly “used.” The next time the person who did not reciprocate is in need, we might have trouble being a “good” family member or a Good Samaritan. As Hochschild noted, when feeling comes hard, people begin to realize that strings were there all along (1983, 28). Thus, just as the New Testament has not totally replaced the Old Testament, the logic of beneficence has not completely supplanted complementarity and reciprocity. I believe Americans’ expectations for giving and getting valuable resources center not on a pure exchange logic but on logical mixes, most commonly what I term “reciprocal complementarity” with family members and “reciprocal beneficence” with nonkin. According to a logic of reciprocal complementarity, people in complementary roles should carry out their obligations only if the partner does so as well. If a role partner fails t o perform acceptably, one can justifiably abandon one’s own duties. The historical record shows that complementarity was not always tempered

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with reciprocity to the extent it is today. In contrast to feudal societies, we do not believe workers owe loyalty and dedicated hard work t o bosses who demean or underpay them. In traditional Japanese society, daughtersin-law performed their duties toward their mothers-in-law in the face of harsh or even abusive treatment from them, a situation modern Westerners would consider insupportable and grounds for estrangement. Also, compare the contemporary American family system with, for example, the traditional Italian family system. In the traditional Italian system, adult children bring aged parents into their own homes to care for them, no matter how their parents have treated them or whether their parents are “nice” or beneficent. American children nowadays may decide that they are obligated by family roles to undertake the care of their elderly parents, yet in making that decision they also consider the treatment they receive from their parents and how kindly the parents are (Bould 1993). Neither do we believe what was a commonplace in the past, that a wife owes loyalty and services to a husband who abuses her. That is, modern-day Westerners’ dealings with family members incorporate elements of reciprocity with complementarity. Ideally, we believe family members should take care of one another “no matter what.” In practice, people weigh their kin’s actions and feelings toward them. The tide of public opinion has turned. Honor, a role-based phenomenon, has given way to respect, an individualized emotional response to another (Berger, Berger, and Kellner 1973). W e now question the logic if not the sanity of workers who endure bad working conditions, family members who continue t o be loyal to parents or in-laws who demean them, or battered wives who stay with their spouses. Some family researchers have concluded that, on the whole, interpersonal “bonds of obligation” have become less compelling and “bonds of affection”-based on friendship, love, sympathy, and the like-more important (Bould 1993). More unpredictable and fragile than bonds of obligation, bonds forged by genuine affection require constant negotiation (Riley 1983). It is not always certain that people will have positive feelings for their fathers, mothers, siblings, grandparents, spouses, and children, let alone for neighbors, co-workers, fellow religious congregants, or other nonrelatives. To receive concern or affection, people must have shown themselves to be likeable and morally worthy. In most traditional societies, family members could usually count on economic support from each other simply because they were family members. In the Western world today, children are the only family members legally entitled to maintenance. Adult

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children usually support their elderly parents in time of need (Riley 1983), but they may refuse. A decision to provide assistance may be based in part on affection, gratitude, sympathy, and similar emotions (Bould 1993). People are relatively free to feel or not feel these emotions. Elderly people who have not cultivated the affections of their children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or other kin may find themselves in the care of the lessthan-kindly state. Today’s elderly may be surprised at such an eventuality, because they hold more traditional beliefs in family duty. Tomorrow’s elderly-and others in formerly “protected” statuses-will be less surprised. However, this argument may state the case a bit too dichotomously. Obligation and affection are not always antithetical. They also can feed into each other. For example, American parents teach their children they have an obligation to love their family members, and the message appears t o work. In addition, the causal arrow between obligation and emotion sometimes goes the other way. That is, positive feelings toward a person can evoke the sense of obligation. Outside the family circle, the most common exchange logic today is a mix of beneficence and reciprocity, or what I call “reciprocal beneficence.” O n one hand, as Pierre Bourdieu (1990, 98-106) has pointed out, gifts are more effective when their donors are more beneficent and less materially, economically, or otherwise personally motivated. Paradoxically, those who give most selflessly, who are most genuinely and innocently beneficent, secure the largest social rewards and self-esteem. Their lack of self-interest is usually not a calculated pretense. If they are being rewarded, they can afford to be beneficent. Social actors earn social capital for giving altruistically, without regard for what they might get in return, and social capital sustains feelings of pride and self-esteem (Wentworth and Yardley 1994). O n the other hand, beneficence is more difficult without rewards. Many charities have recognized this point and repay contributors with gifts such as bumper stickers, tote bags, or coffee mugs (which also may serve advertising purposes). As Stein discovered in his study of volunteers feeding the homeless, some felt angry when the homeless did not express gratitude in return (Stein 1989). Following the logic of reciprocal beneficence, they gave food and services voluntarily but expected recipients to reciprocate, not in kind, of course, but perhaps in proportion. Thus, according to the principle of reciprocal beneficence, we believe it makes sense to give positive emotions to others when they are in need

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they act and feeZ according to the same motives, that is, if they appear likely to reciprocate our beneficence. W e expect people t o be beneficent toward each other. We are altruistic and feel obligations to others as long as we get “credit” for it and our beneficiaries are also beneficent and feel counterobligations. Although people often believe their own motives are beneficent, they can continue in this belief only if others accept their gifts with the “proper spirit,” the spirit of reciprocity. George Homans made a similar argument in his discussion of “distributive justice” : people usually do not try to maximize their own rewards but seek only what is “fair” relative to their investments (1984, 232-64). This set of expectations is especially important for socioemotional gifts. It does not ‘‘make sense” to continue t o give help, advice, attention, or valuable emotions to those who benefit but offer little or nothing in return. At a minimum, donors expect others to appreciate their socioemotional gifts. Recipients should not impose upon, take for granted, or abuse donors’ feelings. Both of the mixed exchange logics of today’s socioemotional economy reflect the importance of the self. W e deem our selves valuable enough to warrant some sort of return for our socioemotional investments in others, be they strangers, friends, or family members. Furthermore, these logics hinge on and underscore the importance of social value. People usually limit their socioemotional gifts to those whom they believe are worthy. To merit socioemotional gifts, people have to prove themselves responsible and deserving (Matza 1971; Wiseman 1979; Loseke and Fawcett 1995). Worth and deservingness come partly from a person’s position in the social hierarchy and partly from their actions and demeanor. The ascribed and achieved statuses a person occupies are not irrelevant today, but they are no longer enough to entitle a person to others’ kindnesses. In other words, recipients must not only have something to offer in the way of cultural and social capital, they also must follow the rules and logics of the socioemotional culture in their dealings with others. Because it calls for people to reserve their respect, goodwill, and positive emotions for those deemed worthy and deserving, the socioemotional economy serves a moral function. It channels socioemotional resources and rewards toward the worthy and negative emotions toward the undeserving. People living out the logics of reciprocal complementarity and reciprocal beneficence in the socioemotional economy create social webs of payment, obligation, and repayment. These webs can engender connection, aid, and support. At the same time, because they entail obligation and social debt,

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they can create inequalities in everyday encounters and relationships. Thus the socioemotional economy helps guide the flow of feelings that shape commitment and create the microlevel equivalent of stratification, or microhierarchy. In these ways, the socioemotional economy patterns the social order. The ideas I have put forward here need to be empirically verified. Studying socioemotional economies will require researchers t o find relatively isolated groups or communities and spend a great deal of time mapping exchanges of socioeconomic resources and getting a feel for the rules and logics that guide them. To date no one has undertaken a study with precisely this focus. However, novelist George Eliot, the author of Middlemarch: A Study off‘rovincial Ltfe ([ 18721 198 1), imagined such an undertaking, which I will describe in the next section. I do so because I believe that her “study” captured the essence of the socioemotional economy of her time and also that many features of that economy-including the central role of sympathy-persist today.

SYMPATHYI N T H E S O C I O E M O T I O N AELC O N O M Y o F E L I O T’ s MIDDLEMA R CH If the nineteenth century had an Erving Goffman, it was George Eliot. Although she did not brand herself a sociologist, Eliot (whose real name was Mary Ann Evans) was a member of the London intellectual circle that included a number of early sociologists. It was rumored that she once considered marriage to Herbert Spencer (Coser 1971). For my immediate purposes, then, I am considering Eliot to be a sort of microsociologist worlung in the medium of fiction. She gives every evidence that she understood social structure, class, social forms, interaction, and especially the interplay between self and society. Charles Horton Cooley ([ 19021 1983, 385) and Thomas Scheff (1990,43-53, 119) have also recognized the value of Eliot’s work for comprehending self-processes and interactional patterns. More than description, her work could be characterized as exceptional ethnography-exceptional for its subtlety and its transparency, its skillful sociology, and its ability to impart sociological principles implicitly and with such lucidity that the reader need not be aware of them to receive the benefit. Her characters represented men and women from almost all classes of mid-nineteenth-century British society-landowners, merchants, pro-

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fessionals, servants, and tenant farmers-although she tended t o focus on the gentry and the emerging middle classes. She followed them into the manor house and the hovel, the drawing room and the pub, the boardroom and the sickroom. She caught their conversations and gave voice to their thoughts and feelings. Eliot recognized that emotions play a key part in social life and, perhaps better than any other novelist of her day, captured Victorian emotional culture in her stories. Also, through the voice of her narrator, she provided her own commentary on the situations she presented. Thus Eliot wove “data” and “analysis” together in her “study.” Even more impressive, she also directed and developed the reader’s emotions in accord with microsociological principles. She tested her hypotheses about social processes by first describing elements of event and character designed to elicit particular reactions from readers and then introducing new elements to modify or transform the initial reactions. In Middlemarch, Eliot provided a detailed picture of the socioemotional economy of a fictional mid-nineteenth-century British town. Sympathy give-and-take was a pivotal part of that economy. Middlemarch inhabitants met on the streets, in the pubs, and in commerce. In good times, they visited each other’s homes and entertained each other at dinners and evening socials. They backed each other up in board meetings and new ventures. In the inevitable bad times, sympathy was a sustaining resource. Some townspeople could count on the sympathy of their family and friends-and are more apt to win the reader’s sympathy-but some could not. What made a character sympathetic was his or her social value as measured in both cultural capital (e.g., family name, occupation, education, and beauty) and social capital (e.g., honesty, amiability, and industriousness). Worthy, valuable townspeople got sympathy and support. The sick received visits, and the needy, gifts or loans. In ‘(compassionate conversation” and gossip, friends discussed the ethical and the long-suffering in worried tones. For instance, chatting with a neighbor about Dorothea Brooke’s unpromising upcoming marriage, her sister Celia said, “I am so sorry for Dorothea” (56). Caleb Garth commented to his wife on another I‘ love problem,” their daughter’s: “Poor Mary! . . . I’m afraid she may be fond of Fred” (244). Also, Eliot described reactions to Mrs. Bulstrode, whose husband fell into disgrace: “Women who were intimate with her talked together much of ‘poor Harriet,’ imagined what her feelings must be when she came to know everything. . . . [TJherewas a busy benevolence anxious to ascertain what it would be well for her to feel and do under the circumstances” (720).

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Eliot connected worth and sympathy in another way too. How and why the characters gave sympathy contributed to their social capital. Sympathizers are not only judges and moral gatekeepers-they are also participants in social life who have received others’ emotional gifts in the past and may want or need them again at some point in the future. Eliot showed that sympathizing “properly” helped establish characters’ social value, community standing, and the rewards they received from self and others. Two major characters, the self-righteous Mr. Bulstrode and the selfless Dorothea, illustrate the connection between sympathy giving and social capital. They serve as ideal types representing the exchange principles of pure reciprocity and pure beneficence. Both characters carried out their charitable obligations. Bulstrode was never genuinely sympathetic, however, while Dorothea “was alive to anything that gave her an opportunity for active sympathy” (201). In the town’s socioemotional economy, the two fared quite differently. Bulstrode, a holier-than-thou banker, held his neighbors in contempt and in his sway. Eliot described his power as “fortified by a beneficence that was at once ready and severe-ready to confer obligations and severe in watching the result” (153). He played a major part in administering the town charities. He also gave many private donations to people who were down on their luck. However, he followed reciprocity principles strictly and made sure others did too. He first scrutinized a beneficiary’s circumstances and character and gave only to those he considered most needy and worthy. Once he had lent people money, he observed them carefully to make sure their churchgoing, child-rearing, and spending habits were within scriptural boundaries as he interpreted them. He kept the possibility of recalling the loans ever alive. Those who owed Bulstrode money felt inferior to him, according to his design. Eliot described the results of Bulstrode’s approach thus: In this way a man gathers a domain in his neighbours’ hope and fear as well as gratitude; and power, once it has got into that subtle region, propagates itself, spreading out of all proportion to its external means. (153)

Another character, the easygoing Reverend Mr. Farebrother, commented that Bulstrode smugly “look[ed] on the rest of manhnd as a doomed carcass which is to nourish [him] for heaven” (173). Although he gave others money when they were in need, he did not give valued emotions. Bulstrode felt obligation not to others in themselves but to their function in a formula for his own salvation. His “charity” earned him power over his neighbors

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but, needless to say, little social capital-respect, esteem, admiration, liking, or love (Bourdieu 1990). By intimidating his debtors, he had already exacted repayment for his largesse, and in the socioemotional economy of Middlemarch, he was impoverished. For all his piety, righteous living, and aid to those in trouble, Bulstrode had earned no sympathy, and when past indiscretions eventually came to light, his neighbors cast him out. Bulstrode’s problems stemmed from his having cheated his former wife’s daughter out of her inheritance. He had not told his former wife, a widow when he married her, that he knew of her missing daughter’s whereabouts and her financial straits. When his former wife died, he alone inherited her considerable assets, assets further sullied because they had come from her first husband’s immoral activities. Bulstrode then moved to Middlemarch, married again, and became a banker, a religious extremist, and a sanctimonious model citizen, all along hiding the fact that tainted funds had enabled him to prosper. Eventually a man called Raffles, a former acquaintance of dubious character, arrived in Middlemarch, blackmailed him, and died in his house after letting out his secrets. Bulstrode faced disgrace, ostracism, and even false accusations of complicity in Raffles’s death. Afraid to tell his wife, Harriet, the details of what had transpired, Bulstrode waited for her to learn the story from others. As he waited, “(h]e felt himself perishing slowly in unpitied misery. . . . And if he turned to God there seemed to be no answer but the pressure of retribution” (728). Thus was Bulstrode hoisted on his own petard. In contrast to Bulstrode, Dorothea was almost perversely beneficent and selfless. Eliot intended to portray Dorothea as a slightly flawed Saint Teresa of Avila: “Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heartbeats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed” (viii). The orphaned daughter of a local landowner, Dorothea generously gave time, energy, money, and genuine emotional gifts to those in her inner circle and also to the poor, sick, and troubled who farmed on her family’s lands or lived in the town. She sought out chances to feel obligations to others. Her altruism brought her moral standing in others’ eyes. At the same time, her gifts and the unassuming manner in which she gave them elevated the recipients too, symbolizing or vouching for their social worth. Everyone, including otherwise selfabsorbed and competitive characters (in particular, Rosamond Vincy), eventually felt admiration and affection for this paragon whose heart went

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out to others at the slightest provocation. True to the beneficence principle, Eliot’s Dorothea never asked for returns for herself. Instead, when others offered sympathy or concern as she entered a disastrous marriage and later when she became a widow, she denied any need. As Eliot was quite aware, the rhetoric of beneficence obscures the fact that people want and get returns for being altruistic. Ironically, although Mr. Bulstrode had counted heavily on receiving earthly and heavenly returns for his good deeds, it was the beneficent Dorothea who earned the reward of esteem. For instance, Eliot described physician, Tertius Lydgate’s reflections on Dorothea. By paying his bills, establishing a hospital for him, and befriending his wife, Dorothea saved his reputation and his marriage. As Lydgate rode away, he thought, “This young creature [Dorothea] has a heart large enough for the Virgin Mary. She evidently thinks nothing of her own future and would pledge away half her income at once, as if she wanted nothing for herself but a chair to sit in from which she can look down with those clear eyes at the poor mortals who pray to her. (745-46)

Lydgate’s thoughts imply that the altruistic may find rewards in heaven, in public sentiment, and in their own inner feelings of pride and self-worth. He also implies that these rewards are more substantial than the returns that a person may count up or count on. In Middlemarch’s socioemotional economy, Dorothea was rich. If Bulstrode conspicuously followed the reciprocity principle and earned little social capital, and Dorothea was purely beneficent and amassed a fortune in esteem, the other Middlemarch residents fell between these two extremes. Each character’s dispositions and actions at times reduced others’ respect and sympathy for their plights. For example, Fred Vincy, the newly elected mayor’s son, frittered away his chances at education, gambled away his future inheritance from his uncle, and nearly brought financial ruin on his intended wife’s family by borrowing money from her father he could not repay. Mr. Casaubon, Dorothea’s self-important, boring, and unattractive husband, spent his life (including his honeymoon) sequestered in libraries researching an inconsequential theological treatise. Other Middlemarch residents believed that both Fred and Casaubon had failed to take advantage of the opportunities life had given them. Fred Vincy’s sister, the petty and frivolous Rosamond, was even less worthy. She drove her husband, physician Tertius Lydgate, into debt and profes-

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sional ruin and then turned her affections to another man. Schooled in the feminine graces at Mrs. Lemon’s finishing school, Rosamond’s grace was only skin deep. She “came short in her sympathy” (735) and “had been little used to imagining other people’s states of mind except as a material cut into shape by her own wishes” (754). Others saw her as an emotional freeloader. Introduced in these terms, the characters earned little respect from the reader and little sympathy when they eventually faced misfortune. However, Eliot gradually disclosed some of their inherent finer traits and better actions, bidding the reader’s goodwill and sympathy. For example, Fred Vincy gained social value and sympathy for his problems because he sincerely loved and respected the plain but worthy Mary Garth even though her family, tenant farmers beneath his station, “lived in such a small way” (226). Also, Mr. Casaubon, for all his obtuseness and insensitivity, became pitiable when Eliot described him as ‘‘utterly condemned to loneliness” (85). Eliot offered Casaubon her narrator’s explicit sympathy: “For my part I am very sorry for him. I t is an uneasy lot at best to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small, hungry, shivering self” (273). She was equally straightforward when charging her readers to sympathize. Describing Casaubon’s jealousy, she stated: “Poor Mr. Casaubon felt (and must not we, being impartia1,feel with him a little?) that no man had juster cause for disgust and suspicion than he” (366; emphasis added). Sometimes Eliot poked a little fun a t her characters with mock sympathy. For example, she described Rosamond’s shock as she learned from Will Ladislaw (the man she hoped would rescue her from debt and an unhappy marriage) that he loved the widowed Dorothea and held Rosamond in contempt: “The poor thing had no force to fling out any passion in return; the terrible collapse of the illusion towards which all her hope had been strained was a stroke which had too thoroughly shaken her; her little world was in ruins, and she felt herself tottering in the midst as a lonely, bewildered creature” (756-57; emphasis added). Yet even as Eliot belittled Rosamond, she invited a measure of sympathy: later, Rosamond earned more credit and therefore garnered more sympathy when she stopped trying to win Will’s attentions after realizing that Dorothea loved him (774). Weaving in such details, Eliot evoked and enlarged the reader’s sympathies. Even the despicable Bulstrode gained some sympathy in the end-not because he faced scandal and ruin but because his wife sympathized with him. After learning from townspeople of her husband’s past sins, Harriet Bulstrode approached him in his rooms.

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He dared not look up at her. He sat with his eyes bent down, and as she went towards him she thought he looked smaller-he seemed so withered and shrunken. A movement of new compassion and old tenderness went through her like a great wave, and putting one hand on his which rested on the arm of the chair, and the other on his shoulder, she said solemnly but kindly, “Look up, Nicholas.” He raised his eyes with a little start and looked at her half amazed for a moment: her pale face, her changed, mourning dress, the trembling about

her mouth, all said, “I know”; and her hands and eyes rested gently on him. He burst out crying and they cried together, she sitting at his side. They could not speak to each other of the shame which she was bearing with him or of the acts which had brought it down on them. His confession was silent and her promise of faithfulness was silent. Open-minded as she was, she nevertheless shrank from the words which would have expressed their mutual consciousness as she would have shrunk from flakes of fire. She could not say, “How much is only slander and false suspicion?” And he did not say, “I am innocent.” (728-29) His social value tied to his wife’s, Bulstrode evoked a modicum of the reader’s sympathy. Harriet’s gifts of sympathy and loyalty redeemed him. Eliot’s novel illustrates how important socioemotional resources-especially sympathy-can be for self-esteem and contentment with life. I t also reveals the key roles of obligation and exchange in a socioemotional economy. I think it was no accident that Eliot made Bulstrode a banker. One point of her story is that people have accounts of social credits-and who would be more apt than a banker to appoint himself overseer of these accounts? Another point is that people can go too far in social accounting, especially when they rely on future rewards they think others owe them. Becoming too bankerlike, we can “get our thoughts entangled in metaphors and act fatally on the strength of them” (85). However, the banking metaphor is not altogether imperfect. In the next section, I will introduce another banking analogy, the concept of sympathy margin, which I believe Eliot implied and which helps explain why people cannot count on unlimited sympathy.

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Stories of sympathy gained and lost are still common today. As I noted at the beginning of this chapter, one type of story my respondents told fea-

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tured family members, friends, or acquaintances who evoked others’ sympathy but only for a while. As I listened to these stories, I formed a mental image of sympathizers as socioemotional bankers extending others ‘‘lines of social credit.” These lines of credit I call sympathy margins. In essence, each person holds a limited number of “sympathy credits’’ in ready, “on collectaccount,” for many others. A credit is a right t o call on-to sympathy. The number of credits-and, therefore, the amount of others’ sympathy people can call on-depends on their social value and history of dealings in the socioemotional economy. Yet no matter how many credits people have-how large their sympathy margins with family and friends-they can exhaust them much as they can exceed their credit limits or overdraw their accounts at the bank. Other sociologists have also written about various kinds of social credit. For example, Edward Hollander set forth the concept of “deviance credits,” which he viewed as the allowances or indulgences a person can claim before incurring negative sanctions for violating norms or rules of decorum (1 95 8). Erving Goffman introduced the more general idea of ‘‘social credits,’’ which both indicate recognition and yield license or privilege (cited in Wiseman 1979, 3 25). Jacqueline Wiseman incorporated Goffman’s notion of social credits in her concept of “social margin.” In a study of men on skid row and the agents of social control who dealt with them, Wiseman described social margin as: the amount of leeway a given individual has in making errors on the job, buying on credit, or stepping on the toes of significant others without suffering such serious penalties as being fired, denied credit, or losing friends and family. . . . A person with margin can get help. (1979, 223) In contrast t o people with social margin, Wiseman found, the skid row residents in her study had prevailed too much on others’ tolerance and understanding and had been cast aside. Family members spurned them. If they were unwilling or unable to go along with treatment or rehabilitation programs, then mental health workers, rescue mission personnel, the courts, and the jails washed their hands of them. Eventually skid row was their only refuge, The situations and relationships my respondents talked about rarely involved people as far on the fringes of society as the homeless people Wiseman studied. Yet I found ample evidence that her term is applicable to the stories my respondents related. Sympathy recipients who had called

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upon others’ compassion too often, too long, or too boldly often found that friends and even family members cut them off. Thus I came to see social margin as encompassing sympathy margin. That is, part of social commiseration, and margin is the amount of sympathy-understanding, reprieve-we can count on others to give us in times of trouble. Sympathy margins, which operate within the socioemotional economy, are always in flux. Although a sympathy margin “belongs” to one individual, it exists only because someone else has created it. Through role taking and interaction, people negotiate sympathy margins. When one person gives another sympathy for a problem, the recipient has fewer sympathy credits available in case of later misfortunes. Alternatively, a sympathizee can cash in all the credits in the margin. Once a person has used up a margin by cashing in all the credits, he or she cannot expect the sympathizer to feel or display additional sympathy. For example, an Irish American labor-union organizer in his sixties gave this account of friends’ reactions to his wife’s surgery: Poor Rosie’s in the hospital, and I’m trying to get people to rally ’round. She was scheduled to go in for a hysterectomy two weeks ago Friday. She was real nervous about it, and all her friends were sending cards and flowers and calling her up to wish her well. She got to the hospital on Thursday night, but the surgeon canceled the next day and she came home with no operation. He rescheduled last Friday, and she went back to the hospital and had the operation. But it was the darnedest thing! No one called or sent cards or anything. I guess they figured they had already done the sympathy bit, but the flowers were already wilted. She’s really taking it hard. (Field notes)

In this unusual case, the woman’s friends apparently felt they already had sympathized enough for the circumstances. Although she had not engineered her plight or demanded others’ attentions too forcefully, she had depleted her sympathy margin. A sympathizee can replenish credits by repaying donors-with, say, gratitude or future sympathy-but Rosie had not had time to do so. More typical cases involve sympathizees who repeatedly demand sympathy from others. For instance; a young single Polish American college administrator told of her eventual resistance to her younger brother’s bids for sympathy:

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I used to feel like I should feel sorry for him just because he was my little brother. Also my mother and father wanted me to help him out. He has several crises a week, sometimes several a day. He is always looking for

sympathy. He has more sad stories than anyone I know. . . . Now I set time limits. I’ll listen to him for fifteen minutes and no more. And I set other limits. Like, I won’t listen to him if he calls in the middle of the night. He has to call during reasonable hours. He had a flat tire, I should say another flat tire, at about four o’clock in the morning on New Year’s Eve, and he called me to come get him and his girlfriend on the turnpike and drive them to the bus station. Before, I would have gone, but this time I told him to call Triple A and hung up. [Nervous laugh] (Field notes)

For many years this young woman created a large sympathy margin for her brother and gave him sympathy when he was having problems. However, when he finally had cashed in too many credits and continued to ask for sympathy and help, she felt resentment. Consciously and deliberately, she quit responding to his claims to sympathy. Following the principle of reciprocal complementarity at her family’s urging, she created a wider and deeper margin for her brother than she would have done for nonkin, but it too had its limits. Another story of a family member’s shrinking sympathy margin came from a married Hispanic computer programmer in his thirties: Well, I felt sorry for my sister the first time her husband was cheating on her and she kicked him out. But then the second and third time, I knew the story behind it and I think she should have just left him alone. The first time,

I did feel sorry for her, and if she would have come and asked me for help, I would have helped her, and I did. She needed somebody to go over there, and I stayed over there for a month or two, just to have a man in the house. But then the second time when I found out what the story was, I didn’t want to get involved anymore. (Interview)

In this case, the woman had used up her sympathy credits, in part because she had done little or nothing to extricate herself from her plight. Both the college administrator and the computer programmer followed the blended exchange principle of reciprocal complementarity with their siblings, although the former was more uneasy about cutting off a family member. The cases above illustrate the limits people set on their sympathy, but they also indicate a willingness to create margins in the first place. Even in the absence of a face-to-face relationship, a sympathizer can open a sym-

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pathy account for a stranger to whom he or she feels related by common membership in a particular community, society, or in the general category of humankind. The legitimating logic today has two opposing themes, as we have seen earlier in this chapter. The first, emphasized in the Old Testament, has to do with earthly and heavenly rewards and punishments for the stances one takes toward others. The second legitimating logic accords with the moral themes of the New Testament. I t shifts the self-serving aspects of sympathy giving to the background and focuses on its expressive side-signifying honor, love, charity, loyalty, and goodness. Thus, unlike the lk or the Alto do Cruzeiro residents, we expect a “loving” parent or spouse, a “loyal” brother or sister, a “good” friend, a “humane” person, and a “nice” person to be predisposed to empathize with others and predisposed to feel and display sentiment toward them without thinking too much about future returns. Those who are not predisposed to create sympathy margins for others may, like George Eliot’s Bulstrode, face disapproval. Among my respondents, a thirty-seven-year-old divorced white businesswoman summarized a common view of sympathy “underinvestors”: [They] live a crummy kind of life. So uninvolved. So dispassionate. But they never have to do anything for anybody. . . . It’s selfish. (Field notes) The sympathy underinvestor’s sin is being an emotional ‘‘tightwad, ” aloof and removed from the group. Several of my respondents described instances in which they were criticized for not creating sympathy margins. For example, the married thirtyeight-year-old WASP vice president of manufacturing for a local business, introduced earlier, described his mother’s instruction: My mother lost her sister, who I hadn’t seen in years, she hasn’t seen in years, and I didn’t display sympathy or sorrow openly. She resented that. Not so much because she felt sympathy and sorrow for her lost sister, but because she thought it was a mandatory emotional set [emphasis added]. Boy, I screwed up on that one! What made y o u think Sympathy was expected? I was told! [Laugh] (Interview)

The “mandatory emotional set” this man refers to is the predisposition to sympathize, to create a sympathy margin for a relative. In another case,

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a young college professor I spoke with received the “cold shoulder” from his graduate students. He had conducted a three-hour seminar in the first class period after one of the students had died. They had had the weekend to adjust to the news, and I had only about two hours. We talked about Julie’s death for about ten minutes, and then I went on with the lecture. I felt I had to show them that life goes on, life is for the living, that kind of thing. They never forgave me for that the whole semester. H o w did they indicate their feelings to you?

They didn’t. They never said a word to me. H o w did you know that you had violated their rules?

They told other faculty members, and it got back to me, that I was coldhearted. They already thought I was a slave driver, and this just convinced them more. (Field notes; divorced man, WASP) Not only did the students expect the professor to sympathize with their late classmate, they also expected to have sympathy margins themselves, to get some leeway from the professor. His failure to “cut them some slack” when their lives were touched by death led them t o withdraw friendly emotions. Thus, contemporary Americans expect people to create sympathy margins for others. Also, some of our interaction rituals give momentum to the predisposition to create sympathy margins. These rituals include keeping each others’ biographies in mind, referring to past illnesses, and asking how problematic situations turned out (Goffman 1983 , 13 ) . They permit and even encourage sympathizees to advertise some of their troubles. One actor can get an inkling of another’s problems and press for more details. In this way, one can gain the knowledge necessary for empathizing and sympathizing. A person’s moral worth may hinge on living up to this expectation to create sympathy margins. Eliot, for example, illustrated this point in the cases of Bulstrode and Dorothea. I have already noted the contempt that Bulstrode earned when he searched for reasons to deny sympathy. Dorothea’s case illustrates the opposite. She felt painful jealousy when she discovered Will and Rosamond in what she thought was an amorous meeting. Yet, because Rosamond and Tertius Lydgate were facing difficulty, Dorothea forced herself to sympathize with “poor Rosamond” and return the

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next day to comfort her ([1872] 1981, 774). In Dorothea’s mind, Rosamond was due sympathy simply because she was a human being in trouble, and Dorothea was determined to extend sympathy. I have already pointed out the admiration and respect this kindly approach earned for her. People who create sympathy margins for others earn credits in their own accounts. Yet, as I have already implied, we do not create margins of the same width or depth for everyone. Usually, family members-especially children-get the largest margins. Friends get intermediate-sized margins. Strangers’ margins may cover only disasters. Furthermore, social actors can cultivate credits in their margins. One way is by generating debts (Simme1 1950; Schwartz 1967). For instance, one might attend the funeral of a friend’s relative or send a get-well card when the friend is ill. The friend may feel an obligation to reciprocate when an appropriate moment arises. Another way to earn sympathy credits is by establishing social value in one or more of several arenas. First, position, wealth, education, authority, beauty (Webster and Driskell 1983), fame, and other forms of cultural capital contribute to one’s worth. However, being a celebrity o r a businessman, an MBA or a prize-winning scientist, is not enough to merit sympathy credits. “Goodness” also counts. Thus worth depends, second, on how one enacts his or her social roles. Respectability, work, self-reliance, and living up t o one’s duties as a family member, community member, and citizen show that one is holding him- or herself to proper standards of conduct. One who does so is called a “good” person. As I pointed out in the discussion of the changing grounds for sympathy in chapter 3, actions people take toward themselves-for instance, taking responsibility for one’s body, safety, and mental and physical health-are increasingly becoming part of our code of proper conduct, our code of goodness. People create larger sympathy margins for good people whom they believe “deserve” it: the “deserving poor,” people who are bravely trying t o help themselves, and those who fulfill their duties toward others. Third, one’s interactions and interpersonal skills play a part. It is not only who one is, and how one enacts one’s roles, but also how one deals with others that matters. In Western societies today, a proper interactional approach entails being “nice’ ’-promoting and protecting others’ selves and safeguarding their feelings. We encourage tact, kindness, and niceness. All of these involve a careful approach to others’ emotions. The nice person is entitled to tactful and kindly treatment in return.

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In this chapter, we have looked at the broad contours of Americans’ socioemotional economy. Against the lk and the inhabitants of the Alto do Cruzeiro, contemporary Americans appear distinctly sympathetic. However, even in conditions of plenty, people must limit sympathetic sentiments and displays. As George Eliot helps us understand, we bestow emotional gifts such as sympathy within the context of a socioemotional economy. This economy is a set of logics and rules regulating the flow of valuable nonmonetary resources, including affection, attention, help, and sympathy. The give-and-take is both socially guided and socially generative. Within the socioemotional economy, people reckon each other’s social value and moral worth. Sympathy is a currency of moral worth: the more sympathy one gives and gets, the more one’s social value increases. Today, the exchange principles that underlie this economy are logical blends of three pure types: reciprocity with complementarity for family members, and reciprocity with beneficence for nonkin. Americans would like to believe their gift giving follows the logic of complementary role requirements with family members and the logic of beneficence or altruism with friends and acquaintances. In reality, however, the principle of reciprocity is paramount: we expect returns for our socioemotional gifts. When people do not follow through with these returns, they jeopardize future socioemotional gifts. Furthermore, the blended logics of reciprocal complementarity and reciprocal beneficence infuse sympathy margins-the finite, mutable accounts of sympathy credits people can call on in times of trouble. People create these margins for others-family, friends, co-workers, and even strangers. In life, as in the literature that helps socialize us, one must be a “sympathetic character,” with cultural and social capital, to merit a fund of sympathy margins. Sympathy margins are tailored to the cultural capital and interactional resources of the would-be sympathizee. How bad a plight is and how much luck is involved are factored into the sympathy calculus, yet some categories of people (for instance, children and women) regularly get wider and deeper sympathy margins than others. In the next chapter, we will step off the main highway to take a closer look at the point where the socioemotional economy, sympathy margins, and what I call the individual’s “sympathy biography’ ’ intersect. Normally, to be accorded a sympathy margin, one should have followed rules of

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sympathy etiquette” in the past. These rules, which we will examine in detail, provide sympathizees with guidelines for how to claim, accept, and repay sympathy properly. Adhering to the rules makes for a satisfactory sympathy biography, and without a satisfactory sympathy biography, the sympathy margins accorded to an individual are narrow indeed.

Sympathy Biography and the Rules of Sympathy Etiquette

A Shepherd’s Boy had gotten a R o p y Trick o f c y i n g [a Wolfe, a Wolfel when there was no such Matter, and Fooling the Country People with False Alarms. H e had been at This Sport so many times i n Jest, that they would not Believe him at last when he was in Earnest: And so the Wolves Brake i n upon the Flock, and Wory’d the Sheep at Pleasure. Aesop’s Fables

E

very social actor has a history of sympathy giving and getting, what we might call a “sympathy biography.” Before others sympathize, they usually assess not only an actor’s bad luck and social and moral worth-they also take the actor’s sympathy biography into account. Does the individual have a history of following proper “sympathy etiquette”? If not, his or her sympathy biography is flawed, and sympathy margins granted that individual may be small or even nonexistent. As I listened to my respondents describing people to whom they extended little or no sympathy, I discovered that many of those with small sympathy margins had violated the unwritten rules of a sympathy etiquette. From these accounts, I was able to discern and formulate what several of the rules are:

1.

Do not make false claims.

Do not claim too much, for too long, or for too many problems. Corollary 2a: Do not accept sympathy too readily. 3. Claim some sympathy to keep accounts open. 4. Reciprocate to those who have given sympathy. 2.

Following these rules generally helps people protect or enhance their sympathy margins.

RULE1 : D o N O T M A K EF A L S EC L A I MTSO S Y M P A T H Y The foremost rule of sympathy etiquette is not to claim others’ sympathy falsely. Two and a half millennia ago Aesop’s Fables provided an illustrative case, the still-familiar tale of the boy who cried wolf. Neighbors heeded the boy’s first few cries. However, because they could find no concrete evidence of the wolf’s visit, they closed his sympathy accounts. When the wolf actually threatened, the boy found himself alone. Many interviewees were quite concerned about violations of this rule. I59

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They reported feeling “taken advantage of,” “betrayed,” “driven crazy, and “conned” when other people played on their sympathies for their own gain. A person who only pretends to need sympathy erodes bases for trust. For example, I observed a twenty-year-old white college student describing former classmates in her high school: Two kids in my school were killed in a car wreck, and the school was very concerned about how it would affect their friends. The principal announced over the loudspeaker that we could get off of school for the funeral, and four kids who didn’t even know the ones who got killed went to their teachers and pulled long faces and claimed to be destroyed. They got off the day of the funeral and they took some extra days off too. They just ran around town while the teachers were feeling so sorry for them. Some of the kids laughed, hut, really, I thought it was shocking. You could never believe them again. (Field notes) When someone is caught in a lie, subsequent claims may not ring true. In what could be a sympathy-worthy situation, others may not empathize, feel sympathy sentiments, or feel obliged to display sympathy. A young Polish American working-class man also illustrated this logic. Explaining his reactions to a co-worker’s false claims, he said, “I can’t take the time to sort out which things she claims are real. Now everything she says is suspect to me” (field notes). Usually, however, a “false claim” is not an out-and-out lie. In one kind of false claim, an actor calculatedly uses hardships to manipulate others’ sympathies. For instance, a thirty-seven-year-old divorced white woman, a real estate agent, spoke heatedly of a man who had gotten his friend’s parents to feel sorry for him because his wife divorced him. The friend’s parents were quite sympathetic. They rented him a house cheaply and then sold it to him for half its market value. “He just used the [former landlords], and I could never help him out again knowing what he’s like’’ (field notes). Another woman, a middle-aged divorced account clerk of Eastern European background described a litigious friend: I have a friend that I really like who is unfortunately a little greedy and selfish. She has a fetish for going around suing people. She had a car accident and no one was hurt. She claimed to he. As a result of that accident, she was able to buy a brand new car. She slipped and fell at Shop Well, and she sued the food store and walked away with whatever amount of money that was.

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And this is an ongoing thing. So I can’t say I can be very sympathetic towards her falling or her car accident. I’m talking about a fender-bender! (Interview) False claims may also consist of exaggerations containing a grain of truth. The young white teacher quoted before, interviewed in his kindergarten classroom, spoke of his mother’s tendency to ask for sympathy when she could “be stronger” and “get through her problems.” “She has been the martyr for so many years that it’s like crying wolf so many times that sometimes when she deserves sympathy she doesn’t get it from some of her children.” Also, a government worker, a white middle-aged single woman I interviewed, described an acquaintance who for years had demanded sympathy: ‘‘I know a woman who’s always been sick, and she could never stay alone, and so forth. Then her husband died, and she had to make the choice whether she would go to a [nursing] home or not. Now all of a sudden she can live alone and can do many things she never could do before. . . . I just tell her point blank, ‘Grow up.’ ” Yet another respondent, the elderly homemaker I call Goldie Blum, explained her lack of sympathy for her mother-in-law’s claims:

My mother-in-law, she’s dead now, always complained. I’m sure the complaints were valid in her mind. You know, the older you get, the more you complain. She always complained about being lonely. This is a woman who had six or seven husbands, and she would always say she was alone. She lived in Florida, she was alone, she was lonely, she missed everybody, but when you called her she was always out playing cards. . . . Being sympathetic to some people is, like, next to impossible. Finally, courting disaster to play on others’ sympathy is another type of false claim. A married Hispanic psychologist in her fifties, describing her sister, illustrated this kind of claim: Amy’s a disaster area! But . . . she makes her own problems. She calls collect from Hawaii to tell me that her husband is selling the house out from under them. She wants me to say, “Poor Amy!” I have to say to her, “He can’t do that unless you sign the papers too.” But she won’t think or do anything for herself. . . . She makes things bad for herself to get sympathy. . . . I used to feel sorry for her, but now I try to avoid her. (Field notes) What is at issue with false claims is a breach of trust, a loss of faith that others will “play by the rules.” Even if we know to expect cynical and manipulative performances in our everyday lives, it comes as a shock

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when we encounter them. The fictions that make interaction easier are dashed when we cannot overlook or explain away a false claim. W e call people “untrustworthy” and “con artists’’ when they mishandle others’ tangible property or their emotions. A person with such a tag will have low value in the socioemotional economy and small sympathy margins.

R U L E2: D o N O T C L A I MT o o M U C H SYMPATHY Even when legitimate grounds exist, do not claim “too much” sympathy “ too often’’ or for “too long.” The person who overdraws accounts in this way risks receiving less sentiment than would otherwise be forthcoming, or sympathy displays without sentiment, or, worse, no sympathy displays at

all. Although the point of Aesop’s story was that pretenses to sympathy are interpersonally dangerous, I contend that even if many wolves had actually threatened, the boy could not have hoped to receive unlimited sympathy. In my terminology, the boy had cashed in his sympathy credits. After his first few claims were honored, he had already received his sympathy allotment and depleted his sympathy accounts. Whatever one’s misfortune, claiming and accepting too much sympathy can seriously diminish others’ willingness and capacity to sympathize. A person can ask for too much sympathy in several ways. First, one can ask too much for a particular problem. One’s own plight may seem dire, but others may perceive it as minor. I found much evidence of negative reactions to people who violated this rule: Every time I see her, I think, “Here we go again!” She’s like a broken record. “Me1 did this to me; Me1 didn’t do that for me.” I’m sorry, but a lot of us have been through divorces and survived. She’s gone completely overboard. (Field notes; married white man, teacher, in his thirties) She looks like she’s about thirty. I mean, what does she want? Why should I feel sorry for her just because she’s having her fortieth birthday? (Field notes; married forty-five-year-oldwhite professional woman).

My neighbor complains that she can’t make the time to do the things she needs to do. She wants me to be sympathetic to her. I’ve found myself coming home and she’ll be in my house and say, “I had such a bad day.” I tell her, “ Barbara, I don’t care, I don’t care. I mean, I’m more worried about your

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kids and your husband than I am that you didn’t have enough time to go shopping with your mother today.” So my wife’s hating me because she thinks I’m being callous about this, but I’ve told the person to her face, ‘‘I don’t believe this story anymore, and don’t indulge in claptrap as far as I’m concerned.” (Interview; middle-aged “semi-Orthodox” Jewish man, money manager) He’s thirty-eight years old and still doesn’t maintain a full-time job. He always blames things on the fact that his mother died when he was fifteen. . . . And at this point to use that as an excuse to try and get sympathy is to the point of being ridiculous. (Interview; married Italian American woman in her thirties, second-grade teacher) My next door neighbor is a nice person, but a person who I think demands sympathy from other people to give her own life some sort of focus. She wants other people to understand her and her plight and doesn’t seem able to analyze her life enough so that she understands that other people have the same problems she has, it’s really not a big deal. And I think that she often tries to evoke sympathy from you because her life isn’t a big deal. So that’s a way of creating it for herself. She whines and calls you up and kinda says “Woe is me.” I respond, “Oh, it isn’t so bad,” and go into your ritualistic method of dealing with her. . . . Just today, I got off the phone with her after the perpetual pep talks to her. I felt that it was rather pathetic to be her age and still demanding sympathy from people. And I felt sad for her because she was being a pathetic individual and she has a lot more capacity to make her life better. And I was a little angry with her for not getting off her butt and doing it herself, that she constantly demands things from me to a point that it really does no good for her. I should tell her, but it’s kind of frustrating. You expect people to see that themselves. (Interview; WASP thirty-three- year-old married woman, secretary for an insurance claims department)

A second way to ask for too much sympathy is t o ignore the sympathizer’s present problems. Those who have their own troubles are, to some extent, exempt from the obligation to feel or display sympathy to othersespecially to others with less serious plights. The comments of a survey respondent, a Hispanic custodian in her fifties, show that she applied this I 1 rule for breaking rules” to herself: “Why should I feel sorry for those people in that story [about a hurricane damaging their house]? I’ve got n o job, and my husband died. ” A white forty-seven-year-old widow, principal

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of an elementary school, said of her mother, “She always topped our problems with her own” (interview). Also, Robin Adams, the young bookkeeper quoted previously, sympathized with her sister Rose who was hospitalized for mental problems, but at times she became exasperated: She will never be happy because everybody has done everything to her and she’s not responsible for anything! Anything! The bitch makes twice as much money as I do. She lives with my parents, she pays nothing for anything, and she still thinks the whole world owes her everything. Finally, my respondent Juan Carvajal described his reactions to his wife’s bid for sympathy: On Wednesday night, I go to school; I get home at ten o’clock at night. I had gone from work to school and I hadn’t really gotten a chance to eat. And I got home hungry, tired. . . . I was expecting something to eat. I asked if there was something to eat and she says no, that she didn’t have anything to eat for me. I say, “Well, how come you didn’t cook for me?” She says, “Well, I was tired, I had a headache, I came home, I took a nap, and I didn’t really feel like it.” I said, “Oh, OK.” She wanted me to feel sorry for her because she didn’t have anything prepared for me. So I said, OK, it’s fine, no problems. And that was the end of that. I didn’t feel good about it. I knew she was looking for me to feel sorry for her, because what else did she want me to do? She didn’t have anything prepared for me. Juan’s description of the encounter showed that he felt resentful. His wife should not have presumed upon his sympathies when, in his view, he had had a more difficult day. Third, one can ask for too much sympathy for a particular setting. For instance, a claim that would be honored at lunch may not be honored in the office. Teacher and coach Eric Dietz also provided an example from sports: “In the middle of a game, a player who expected to get sympathy for a minor injury or even a medium injury just wouldn’t get it. The same person might hurt himself outside a game and get a lot of sympathy. When the game is on, you have to follow the old saying, ‘Play hurt.’ ” Fourth, an actor can claim sympathy over too long a period. Counter to what one might predict, problems that continue over a long period engender less (or less constant) sympathy than intermediate-range problems. Thus, a problem’s expected duration is related to the size of sympathy accounts in a curvilinear fashion. Problems that are over quickly, like a painful medical test lasting only a few moments, elicit minimal sympathy

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because these situations are not “worth” much. Long-term problems, while they might be worth more sympathy, call for greater emotional expenditures than others can or will put forth. Partly for this reason, many elderly people find their sympathy margins with younger people smaller than they expect, especially when they have few resources to offer in social exchanges (Dowd 1980). Furthermore, rules for claiming sympathy may be more permissive in subcultures of the elderly than in the larger society (Livingston 1986). Also, those who grieve “too long” (Wood 1975) or who cannot recover from a divorce or disaster after a “ n ~ r m a l ”period of distress may find their margins empty. People with long-term or chronic illnesses may receive less sympathy than people with an intermediate-range, acute illness (see, e.g., Strauss et al. 1982, 256). Jim Mulcahy described the case of a co-worker who violated this rule. The worker “tore his leg up in a skiing accident” and expected to get sympathy for months: He was out of work for a long time, and he recuperated and had a tough time doing it. And you kept feeling sorry for him, you kept saying, “That really is a tough deal,” and all of this. I got to the point really that I realized, “ Jesus, this is a tough situation,” but I really didn’t feel it anymore. . . . He was in a cast from his hip to his foot. He was relatively immobile. He would come into work by cab at 1O:OO and leave at 3:30 so he didn’t have to fight rush hour traffic and all this kind of stuff. And he’d come in and complain and carry on. You know, I got tired of hearing it, and I told him one day, “What do you do in the mornings? What do you do in the evenings?” He answered, “Well, I get up and I wash and I exercise and this kind of stuff.” And I said, “You know, you’ve got a couple of hours each morning that you’re home doing nothing. Why don’t you do your paperwork? Why don’t you do your dictation? Why don’t you do something instead of coming in here and [expecting] we’re supposed to feel sorry for you? We feel sorry for you, but now it’s time to get on with the world and with the business.” . . . I was sympathetic to a point, but then sympathy stops and you get to reality. . . . It was a case of saying, “I’m tired of feeling sorry for you. I’ve done that already. Now stop screwing around and get your act together and let’s go.” Several respondents described people with chronic illnesses who asked for sympathy over too long a period. A white twenty-three-year-old single woman, a clerical worker, said, “My sister has a lot of arthritis, but she plays on sympathy. She has a lot of problems, but her problems can be solved just by acting differently. She whines, carries on, she’s irritable. I

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pretty much ignore her unless it is justified. If the weather’s crappy, then it’s understood” (interview). Also, Goldie Blum reported, “My daughterin-law had trouble with her back, and I was sympathetic. But when she stayed in bed for, like, a month or so, I kind of lost any sympathy because I have trouble with my back too. When you have a child, you just don’t have the luxury. So my sympathy and my feeling kind of waned a t a certain point. ’ ’ A fifth way to claim too much sympathy is to have “too many” problems. A recurring character in my interviewees’ accounts was the constant or long-term complainer, a family member or co-worker who has often responded to each “How are you?” with a litany of slights, predicaments, ailments, and general moaning and groaning. For instance, Sam Duschek portrayed his reactions to his mother-in-law’s list of problems: She’s old. She’s crippled. She lost her husband. She always needs sympathy, I guess for us to feel she’s important or something. She’ll say, “Oh, I can’t get on both my legs.” She’s got arthritis. She’s always complaining that she can’t get out of bed, or she can’t walk, or do this or that. It’s got to be to get sympathy, to let us know that it hurts her. . . . It makes me angry because it puts a burden on, pressure. Finally, claims to sympathy may be excessive for specific encounters or relationships. Panhandlers and beggars regularly discover that many strangers do not feel obligated to offer empathy or aid. A young WASP single woman, a doctoral student at an Ivy League University, told of an acquaintance whose claims for sympathy overstepped intimacy boundaries: “She tells every single little thing that’s wrong in her life and goes into detail. She’ll tell anyone. Whoever will listen to her. No privacy whatsoever. She’s a nutcase” (interview). Statistical analyst Rebecca Jones described a neighbor who had too many problems in a short time span and also overstepped intimacy bounds: A neighbor tried to commit suicide last week and I got involved. Her name is Elsie and she’s about twenty-eight, a single mom with three kids, ages eleven, four, and two. She has very little education and she’s been in a series of low-paying jobs. . . . Anyway, this Sunday we all saw two police cars and two ambulances pull up beside her house. No sirens, but the lights were flashing and eventually people started coming out of their houses to see what was going on. I went over too and saw Jennifer, the eleven-yearold, sitting on the porch steps crying. So I went over and asked what was

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wrong, and she said her mom had taken some pills. I saw the rescue workers in the basement trying to pump Elsie’s stomach. The little ones were standing behind Jennifer, and they were crying too. Fortunately, the grandmother was visiting for the day or the kids would have been even worse off.

...

The rescue squad finally carried Elsie out. She looked all but dead to me, totally limp and staring into space. The grandmother decided to go to the hospital, so she got in the ambulance. It was clear to me and the others standing around that the kids were going to be left home alone. We didn’t know how long Elsie would be in the hospital or even if she would live. I asked the grandmother if anyone could come look after the kids or if she could take them home with her, and she said no. The kids were not allowed to come to her house because of a court order-her

son who lives with her

was accused of abusing them. The grandmother’s brother and his wife and seventeen-year-old daughter live about twenty minutes away, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t help. The brother was working, the kids can’t stand the cousin, and the wife simply would not help out. There was no one else to call on. So we neighbors each volunteered to take one of the kids. We gave the grandmother our telephone numbers, and the ambulance eventually

took off. . . . Elsie didn’t have any money or insurance, so they rushed her through the system. She arrived home about midnight and collected the kids.

... On Tuesday, Elsie had to start back to work, but her car wouldn’t start.

Mrs. Edmonds drove her to work that day, and then [Elsie] came by to ask if I knew anything about cars. I said no. I had already spent two days dealing with her problem and was getting behind on my consulting work. I felt she wanted me to volunteer to take her to work. Although she had never come

by my house before even to chat, she was hanging out in my yard telling me her problems. I gave her the phone number of my mechanic and wished her luck. Then she said her therapist told her to be with people if she started feeling sad, and I guess I was elected. I was beginning to get the feeling that she was a bottomless pit. If I drove her to work one day, she’d want me to do it every day. If I invited her in, she would just stay! I decided I’d have to put the limits on because she wouldn’t do it herself. Maybe I was wrong, but that was the sense I had. And sure enough, she asked me to lend her some cooking oil and later to drive her to the train station. Then she came over wanting my husband to repair a bed the kids had broken. All this within the space of four days when she hadn’t even said hello before.

I had helped out at first because I felt so bad for the kids. And I would still help them if they said they needed something. But I’m leery of helping

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her out again. I’m sure she’s asked the other neighbors for help too. It’s like she thinks her suicide attempt gave her license to turn her life over to us. She got a foot in the door and didn’t intend to leave. She has a very hard life. I really understand how she feels and why she did what she did. I’ve been in a similar circumstance myself even though I wasn’t broke and having to deal with three kids, and I thought about ending it all. But I can’t feel sorry for her, really, because she is so passive. O r is it active? That’s it. She’s so actively working to get others to feel sorry for her and so passive about taking charge of her own life. I may be wrong, but I’ll bet her family have had it with her too and that’s why they didn’t help. Even her mother didn’t take a day off work to stay with her. Maybe the boyfriend steered clear for the same reason. It doesn’t excuse his not taking any responsibility for his own kids, but I can see why he wouldn’t want to sign on the dotted line to take care of her forever. Sympathizees sometimes impose on relationships with people who have special shlls or “sympathetic” occupations. For example, the blind therapist quoted previously described his reactions to a friend who thought that he would be amenable to listening to her problems even when he was “off duty”: “She makes m e feel angry. She makes m e feel like this is somebody I can’t relate to because if she sees m e as a person who is going to give her sympathy, that is all I am. In other words, I’m not appreciated for who I am but for the needs I can fill” (interview). Also, a middle-aged married white woman, a twenty-year classroom veteran, said: These kids are nuts. When they have another teacher who is doing a bad job, they come to me and moan and groan, “It’s no fair! I have Ms. So-andso and she can’t teach math.” They think I should feel sorry for them and stop everything and help them. I’m supposed to be ready to share knowledge twenty-four hours a day. I hate to be rude to them, but it just doubles my work. And of course the bad teachers never have to improve. The kids really are having trouble, but it really shouldn’t be my problem. (Field notes) For both physical and cultural reasons, then, a social actor may find an upper limit on how much sympathy a specific other gives in a particular period. Many of those I observed and interviewed recognized these limits on others’ sympathy. Several noted that, if they had recently received sympathy, help, time off from work, and the like, they were reluctant even to mention new problems that cropped up soon afterward. As one man,

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a white carpenter in his fifties, put it, “That month when I had three deaths in the family, and my car broke down, and my mother-in-law needed constant care, and the kids were sick, well, it was too unbelievable. I was embarrassed to even tell people what was happening. I didn’t bring up all the details” (field notes). Professor Mary Smith, the young white college professor quoted in chapter 2 , had recently undergone surgery and two deaths in the family. She stated, “I had to deal with it jokingly. I’d list all the terrible things and laugh. There were just too many things all a t once” (field notes). She took care to protect her significant others and her sympathy margins. Another respondent who protected her significant others was Goldie Blum. Her sister had been a confidante until she moved to Florida: “I don’t really speak to her that much anymore [about problems]. You try not to give them anything to worry about at that distance.” The other side of this sympathy rule is that if one does not claim very much sympathy or help very often, one may be “due for” it. A thirtynine-year-old Italian American man gave one illustration: One of the fellows I work with, his wife is very ill, and he has to take care of her. I really should show more sympathy toward him, because he has a tough road, but he doesn’t look for it. She’s suffering from multiple sclerosis, and she’s wheelchair-bound. He’s very good and takes her everywhere-out to dinner, on vacation. He really doesn’t look for sympathy, but he probably should get some. (Interview, assistant grower for a flower wholesaler, separated from his second wife)

Note also the case of Mr. F., cited in British sociologist David Locker’s study of illness. Mr. F. is a stoic who has very rarely claimed sympathy and attention for illness and who is thought by his wife to deserve some: he had very bad flu, it’s the first time he’s been ill since we’ve been married, and I couldn’t get the doctor to come and see him. OK, so everybody has

flu, but he had a high temperature.

...I

felt that if Dr. M. (their former

physician) and his old receptionist had been there, . . . they would have thought: Mr. F. never ever comes near us, he must really not be well, or even if he’s not, we owe him a visit. (1981, 108)

Many of us, like Mr. F., may store up sympathy credits by being competent, functioning group members. (That we can go too far with this practice is the subject of rule 3.)

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Corollary 2a: Do Not Accept Sympathy Too Readily Besides not needing too much sympathy, one should not appear to want it too much. One should not demand sympathy o r take it for granted. One certainly should not wallow in sympathy. Instead, one should underplay problems and count blessings. Giving expressions of strength, independence, and bravery helps one avoid being perceived as self-pitying or as enjoying others’ displays of sympathy. The oft repeated question, “How are you bearing up?” implies that one should be trying to bear up. The appropriate response is, “I’m O K , ” “Pretty well,” or “Can’t complain.” One’s tone of voice, energy level, and other nonverbal cues may suggest otherwise-for instance, a person may exhibit what one of Henry James’s characters called “the droop of the misunderstood” ([1881] 1963, 192). Yet etiquette calls for verbal expressions of bravery. One of my interviewees undergoing many problems, a young white single typist, pointed out that she often catalogued her misfortunes and problems for others but expressly declined sympathy. ‘‘I guess I’m conveying that I could ask for their sympathy, but I’m not, I’m being brave” (field notes). Underplaying problems is quite common, as Sudnow also found in his research on dying and the bereaved: “Persons are engaged, so it seems, in the continual de-emphasis of their feelings of loss, out of respect for the difficulties of interaction facing those less intimately involved in the death than themselves” (1 967, 140). For instance, sympathy phone calls that Sudnow managed to overhear included remarks initiated by the bereaved about the concerns of the sympathizer: “How are your children these days?’’ ( 137). Underplaying problems represents, first, significant emotion work undertaken to align feelings with the norms of various interactional settings. Second, underplaying is a meaningful gesture t o the nonbereaved. My respondent Ethel Carrington underplayed a series of lifethreatening illnesses: When they told me I had cancer and that I had to have a modified radical mastectomy, I couldn’t believe it. Then I had the bad flare-up from lupus, and I had a stroke. To be thirty-four years old and to have a stroke out of the clear blue sky from a disease that you didn’t even know could give you a stroke! And I had arthritis. . . . I wasn’t able to drive for almost a year. I felt very dependent. I’m a very independent person, and unfortunately in my town there’s no transportation, none. You have to depend on other people. That was very frustrating. But I’m better than I was. I’m the type of

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person, I’m so busy helping other people that I don’t have time to dwell upon myself. . . . My aunt and uncle died-one died one week, one died the next. I’ve got a cousin right now that’s in a tizzy. I’m giving him advice. . . . I believe even if you’re sick, you should try to do as much as you can. Goldie Blum gave another example: I was in the middle of having a gall bladder attack, and we were going to somebody’s house, and I didn’t want to be the one to say I can’t come to dinner. I went to the hospital early that morning. I’ve never liked to be the one to disrupt plans, especially when I know someone is preparing and doing h n g s . I had the attack the night before, and I was really dragging around, and I really didn’t want to go there for dinner. But I said to Morris, who is my husband, I said, “How can we call now and tell them I don’t feel well?” At that point there was nothing I could even eat. They’re neighbors, not even real friends. Can you imagine what I’d do for a friend?

The victim of circumstances is also commonly expected to focus on “good luck” or “blessings” that compensate for the present bad luck. Hurricane victims interviewed by network newscasters in the late summer of 1994 lived up to this expectation. None of those whose interviews were aired failed to strike a positive note. For example, “It could have been worse” (middle-aged woman), “At least we’re still alive” (middle-aged man), and “We’ll just start rebuilding and try to forget all this” (elderly man). My survey respondents reacting to the vignette about hurricane victims echoed this theme:

I feel sorry, but at least they’ve got each other and no one was killed. (White homemaker in her fifties) Sometimes a disaster like this draws people together. They’re fortunate, because they’ll probably be closer now. (Young single African American woman, secretary) One typical get-well card from Hallmark makes the count-yourblessings norm explicit. I t attempts to convince the ‘‘unlucky’’ sufferer that she or he is really “lucky”: Cover:

CHEER UP! Things Could be Worse!

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Suppose you had a SNEEZING FIT Or you maybe had the GOUT, Suppose your ARCHES all FELL IN Or all your HAIR FELL OUTInside:

You’re really lucky when you think Of what it MIGHT HAVE BEENBut just the same, here’s hoping You will SOON BE WELL AGAIN! Other cards urge male patients to pay attention to the nurses rather than the pain and danger. One of my respondents, a seventy-one-year-old divorced Polish American woman whose alcoholic husband had left her and whose son had died of a brain tumor, compared herself with a friend who was too eager to get sympathy for her financial situation:

I think that I’m in a better situation than she is. Well, maybe I have a better attitude. I don’t expect too much out of life to make me happy. I don’t want sympathy; I just want someone to come and ask me to dance. With her, nothing’s ever enough. She goes to all these richy places just for the sake of saying, “I’ve been there.” I say, “This is bullshit.” I say, “You should go because you’re getting enjoyment, not because you can boast. ” (Interview)

This woman was offering her friend a strategy for contentment to replace her sympathy-getting tactics. When people do not “keep a stiff upper lip,” they, in effect, claim sympathy. The “semi-Orthodox” Jewish man I quoted previously, vice president of a stock brokerage house, illustrated this point when he listed his neighbor’s sympathy-getting ploys: She has little crying jags. . . . She pushes people’s emotional buttons. My personal favorite is the heaving of the heavy sigh. She doesn’t want to say something’s wrong. She just sighs until someone says, “What’s the matter?” (Interview) Robin Adams, putting on a theatrical voice, described her sister similarly: “She moans and groans and cries and puts on the attitude, et cetera.” Claims, especially obvious claims, diminish margins. A middle-aged Italian American married man, president of a printing company, stated succinctly, “My brother looks for sympathy. The more he looks for it, the less I give him” (interview). Many respondents said they cut short

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their interactions with people who openly sought sympathy. For instance, a married man of Scottish descent, a medical researcher in his forties, reacted to a sympathy-demanding co-worker as follows: “I always tell people to watch out for Josh. He can be quite a leech if you let him. His problems are endless. You just have to keep your distance” (field notes). An Italian American married second-grade teacher in her thirties said, “I have a friend that, whenever I meet her, [I say], ‘Oh, hi, how are you?’ And always, ‘This happened and that happened.’ It’s almost when you meet them, you don’t want to ask, ‘How are you?’ or ‘What’s happening?’ ” (interview). Frank DeLucca, the young contractor quoted in earlier chapters, went further: “If I knew people who asked for too much sympathy, they wouldn’t be friends of mine or acquaintances of mine. If it goes overboard-there would be something wrong. There’s nothing really natural about someone who’s always looking for sympathy. To me, someone looking for sympathy has something wrong.” One indication that people are wallowing in pity and not trying to be brave is their failure to follow advice. Ethel Carrington believed her friend was one such person.

I know a person that I tried to help that has lupus like I do. Her family is so used to catering to this and that, she won’t even do that much for herself. She’s been on permanent disability for about seven or eight years, she’s dropped out of high school. She should finish school, learn how to drive. I’m not saying she has to [go to college] like me, but she could at least do correspondence courses. I know a lot of people that will use their illness as a crutch to get sympathy and to say, “Oh, I can’t do this. I can’t do that.” You don’t know what you can do until you try. Just because you’re sick, you’re not dead. Also, Robin Adams’s sister Rose refused to follow the advice she had solicited. I wanted to give her so much, but then again her psychiatrist told me, “What do you do for a person that asks for your advice and bellyaches and moans, and you give it, and they don’t do anything about it.” Like, he told me, you don’t do anything. . . . When she first went into the psychiatric hospital, . . . I felt so sorry, I did everythmg I could. But now I’m standoffish when she says something to me that demands sympathy. I try to give [sympathy], but I try also not to give her any advice. I feel like I’m walking a thin line like a lot of other people must feel.

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To summarize this corollary, people who eagerly and openly accept sympathy can be an embarrassment. They are not meeting the role obligations of the sympathizee. Each of us has a right to some sympathy, but interactional strategies that explicitly call for these rights to be honored will rapidly diminish sympathy margins. The result is usually less sincere sentiment and empty display, if any.

R U L E 3 : CLAIMSOME S Y M P A T H Y Prescriptions of bravery aside, to keep sympathy margins alive, one should claim and accept some sympathy from others in appropriate circumstances. This sympathy rule is perhaps less obvious than the others. Taken with rule 2, it suggests that there is some optimal amount of sympathy t o claim. The entirely self-reliant-who remain aloof, “pay cash,” and do not develop “credit ratings” by borrowing and repaying-may not have sympathy accounts in time of need. Paradoxically, those who have histories of never crying wolf may find no one heeding their legitimate cries. This rule is most clearly applicable in relationships involving intimates or equals. Yet the case of normally healthy Mr. F. (Locker 1981) shows that it operates to some extent with nonintimates, subordinates, and superiors as well. Another example came from an interviewee, a forty-year-old married man, a WASP who works as a coordinator of a program for gifted and talented students. He said, “A woman a t work, her husband just died. Nobody knew he was sick; she was just acting a little strange. But she couldn’t get any sympathy.” Just as the act of claiming sympathy has a variety of meanings, so too not claiming sympathy or refusing it is freighted with meaning. Usually, one who never claims or accepts sympathy in a stable relationship may no longer be defined as an active member of the interaction network; this definition results especially, but not only, when one gives little sympathy to others as well. Actors who do not give or accept sympathy are of the group but not in it. When such a role solidifies and becomes habitual, an out-of-character claim for sympathy may not ‘‘compute. ” The following case shows that highly competent people who rarely claim sympathy can easily face being defined as not needing sympathy-not having the problems, worries, or stage fright common among the less able.

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I was so surprised-shocked-at the reaction of my colleagues last week. I had to give a big presentation that lasted two days. I’ve done shorter ones before, but this was frightening. I found myself getting nervous and tried to talk to my friends about it. They just said, “Oh, you’ll do OK. You always do.” Not an ounce of sympathy! And these were “near” friends, too, not just people I know. (Field notes: WASP single woman in her thirties, editor in a publishing business)

Although this young editor gave sympathy to others, she rarely found the need to claim it. The event she described led her to recognize that she had no sympathy accounts with her co-workers. She reported that she intended to change their perceptions of her by letting them know more about her insecurities-namely, by claiming some sympathy. As my respondents indicated, a person who does not, from time to time, claim and accept some sympathy sends signals. Others may consider them too self-possessed or too fortunate. People may see the self-possessed as too expert at coping compared with the average person and therefore not in need. They may believe the fortunate have already received adequate compensation to offset reverses. In other words, a social actor who never claims sympathy is a type of rate-buster. Another important signal is a claim t o a particular position in a relationship’s microhierachy. First, nonclaimers may send the message that they feel too “lowly” to expect others’ attention and sympathy. More often, an actor who rarely claims sympathy appears too lofty, and others may view the lofty as outside their circle of intimates. A nonclaimer avoids incurring obligations, prevents others from discharging past obligations, or excludes others from backstage regions where problems and vulnerabilities are apparent. All these serve to create interpersonal distance. Rule 3 shows that, as a particular sympathy exchange unfolds, group boundaries emerge. The participants define insiders and outsiders, intimates and nonintimates; in the process, the system of power and status relationships changes or crystallizes. To begin with, a sympathy interchange creates a bond of “knowership” (Goffman 1983, 13), or intimacy, between the parties. I t may also create trust in the sympathizee. Further, the direction of the exchange solidifies the statuses and roles of those in the relationship along a superordinate-subordinate dimension. Mutual exchanges of sympathy commonly symbolize equality, whereas one-way gifts of sympathy usually signify inequality. If one both gives and receives sympathy, one is a friend, intimate, or peer. Former acquaintances who have

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not been particularly “close” may find their relationship taking on a more intimate cast once a sympathy exchange occurs. On the other hand, a person who gives without claiming or accepting sympathy in return does not allow recipients a chance to discharge their obligations. Rather than enhancing equality, these situations engender the parent-child relationship between donor and recipient that George Herbert Mead viewed as the essential form of sympathy ([I9341 1962, 367). People may, rightly or wrongly, perceive the parent/donor as not requiring or needing sympathy. Furthermore, the state of owing engendered in the child/recipient may be so uncomfortable as to cause resentment against the donor, providing justification for not returning sympathy or actually interfering with feeling it. To recap, there appears to be an optimal amount of sympathy to claim and/or receive, depending on the relative power and authority of the social actor and the desired closeness of the relationship, if one wants to keep accounts open. Claiming too little or claiming too much may diminish margins.

R U L E4: R E C I P R O C A TT E O T H O S EW H O H A V E G I V E NSYMPATHY A final rule for maintaining an adequate supply of sympathy credits is to reciprocate. In chapter 4, I argued that principles of reciprocal complementarity and reciprocal beneficence guide the socioemotional economy. In other words social logic leads people to expect returns from those to whom they give gifts. Family members should fulfill their emotional roles, and friends and acquaintances should appreciate gifts of emotion. Depending in part on one’s micropolitical position or “place” vis-A-vis the donor, one may repay the gift of sympathy with gratitude, with deference and esteem, or with more sympathy. Those who do so keep margins open. In Peter Blau’s words, when recipients “regularly discharge their obligations, they prove themselves worthy of further credit” (1964, 98). As I mentioned previously, returns for emotional gifts do not have to accrue to the original donor to be considered valuable (see, e.g., L&Strauss 1969, 54). Returns to a donor’s family members, friends, and even to charities or the community at large may serve to erase obligations. For instance, if A receives sympathy from B, A can discharge the debt by showing gratitude to B’s spouse. O r A can give sympathy to B’s children should

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they experience problems. However, a recipient who never tries to show appreciation to the group may come to be ignored. The minimal and most immediate type of return expected for sympathy is gratitude. Paying for sympathy by showing gratitude signifies that one is in, and acknowledges, a position of need. The sympathizee is one-down or one-less-up. First, the recipient is in trouble, ailing, or otherwise unable to function as usual in social roles, or the sympathy would not be needed. Second, the recipient has “burdened” the sympathizer because of these difficulties. Third, the sympathizee knows that the sympathizer very well could have “believed in a just world” and offered blame rather than sympathy. To refuse to pay with gratitude can imply, then, a refusal to recognize the state of need, a refusal to accept the sympathy and well-wishes of other group members, or an expectation that sympathy is a right involving no obligations. Any of these signals can create a gap between the sympathizee and the sympathetic other, who may feel (to use my interviewees’ words) “used,” “taken for granted,” or “unappreciated.” Recall, for example, the negative reactions of those distributing food and clothing to homeless people who were not as grateful as the volunteers expected them to be (Stein 1989). One of my respondents, an elderly married Jewish woman who is a retired secretary, reported a case that shows a connection between lack of repayment and accepting sympathy too readily. She prided herself on her selflessness and kindness, yet she described exasperation with her sister-in-law, Sophie. Sophie made frequent sympathy claims but offered nothing in the way of recognition or repayment. Sophie’s a relation, but she’s getting to be a drag. She can call every day with a new complaint. Last week she called at three in the morning and wanted Jack to take her to the hospital because her tongue was swollen. We had just spoken with her a few hours before, and she said she was fine. I told her to go back to bed and see how it was in the morning. If she wanted to go to the hospital, she could just call a cab or the Emergency Squad. And then she had a pain in her leg and wanted us to drive her to the doctor. We told her we were busy, she should take a cab. When she called later, I had to remind her about her leg, and I asked what the doctor said. She said she hadn’t gone to the doctor, her leg had gotten better. But, you see, she really loves going to the hospital. She gets better the minute she gets in the doors. All she wants is the attention and the sympathy. I’m not saying she’s a hypochondriac; she really does have a lot of problems. It’s just that she thinks she can call with something new all the time. And

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no hint that she’s putting us out. We can’t be expected to respond to her a t all hours of the day and night. It’s giving Jack ulcers. (Field notes) The respondent’s comments suggest some guilt over her gradual lessening of sympathy for her sister-in-law. They also show that she implicitly used the concept of sympathy margin to justify her feelings and actions. Sophie had used up most of her sympathy credits-at least with her brother and sister-in-law-and she had done nothing to rebuild the account. Only in grave circumstances would their sympathy outweigh their annoyance. On the other hand, showing gratitude, even minimally with a nod or a look, can serve to cement ties. In the Outer Hebrides of Scotland and some rural communities in the United States, a gratitude column is a regular feature of weekly newspapers, where recipients of sympathy visits and flowers publicly give acknowledgment and thanks. Also, some potential sympathizees-students, skid row residents, and low-income crime victims-may even be required to display gratitude before they receive sympathy (see Wiseman 1979, 243). The type of gratitude one owes in return for sympathy varies with the relative social standings of donor and recipient. As Barry Schwartz argued, the returns appropriate for a gift from a superior differ from the returns appropriate for peers (1967, 4). Gratitude alone may suffice for peers. What is owed a superior is gratitude-cum-deference. Gifts of sympathy given by superiors, especially when the superior is frugal with such gifts, are imbued with greater value than the same gift from an equal or an inferior. The people I observed and interviewed rarely mentioned receiving sympathy from a subordinate but noted receiving gifts from “personages.” They remembered and remarked on baskets of fruit sent by company presidents at times of bereavement and condolence cards sent to pet owners by veterinarians when a beloved animal died-even though most people recognized that such tributes are routinely signed and mailed by secretaries. The tone of this recognition implied deference, a weightier and dearer commodity than gratitude. Deferential behavior implies that one is inferior, in a fundamental and perhaps permanent way, to the person to whom one defers, grateful for the valuable gift from that superior, and unable to repay the debt with an equally valuable gift. A lack of deference and gratitude is often seen as arrogance, and arrogance can diminish sympathy margins (see, e.g., Chambliss 1973; Wiseman 1979, 72). Sympathizees must not simply show gratitude and deference. They must show gratitude and deference even when the sympathy displays are

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crude, inept, hurtful, or unwanted. Sudnow’s research on bereavement suggests that “offers of sympathy must be accepted without invitation” (1967, 156). In some of his cases an open-door policy existed, allowing anyone to enter the house of the bereaved to offer sympathy, whether it was timely or not. Ethel Carrington, the divorced middle-aged African American student quoted previously, described a case of unwanted sympathy that she acknowledged despite some feelings of anger. She met a young woman who worked at a doctor’s office where Ethel was being treated for cancer and lupus. “The young woman sent a six-page letter about how she felt so sorry for me. . . . I wrote her a letter and thanked her for her sympathy, which was nice, but I don’t feel sorry for myself!” Furthermore, the awkwardness sympathizers often feel may result in bungled communications, empty phrases (“I just don’t know what to say”), jocular attempts to “cheer up” the victim that induce tears or horror, and the like. Another common mode of sympathizing is the recitation of the sympathizer’s own problems (“I know just how you feel, because the same thing has happened to me, and . . . ”). A middle-aged white married woman, a clerical worker, offered an example: When my dog died, a woman called on the phone, and I was crying, so I told her what happened. She said, “I know what you’re going through because my parakeet died last year.” I thought, this lady is nuts if she thinks losing her parakeet was anything like losing my wonderful Lola who’d traveled all over the country with me for sixteen years! I could hardly answer her. (Field notes) The I-know-how-you-feel variety of communication is intended, one might assume, to refocus the sympathizee’s attention and to say that one is not alone in misfortune. The sympathizee must put up with all of the above types of communications because, we believe, the mere fact of expressing some sympathy is evidence that the sympathizer “means well.” A sympathy recipient may feel compelled to listen to or even to elicit such remarks, thereby switching roles with the sympathizer. Beyond gratitude, another important type of return is sympathy itself. Not paying back past awards reduces margins. For example, an unmarried German American man, a twenty-five-year-old teacher, said, “He’s having a hard time, but I’m keeping my distance. . . . I gave him a lot of sympathy . . . but he didn’t even notice when I needed it” (interview). The retired secretary who described her sister-in-law Sophie also spoke of another relative: “I was by her side a t her mother’s funeral. Where was she when my

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brothers died? I don’t count her as part of the family anymore” (field notes). An elderly Native American man, a retired maintenance worker separated from his wife, described his indignation at a former friend’s lack of reciprocity: There was this guy that I thought was a friend and he turned out to be the worst enemy I had. I went into the hospital and he needed a place to stay, and I offered him to stay at my house. While he was at my house, he misused it. . . . He ate my food while I was in the hospital. . . . When I got out of the hospital, he didn’t offer to do anything. Instead of trying to help me, he turned the other way. So the next time he has a problem, I’ll do the same. (Interview)

Although these people feel that their past investments entitle them to sympathy, there is no FDIC t o guarantee emotional returns. The people who failed to pay back when an occasion arose risked, and got, closed accounts. As with paying back sympathy with gratitude, rules for repaying sympathy with sympathy are contingent on power relations. For example, repaying a superior with sympathy (an equal return) may be considered an insult. Thus, superiors often prefer gratitude. The peer or intimate is more likely to receive sympathy for sympathy. Although my observations and interviews yielded some evidence of reciprocity logic on the rare occasions when people did not follow the rules, most people seemed unaware that reciprocity guided their sympathy giving the rest of the time. To examine the reciprocity issue more specifically, I devised two very brief vignettes, the first of which described a friend’s lack of reciprocity and, the second, an instance of friendly reciprocity: Helen gives sympathy to Joan when Joan’s car breaks down. Later, Helen has a run-in with her boss at work. Joan does not offer her sympathy. How should Helen feel? Bob gets laid off from his job. His friend Tom offers sympathy. Later Tom’s son flunks out of college. Bob is understanding and sympathetic. How will Tom feel?

One of my research assistants presented both vignettes to a small but diverse sample of forty-nine adult respondents in northern New Jersey. The respondents then described their views of the characters’ emotional reactions when their sympathy was or was not returned. Of course, these

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responses do not necessarily show how they have felt or would feel in similar circumstances. Rather, they speak to the emotional culture and the feeling rules regarding reciprocity. A minority of the respondents (four men and five women, 18 percent of the total) said that Helen should not have expected sympathy or that Joan was right to stay out of things. A few elaborated, mentioning that work or business matters should stay private. Some explained that because Joan did not sympathize, Helen had probably done something wrong at work and did not deserve Joan’s sympathy. Neither of these explanations is a strong repudiation of reciprocity principles. More than 80 percent of the respondents stated that Helen was entitled to feel negative emotions. They could be categorized as “hurt” (e.g., “hurt,” “upset,” “disappointed,” or “sad”) or “hurt-plus-indignation’’ (‘ ‘used, ” “cheated, ” “slighted, ” “unappreciated, ” “neglected,” ‘‘taken for granted,” or “betrayed”). Thus, the majority believed that Helen had a right to be troubled when her emotional gift was not repaid. The responses to the Bob-and-Tom vignette show the same picture in mirror image. Tom should feel “good” or “happy” that he has such a “true friend.” Some even noted that Tom should feel appreciative and grateful, emotions that could lead him to give to Bob again. No one said Tom should feel negative emotions or feel nothing. All my findings support the contention that sympathizers do expect recognition of their gifts and that sympathizees should acknowledge the debts they incur each time they accept such gifts. The rules do not specify commensurate returns in every case-first, because measuring how much has been received (and is therefore owed) is hard and, second, because people may want to maintain rather than erode power differences. O n the whole, though, it is difficult for most people to receive much more sympathy than they can repay with their gratitude or their own sympathy. Margins not replenished soon become overdrawn.

S Y M P A T HO Y VERINVESTORS W e have seen that following the rules of sympathy etiquette-avoid making false claims, claim some sympathy but not too much or too readily, and repay others’ gifts-makes for an acceptable sympathy biography. An acceptable sympathy biography entitles one to future sympathy. Rules for sympathizees imply a corresponding set of rules for sympa-

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thizers: give some sympathy but do not give sympathy when it is not warranted, do not give too much for too long, and do not give sympathy when gifts have not been appreciated. People can, with impunity, close the sympathy accounts of a social actor who has an unacceptable sympathy biography. However, I also found evidence against strict adherence to rules for closing accounts and narrowing margins. Deviant sympathizers include those who underinvest or overinvest, who give “too little” or “too much” sympathy. Underinvestors protect their emotional resources, as I noted in chapter 2, but they risk their own sympathy margins. Overinvestors are a more difficult category to explain. These sympathizers expand margins beyond the ordinary size for people who have low social worth, whose plights are not bad or unlucky, and who do not follow the rules of sympathy etiquette. One of my respondents, for example, told of her feelings about her husband, who took her sympathy for his troubles for granted but never asked about or listened to her problems. “I should leave him. It’s stupid, but I’d feel sorry for him trying to manage alone. He’s used to having someone around” (field notes; WASP homemaker in her fifties). To understand what appears to be overinvestment of sympathy, we should consider (1) other types of currency being exchanged in relationships, (2) rules for establishing moral worth, and ( 3 ) social rewards other than the sympathizee’s gratitude or sympathy. First, sympathy is not the only currency people are exchanging in the socioemotional economy. Money, love, and support for social identities are among the many others (Lofland 1982). A person’s failure to follow sympathy rules may lead to a closed account unless other commodities being exchanged can compensate. Furthermore, a sympathy account may be closed, but that does not mean that all other kinds of accounts-respect accounts or duty accounts-are closed simultaneously, A person may continue a relationship because it affords other rewards, but it may become distant or hostile thereafter if the motivation to empathize and sympathize is lacking in one person because of the other’s deviant sympathy biography. Empty sympathy displays, dutifully performed, may be one result. In this regard, the reader may recall the ailing wife who got no sympathy from her husband though he expected her to play the role of Miss Sympathy. She did continue to play the role, albeit insincerely. A second reason for apparent overinvestment is that cultural rules link the act of giving to moral worth (Mauss [1925] 1954; Mitchell 1978) and to the requirements of certain social roles. According to these rules, the

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“nice” person, the morally worthy person, should feel that it is better to give than t o receive, even when others have not proved themselves worthy of the gift. The “good” person gives and gives freely, without “keeping track” or attaching “strings.” Furthermore, it is not ‘‘nice’’ to calculate costs and benefits before feeling or displaying a positive, other-oriented emotion such as sympathy. For one thing, we value authenticity of feeling, and calculating possible returns before feeling or expressing an emotion destroys it. Also, calculating costs and benefits implies that one questions others’ intentions to repay-which is tantamount to questioning their identity claims as nice people. Seeming to question others’ intentions can impede the smooth flow of interaction and alter relationships (Goffman 1959, 13-14). A good person makes allowances for others’ flawed sympathy biographies (see Goffman 1967). Making allowances means constructing excuses and justifications (Scott and Lyman 1968) of others’ actions for them. I t involves searching for evidence that they are legitimately exempt from fulfilling their obligations. For a sympathizer, this course is often easy, because the sympathizee is accorded this status precisely because she or he has problems. The nice or good person may exempt the one with problems from fulfilling role obligations until the problems are resolved. Of course, all of the above statements hold even more strongly for the “good son,” “good friend,” “good mother,” “good wife,” and so forth, than for the general “good person.” Finally, rewards do not have to come directly and immediately from the sympathy recipient t o encourage investment. Rewards can come instead from anticipation of the recipient’s future gestures, from others’ elevated opinions, from perceptions of rewards from the generalized other, from oneself as self-congratulation (or self-pity), or from God (Titmuss 197 1). Most of these types of returns serve to enhance self-esteem and moral worth (Shott 1979). In fact, one who experiences or displays sympathy for a “difficult case” (e.g., as Dorothea did for Rosamond in Middlemarch) may feel even worthier and more selfless and saintly than if the sympathizee had a faultless sympathy biography. Whether these kinds of rewards are sufficient unto themselves depends both on the sympathizer’s assessment and on the cultural rules for how nice, how selfless, one can be before others view one as a “chump,” “ “ doormat,” or martyr” (see Ferraro and Johnson 1983 on battered wives, and Lerner 1980 on “martyrs” in experiments). Most of us are nice-up to a point. W e give freely and forgive our debtors until they

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overstep the boundaries we have learned to set for them. Rules for goodness and niceness exist side by side with rules for sympathy etiquette, creating a classic double bind for sympathizers. Even selfless, non-cost-accounting overinvestors can rarely deny completely that they hold expectations of return. They may feel betrayed, let down, or angry when, as time goes by, they can find no “good reason” for another’s failure to display gratitude or to return sympathy. These feelings, however strong, still may not be sufficient to override role requirements calling for sympathizing. Dutiful family members nursing sick or elderly relatives may come to resent calls for emotional investment that are not returned. They may not, however, be physically, financially, or emotionally able to withdraw. Those locked by tradition, commitment, or lack of alternatives into role relationships with others who demand sympathy without reciprocating often find themselves in an almost constant state of depression or anger, which they believe they have little right to feel or express. Some, in fact, become almost paralyzed by their unreciprocated sympathy: Mrs. Palmer had contracted Lou Gehrig’s disease three years previously, which left her all but paralyzed. The care of his wife and their three-yearold daughter has fallen to Mr. Palmer almost entirely, because other relatives and friends have abandoned the family. His own health and work have been adversely affected. He has lost several jobs and finds it almost impossible to keep financially afloat. He reported, “Sometimes she tries to get back at me if she thinks I haven’t done something fast enough. But I can’t leave herI’m her husband. I feel so sorry for her. She wants to hang on to see [our daughter] grow up. How can you argue with that? But it’s a lonely, hard life.” (Field notes; WASP man in his thirties) Stephanie Woods is the twenty-three-year-old daughter of white, Southern Baptist parents with problems. Mr. Woods drinks daily and abuses his wife verbally and physically. The situation has gone on for several years. Yet Mrs. Woods, for religious reasons, refuses to divorce her husband, She telephones her daughter at work to ask for sympathy. Stephanie reported, “If I don’t listen, she calls me a rotten daughter. She says she’d kill herself without me to talk to. I just couldn’t have that on my conscience.” Near the breaking point herself, Stephanie claims she cannot sever her ties with her parents, even though she may lose her job and has become increasingly irrational and withdrawn: “I can’t leave my mother like that. . . . I feel so sorry for her living with him. But I feel sorry for him too. I really get angry, though, when she calls and won’t let me tell her about my

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problems. I blew up a t my best friend today. . . . What’s wrong with me that I feel so sorry and so angry at the same time? I’m losing it. I’m a wreck.” (Field notes) For both Mr. Palmer and Ms. Woods, sympathizing is a duty, a part of the role requirements of the good husband and good daughter. Expectations of return do exist but are not as important to them as other considerations. Like underinvestors, overinvestors are deviant sympathizers. Their actions may be justifiable and understandable, but they have still violated rules that prescribe how and when to set up sympathy margins for others.

EMOTIONAL S U B C U L T U R EASN D SYMPATHY MARGIN Sometimes an actor who appears to be over- or underinvesting sympathy is actually following subcultural rules a t odds with those of the larger culture. Our society’s emotional culture has some more or less universal elements, but it is also diversified. For example, many occupations have their own rules for creating sympathy margins. The rules may be imposed by management, yet workers also shape and modify the rules informally as they interact with clients or customers and each other. For example, Hochschild (1 983) showed that while airline management expected flight attendants to be completely in tune with customers’ emotions and endlessly sympathetic, collection agencies expected bill collectors to be unsympathetic “bad guys.” Of course, being predisposed to sympathize with the bereaved is important for funeral directors and the clergy. Sympathy is also an important ingredient in the “bedside manner’’ patients expector used to expect-of physicians, nurses, and other medical workers; increasingly, however, these workers have traded the personal involvement that sympathy requires for a more remote, “professional” demeanor. Perhaps the most sympathetic of occupational cultures, as I noted previously, belongs to social workers. According to Loseke and Cahill, social workers see the major requirement for membership in the profession to be possession of a certain character type. Particular skills do not make one an authentic social worker; being “the right lund of person” does. The right kind of person is, both on and off the job, limitlessly concerned and sympathetic to the plights and feelings of the underdog. From their textbooks, professors, and field contacts, the student social workers whom

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Loseke and Cahill studied formed these opinions of what makes a good social worker. “The little things, by that I mean inside you. How much you’re willing to give . . . of what you feel” (1986, 254); “[A social worker is] a person who is going to aid you in doing something you don’t know how to do, someone to sound off to, someone to bail you out because you’re freaked out, or just a friend” (253); and, “in my opinion, a social worker should care for the people that she works with in order to truly care if they are helped” (254). Like the flight attendants Hochschild studied, the social work interns struggled to keep themselves in line with the official ideology of creating large sympathy margins for all clients, indeed, for all humanity. Loseke and Cahill found that neophytes underwent a socialization process similar to a conversion to become the right kind of sympathetic person for the job. Feeling styles and feeling rules develop not only in occupational cultures but also among people in particular social niches based on their age, sex, social class, ethnic group, religion, geographical region, and the like. Although very little research has focused on emotional subcultures, how they arise, and how they differ from the mainstream emotional culture and from each other, it seems likely that they are specific to narrow categories and therefore numerous. For instance, middle-class WASP suburban teenage girls probably do not absorb and create exactly the same emotional values, assumptions, and expectations (or, consequently, have the same feelings) as middle-class WASP suburban teenage boys. And their salesman or engineer fathers have probably developed very different emotional sensibilities as well. Evidence regarding ethnic variations in sympathy margins comes from Zborowski’s early studies of responses to pain. He established that hospitalized Italian and Jewish men expected and got more sympathy and concern from family members than WASP men experiencing similar illnesses and levels of pain (1952). In my terms, the WASPs created narrower sympathy margins than did the Italians and Jews. Further, as Dodd found, African American ghetto residents have a distinct view of emotions and a unique set of emotional sensibilities: with its roots in the “culture of captivity,” today’s ghetto culture treats emotions as “capital” (1987). More than members of the WASP-oriented mainstream, ghetto residents-from small children to their parents and grandparents-are carefully attuned to emotions and to their interactional uses. For people with few other resources to command, “emotion play” is a serious game in which each tries

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to evoke in others emotions that will serve his or her own interests. Those who can play the game well are viewed with admiration, if also with a measure of distrust. Dodd found that sympathy margins were small in the neighborhoods he studied where survival was a day-to-day struggle (which may bring to mind the Ik and the women of the Alto do Cruzeiro). Sympathy was a luxury, for two reasons. First, sympathy did not fit the residents’ “That’s life” philosophy. According to this philosophy, life is about bearing burdens, and everyone must carry his or her own crosses, not lay them on others. Second, if one actor showed sympathy to another, the recipient gained an emotional advantage rather than a debt. Thus, a common response to another’s hard luck story was suspicion that one was being manipulated or used. Everyone has troubles, the assumption goes, and any particular person’s sad tale is probably embellished to “get over” (Dodd 1992). In consequence, sympathy margins tend to be narrower than in middleclass neighborhoods. Gender, as we could infer from previous chapters, underlies most other subcultural differences in the creation of sympathy margins. That is, in most subcultures women tend to create wider and deeper margins than men do, covering a larger variety of incidents and more minor problems. As I have already argued, men empathize and feel sympathy sentiment. Yet their gender and work roles call for them to create narrow margins for others, limiting their sympathy to a few extreme situations. Because men are not supposed t o adopt a too sympathetic attitude, getting away with being curmudgeonly or “hard” is easier for them. At the same time, because women do a great deal of relationship work and sympathy display work, they are more likely to hear others’ sad tales and hard-luck stories that elicit their sympathy. Westerners hold women to higher standards of niceness and sensitivity than men and expect women to be more emotional and sentimental. The women in my studies were somewhat more likely than the men to feel and show sympathy for a broken relationship or a broken fingernail and also for another’s grief, loss, or danger. Studies of contemporary middle-class white women show that women direct much of their conversation and attention to each other’s concerns and problems (see, e.g., Oliker 1989). Sometimes to men’s consternation and bafflement (Cancian 1987; Rubin 1983, 771, women sympathize with others whom men would have given up on long before. Consider, for example, the following conversation I overheard in a restaurant:

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Husband: Huh? You’re still worrying about her!? You’ve already done enough. Why can’t you just get your attention back on your own family?

Wtfe: But she’s having such a hard time with the dating scene since the divorce. Husband:

She should be grateful guys ask her out. (Field notes)

The wife’s margin for the couple’s friend was wider than the husband’s. Since women tend to create larger margins than men, and since both men and women tend to create larger margins for women than for men, a special bond can emerge among women-a type of closeness based on mutually reinforcing sympathy. It could be called a “sisterhood of sympathy.” This type of relationship is, I found, more common among those with Hispanic cultural roots. Expectations of bonds based on mutual sympathy, tempered somewhat in the modern, equality-oriented American culture, are taken to their logical extreme in the more traditional, sex-segregated Latin culture. Interestingly, there is no Spanish equivalent of the word “sympathy,” as I mentioned in chapter 2. Yet the empathy, sentiment, and display that English speakers associate with sympathy are unmistakable in Hispanic women’s everyday encounters. Because the Latina case illustrates the overlap of gender and ethnic emotional subcultures, I will describe it in some detail. Many previous researchers have noted a unique cultural model of womanhood among Latin Americans (e.g., Pescatello 1973; Horowitz 1983; Dodd 1987). This model, the reciprocal of machismo, is variously called the Madonna role, rnarianisrno, or the cult of the Virgin Mary. My Hispanic American respondents’ descriptions of sympathy giving and getting appear t o be consistent with rnarianismo, as described by Lloyd Rogler. A wife and mother ought to be all-giving, expecting little in return. It is her lot to bear the pain of economic hardship, the sickness of children, the occasional ingratitude of relatives. An unmistakable tone of the sacred, or the martyr, infuses her world of “oughts.” . . . Conversations with acquaintances, friends, and relatives often consist of mutual efforts to invite a sympathetic response by reciting a personal history of suffering. . . . “Oh, the poor one. How much she has suffered!” is an exclamation that punctuates many such conversations. To be the object of this attitude provides the married woman with a source of emotional support and rationalizes the problems she confronts in family life. (1968, 131)

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Rogler contended that sympathy is an important response to misery in this system, important because it confers on a woman a place in the group, an identity, Several of my Hispanic respondents explicitly stated that a readiness to sympathize permeates many women’s thoughts about others, especially about other women. A married psychiatric social worker in her late thirties whose family came to the United States from Puerto Rico explained the nuances of the sisterhood in some detail. Based on her own experiences and those of her clients, who are Panamanian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Colombian women of all ages, she concluded that there is pressure to be sympathetic-to set up wide and deep margins-and there are rewards for doing so. Overall, grouping and clannishness are important. American women are more isolated. For Latin women, it’s us against them, immigrants against the new society. Loneliness is more devastating in North America. For Latin women, if you break out of the role, the more alone you are. Women are a clan, and they want to move it-all of the clan-along. But don’t get too far away from it, stay close to traditions. Boasting stories-when people know you’re bragging-it’s not good. You can’t dress, talk, or act outrageously. The old values and morals enter into the traditions. Women are very restricted-they must respect the husband, be a good mother, which means cleaning, cooking, and church. Duties, obligations are everything. Sympathy equals your understanding that I’m bound by these rules, within this context. These are givens: I can’t leave my husband; I can’t disobey the church. Loyalty is very important, and you sympathize with people you should be loyal to, family, parents, your husband (you have to be careful about criticizing your husband in front of others). A woman has to walk a tightrope-complain some, but not too much. The women are a clan. I see some women who don’t get involved in networks, just numb out on TV or booze. But most are in a clan. They share stories of sacrifice-the migration, for example. ‘‘I had to pack up and leave my home, leave my children behind.” Once you get here, you’re expected to move on from there, and you get sympathy for not being able to move on-if your kids don’t behave or your husband is an alcoholic or he can’t get a job. Sympathy is around survival, trying to move each other up. One gets chosen and supported to go out, experiment, and report back. Everyone wants information and support-what to do with your man and kids. How

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do you handle this man? The women tell pain stories but wrap them in bravery: “I survived.” It might be a story of how “I had to put up with this boss.” Others say, “Oooh, what did you do?” “I said this, and I did that.” “HOW did he react?” Or, “My man almost kicked me, but I did this and that . . . ” “Oh, yeah?!” In coffee klatches women spend lots of time exchanging fotonovelas [soap-opera-type comic books]. A woman in a story leaves her husband, so you root for her. You wouldn’t do it, you wouldn’t leave yourself, but you’d root with the others. There is support around deprivation and bravery. They’ll say, “Yes, I came from a family with thirteen kids too.” Others will tell your story, pass it around. They’re proud of you. The punch line is how you’re surviving. Sympathy words are, “YOU did so much!” Almost like an applause. If you do too badly, if you’re drinking, on drugs, getting beat up and being a victim too long, you’re left behind. People push her out: “When is she going to learn?” (Field notes) The knowledge that other women are predisposed to sympathize often shapes a Latina’s behavior and self-presentations. A single twenty-threeyear-old woman who was entering law school illustrated this point. In her family’s Cuban and Puerto Rican neighborhood, women in the older generations centered their conversations on bad luck and sympathy: When my mother’s friends all get together to drink coffee, all they talk about is their problems. One will start by saying, “You’ll never believe what Josk did. He was out last night until three o’clock.” Then the other ones will cluck their tongues and tell her how sorry they are that she has to put up with this man. Then the next one will bring up her son who is doing badly in school. And they’ll all be sorry for her for a while. It’s endless. They never talk about anything positive. It’s all gloom and sympathy. . . . I’ve never seen my father or any other men do this. (Field notes) Another woman, the Hispanic psychotherapist in her fifties I quoted previously, pointed to the limiting aspects of the sisterhood of sympathy: You can’t have anything good to say [to other women]. They’ll ignore you. They hate you, I think. A woman’s lot is supposed to be terrible. She is supposed to be putting up with misery. If she says anything positive, she’s a traitor. If nothing is wrong, you make something up. It’s better that her son gets into trouble than into Harvard. She can’t say her husband is loving and warm. She can’t achieve any success of her own. It’s like that old movie about a woman in a Greek village who is stoned to death by the other women

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because she is making a better life for herself. They killed her because they couldn’t relate to her unless she was miserable. The movie was about Greece, but it might as well have been Bogoth. You’re supposed to be endlessly sympathetic and endlessly miserable. (Field notes)

To be part of the group of women kin and friends, this woman believed, one must create sympathy margins for others and sustain one’s own margins. To her irritation, she felt that women had to focus on their problems to maintain their margins with others. Paradoxically, in this system, when a woman cashes in some of her sympathy credits, she does not necessarily deplete her margin. Rather, she may gain some credits because she has given the sympathizer a chance to display her sympathetic qualities and earn social capital. For example, a young woman who came to the United States from Cuba as a child discussed her family with a companion: My poor mother went to visit her family in Cuba. She had such a time. They searched her jacket and her purse. They wouldn’t let her take in money or jewelry. Think of how my poor niece has to live! [Tears come to her eyes and roll down her cheeks. She wrings her hands and shakes her head, looking miserable. Her companion asks if she has met her cousin.] I’ve only seen her in one photo. I feel so bad when I think that my daughter has everything. She has everything, and my niece has nothing. Only two dresses. Oh, it’s so terrible. What Castro has done! . . . [Somewhat later] Can you come to my daughter’s birthday party? Poor Rosario, what if the kids don’t come? She won’t have anyone there. (Field notes) In a thirty-minute time span, the woman prefaced every reference to another person with “Poor X . ” And few of the people she referred to were men. She showed in this encounter that she was the kind of person who created deep, wide margins, especially for other women. The mutual predisposition to sympathize provides the social glue and creates the foundation for intersubjectivity and obligation that make the women a “clan,” a sisterhood. At the same time, the sisterhood may reward and promote passive behavior. Moreover, these sympathy norms would seem to serve as social control by allowing women to release tensions and frustrations, rewarding them for remaining in their traditional roles, and threatening them with isolation if they reject those roles. The social worker quoted above believed that the sympathy-based relationships she observed in her work could have offsetting influences on the women’s

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lives: “The group may seem like something that holds you down, but it holds you up, too.” For these reasons, Hispanic women may tolerate misery, as Anne Campbell’s respondent, a girl gang member, implied: “Yeah, Puerto Rican women they hurt a lot. Some women they hurt a lot. They suffer a lot because of the man. O r because of their kids” (1 987,

462). Paying attention to variations in emotional culture may help us trace how emotions like sympathy serve as social glue, binding people into specific groups and networks. It may also increase social interventionists’ awareness of what a sympathy claim means within the Hispanic cultural context and make a Latina’s reluctance to accept “logical” solutions to her problems more understandable. Uninformed approaches and premature “solutions” to a woman’s plight could have disastrous unintended consequences, such as disrupting support networks and propelling a woman into isolation.

In this chapter we have examined some of the twists and turns that relationships can take depending on social actors’ adherence to the four basic rules of sympathy etiquette: (1) do not make false or unwarranted claims sympathy; ( 2 ) do not claim too much sympathy, or (2a) accept it too readily; ( 3 ) claim some sympathy to keep accounts open; and (4) repay sympathy gifts with gratitude, deference, and sympathy. When an actor’s sympathy biography does not fit this etiquette, his or her sympathy margins may shrink. At times, however, sympathizers do not follow their own set of complementary rules for withholding sympathy. In these cases, sympathizers overinvest, themselves violating exchange rules of beneficence o r reciprocity. Or, what may appear to be deviant sympathizing can represent adherence to unique subcultural norms. Looking at the links between sympathy biographies and sympathy margins makes it clear that relationships have lives of their own. Though this is especially true of face-to-face relationships, it also bears on mental ties between strangers. Relationships grow in intimacy, and they wane. Sometimes they end. Social actors’ awareness of a relationship moves from the mental background to foreground and back again. Of course, many other factors contribute to the process, but the history of sympathy giving and getting can play an important role. To this point, our journey has taken us along many new roads, but

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we still have not investigated all corners of the territory. In the next chapter, we will venture even more deeply into some cases that seem to involve sympathy overinvestment. W e will trace the paths of sympathizers who give their emotional gifts to “deliberate deviants” who have brought about their own plights.

In t erpr e t i ng D e vi a n ce The Sympathetic Response

It is sureI, better to pardon too much than to condemn too much. Dorothea Brooke, in Middlemarch. 1872

New York City, 1984: A hospital reported the disappearance of a 5-hourold baby. A former hospital employee had taken the infant and returned it some days later. Her previous co-workers described the kidnapper as a “poor lost soul” living a lonely, empty life. She wanted a baby to love. Although the police arrested the woman for kidnapping, the aggrieved parents felt sorry for her and did not press charges. (Extracted from the New York Times, 14 April 1984) Washington, D. C., 1987: Lt. Col. Oliver North, under a limited grant of immunity, testified before the U.S. Senate Iran-Contra hearings that he had committed several illegal acts. These acts included selling weapons to another government, accepting money from arms deals for a burglar alarm for his house, destroying government documents, and lying to officials. Throughout several days of testimony, North established an image as a forthright, concerned, nationalistic, and loyal soldier fighting for his president and for his country’s beliefs despite shabby treatment by his superiors (including President Reagan). Much of the public was sympathetic toward North’s ordeal. (Extracted from the New York Times, 9 July 1987)

South Carolina, 1994: Susan Smith, a 23-year-old South Carolina mother rolled her car into a lake, killing her two young children strapped inside. Defense attorneys acted as sympathy brokers. In the words of reporter Rick

B r a g , they “pieced together the picture of her troubled past, trying to build a wall of sympathy around her. ” Calling witnesses for Mrs. Smith-including the sheriff who got her to confess to the crime and a forensic psychiatrist hired by the defense-prosecutors

“[gave] jurors a sad silhouette of Mrs.

Smith without having to put her on the stand.” The psychiatrist “painted a dark, hopeless image of the months leading up to the killings,” saying Mrs. Smith was sane but suffered from “brief intermittent depressive disorder. ” Perhaps because her stepfather molested her when she was 1 5, she developed a “desperate need to be liked” that triggered a “destructive cycle of sexual relationships to ease her loneliness,” which in turn caused feelings of guilt I95

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and eventually constant thoughts of suicide. Defense attorneys did not question Mrs. Smith’sguilt. Instead they called witnesses “who made excuse after excuse for her, attributing the deaths to her depression.” The attorneys’ strategy presupposed that having a “troubled past” is a plausible, credible argument for getting sympathy. Susan Smith did not go free, but a sympathetic jury sentenced her to prison rather than execution. (Extracted from the New York Times, 21, 22, and 31 July 1995)

esides newsworthy cases such as those above, people see or hear of individuals violating norms of one sort or another every day: drivers on the expressway exceed even the informal speed limits, a coworker steals company property, one nursery-school child hits another in the playground, a mugger assaults and robs a jogger. What happens when people learn of clear-cut cases of norm violation? The answer is not so clear-cut. Theorists of labeling, such as Howard Becker, noted long ago that we actually label as deviantfew of the nonconforming acts we observe or know about (1963, 9). What happens when deviants are not labeled? Sometimes they get sympathy instead. Judging is an almost constant feature of social life. Parallels between courtroom trials and everyday conversation about people’s actions and plights are less a matter of metaphor than of the formality of the governing rules and processes. Trial by gossip can be every bit as consequential as a legal proceeding. At issue in both circumstances is how to interpret, understand, judge, and respond to what has happened to people-both alleged victims and perpetrators. The judging process can result in a negative label; ,, it can also have other outcomes-a “hung jury, mercy, or sympathy. For instance, extenuating circumstances could warrant sympathy for a speeder, a workplace thief, a disruptive child, or even a mugger. Although the three news makers described above unquestionably broke laws, both the kidnapper and Oliver North were able to avoid prison and indeed any official sanctions, and as a result they were spared much unpleasantness and hardship. Susan Smith avoided the death penalty. These cases show that when rule breakers evoke the public’s sympathy, their fates may be far different than if the laws were strictly applied. This chapter focuses on the paradoxical cases of people giving sympathy rather than blame to those who break rules. This issue has implications of significance to judges, bosses, parents, and other rule enforcers. Starting from the sympathizer’s standpoint, I will present a model of the judgment

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process, illustrating with survey and interview data. The model includes steps in deciding whether a rule breaker deserves sympathy or blame and what happens as a result.

SYMPATHY AND DEVIANCE Sympathy and deviance are related in several ways. Usually, for claims against a sympathy margin to be honored, we expect people to have value in the socioemotional economy and acceptable sympathy biographies. They should be respectable group members who have not caused their own difficulties by breaking social rules or ignoring social logic. The worthy and innocent deserve sympathy, but the blameworthy deserve none. However, this general rule may be ignored. First, as we have seen repeatedly, the innocent may evoke blame. When people “believe in a just world,” they regard the innocent as blameworthy. Because people receive sympathy only when something goes wrong, even the most innocent sympathizees are potentially labelable as “ deviants. ” Sympathizees have experienced losses, illnesses, stigmata, misfortunes, or dilemmas that are not “normal” or “routine.” The disabled person is not whole, the sick person is not well, and the disaster victim has bad fortune. Plights are nonnormal and nonroutine, and people in plights may slip in others’ esteem for the mere fact of undergoing them. For example, co-workers may consider a sick person who cannot carry out routine chores of everyday life with customary levels of energy and attention to “deviate” from previous performance levels. Or people can label some categories of people as ‘‘essentially” deviant-for instance, the poor, AIDS sufferers, or rape victims. That is, whatever actions they take or fail to take, others perceive their “essences” negatively (Katz 1975). Considering the case of sickness, anthropologist-physician Horacio FQbrega noted that, in all known societies, entering the sick role always carries with it some degree of “discreditation” (1 974). Much previous research has shown that Westerners often fear and shun the mentally ill, the physically disabled, epileptics, and cancer patients (see, e.g., Goffman 1961, 1964; Conrad and Schneider 1980). Through the ages, some illnesses (e.g., leprosy, epilepsy, typhoid fever, venereal disease, and AIDS) have brought special disgrace (Conrad and Schneider 1980). To avoid discreditation, people may try to hide problems to escape being categorized, as Scott (1 969) found in his study of the blind: many of his respondents who could have

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qualified for social services as legally blind denied their disabled status and forfeited those services. In short, having a problem that warrants sympathy can also qualify a person for a deviant label, a loss of social credit. Such cases probably provided the beginning point for sociological labeling theory (see, e.g., Becker 1963; Lemert 1951, 1967; Scheff 1984). I t is paradoxical, then, that “deliberate deviants” (Lorber 1967) sometimes get sympathy and reprieve when they break rules. They could logically be said to deserve their difficulties and perhaps further punishment as well. Both Oliver North and the kidnapper described above were potentially blameworthy rule breakers who (strictly speaking) caused their own plights. Yet they evoked considerable sympathy and escaped formal sanctions. Susan Smith admitted killing her own children, yet she escaped execution. Because the people being judged contribute to the process, it is a negotiation. Further, because they are usually not social isolates, they may have both sympathy brokers and detractors who also contribute. However, in this chapter I will focus on the judge, that is, any person who interprets another person’s “deviant” action and judges it, meting out sympathy or blame for the rule breaker. I will examine the judge’s perceptions, interpretations, and emotional responses. I will do so both for the sake of simplicity and to spotlight the judge’s part in labeling/ sympathizing processes. Previous sociological work has ignored the role that sympathy and other emotions play in social judgment partly because it has not begun with the judges. Over the past thirty years, the labeling-theory perspective has shifted sociologists’ attention from (alleged) deviants to the actors and institutions that create deviance and deviants (see Becker 1963; Lemert 1967; Scheff 1984). Research in this tradition has focused chiefly on three lines of inquiry. The first, of course, is blaming / labeling: who labels whom a deviant (Becker 1963; Sudnow 1967) and what are the consequences of labeling for society and for the labeled (Glaser and Strauss 1965; Scott 1969; Thoits 1985)? One important area of inquiry stemming from this focus is how medical definitions of deviance-and therapeutic, “sympathetic” treatments-have eclipsed religious and legal definitions in recent decades (Conrad and Schneider 1980). A second major focus is normalization, or ignoring others’ norm violations and treating perpetrators as “normal” (see Becker 1963; Scheff 1966; Lemert 1967; Chambliss 1973; Locker 1981; Giordano 1983). The third line of inquiry concerns reactions to being labeled a deviant, in the form of “neutralization”-actions norm violators undertake to escape labels, t o “excuse,” “justify,” or “disclaim”

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their deviance, and sometimes to claim sympathy (Sykes and Matza 1957; Goffman 1961; Davis 1964; Scott and Lyman 1968; Hewitt and Stokes 1975; Gramling and Forsyth 1987). In general, labeling theorists have begun their analyses with outcomes-labels, nonlabels, reactions-and worked backward, rather than beginning a t the beginning of the judging process. That is, sociologists often ask how a labeled deviant came t o be labeled or reacts to labels, rather than approaching the label as only one possible outcome of ajudging process. I do not mean to imply that no one has begun with the judges (see e.g., Sudnow 1965 on public defenders’ typing of clients; and Howard and Levinson 1985 on mock jurors’ attributions and labels). Yet even Becker’s processual labeling model starts with behavior that could be labeled deviant, rather than starting with the judges, their observations, and their classifying emotions, cognitions, and acts. For these reasons, sociologists have neglected those social processes that call attention to deviance yet excuse it. Thus, we have also largely ignored an important process of social control. It might seem that to sympathize with acknowledged rule breakers rewards their behavior and accomplishes the opposite of social control. However, I contend that in some contexts sympathy provides integrative social control (see also Braithwaite 1989). Although it does not result in formal punishment, derogatory labels, or other types of segregative social control, sympathizing does underscore deviance by the mere fact of calling attention to it. When a person gives sympathy to a rule breaker, a mental bridge is built. When receiving sympathy calls forth the rule breaker’s feelings of connection, guilt, deference, relief, gratitude, and obligation, it ties him or her to the very society whose rules were violated (see also Shott 1979). Taking a sociological look at emotional responses t o norm violators will help sociologists expand and revise theories of deviance, social control, and social judgment. I uncovered much anecdotal evidence of sympathy for rule breakers in interviews and news reports. To obtain more systematic information, I also surveyed reactions to a vignette describing an incident of employee theft. The vignette was based on an actual case reported in an interview. As with the other vignettes in my surveys, I prepared four versions of a story in a two-by-two factorial design. In two versions, the main character was “Michael;” in the other two, “Susan.” The perpetrator acted alone in half the vignettes (the “worker alone” version, for short); in the other half, the worker acted on the advice of a co-worker (the “co-worker” version). The Susan version (with the optional wording in brackets) reads:

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Susan, a twenty-six-year-oldwife and mother, works in the meat department of the local Pathmark Supermarket. One day the poultry distributor accidentally delivered an extra carton of two dozen chickens not listed on the invoice. [Susan asked a co-worker what to do, and he said, “Take it home. That’s what everybody else does.”] Although she had never done it before, Susan decided to take the chickens home and put them in her freezer instead of reporting the overshipment. A shopper in the parking lot saw her loading the chickens into her car and told the store manager. When the manager asked Susan about it, she apologized. Several features of the case could, I suspected, trigger some people’s sympathy: the perpetrator’s sex, family situation, age, previously unblemished record, and apologetic behavior-plus the co-worker’s advice. Some respondents invented additional information to explain o r justify their reactions. The 329 respondents first read the story and indicated how sorry they felt for the character (on a five-point scale from “not sorry at all” to “extremely sorry”) and why. Then they were asked to suppose they managed the store and to explain what actions they would take toward the employee and why. Almost half the respondents (47 percent) said they felt at least some sympathy for the story character, and the rest felt little or none. As for the actions they would take, only 24 percent said that they would fire the worker, 10 percent would overlook the incident, and the majority (66 percent) would take an intermediate action, most commonly a warning or lecture. Consistent with studies of jurors’ decisions in actual and mock trials (see, e.g., Hans and Vidmar 1986, 76-77), the respondents’ background characteristics (e.g. , sex, age, marital status, religion, and social class) were weakly related to either their degree of sympathy or their proposed actions; the most powerful model of several I tried explained just 8 percent of the variation in sympathy scores. Only the factors of “race” (beta = .18; as I noted in chapter 2, I have categorized respondents as either white or African American for the Multiple Classification Analyses) and educational level (beta = .17) showed appreciable independent effects on sympathy. Whites and college-educated people had lower average sympathy scores than African Americans and those with less schooling. This finding suggests that identification with the perpetrator may facilitate sympathy, if we were to assume that African Americans and the less educated in general have had closer contact with or more experience as supermarket employees or similar service occupations. Overall, though, the respondents’ background

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characteristics explained only a small part of the variation in reported sympathy for the perpetrator; I found no significant main or interaction effects. Neither did the story version (sex of employee or presence/absence of co-worker) make much of a difference. If background factors and story version were poor predictors of the respondents’ sympathy scores, they were even worse predictors of leniency. I coded responses as either “definitely fire” or “not fire”-taken together, all these factors explained only 3 percent of the variation in leniency. However, the respondents’ leniency was connected to their sympathy scores: alone, sympathy scores accounted for 16 percent of the variation in proposed actions (beta = .41); adding other variables to the model did not diminish the impact of sympathy and only increased the amount of explained variation in proposed actions to 18 percent. Although judges’ degree of sympathy did not determine their proposed actions absolutely, actions were more strongly related to sympathy than any other factor. These findings support two contentions. First, judging rule breakers is not a simple, invariable process. What is to one person a clear case of punishable violation may be to another a clear case of bad luck. Contrast comments such as “Stealing is stealing’’ and “She took what didn’t belong to her!” with “She never stole before, and then she got caught when she only did it once” and “He might need the food. The store should not care-they didn’t pay for the chickens in the first place.” Second, emotions-spectf;cally sympathies-play an important part in the interpreting and judging process and in motivating judges’ subsequent actions,

A M O D E LO F

THE J U D G I N G

PROCESS

The model outlined in figure 1 reflects some aspects of the judging process. Many of the ideas incorporated in this model are far from new (see, e.g., Lemert 1951, 1967; Becker 1963, 1973; Kelley 1967; Kinch 1973). Therefore, rather than providing detailed arguments for each step, I will focus primarily on the pathways to and from blame (on the left side of the figure) and Sympathy (on the right side). These pathways start with the person engaged in judging rather than with the judged. Of course, not every case of judging follows the exact same sequence presented here. That is, sometimes a judge is ready to sympathize before learning the details of a case, sometimes a judge learns of extenuating circumstances before the actual details, and so on. The order of the steps in

Figure I

interpreting and Judging Deviance

Judge’s awareness of other’s norm violation

sources, including other

Search for information from I N T

.

-

(a) Other’s responsibility

Emotions /feelings

(b) Mitigating and extenuating circumstances

Self-concept

(c) Closeness of relationship

E

(d) Sympathy margin

R

(e) Cultural capital

J

P R

Y

T

V

-

Definition of other as

E

I

-

Cognitive consistency

Deviant

E

Normal

Placement on blame continuum W

0

armed robber

“drunk”

“alcoholic”

bereaved

R

-

K

”

(f) Other’s degree of contrition

(8) Punishment already suffered - by other

M E

N T

BLAME

SYMPATHY

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the model is meant to articulate a process, to suggest the factors involved, not their necessary sequence.

Interpretive Work

A judge gets information about a case of norm violation directly from the other-that is, from the person charged with violating social normsand/or indirectly from news accounts, sympathy brokers acting for the other, or interested community members. Following Scheff (1990), we can say that a judge’s outer search for evidence about another’s plight, behavior, and character contributes to sympathetic and nonsympathetic as,, sessments of what has “really” happened and what it “means. Inner search contributes also, as a judge assesses the present context of the other’s situation and recontextualizes it in terms of past and possible future contexts and in terms of what could have happened. Judges do not judge in a vacuum. They know that others are likely to judge their judgments. Societal members urge each other to judge and to judge “correctly.” W e judge the validity and appropriateness of one another’s perceptions, interpretations, and emotional reactions. Humans may have an innate need to classify and make sense of events and people in the social world (Piaget 1960; 1973), but moral entrepreneurs and our contemporaries also pressure us to do so (Berger and Luckmann 1967). Strong social norms call for us to perceive and judge other people’s behavior and to align our other-oriented feelings with the culturally appropriate judgments we make. Thus a judge usually wants to interpret the situation and the other correctly, not just to arrive a t socially appropriate interpretations but also to arrive a t socially appropriatefeelings about the other, be they sympathy, disgust, or indignation. Everyday conversation and gossip serve to help group members arrive at acceptable interpretations and emotions (Berger and Luckmann 1967; Spacks 1985, 229-33). A person who continually ignores others, makes “inaccurate” interpretations of them and their plights, or refuses to feel or express appropriate emotions to them is viewed as antisocial. In short, societal members judge each other’s otheroriented emotions. For example, as we have seen in Locker’s study of how people become categorized as “well” or “not well,” he found that family members and friends expected each other to engage in a constant monitoring process, searching each other for signs and symptoms of illness (1 98 1, 62). Family members, neighbors, and physicians criticized people (especially women)

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who missed early indications that all was not well with their children, spouses, or parents. They also criticized those who had attributed unusual behavior to personal willfulness rather than illness, once a physician had diagnosed it as such. Similarly, I observed innumerable conversations in which people discussed the moral state of friends, enemies, acquaintances, celebrities, and people in the news. Rarely did people allow others to have no opinion. When the parties’ categorizations and judgments differed, they often challenged each other. For instance, Did you hear about poor Bill? Since he got fired, he hasn’t been able to find another job. Everything’s going wrong for him, and he’s really an OK guy. Woman A:

Woman B: Well, I don’t think he’s OK. If he hadn’t broken the rules in the first place, he wouldn’t have been fired. How can you feel sorry for someone who tried to get ahead in his career by stealing ideas from someone else? Woman A :

I guess you’re right, but I still feel sorry,

Woman B:

I don’t see why you should!

Woman A:

I know, I know, but I don’t see how you can be so hard. (Field

notes) Neither woman seemed willing to say to the other, “You’re entitled to your opinion.” Each wanted the other to accept her own judgment. And each was judging the other’s judging abilities. These examples suggest that a judge’s awareness of others’ possible reactions serves as a backdrop to the interpretive work of the judging process. Statistical analyst Rebecca Jones reported an unusual illustrative case:

I was on jury duty on what I thought was a tough case. The other jurors seemed to have made up their minds before they heard the evidence. They couldn’t get the legal points straight in their minds, it was beyond their mental capacities[,]. . . so they were about to convict a guy of something he didn’t do. He did some pretty bad things, I think, but there was no evidence that he did what he was charged with. I was pretty much alone on the jury, and of course I wasn’t supposed to be discussing the case with family or friends. The other jurors kept sneering at me and calling me names because I was hanging the jury. I kept thinking, though, “What would my friend Steve think of my opinions? What would Nancy think? She’d know what to do.” In the end, I stuck to my guns and hung the jury.

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Thus as Scheff ’s concepts of implicature and explicature remind us, judging is a social process notwithstanding the fact that it takes place internally (1990, 52-58, 113-16). Moreover, the interpretive work required is almost simultaneously cognitive and emotional. When a judge learns that a person is experiencing a problem, the first judgment step is to construct a mental outline of the particulars of the situation. Once the judge has a basic outline, he or she can further classify the actors as saints or sinners, conformists or deviants. To do interpretive work, the judge sorts through learned categories of experience to find classifications that fit the present situation and its participants. Emotionality is a constant, ongoing process orienting self to situation and t o others (Wentworth and Ryan 1992). Thus, as judges do cognitive work, they experience emotions spontaneously and also work on their emotions to make them conform t o feeling rules (Hochschild 1979, 1983). Depending on the situation, a person should feel disgust or vengefulness toward a mugger, sympathy for the victim, fear for his or her own future safety, and hopelessness about the current state of society. Alternatively, one should feel disdain for the victim and sympathy for the mugger. The process of interpreting and judging events, then, includes experiencing emotions and engaging in emotion work. These emotional phenomena produce or mediate responses to the wrongdoer. That is, the type and intensity of a judge’s socially shaped feelings guide his or her ultimate labels and actions. The model I have developed of how people do interpretive work makes room for these emotional factors. Two additional important factors focusing a judge’s outer and inner searches are the degree to which the judge identifies with the wrongdoer and how content the judge is for others to identify him or her with the wrongdoer (Hochschild 1987). That is, the judge may view the other as “like me” or “not like me.” Also, the judge wants others to see him or her as “like the rule breaker” or “not like the rule breaker.” In other words, the judge’s self-concept plays a part. Having gotten only this far, a judge may stop and apply a label to a rule breaker. That is, if the other is “not like me” (and I want to continue to see the other as not like me), I may apply harsher classifications than I would if the other is “like me.” For example, when the Iran-Contra event became public, an antiwar Democrat might not have identified with Oliver North and might have been prone to label him almost before the facts were known. O r , a Republican supporter might have been prone to sympathize with North though the evidence pointed to his guilt.

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Typically, however, judges go beyond identification. For one thing, they may assess the mitigating and extenuating circumstances surrounding a situation (see Stone and Farberman 1970). Searches for more information may follow. The model in figure 1 points to five types of data produced by outer and inner searches. They can contribute to defining another as ‘ (normal” or “deviant” and, if the latter, to placement somewhere on the continuum from “blameworthy” to “blameless.” Four of these five types of data (excluding only “closeness of relationship”) represent the basic clusters of reasons my survey respondents gave for sympathizing. The more blameless a deviant, the more likely others will sympathize. I will focus primarily on how the five types of data can contribute to an extreme, ‘ ‘blameless deviance’ ’ interpretation-and, subsequently, to sympathy. The reader can then imagine corollaries that explain how these types of data could lead a judge to make other types of interpretations, namely, viewing the other as either a “blameworthy deviant” or as “normal.” For example, in the employee theft survey, 53 percent of the respondents felt little or no sympathy. Most of this number blamed the worker, but ten respondents “normalized” (Sykes and Matza 1957). They stated that neither sympathy nor blame was called for, because the worker had done nothing wrong. One young man claimed, “He did the right thing. Why feel sorry for him?” Others noted that employee theft is quite common-even among managers. The normalizing theme also appealed to some sympathizers who felt sorry for the employee because, although the action was “normal,” he or she was caught on a “technicality” and would probably have to suffer the consequences. Of course, things are more complicated than the model shows. For instance, a judge may simultaneously blame and sympathize. Respondents said, for example, “I feel sorry because Susan will probably lose her job, but she shouldn’t have stolen the chickens” (Hispanic man, twenty-fouryear-old single accountant), and ‘‘I am a bit sorry because Mike is a victim of the semimoral society we live in. W e all feel that we can cheat ‘a little’ and it’s OK. . . , However, it doesn’t excuse him in the slightest. He is old enough and responsible enough to know right and wrong; and he must take the consequences for his own actions” (convenience store owner, white, fifty-three-year-old married father of seven). Such cases usually fall closer to the center of the “blame continuum” in figure 1. Let us trace the steps in interpretive work that lead t o such placement.

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(a) Other’s responsibility. To the extent that a judge believes a person to be f ree of responsibilityf o r a problematic situation or deviant act, the judge is likely to deem the person a blameless deviant and to sympathize. Looking first at the sympathetic respondents in the employee theft study, I found many reasons for feeling sorry for the transgressing worker (see table 9). Since respondents’ explanations often included multiple reasons-and sometimes reasons for both sympathizing and blaming-I have made comments, rather than people, the units of analysis here. A sizable group of sympathizers used the logic of responsibility- “It really wasn’t his fault”-to explain their reactions. This was true especially among people who received a version of the vignette in which a co-worker validated the theft (see table 10). About one-third of the responses given by sympathetic respondents in the co-worker version related to the other person’s role in the rule breaking. Of the sympathetic comments the “co-worker” respondents gave, one-fourth pertained to the co-worker’s bad influence and/or the worker’s confusion about the rules. For instance, a fifty-sixyear-old security director, a married Italian American man, said, “[She was] honestly being misled. [She was] a victim of innocence and naive&.” A forty-nine-year-old married white woman, a banquet manager, said, “Michael unfortunately listened to somebody else, who gave him bad advice. . . . If Michael were dishonest, he would not have asked someone else what t o do.” Interestingly, respondents who got the “worker alone” version of the vignette were just as likely to be sympathetic, but they did not use the logic of responsibility. Instead of focusing on the responsibility issue, the sympathetic ‘‘worker alone” respondents mentioned various mitigating and extenuating circumstances as their reasons for sympathizing (see b in table 9). Thus, among sympathetic respondents, those with the co-worker version typically thought in terms of assessing responsibility rather than extenuating circumstances. Those with the worker alone version focused on extenuating circumstances rather than responsibility or blame. Other than these grounds, both subgroups of respondents were equally likely to mention sympathy margin (e.g., first offense), cultural capital, contrition, or punishment as considerations in their responses; I will return later to these grounds. On the other side of the same coin, unsympathetic respondents explained their lack of sympathy primarily by pointing to the worker’s responsibility for his or her acts (see table 1 1). For example, “Michael is a snake in the

~~~

~

Table 9

Grounds for Sympathizing with Thief ( N Reasons = 216; N Respondents = 329)

N % All % All Respondents Mentions Reasons Who Mentioned

Catenories

(a) Employee not responsible: Co-worker influenced

18a

28

13

12 12

6

8a

6

4

52

24

16

27

12

8

11

5

3

Subtotal

38

18

11

(c) Closeness of relationship Not applicable (d) Sympathy margin: First offense

40

19

12

4

2

1

14

6

4

4

2

1

18

8

5

26 8

12

6

3

6

3 -

8 2 2 2

Worker sought advice, was confused Temptation too great Subtotal (b) Mitigating and extenuating circumstances: Worker needed food Family responsibilities

(e) Cultural capital: Young ( f ) Degree of contrition: Worker apologized Wouldn’t do it again Subtotal (g) Punishment already suffered: Worker got caught Worker humiliated Shopper shouldn’t have told manager Theft was minor Worker will lose job Subtotal Other, vague, not classifiable

1

4

~

47

22

14

17

8

5

’Percentages based on respondents receiving “co-worker” version (n = 164).

Table 10

= 329) and Sympathetic Respon-

Percentage of Respondents Mentioning Sympathy Grounds by Vignette Version, for All Respondents ( N dents (n = 155) Categories Mentioned

All Respondents “Worker Alone” Version (n = 165) n

%

Sympathy Respondents

“Co-worker” Version (n = 164)

“Worker Alone” Version (n = 75)

Total

“Co-worker” Version (n = 80)

Total (n = 155)

n

%

n

%

n

%

n

%

n

%

Not responsible* Mitigating and extenuating

13

8

34

21

47

14

10

13

31

39

41

26

circumstances**

31

19

6

4

37

11

29

39

4

5

33

21

Sympathy margin

19

12

21

13

40

12

19

25

Cultural capital Contrition

3 11 20 6

2 7 12 4

1 6 19 14

1

4 17 39 20

1 5 12 6

3 11 20 5

4 15 27 7

21 1 6 18 13

36 1 8 22 16

23 4 17 38 18

3 11 25 12

Closeness of relationship

Not applicable

Punishment Other

4 12 9

Note: Percentages are based on the number of relevant respondents who mentioned a given category, not on the total number of responses. They do not total 100 percent because of multiple responses.

x 2 < .01. x’ < ,001.

*For all respondents and for sympathetic respondents, the p of **For all respondents and for sympathetic respondents, the p of

Table I I Grounds for Not Sympathizing with Thief ( N Reasons = 239; N Respondents = 329)

N

96 All Reasons

96 All Respondents

Mentions

104

44

32

Worker followed other

34

14

10

Worker didn’t report

33

14

10

25

10

8

8

3

2

7

3

2

211

88

Categories

Mentioning

(a) Employee responsible: Worker stole

Worker took a chance and had to pay Apology was admission of guilt Negative consequences for shipper/distributor Subtotal (b) No mitigating or extenuating circumstances: Worker not poor

1

(c) Distance of relationship: Not applicable (d) Lack of sympathy margin: None (e) Cultural capital: Worker was parent; jeopardized children

5

2

2

8

3

2

14

6

4

2 39

99

Worker old enough to know better None

(9

No contrition: Apology insincere

(g) Should suffer more: None Other, vague, not classifiable Total

Note: Percentages do not total 100 percent because of multiple responses.

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21 1

grass . . . a sneak, . . . and I’m glad he got caught” (twenty-two-yearold single white man, sales manager). An elderly white widow, formerly a nurse, said, “This person was stealing and cheating both the store and the distributor. Therefore, why feel sorry for him?” The crucial point, according to a young single African American woman, a clerical worker, “ was, She was stealing, no matter what the circumstances.’’ Of the 239 unsympathetic comments, fully 88 percent concerned the worker’s stealing, failing to report the overshipment, taking a chance, following others (in the co-worker version), admitting his or her own guilt-in short, acting culpably. (Most of the other 11 percent of the comments pointed to consequences of the employee’s acts, e.g., the shipper’s lost money or the effect on the employee’s children.) For the unsympathetic, then, responsibility was the most critical issue, and they did not read innocence into the worker’s actions. Additionally, some respondents who received the hurricane, assault, and problem drinker vignettes provided examples of the logic that sympathy should hinge on responsibility. I had intended to portray the characters as victims rather than rule breakers. However, many respondents reversed things. As we saw in chapter 3 , some who were “not sorry at all” and believed the characters were responsible for their own plights noted, for instance: “They were stupid to buy a house in a storm zone” (hurricane vignette; bank officer, thirty-seven-year-old married man of Eastern European descent); and “She probably led the guy on, maybe dressed provocatively. She was probably looking for action-and found it. She deserves everything she got” (assault vignette; white insurance salesman in his fifties). O n the other hand, respondents who said that they felt “extremely sorry” for the characters typically explained: ‘‘The Browns were innocent victims of nature” (hurricane vignette; jewish man, married, thirty-sixyear-old prosecutor); and “No matter how careful one is in the city, the possibility of being attacked always exists” (assault vignette; twenty-threeyear-old single Italian American woman, auditor). In these latter examples, the judges viewed story characters as not responsible and sympathized with their plights. These survey data accord with experimental evidence (e.g., Riordan, Marlin, and Kellogg 1983) showing that people judge a wrongdoer’s character less harshly when he or she offers a convincing excuse denying responsibility for a deviant act.

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(b) Mitigating and extenuating circumstances. To the extent that Q judge perceives mitigating and extenuating circumstances, he or she is less likely to consider the person blameworthy and more likely to sympathize, whatever the person’s responsibilityf o r the situation. The employee theft survey showed that mitigating circumstances entered the sympathy equation. For instance, one of the most common categories of reasons for sympathizing with the worker (the most common among African American respondents) was, simply, need-the perception that the employee probably needed the food. Other explanations focusing on mitigating circumstances were that the worker had family responsibilities and therefore needed the job, that the worker was young, and that the store wouldn’t miss the chickens anyway. For instance, one woman explained, “She probably didn’t have very much money and was just doing this for her family” (married Irish American fifty-five-year-old, secretary). Also, a white fifty-two-year-old married man, a sheriff’s office detective, saw it this way: “Michael was a young father and, not having a job of affluence, one can easily understand why he would act in such a manner.” Thus, these respondents felt sorry. Note also the response reported in the news story about the lonely woman who kidnaped an infant. Her lay judges, including former coworkers and the infant’s parents, forgave her crime because of the pathos of her life circumstances. She was not even required t o make what Scott and Lyman called “excuses” or “justifications” (1968). Her judges made them for her. Finally, consider the case of Bernhard Goetz, “the Subway Vigilante” of the 1980s (New York Times, 17 and 18 June 1987). Asked for money in a city subway by four African American youths, Goetz, a white man in his late thirties, feared he would be mugged. In a taped confession he sent to police, Goetz admitted he had pulled out an illegal Saturday night special and shot the four youths. Public reaction to the case proved quite emotional. Many felt anger and fear toward the youths and lionized Goetz. Others felt sympathy for the shooting victims and indignation toward Goetz for taking the law into his own hands. When the criminal case against Goetz came to court, the evidence of the youths’ antisocial behavior, Goetz’s previous experience with being mugged, and their own familiarity with New York City subways swayed jury members. In their construction of the event, they dismissed Goetz’s confession, in which he said he had wanted to murder the youths even after they no longer threatened him. They felt that his previous mugging “explained why” he reacted to the

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four youths by firing bullets at them. They found Goetz guilty of unlawful possession of a firearm but innocent of attempted murder or manslaughter. According to a New York Times editorial, “The jury seemed to be saying that the fear of crime, in someone who has been a previous mugging victim like Mr. Goetz, can weigh so heavily on one’s emotions that it can lead to conduct that might normally be considered wrongful.’’ The jury’s sympathies lay with Goetz, and they found him “normal,” his violent reaction “reasonable” ( N e w York Times 17 June 1987). Almost a decade later, however, a second jury in a civil suit against Goetz found that his shooting of one of the youths, Darrell Cabey, was unjustified. Cabey is paralyzed and permanently brain-damaged as a result of the shooting. That jury did not believe Goetz’s circumstances warranted much sympathy and ordered him to pay Cabey $43 million ( N e w York Times, 24 April 1996).

(c) Closeness of relationship. To the extent a judge considers or wants a relationship with another to be close rather than distant, the judge is less likely to deem the person blameworthy and more likely to sympathize, whatever the person’s responsibilityf o r the situation. The employee theft study does not pertain to this proposition because it did not focus on the respondents’ significant others, but many sources of evidence exist. For example, family roles call for members to created larger sympathy margins for those within the group than outside it (see Coser 1982; Manners 1984, 320). Thus, it is quite common to witness obstreperous or violent children receiving much more understanding and sympathy from their parents than from school officials. A mother or father might exclaim, “My little Johnny acting up? The teacher probably accused him falsely! Or, if Johnny did do it, the other kids probably put the poor thing up to it!” W e can also find dramatic supporting examples in the literature on battered women who remain loyal to their spouses (Ferraro and Johnson 1983; Denzin 1984b; Loseke 1992). In these cases, the sympathizer is also the victim. Also, the friendship role calls for granting leeway. Thus, a parent, spouse, or friend may be more likely than an acquaintance or stranger to find one not responsible or more likely to search for extenuating and mitigating circumstances. Yet at times the causal direction between closeness and sympathy is reversed. That is, people who first sympathize with another may find themselves later identifying with or wanting t o be close to him or her. Consider for instance, the couple described in chapter 1 who felt sorry for and then befriended the youth who had killed their son in an automobile accident.

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( d ) Sympathy margin. The amount of leeway and sympathy a judge grants depends on the number of credits remaining in a person’s sympathy margin. As I argued in chapter 4,group members accord each other limited sympathy margins. One way to maximize one’s sympathy margin in the face of blame is to appear to conduct oneself reputably and respectably (Wiseman 1979). For instance, Oliver North’s deferential demeanor and obedience to military rules affected his sympathy margins. As public opinion immediately following his Senate testimony had it, he was being a good soldier, working on important matters, doing his duty. Also, a person who follows proper sympathy etiquette-by not asking expect for too much sympathy, repaying social debts, and so on-can others to give some sympathy in a variety of circumstances, even blameworthy ones. A person who has overdrawn or failed to replenish sympathy margins (cashed in too many sympathy credits) may find that others refuse to sympathize in the present instance, especially if the grounds are not compelling. The person who has not overdrawn margins may find that others sympathize, even if he or she is to blame for the plight. In my employee theft study, I found evidence that judges paid attention to the matter of sympathy margin. The most common single reason given for sympathizing with the hypothetical worker was that it was his or her “first offense” (40 of 216 reasons; see table 9). People’s explanations of the logical link between sympathy and a first offense centered on the assumption that the worker was basically trustworthy and the corresponding rule that people who are trustworthy deserve a second chance. Some even cited the Bible on this point. In other words, the worker had not used up his or her sympathy margin. (e) Cultural capital. A person’s cultural capital-based on membership in highly valued age, ethnic, social class, gender, occupation, attractiveness, marital, and religious categoriesinjluences the number of sympathy credits a judge creates. Support for this proposition comes from previous research in the labeling perspective. Sudnow (1965), for example, has shown that people are more likely to label ethnic minorities deviant than the majority group. Social class, however, is a more complex matter. Some people judge both the poor and the wealthy to be more responsible for their plights than the middle class are for theirs (a mixed social-Darwinist/ populist view). Others may see the poor as helpless victims of social forces (a leftist view)

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and the wealthy as celebrities above the reach of everyday norms (an elitist view). Overall, however, the most common reaction, as Peggy Giordano ( 1 983) found, may be for people to feel cognitive inconsistency when they find that high-status people have broken rules. I would add that blaming a high-status person may generate cognitiveemotional inconsistency, which may lead people to sympathize. For example, many people sympathized with Bernhard Goetz, “the Subway Vigilante,” a middle-class white man, who, compared to the lower-class African American youths he shot, had more cultural capital on grounds of both class and ethnicity. (At the same time, many of those with a different assessment of cultural capital found it easier to sympathize with young African American men than with a middle-aged white man who seemed mentally unstable.) Similarly, a public defender with whom I spoke noted that the attorneys in his office helped defendants appear sympathy-worthy by boosting their perceived social class and cultural capital: Our office has a closet of “respectable” suits they can wear to court. We coach them on how to speak to the judge respectfully. We also try to get their relatives to show up in court, again, dressed appropriately. And it doesn’t hurt if their mothers shed a few tears. (Field notes; married middleaged Jewish man) The gender issue is also complex. From a traditional vantage point, women as a category merit sympathy because they lack cultural capital yet, at the same time, possess social capital by virtue of their presumed “ goodness” and “niceness.” In this value system, men have greater worth, but that worth is based on a presumption of strength, competence, and responsibility; receiving sympathy would weaken their position. On the other hand, from a modern vantage point, women are entitled to equal standing with men and also to “sympathy reparations” for past injustices. Thus, as I suggested in chapter 2, in both social logics women as a category are somewhat more sympathy-worthy than men are. The employee theft survey, designed to permit comparison of reactions to men and women of equal social-class, marital, and age statuses, showed that Susan elicited slightly more sympathy on average than did Michael. As I noted in chapter 3, when we adjust for the effects of the respondents’ background characteristics, the average sympathy scores for Michael and Susan in the “co-worker” condition were 2.02 and 2.16, respectively (out of 5 possible points; grand mean = 2.06). In the “worker alone” condition, the average sympathy score for Michael was 1.91, for Susan 2.19;

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interestingly, average sympathy scores were higher for Michael in the “coworker” condition than in the “worker alone” condition and higher for Susan in the “worker alone” condition than the “co-worker” one. These differences are not large, but they suggest that people do factor the other’s gender into their judgment. They also consider what people do for a living and how they do it. Oliver North’s case suggests some links between a person’s occupation, attractiveness, and others’ reactions. His not-too-high and not-too-low military position, which he emphasized via his uniform, ramrod posture, cleancut boyish good looks, puppy-like earnestness, and deferential but firm speech, seemed to lead much of the public to sympathize. His status as a Pentagon insider helped, too. Although the relationships between a person’s cultural capital and a judge’s interpretation are too many and too complicated to explain fully here, they are nevertheless important ingredients in the judging process. They should provide many foci for future researchers. Once a judge has considered one or more of these five factors-responsibility, circumstances, closeness, sympathy margin, and cultural capital-he or she mentally places the person on a blame continuum. Looking at figure 1 , we see several ideal-typical examples of cases ranged along such a continuum. People often blame those they see as deliberate deviants-in label them, accordingly, figure 1 , the armed robber and the “drunk”-and as blameworthy. The medicalized “alcoholic” and the bereaved, on the other hand, may escape blame for rule breaking, and consequently be labeled as relatively blameless. Any differences between judges in their assessments of blame probably result from their assigning different weights to the rule breaker’s cultural capital and aspects of his or her plight. After assessing a rule breaker’s degree of blameworthiness, another set of issues may arise. The judge may have decided how much blame another deserves, but the other may have already “paid” for his or her norm violation. The propositions that correspond to factors (f) and (g) address this issue.

(f)Other’s degree of contrition. To the extent a judge perceives another to feel contrite, the judge is likely to consider the person worthy of sympathy rather than further blame and punishment, whatever the person’s responsibility f o r his or her plight. Some respondents in the employee theft study saw the worker’s apology as little more than an admission of guilt, a ploy to get out of trouble, or

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a sign of weakness. More often, though, respondents mentioned the apology as cause for sympathy or leniency. Comments included: “He had the guts to admit it,” “She regrets what she did,” and “I’m sure he’s sorry about it now. ” These comments suggest that contrition can serve to repair sympathy margins after rule breaking. Research on emotional perceptions of criminals who repent (Robinson, Smith-Lovin, and Tsoudis 1994) has confirmed that sincere repentance prompts others’ sympathy. For example, the young drunk driver who labeled himself a murderer and cried in front of his high-school audiences won the sympathy of the bereaved parents of his victim. It is possible that Bernhard Goetz’s taped admissions may have persuaded the jurors in his 1987 criminal trial in this way as well. In cases like these, the judge’s social logic might be that selflabeling, feelings of guilt, and the act of confession are enough to atone for blameworthiness and replenish sympathy margins.

(a) Punishment already suffered by other. To the extent a judge perceives a person to have suffered signijlcant losses (e.8.. of money, freedom, social esteem, or self-esteem) as a consequence of the plight, the judge is likely to consider the person worthy of sympathy rather than further blame and punishment, whatever the person’s responsibilityf o r his or her plight. W e can find evidence for this proposition in the cases of two medical school professors who plagiarized parts of their writings ( N e w York Times, 8 June 1984, 2 December 1988). In both cases, when the misdeeds came to light, colleagues expressly stated that they felt sorry for the humiliation the professors had suffered and they believed further disciplinary action was unnecessary. In Oliver North’s case as well, the majority of Americans felt he should not be punished because he had already put up with enough in the way of defamation, harassment, and buck passing by his superiors ( N e w York Times, 24 March 1988). Consider also the case of a convicted tax evader who was stuck for two hours in a courthouse elevator on his way to sentencing. The judge in the case was aghast that the court had caused him inconvenience and anxiety and sentenced him to “time served” in the elevator ( N e w York Times, 6 December 1986). A common theme in the responses to the employee theft story concerned the punishment issue. Many respondents said that the worker had already suffered enough-or more than enough. They felt sorry because the worker was caught (1 2 percent of all 2 16 sympathetic comments; see table 9), because the worker would lose his or her job, because the worker

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had suffered humiliation and embarrassment, or because the infraction was minor. Some said, “NO one would miss the chickens,” and one respondent exclaimed, “The shopper should have stayed out of it. . . . All that for a few lousy chickens!” These people felt further punishment was almost inevitable once the manager learned the facts; since further punishment was not called for, they sympathized. The model of the interpreting and judging process I have presented here is, of course, gross and incomplete. It does, however, begin to show the variety and importance of both cognitive and emotional information. It also implies that the outcomes of the judging process can feed into the potential deviant’s self-definition. Self-definitions, in turn, can affect the rule breaker’s future.

Judgment Outcomes Becker (1963), Scott (1969), Gusfield (1969) and others have posited that blaming and labeling are linked t o segregative social control: ostracism, gossip, punishment, and/or incarceration. These societal reactions, once filtered through the rule breaker’s self-concept, may lead the person to become a career deviant, to reform, or to adopt alternative, subculturespecific definitions of normality. I suggest that sympathizing has some parallel outcomes. The upshot of a particular case depends on the sympathy recipient’s self-definitions and self-emotions. One possibility is that a social actor may realize that unlimited sympathy is rare, feel grateful for getting off the hook, and try to be a model citizen in the future. Alternatively, one might become what I call a “career sympathizee,” analogous to the “career deviant.” I will turn now to these two outcomes.

Career Sjmpathizees A rule breaker who gets sympathy may assume that his or her rule breaking was 1 L normal,” to use Sykes and Matza’s term (1957). Such a person may consider the sympathizers to be “suckers” and see sympathy-getting strategies as an acceptable way to keep out of trouble (see Gramling and Forsyth 1987). Violating rule 2 of sympathy etiquette by positioning oneself in the sympathizee role too often or too long is usually difficult, yet some people repeatedly claim sympathy. Some of these people manage to receive more than the average number of sympathy awards. A career sympathizee routinely spends energy and interpersonal resources to elicit others’ sympathy.

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Figure 2

Judgment Outcomes

“

0 N S

BLAME

SYMPATHY

Segregative Social Control

Integrative Social Control

.J

. .

Ostracize

J

Provide safety valve

+

Gossip

Obligate

Punish

Create bonds

Incarcerate

SELF-CONCEPT

R

![ N S

Y

x Feel

Become

career

reprieved;

career

deviant

conform

sympathizee

Become

Reform

E S

For the career sympathizee, getting sympathy and aid becomes a persistent strategy for living. Some career sympathizees are hustlers or con artists, consciously or unconsciously manipulating others into giving more sympathy than their situations merit. Perhaps the prototypical example of this type of career sympathizee is the panhandler, who operates in the impersonal world of the city, trading prestige for cash. Other career sympathizees are people whose problems are many and difficult to overcome and who find that the rewards of sympathy offset the concomitant sense of owing gratitude and the loss of social power. In effect, they become typecast-both in their own eyes and in others’-as “poor souls.” David Copperfield’s pouty, weepy child-wife Dora (Dickens [1850] 1981), like Rosamond in Middlemarch, is by no means strictly a historical type. They come to expect and to get sympathy as a matter of course. In family and friendship groups, a career sympathizee, by evoking the logic of complementarity, may manage t o move from crisis to crisis, mobilizing inordinate amounts of sympa-

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thy and support along the way from duty-bound parents and siblings. A career sympathizee may also become adept at calling forth beneficence from ever expanding pools of friends, co-workers, and even strangers. Almost all of my interviewees could identify at least one career sympathizee within their circles of friends and family. Many were quite indignant about them and described them as “takers” and malingerers. For example, a respondent related the case of a friend who felt sorry for her ex-husband although he was not paying child support: He is a kind of weasel, a sniveling wimp. He will constantly tell her his troubles, problems, instead of making a conscious effort a t getting a job and supporting his child. He thinks he can get away with it simply because he’s going to evoke sympathy in her. (Interview; forty-four-year-old divorced Eastern European woman, account clerk) Also, a married young Hispanic repairman told of his brother-in-law who repeatedly asked for sympathy: He tries to cover his mistakes and problems by using drugs, and he tries to

get sympathy from people because he’s on drugs. . . . Well, he does all different kind of things to get attention. He’ll steal cars, yell at his children, hit his children, yell a t his wife, do drugs, and cry about it later and be looking for sympathy from everybody. He’s using and abusing that sympathy from people for his gain. (Interview)

A middle-aged married Italian American woman who works as a sales representative described her grandmother: She always wants someone to feel sorry for her. She thinks she has every illness. If you say, “I have chicken pox,” she says, “I had that once.” If someone says they have cerebral palsy, she says, “I had that once.” She thinks she had everything once, and she always wants to be the center of attention. If she has the sniflles, she has to be catered to. She acts like she’s dying. I think she’s funny, and I play along with her. (Interview) Consider the words of the divorced forty-nine-year-old WASP administrative assistant introduced in chapter 3 who discussed her “macho” coworker. Everything that happened to that person was someone else’s fault. His parents didn’t raise him right, or the boss didn’t treat him right, or he wasn’t feeling well so he couldn’t do well. And he used that. Definitely always asking for

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sympathy from the simplest “Hello, how are you?” to more complex things like job, the relationship, and so forth. Drove me nuts! (Interview) Finally, Goldie Blum described her feelings for her mother-in-law, who before her death had complained about being lonely although she “had six or seven husbands” and “was always out playing cards.” Goldie said, “I disliked her immensely because she was a very tough person. If you didn’t know her, if she was talking to a stranger, it made you feel rotten because the other person would be very sympathetic. Inside I would know there’s nothing to feel sympathetic about.’’ I view such career sympathizees as the products of a societal reaction that, from the group’s point of view, has gone awry. It seems reasonable to argue that the career sympathizee has come to rely on the release from role expectations and the sense of connection that sympathy offers, but pays less attention to norms of obligation. One respondent, the young college administrator quoted in chapter 4,considered her brother a career sympathizee. She described his approach, noting his lack of appreciation: The portrait he paints of himself as an unfortunate soul who lost all of his friends is somehow tied up in the song and dance he performs when he calls looking for help from me. This talk about losing all his old friends is part of laying groundwork for getting me to feel sorry for him. He has a way of acting to let others know when something is wrong. Something about body language that says, “Back off. I’ve got problems.” He’s very good at it. And I started to really feel sorry for him while we were it worked-almost. talking. I started to think that maybe I should have helped him out those times when he came to me for help. But I didn’t, and he always finds a way out, in most cases without my help. There is something about the way his eyes get when he talks about this stuff. It’s hard to believe. He just doesn’t appear to be sincere about what he’s saying. He sounds sincere, but he doesn’t look sincere. How do you give someone like that help when in return they don’t even say thank you? (Freewriting) Perhaps the career sympathizee’s success at gaining sympathy engenders a sense of entitlement. Thus assured of their own entitlement, they may have an easier time convincing others as well, especially family members and those prone to be overinvestors.

Integrative Social Control Although sympathizing with rule breakers can produce career sympathizees who take advantage of their donor’s feelings, a t times it fosters conformity.

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By providing safety valves, by engendering obligations, and by forging group ties, sympathy giving creates integrative social control. First, sympathy softens the force of group norms. Always living up to expectations is difficult. By excusing some instances of potentially labelable deviance, sympathy can serve as a safety valve (Simmel 1955, 19; Coser 1956, 3948). That is, if people can sometimes get released from role obligations, they may find it easier to conform at other times. Several respondents in the employee theft survey explicitly recognized this function, saying “If they let him off this once, I’m sure he won’t do it again.” Sympathy’s safety-valve function can also have important integrative consequences for sympathy givers. For one thing, donors may feel socially worthy or even magnanimous. Consider the young single Italian American man who responded to the employee theft vignette this way: “I’m the kind of person who forgives and forgets. If I was the boss, I’d be merciful.” His sympathy giving seems to have enhanced his self-esteem. Further, giving sympathy may underscore sympathizers’ own group ties and loyalties, as when “loyal Americans” sympathized with Oliver North. Finally, giving others safety valves permits donors the legitimate right to claim them for themselves in the future. They may feel less pressured to live up to social norms themselves. Some charity donors, for instance, have described their motivation to donate money as a sense of “social security” that they can receive help in the future should they need it (Atwater and Robboy 1972). Because people may need sympathy to escape deviant labels a t some future date, they will “pay” for the privilege by giving sympathy to and excusing others today. From the sympathizee’s standpoint, getting sympathy can contribute to integrative social control by creating obligation. As we saw earlier, norms of reciprocity and exchange obligate group members to each other (Gouldner 1960; Blau 1964; Lkvi-Strauss 1974). Like other socioemotional gifts, sympathy is subject t o norms of reciprocity. Etiquette advisor Miss Manners declared that sympathy “must be reciprocal” (1984, 320). People do not always give sympathy to all who ask for it. When they give it, donors expect the recipient’s gratitude and recognition of an obligation to repay either with sympathy (if the parties are “intimates” and status equals) or with deference (if the recipient is lower in status and/or a stranger). In other words, the role of the sympathizee includes owing gratitude and deference. These socioemotional commodities contribute to ‘‘social glue” : they serve to increase attachment, decrease disaffection, and promote the legitimacy of the group. The sense of obligation that some sympathy recipients feel may be

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directed not only toward individual benefactors but also toward a group or society as a whole. By adhering to group norms in everyday life, either before or after sympathy is bestowed, one can show oneself t o be worthy of others’ sympathy. Recipient and donor may make the connection between everyday behavior and sympathy tacitly or overtly: among the Hasidic Jews of Williamsburg, for example, a person must be considered a worthy group member to receive charity (Poll 1969). At the same time, a person who owes is one-down (or one-less-up) compared with the person owed. If repayment is feasible, the ower will probably attempt to discharge the obligation quickly, perhaps by searching for an event in the other’s biography suitable for giving sympathy. The original sympathizer may soon find him or herself the sympathizee, with his or her own obligations. Over time, webs of incurred and repaid obligations build up between group members, cementing relationships. The importance of sympathy’s obligation-creating function is even more apparent when we remember that people are often stingy with their sympathy, even for those who are not rule breakers. Just-world interpretations are common, and judges are likely to blame others for their problems whether they are responsible for them or not. Even with strings attachedincluding a loss of social power-getting sympathy and owing repayment may be preferable to a deviant label. Finally, sympathy symbolizes closeness, intimacy, and connection, as opposed to foreignness and marginality. (This is not to say that sympathy necessarily symbolizes status equality between the parties.) When people state or imply, “We understand what you’re going through and feel sorry ,, for you, they are, temporarily at least, putting themselves in your place. It is as if they are saying, “Although there may be differences between us, we are together and alike in the trouble we must sometimes face. In this, at least, we are equals.” These messages are raw ingredients for social bonds. Moreover, sympathy giving provides givers a rare, culturally legitimate opportunity to assert or reinforce group ties and relationships. Recall the case of the bereaved parents who eventually felt sorry for and befriended the young man who had killed their son. All three came to feel more closely united with one another, their church, and their community. Both receiving and giving sympathy, therefore, may signify and reinforce intimate ties among the parties involved. In this way, sympathy rules and roles may serve to reduce uncertainty about one’s future and the threat of alienation from the group. Sympathy’s intimacy-reinforcing function, then, may provide one an-

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swer to the question of why people seek sympathy when they may lose social power by doing so. In chapter 7, I will discuss sympathy and social power in some detail. Suffice it to say here that invulnerability and isolation are sometimes less desirable than vulnerability and connection. If sympathy promotes conformity, can social groups simply do away with other, more segregative social-control measures? Because the meanings of social acts are situated, because we give sympathy in particular social contexts, the answer seems to be a qualified no. Without blame, punishment, or threat as an implicit contrast to sympathy, the sense of relief or reprieve that is a key feature of a safety valve would be missing. Guilt would make no sense, nor would gratitude. It is only because sympathy is scarce and sympathy margins are limited that sympathy is a reward, a gift, with strings attached. Let us consider a final case, described by an urban planner and mother of two, to illustrate this point. When we first moved here, the girls went to a nursery school where the teacher, this Jane Gray, had the values all backward. She apparently believed in giving love and sympathy to the wrong people. . . . Like one day I arrived to pick up Ellen and all the children were standing on the front steps gawking at Jane Gray. She had her arms around a little boy I knew was a bully. She was telling him how much she loved him and patting him. In the meantime, a little girl was lying on the ground bleeding and crying. The boy had apparently hit her, and Jane went immediately to him. I had to see if the little girl was all right and wipe off her face and wait with her till her mother came. . . . Where was the sympathy for the little girl? What did that little boy learn from all this? Nothing but to be a bigger bully. He learned he could get away with murder. I believe it’s affected him to this day. . . . The good children were really confused. They would engage in disruptive and violent behavior to get hugs too. (Field notes; divorced WASP middle-aged woman) In this small social world, sympathizing with rule breakers was the leader’s norm, so giving sympathy did not have the same symbolic meaning as in the larger society, where blaming and applying negative labels are more common. In this microcosm, giving sympathy did not create upstanding, reputable citizens or forge obligations and ties; giving sympathy simply promoted rule breaking. My tentative conclusion, which I hope will lead to further research, is that sympathizing in the larger society takes its considerable meaning only against a backdrop of potential labeling. That is,

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without the possibility of harsh, cold reactions, sympathy would not generate gratitude, ties, or responsibility.

.

Our excursion into the realm of deliberate deviance has uncovered several features of the sympathizer’s judgment process that could add to labeling theory. I believe that sociologists will understand societal reactions to potentially labelable deviants better by beginning with judges and their cogntive and emotional processes rather than with judgment outcomes. Judges do not always blame and label norm violators, even deliberate deviantssometimes they sympathize. The interpretive work that judges undertake when deciding if an actor merits sympathy includes assessing many factors: the social actor’s responsibility for the plight, mitigating and extenuating circumstances, how close their relationship is, the actor’s remaining sympathy margin, the actor’s cultural capital, how contrite the actor is, and punishments the actor may have already suffered. Sometimes people can manage to get “too much” sympathy, but these career sympathizees pay a price in respect and trust. Although initial sympathy awards may whet the recipient’s appetite for more and lead to a sympathy career, sympathy can also promote conformity. Sympathy gives the troubled both social connection and reprieve from everyday role expectations. It also gives sympathizers opportunities to demonstrate connection and moral drama. Sometimes even plights a person has caused are grounds for sympathy, and in these cases sympathy short-circuits the labeling process. So far, our journey has helped us understand what people should be and do to maintain sympathy margins and even escape blame for rule breaking. However, as I have hinted a t many points, although people sometimes appreciate sympathy and even contrive to get it, a t other times they do not welcome it. In the beginning of this chapter, I noted that a person in a sympathy-worthy situation is also potentially labelable as a deviant-as defective, not normal, or not functioning adequately. On one hand, a gift of sympathy could help the person avoid blame and punishment. O n the other, if blame and punishment are not likely alternative outcomes, the gift of sympathy merely calls attention to the problem. Sympathy can temporarily or permanently reduce the sympathizee’s usual “place” o r standing in a relationship, an outcome many people resent and would like to avoid. In chapter 7 we will set out on the last leg of our journey, focusing on some of the micropolitical consequences of getting sympathy.

Sympathy, Microhierarchy, and Micropolitics

Very little achievement is required i n order to pity another man’s shortcomings. George Eliot, Middlemarch, I872

What was most irritating about her behavior was how she gave Sympathy. She did so in ways that always made me feel pathetic rather than comforted. Somehow it would be a put-down, So, she would say things like, “Oh, it must be hard to be single i n the suburbs.” I suppose f t h i s were ofered i n the right context, it would have been good. . . . But she would just throw it out any time. Seemingly she was ofering support, but it was a way to reestablish her position as The One Who Has a “Boyfriend. ”

. . . I f e l t somehow attacked, put on the defensive. Ofering Sympathy when I didn’t need it made me feel, “Gosh, there must be a j a w here. Perhaps I r e a l b am bothered about this. ” And then I would come away feelingjustered and angry at her. And I’dfeel guilty because I wasn’t accepting her kindness. (Freewriting and interview; successful young Jewish professional woman)

I

vividly recall a scene that took place some thirty-five years ago. Just before Thanksgiving, my suburban middle-class high school organized a drive to collect canned goods, staples, and money t o buy turkeys for poor families. I was somehow selected to be part of the group delivering the food to the Grants. O n a Saturday morning, four of us jammed ourselves and the boxes and bags of food into my VW. W e drove to the specified address on a gravel street in a neighborhood unfamiliar to us across town. Carrying bags and boxes up three steps to a concrete stoop, we knocked on the door of a tiny frame house once painted white. W e looked around, wide-eyed, as we waited. Several children in worn clothes, three or four years younger than we were, played quietly in the rutted, muddy yard and pretended to ignore us. Mrs. Grant answered the door and invited us in. We brought our offering into a tiny living room, crowded with clutter and cheap, threadbare furniture. Newspaper, as faded as Mrs. Grant’s housedress, had once been glued on the walls for wallpaper. Now it peeled. So this was poverty. W e had read David Copperf;eld and The Grapes .f Wrath in school, but this was real, and we were embarrassed at intruding in it. Mrs. Grant pretended she didn’t see the looks of surprise on our faces. The others were silent, and I tried to act the spokesperson in as businesslike and respectful a manner as I could. Yes, we were making a delivery and hoped it was satisfactory to her. She thanked us as if we had actually done something meaningful, as if we had sacrificed. Her husband would have been there too, she said, but he was out answering a job ad. I was taken aback that Mrs. Grant was so grateful, so deferential to us teenagers. I do not know if she was sincere,

Some of the ideas in this chapter have been previously described in my essay “Emotions and Micropolitics in Everyday Life: Some Patterns and Paradoxes of ‘Place,’ ” in Research Agendas in the Sociology $Emotions, ed. Theodore D. Kemper (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). 227

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but she was certainly mindful of her manners and showed her appreciation graciously. I felt much self-disgust and guilt, embarrassment at causing embarrassment. And I felt a surge of sympathy for Mrs. Grant. How had I dared show up here, a seventeen-year-old, driving my own car, wearing the latest teenage styles and a bouffant hairdo, bringing sugar and canned corn and pumpkin that parents on the other side of town had given away because they didn’t want them anyway? O n the other hand, how could I be so smug as to assume automatically that my life was so much better than this? Maybe I should feel guilty for feeling sorry. What my companions were feeling they kept to themselves. Our emotions swirling, we made a hasty retreat. But the scene did not fade from my mind. The charity we brought began as an abstract good deed (and a chance to hang out with friends on a Saturday morning-we were much less noble than Eliot’s Dorothea). Our initial distanced sympathy for the poor turned into full-blown active sympathy for Mrs. Grant. And both demeaned her to her face. I could not understand why the school had thought this was such a humanitarian idea, Did Mrs. Grant or the children in the muddy yard feel the turkey and two or three boxes of food were worth the degradation of having high-school kids barge into their world? I’ll never know. But on that November morning in 1962, I understood a piece of the micropolitics of sympathy.

Micropolitics is one side of sympathy that many people prefer to ignore. Yet as I hope I’ve just made clear, giving sympathy can demean. In chapter 5 we saw that sympathizees incur debts for the gifts they have received, and in chapter 6 we saw that sympathizees, simply by appearing to need sympathy, may also appear to have potentially blameworthy problems or inabilities. Sympathizers have it better. They are in the position of being owed, their life situations are comparatively less problematic, and by giving sympathy they increase their social and moral standing. Even when sympathizers do not consciously intend it, giving sympathy can have micropolitical consequences. Ironically, a sympathy transaction in the socioemotional economy may bring people closer and at the same time widen the social gap between them. But perhaps this result is not so ironic. It may explain a fundamental sociological paradox: all human groups are both cohesive

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and stratified. Sympathy and other emotional gifts may contribute to both cohesion and stratification. By focusing on sympathy’s micropolitical implications, I run a risk. The reader may infer that I believe all sympathizers are consciously using sympathy cynically and ultimately to promote their own self-interest. I do not mean this at all. Genuine plights can lead to genuine sympathy built of exquisite empathy and deep intersubjectivity. When the parties are equals, both are gratified and uplifted. But social relations usually are not so simple. In the first place, equality is rare, inequality everywhere around us. Even friends, lovers, and spouses do not occupy exactly equal social positions. At any given moment, one person is (fractionally or greatly) “one-up,” to use Stephen Potter’s apt expression (1952). A sympathy exchange can underline, intensify, or reverse the degree of inequality. Paying attention to the micropolitical aspects of emotional interchanges alerts us to the fact that the socioemotional economy is keyed to intricate microhierarchical arrangements. Exploring these arrangements may help elucidate some of the links between macrosocial and microsocial processes. Randall Collins (1 98 l ) , Anthony Giddens (1 984, 1991), Pierre Bourdieu (1 990), Thomas Scheff (1 990), George Ritzer (1990), and a host of others in the new generation of sociological theorists have offered versions of sociological theory that reassess macrolevel processes such as stratification, modernization, and patriarchy in light of microsociological research findings in symbolic interaction, conversation analysis, and ethnomethodology. It appears that Erving Goffman’s work convinced this new generation, among whom I count myself, that the microworld is an important object of study in its own right and a key to understanding the macroworld.

“PLACE”

AND

MICROHIERARCHY

Social actors generally know where they stand, and where they want to stand, relative t o other actors in their everyday encounters. If they do not act appropriately for their “place,” others remind them. Whether one is a star or a part of the supporting cast, a superior or an inferior, an intimate or an outsider, people “know their places” or get “put in their places” should they violate the pecking order. What I am calling “place” is the microlevel equivalent of social status in a society’s stratification system. If a social status is a socially agreed upon, macrolevel position (Merton 1957,

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368, 381-84), a place is a less well defined, microlevel position. Of course, an actor’s social statuses influence his or her place in a microhierarchy, but in modern societies, at least, the correspondence between status and place is not perfect. People in modern societies move among many places in the course of a day, occupying at least one in each of their relationships or encounters. A person’s subjective sense of place is an impermanent adjunct to selfconcept, or identity. Sense of place arises in a particular interactional context (or an imagined context). It is the momentary consciousness of “who I am and how I can act a t this moment in this encounter”-part of the situated self. Most important, social places are arranged hierarchically, encompassing differences in what sociologists have called “power” (Henley 1977; Kemper 1978, 1991), “face-to-face status” (e.g., Ridgeway, Berger, and Smith 1985), and “social distance,” the opposite of intimacy (Bogardus 1953 ) . Microhierarchies are more precarious than societal stratification systems, and they are rarely equally balanced. Place relationships are in a constant state of flux, adjustment, and alignment. In an instant, the gap between the parties can widen or narrow. Superior can become inferior. In this respect a person’s place in an encounter is less stable than the social statuses he or she occupies. Social actors may not be aware of their attempts to place themselves relatively to others and others relatively t o themselves, but they do so nevertheless (Goffman 195 1). In every encounter and relationship, each participant asks (among other things) who has a higher social place and, for a given moment at least, each answers the question in his or her own way. For one thing, humans have innate comparative mechanisms that constantly weigh object against object, idea against idea, group against group, and individual against individual (Sherif and Hovland 196 1; Wolf 1990, 229-30). Thus, comparing and contrasting are not necessarily willful acts but part of the normal functioning of our intellectual equipment. Comparison evokes emotions, and emotions provide information about where one stands. Also, preserving an acceptable self-concept hinges in part on a person’s ability to lay claim to acceptable places in the variety of situations, encounters, and relationships that make up a “life space.” As Scheff and Retzinger noted, humans are extremely sensitive to possible rejection not only because of what a rejection says about one’s sey but also because of what it says about the bond between self and other (1992, 64-65). Monitoring

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place arrangements involves monitoring bonds. In short, paying attention to the smallest differences in social place is a perceptual, social, and selfprotective necessity. Being attuned to microhierarchical arrangements of social places also allows a social actor to know what lines of action to take toward others in the socioemotional economy. The myriad unwritten rules for interaction are keyed to even the most minute differences in power and place. The proper demeanor toward a person who is greatly superior is different from the proper demeanor toward someone who is moderately superior, a little superior, or to some degree inferior (see, e.g., Whyte 1943; Goffman 1967; Schwartz 1967, 1973). For example, Schwartz (1973) showed that monopolizing others’ time by making them wait reflects and reinforces power differences. He also described power messages inherent in gift giving (1967, 2-4), for instance, “My expensive gift shows that I have more wealth than YOU” or “I know what gift is good for you.” That is, actors cannot take the same line with the One with the Upper Hand that they take with an inferior. They do not take the same line with a person who has low social and moral worth that they do with the worthy. People occupying higher places usually have more cultural and social capital and thus more esteem and privilege. They have more and different interactional rights. For instance, they can evaluate others, ask personal questions, give advice, point out flaws, have their opinions count, be late, hear secrets, have something more important to do, ignore the other, and so on. And their places shield them from others’ abuse and intrusions (Hochschild 1983). Of course, people sometimes engage in inappropriate place behavior, as when a subordinate asks a boss personal questions or the boss tries t o act too much like “one of the guys.” Furthermore, not everyone reads microhierarchical arrangements accurately. One may believe one is less highly placed or more highly placed than is the case. W e call people who repeatedly make both lands of mistakes socially inept, tactless, or even boorish. But even the socially adept may misread place configurations, because the specific places people occupy in a particular situation are often tangled or elusive, This, in turn, is partly because the distances between places are not uniform. What is more, places overlap, and they change. They are taken for granted, multiply defined, and situationally negotiated emergents. One reason social actors may have trouble discerning place configurations is that the gaps between one person’s place and another’s are variable.

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A gap can range from immense (as between corporate executive and typist, white landowner and African American farmworker in the rural South) to almost imperceptible (among friends). Even if actors are ostensibly peers or intimates, like the “lieutenants” among William Foote Whyte’s corner boys, at a given point in time one person usually has higher standing than the others (Whyte 1943). In short, Person A can be one-up, three-up, or a mere one-tenth-up relative to Person B. It is usually easier to detectand perhaps to maintain-larger gaps between places. Furthermore, when many actors are present, each occupies several social places at once. In a family or work group, for example, each member is to some degree higher or lower than each other member (for the moment). Gauging several distances at once can be difficult, especially a t those points when the entire interrelated configuration is in flux. Sometimes, as with a boss and a worker who are also friends, one is simultaneously in two or more place relationships with a single other person. Moreover, as long as people agree on a certain distance between themselves, they may interact freely, frequently, and even “intimately” w i h n a hierarchical place configuration. Groups arranged in paternalistic hierarchies (van den Berghe 1978), such as whites and blacks in the U.S. South or South Africa earlier in this decade and parents and children in a family, replace geographical distance with social distance to perpetuate their unequal places. Outside observers may not notice the full extent of the gap, and the parties themselves may take it for granted and therefore not believe that it exists. Reading places is also complicated by multiple perspectives on a given person’s place. At the same time that we place others and ourselves, others are trying to place us. There are, then, “subjective” (self-constructed) and “objective” (other-constructed) views of each person’s place. Objective places are not where people wish to stand or think they stand; objective places are those that others ascribe through their attention, esteem, deference, and honor-or lack thereof. The objective place that others construct may color a person’s own subjective sense of “where I stand in this relationship,” but does not determine it altogether. Some people resist a place others define for them, while some accept it. I t is little w o n d d , then, that reading place configurations can be bewildering. If it were only a cognitive task of paying attention to “status reminders” (Goffman !195 1) or expectations (see, e.g., Ridgeway, Berger, and Smith 1985), it\ would be harder still. I believe that it is often an emotion cue-a surge of smugness, a little anxiety, a feeling of hurt, or

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even a pang of guilt-that tells a social actor what his or her place is, or how it has changed, often before other kinds of cues come to awareness. People constantly experience and elicit emotions in interaction (Kemper 1978; Wentworth and Ryan 1992): it seems reasonable to assume that these emotions do something significant. That is, people’s self-targeted emotions (such as pride and shame) and their other-targeted emotions (such as awe and disdain) often serve to mark their own places. Usually, positive self-emotions (such as satisfaction or pride) and negative other-emotions (such as contempt or disgust) mark a subjective sense of superiority or powerfulness. Negative self-emotions (embarrassment, for instance) mark a sense of inferiority. Yet at times a negative self-emotion (for example, guilt) can indicate a sense of power over another person’s destiny at the same time that it marks a personal failing. Thus, in complex ways, some emotions mark place, registering a person’s relative place in his or her psyche and soma. The case of the Thanksgiving food delivery that I described at the beginning of this chapter provides an illustration. Mrs. Grant’s gratitude (even if insincere) marked her lower place, and my sympathy marked a higher place. At the same time, I was uncomfortable being cast in a higher place and felt guilt for sympathizing. Yet even my guilt also registered my higher place. Another donor, a Lady Bountiful, might have marked her higher place with sympathy or pity alone, sans guilt.

MICROPOLITICS If inequality is omnipresent, so is micropolitics. Micropolitics is behavior aimed at getting, keeping, and sometimes giving up interpersonal power, through such activities as making place claims, negotiating, and jockeying for position. The precariousness of microhierarchies in our everyday lives makes the need for negotiation great. In modern societies with at least a rhetoric of equality and opportunity, the task of establishing one’s relative place is generally more difficult than in traditional societies, in which places are linked more certainly to social statuses such as landowner and peasant, patriarch and chattel. Also, the rise of individualism has increased the stake we have in our self-concepts, increasing in turn the motivation to negotiate our places. In modern institutions such as business, courtship, family, and government, micropolitics is often played out in the arena of the socioemotional

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economy. Today more than ever, emotions are key micropolitical instruments. Because the esteem and standing we accord to businesspeople, potential spouses, parents, children, and political leaders are based in large part on how we feel about them, people may try t o influence our feelings. A social actor may direct emotions a t others to serve as place claims. Blatantly or subtly, consciously or unconsciously, one can use such emotions as disgust, contempt, and anger-or gratitude, patience, and sympathyto put others down, to elevate oneself, or both. Those who have more cultural and social capital to begin with can better risk making emotional place claims, just as the fully capitalized wield other micropolitical instruments (e.g., mystification, malung people wait, or appealing to law or tradition) with greater facility. One could say that a person has successfully launched an emotional chain reaction for gaining the upper hand when his or her emotional place claims call forth the reciprocal place markers of inferiority in someone else. People often have difficulty recognizing others’ use of emotionsespecially positive emotions such as sympathy-to make claims to higher place, yet their own emotional reactions may signal a change in place arrangements. For instance, one person’s show of displeasure can evoke a sudden feeling of shame, embarrassment, hurt, or inadequacy in another. Each actor feels that the gap between them has widened. Although the parties may not be equally satisfied with the result, a negotiation has nonetheless occurred. Their emotions mark their common recognition of the resulting place configuration. Emotional place claims can work in several ways and involve many emotions, depending in part on the initial places of those involved. The five place-negotiation strategies I will outline below may occur singly or in combinations. Note that people do not always use these strategies in a calculated manner. They are often unaware they are using them at all. Even if it is not consciously motivated, however, an emotional line of action may still influence the actors’ relative places. Three such strategies begin with directing emotions at others:

1.

Most obviously, a social actor can display negative emotions, making another actor feel lowly or inferior. For instance, a teacher’s or a boss’s anger or derision can produce humiliation in students or workers. This strategy is usually used by superiors toward subordinates or inferiors, since it could have counterproductive, disastrous results if tried in the other direction.

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3.

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A social actor can bestow an emotional gift, such as patience, gratitude, or sympathy, in a way that underscores the recipient’s weakness, problems, or lower position, making him or her feel self-conscious or inadequate. A social actor can reduce a gap in a place arrangement by directing positive emotions to others, thereby flattering them, “buttering ” them up, and “getting in their good graces.”

Two additional strategies entail eliciting emotions from others:

4. A person can enhance place by reminding another of an obligation or duty or by creating a feeling of obligation if none existed before. If successful, this strategy elicits the other’s feeling of guilt

5.

a t not having fulfilled the obligation in the first place and induces a sense of urgency to act on the first person’s behalf. For example, a parent may point out to a child that poor grades are inadequate repayment for all the parent has done. A husband may arrive home, seat himself at an empty dinner table, and give a plaintive look at his wife, notifying her of the obvious fact that she has not prepared dinner. Or, a wife may emit a pointed sigh as she tries to pay the bills, reminding her husband of his deficiencies as a wage earner. In all these cases, if the emotion cue connects, the target is one-down. A person can gain the upper hand by eliciting emotion from others while maintaining a monopoly on self-control. American teenagers use this strategy when they deliberately try to “get a rise” from a parent or teacher. Used by a superior, this procedure further reduces a subordinate. Used by a subordinate, it narrows the gap, at least temporarily.

The net result of emotional micropolitics is often to reproduce existing microlevel place arrangements and, consequently, macrolevel power arrangements. The more people’s macrolevel statuses accord with their microlevel places, and the more these statuses channel access to effective micropolitical strategies, the more things stay the same. People in superior places are probably better acquainted with most such emotional strategies than are inferiors. Those in inferior places wisely tend t o refrain from directing their wrath, scorn, or even pity at superiors, in effect granting them status shields. In the end, the superior does not have to resort t o force or threat to maintain privilege, because the inferiorfeels his or her

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own lower place, and those feelings disable rebelliousness. Thus, feelings of inferiority can lock people into unequal relationships. Scheff makes a similar point in his discussion of the role that shame plays in preserving stratification systems (1 990, 71 -95). However, emotional micropolitics may also upset place arrangements and, ultimately, power arrangements. Social actors may actively try to avoid inferior placements and the feelings that mark them. Inferiors have a number of emotional strategies they may use to improve their places or make superiors feel lowly, perhaps with far-reaching consequences.

S Y M P A T HAYN D E M O T I O N AM L ICROPOLITICS One or more of the five micropolitical strategies I have described above can occur in a sympathy transaction. Social actors may give sympathy in ways that pointedly mock others’ negative qualities (strategy 1), condescendingly pardon them for their problems and / or dictate a potentially disagreeable definition of the other’s situation (strategy 2 ) , get in another’s good graces (strategy 3 ) , generate feelings of obligation (strategy 4), or create an emotional imbalance (strategy 5). Beneath the words and gestures that constitute a sympathy display lie judgments, understandings, and sentiments-interior processes and constructs that observers must infer. As I noted previously, interpreting sympathy requires us to engage in “abduction,” lightning-quick searches of the other’s explicit and implicit messages, which involves both outer and inner search (Scheff 1990). In outer search, we read others’ tones of voice, facial expressions, gestures, and words. In inner search, we read our own thoughts and feelings and we imagine the degree to which the other can empathize, has empathized, and could have empathized. W e imagine the actual sympathy sentiments the other is feeling and could have felt. W e compare this sympathizer and his or her sympathy biography to others, remembering past occasions when we have gotten sympathy (from this person and from others), when this actor has withheld sympathy, and much, much more. W e imagine possible futures and how they will be affected by the present sympathy transaction. Throughout, we react with our own emotions and compare them to past and future feelings and to feelings that might have been. To understand how sympathy works micropolitically, sociologists must look beyond explicit messages to explore the implicature of sympathy transactions: the implied messages one person sends and the messages the

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other receives, or ‘‘reads out” of cues, and interprets, or “reads into” them. Of course, obtaining information about people’s search processes and interpretations is problematic, and standard sociological methods are not well suited for the task. Even conversation analysis using audio- or videotapes of interaction give little information about inner search. My analyses of the micropolitical aspects of sympathy rely on several methods. First, I used intensive interviews, especially responses to the questions: “Have you ever had someone show you sympathy or feel sorry for you when you didn’t want it? Can you describe how you felt? How did you react?” Another technique that can give us a glimpse of implicature is freewriting, a method I borrowed from English composition teachers (Elbow 1973) and adapted t o the study of emotional experience (Clark and Kravanja 1990). Much of the data reported here comes from subjects’ freewritings about their experiences of receiving sympathy. My research assistants and I trained several groups of subjects in the technique of nonstop writing without regard for spelling, punctuation, or grammar-letting the pen become the “stenographer” of the mind. As I note in the methodological appendix, we supplied them with directed questions, such as, “How do you feel when someone says they feel sorry for you and it hurts your feelings?” Freewriting is not an ideal method for studying implicature, since it requires people to recall events they may not have paid much attention to in the first place. Despite its shortcomings, however, it did deepen some insights gained from the interview responses. I found that some respondents said they could not remember having received unwanted sympathy. Their situations were in some respects sheltered. For instance, a middle-aged white woman, a homemaker and parttime secretary, explained her inexperience with unwanted sympathy this way: “My friends are close and caring. They would never think of saying ‘I feel sorry for you.’ I think because I’m home with my children most of the time I have not been in contact with many people. Now that I’m working I might come across someone who would say that to me” (freewriting). Men often reported that they receive little sympathy of any sort, let alone unwanted, belittling sympathy. For example, a young white man, an accountant, wrote, “I can’t quite think of myself ever being in such a situation. ” However, some respondents seemed to be expressing cultural ideology (or wishful thinlung) rather than reporting on interaction, like a twenty-two-year-old white woman, a secretary, who wrote, “People don’t do that. They don’t give sympathy unless they mean it.” Indeed, people are often unaware of the micropolitical aspects of a

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sympathy display and fail to decode them. Yet, some freewriters, providing clues as to how they engaged in inner search, warned that gifts of sympathy require interpretation. For instance, a married white middle-level manager in his fifties wrote, “You have to figure out why they’re sorry for you. Why is the person making a comment of this nature and what are the motives involved?’’ (freewriting). They pointed out several problems: How sincere is the sympathizer? What are the sympathizer’s motives? What does the sympathizer imply about the sympathizee’s abilities? A sympathizer may intend to comfort or to demean the sympathizee. Sympathizers may also be trying to elevate themselves by being nice. They can create obligations to be called in later. The case of the young professional woman quoted at the beginning of this chapter shows some of the difficulties involved in interpretation. Her co-worker’s sympathy pointed out her problems, buttered her up, and left her flustered. In addition, the co-worker increased her own social capital. Yet it took repeated encounters with the sympathetic co-worker before the woman learned to trust what she called her ‘‘internal emotional barometer” and realize that she felt belittled. Her reactions confirm that receiving sympathy can kindle emotions that mark an inferior place. Feelings of inadequacy signaled her lower place, and feelings of hurt and anger signaled that something in the relationship was not balanced correctly. Furthermore, her reactions show that people are conditioned t o think of sympathy as a benefit or gift, not as a detriment or attack. Thus, people may become confused by a sympathetic micropolitician and feel guilty rejecting the gift, whatever its implied terms. Another woman, a twenty-two-year-old Hispanic clerical worker, more attuned to place-emotions than was the professional woman, wrote, “It’s not very important what others think. But it is important to me how other people make me feel. . . . I guess I can be hurt very easily. Maybe I’m overly sensitive.” Paying attention to one’s own feelings during interaction can provide data useful for deciphering a sympathizer’s intentions.

Strategy 1: Mock Sympathy One variety of micropolitical sympathizing that is not difficult to recognize is mock sympathy dished out with a sneer and a snide tone of voice. Such sympathy openly conveys disdain. A good-guy cop in the movies may snap at a criminal, “I pity you, you no good creep!” but examples of this type of emotional place claiming in everyday life are hard to come by. Several

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students in a high-school English class wrote in a freewriting exercise about other students who used mock sympathy t o embarrass personal enemies and taunt unpopular students. Also, I witnessed displays of this sort in courtrooms, observing judges sentencing drug users, murderers, and burglars, especially repeat offenders. For example, one judge in a New Jersey county court upbraided a convicted car thief and drug dealer. ‘‘I feel sorry for you, Mr. Delgado. You don’t seem to be able t o learn. You are scum, and you’ll stay scum.” This judge also used the same approach with a defense attorney who delayed the proceedings: “Oh, come now, Mr. Valente. I appreciate the burden this job is putting on you, but can we puhleeze get on with the case?” (field notes). Being on the receiving end of sarcastic sympathy displays is perturbing. A middle-aged white woman who teaches second grade said, “If I realize someone’s being sarcastic, . . . I’ll be mad.” In this same vein, perhaps expressing what many others politely avoided saying, a nine-year-old Hispanic girl wrote, “I feel mad. Mad. Mad. Mad. I feel like I want t o punch them in the face.” Strategy 2: Pointing O u t Others’ Problems and Elevating Oneself More confusing is the sympathizer who does not mock but nevertheless demeans. This kind of sympathizer may be pretending to sympathize, as in the following case described by a middle-aged WASP married woman, a technical writer: I remember that I once used sympathy on purpose to try to knock someone down a peg. I had a boss who was always doing and saying things to put me down in a semi-nice way. . . . I got tired of it, so I turned it around on him. I was in his office, and I said, “Oh, Mr. Wall, look at all those reports you have to get done. I feel so sorry for you. I wouldn’t want your job for the world.” He changed colors, and I could see he was mad. He just said, “Oh, I can get this done in a snap. Nothing to it!” and edged me out the door. Normally he would have chatted a while. So I really got in a good zinger. (Field notes) Here we see a sympathy donor purposely questioning another’s ability to do his job. If the boss had publicly acknowledged his vulnerability, he would have moved one-down. No matter what his response, the worker felt oneless-down.

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Respondents reported that when they were aware of receiving calculated, insincere sympathy that pointed out their problems, they resented it. For example, the twenty-two-year-old clerical worker quoted previously explained, “Some people say they feel sorry for you to intentionally weaken you so you may not reach for your full potential. They may sabotage you by making you feel inadequate” (freewriting). Another young white woman warned that a person should ask, “Is it sorry out of pity, and they are degrading you personally?” A middle-aged white woman said, ‘1 It can come from jealousy.” And a younger white woman wrote, “Maybe they are just saying they’re sorry to goad me into an argument.” If respondents felt a sympathy donor was deliberately demeaning, they often reported feeling anger. Anger can lead a person to make counterclaims to protect a threatened place. Often sympathizers use this strategy less selfishly. In imagination, people engage in deep acting to work up sympathy for threatening or powerful others. Several respondents reported that they dealt with unpleasant bosses, customers, or spouses by mentally replacing their anger or irritation with sympathy. Doing so, they reduced the others’ places in their minds. This strategy is also illustrated by the flight attendants in Hochschild’s study, who kept control of their tempers by finding reasons to pity their disruptive passengers (1 98 3, 5 5). Yet, even when a sympathizer is not intentionally trying t o degrade, getting sympathy can rankle, especially when it carries an implied comparison between the sympathizer’s lot and the sympathizee’s. As one white married woman, a designer in the publishing business, wrote, “A person must think they’re better to feel sorry for someone else.” Contractor Frank DeLucca explained that he kept quiet about his problems for this reason: The first couple of years of school with jobs, the money wasn’t that good. I guess a lot of times even at the house with my parents or my brothers I could’ve brought up that I didn’t have money for gas and stuff. I could’ve said, “I really don’t have any money. I wish I had this or that.” Probably under those circumstances, without a doubt, they would have said, “Well, here, take this, take that, have some money, do this.” But I felt, maybe it’s an ego thing, “Well, I’ll get it myself. I’m not going to die. I have enough meat on my bones. I’ll survive. Tomorrow I’ll make it up. If I need the money, I’ll work somewhere else. I’ll try and get it.” Accepting sympathy and help would have damaged his “ego” and reduced his sense of his place in the family.

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Also, consciously or unconsciously, sympathizers may be trying to underscore or elevate their own superior place by showing themselves t o be moral and good. A married middle-aged WASP businessman’s story illustrates: Having injured my Achilles tendon and walking around on crutches for three and a half weeks I got a lot of sympathy. . . . This is what handicapped people face every day. . . . The ones who try to help you, when you feel like you can do it yourself, that was annoying, . . . but I kept it inside and let them do good. (Interview)

Ethel Carrington, the middle-aged elementary education student quoted in earlier chapters, described an unusual case in which a stranger wrote her a six-page sympathetic letter,

I went to a new doctor because I have lupus and also I have cancer. I had never met this young lady before [who works in the doctor’s office], and she wrote me a six-page letter about how she felt so sorry for me. . . . I was totally shocked, because working in the medical profession for as long as I did, I would’ve never done that. To put it in writing is a jeopardization of your job. My file was confidential, and she went and got my address. First it scared me because I didn’t know-what is this, a nut? I understand that she was a Jehovah’s Witness, and I guess she felt she was doing the right thing, but I never would have done it.

The sympathizer overstepped ethical bounds of privacy and social bounds of intimacy in order to “do good.” Her inappropriate display led Ethel Carrington to question the woman’s sanity. Although Ethel was anything but appreciative, she wrote the young woman a thank-you note. Not all who received this kind of sympathy were kind enough to allow others to gain place. The young country-club bookkeeper Robin Adams, for example, said that when she was “strong enough” she resisted “garbage like that.” Some respondents noted that when sympathy is hurtful, it is likely to be insincere. Insincere sympathy demeans. Again, Robin Adams illustrated. Describing unwanted sympathy she received for her inability to have children, she said, “There are people who aren’t as sincere as you want them to be, who say things t o you that they don’t mean that much because they don’t really care.” A thirty-nine-year-old white woman, a wife and homemaker, said, ‘‘When sympathy is genuine, it doesn’t hurt, but when it’s not genuine, it’s a knife’’ (freewriting). As one respondent stated

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explicitly, a sincere sympathizer would have known how to protect the sympathizee’s feelings: “If she had really felt sorry for me, she wouldn’t have said anything” (freewriting; young white woman). And another young white woman said, “ A truly sympathetic person wouldn’t hurt you. They’d think of some way not to” (freewriting). The truly sympathetic person would have downplayed the problem, avoiding any display that would spotlight the other’s flaws and shortcomings. Judging from the respondents’ descriptions, I would not say that all the sympathizers so blamed were insincere. But the sympathizees felt that they were, and resented them. People also resent having others decide when they need sympathy. As a white, twenty-two-year-old woman, a medical technologist, put it, “Don’t feel sorry for me if I don’t feel sorry for me” (freewriting). A sympathizer may take away the recipient’s right to define his or her own life and circumstances. A divorced semiretired Hispanic custodian, an exprize-fighter, illustrated this point when he said, Many times people say to me, “Oh, Poor Raul.” Well, I may be poor, but I am doing pretty well. Materially wealthy, no-but otherwise. I have many friends, my children are doing well, and I have a bunch of grandchildren. In other ways I am a very wealthy man. And even though I live by myself, I am never really alone. I didn’t feel sorry for myself. (Interview) Also, sympathy may be hurtful or insulting if the sympathizer does not appear to have empathized accurately-remember Frank DeLucca’s comments about his mother discussed in chapter 2. Frank resented his mother’s immediate and automatic expressions of sympathy that indicated little empathy with his views. He implied that his mother was the kind of sympathizer who did not take the time to understand the other’s situation. Not taking time can mean that the sympathizee is not t o be taken seriously or not worth the trouble. Goldie Blum also illustrated this point in a description of family members’ overreactions to her dental problems: “I kind of brushed it off. I told them, ‘I’ll be all right. I have an appointment at the doctor.’ You know, ‘There’s no problem, I’ve been through it many times before.’ Somebody giving you too much sympathy can almost be annoying.” She also described a friend who seemed t o project her own desire for sympathy onto others: “The person I’m talking about was an extreme either way, giving too much sympathy and wanting sympathy. It was too much sympathy and too much kvetching. She was a pest. I didn’t want to tell her if I had a headache because I didn’t want sympathy for it. ”

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Respondents also provided evidence that the impact of an emotional line of action depends on the initial place configuration. Usually, equals or superiors can offer comfort. However, if subordinates offer comfort, they may demean sympathizees or elevate themselves unduly. George Eliot deftly illustrated this point in her description of Harriet Bulstrode’s encounters with a friend after her husband’s past improprieties became public knowledge: Selina [Mrs. Plymdale] received [Harriet Bulstrode] with a pathetic affectionateness. . . . Beforehand Mrs. Bulstrode had thought that she would sooner question Mrs. Plymdale than anyone else, but she found to her surprise that an old friend is not always the person whom it is easiest to make a confidant of: there was the barrier of remembered communication under other circumstances-there was the dislike of being pitied and informed by one who had been long wont to allow her the superiority. (Eliot [1872] 1981, 726)

To Harriet Bulstrode’s displeasure, Mrs. Plymdale was able t o even-up a “peer” relationship that had long been unequal. For some people, all sympathy may be odious. For instance, computer programmer Juan Carvajal said, “I don’t like giving sympathy to people, and I don’t like people giving sympathy to me. I like to work out my own problems if I have any. And that’s why, I guess, it starts going back to why I don’t feel sorry-because I think if I can work them out, why can’t they work them out. That’s what I like to do, work out my own problems.” A married white woman in her early thirties wrote, “Call it too much pride or stubbornness, but I get angry. I don’t care to have people feeling for me that way. . . . I’m no one’s pathetic case and I don’t care to be coddled in that manner” (freewriting). A white married woman, a middle-aged clerical worker, expressed a related concern: “Sympathy for my own mental or physical imperfections . . . I would resent because no one should look at someone who is not perfect with sorrow or pity.” Another white middle-aged woman concurred, “Save your sorrow and sympathy for the unfortunate folks who truly need it and help them.” One young white professional woman began to question the micropolitical implications of her own sympathizing as she freewrote: “I’ve said I’m sorry for my girlfriend Wendy and now I wonder if it hurts her. She’s unhappy with her situation and I’m happy with mine. I only say I’m sorry because I know that it could be better. But that’s only from my viewpoint. Her viewpoint I don’t know.’’ Her words reminded me of my own reactions so many years ago to my sympathy for Mrs. Grant.

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Strategy 3: Getting in Good Graces This strategy usually involves attempts to reduce place gaps by creating greater intimacy. If the sympathizer is a superior or an equal, the sympathizee is not likely to object, as Frank DeLucca’s comments imply: Sympathy kind of brings you down to their level, where they can talk to you, where they can say, “Yeah, I feel bad.” Just those words are a sign of something. It kind of creates a wavelength that shows you’re both on the same level. It’s a device, you know, a psychological device. And it’s there because it’s effective. However, bringing oneself down to another’s level does not meet with the same reactions as bringing oneself up to the other’s level. When the sympathizer is a subordinate, he or she may be trying to get in the sympathizee’s good graces. For example, a subordinate may sympathize with a superior’s illness in an attempt to create closeness. The sympathizer may be genuinely sorry and want greater intimacy because of admiration and liking for the superior. This pattern may apply to those who sympathize with movie stars, sports figures, and other celebrities. Attending a state funeral, for example, may make the sympathizer feel closer in both status and intimacy to a noted figure. O n the other hand, the sympathizer may feel nothing much at all and merely be maneuvering for recognition in order to pull ahead of other subordinates. Whatever the sympathizer’s motivations, however, if the sympathizee acknowledges the gift, the two move temporarily closer. If the sympathizee also accepts the obligation to repay in the future, the relationship may move to a new level of intimacy. Many times, though, a sympathizee rejects the gift and tries to safeguard his or her place. One young white single woman, something of a star in her office, commented about a new co-worker, “She would try to find a pretext, any pretext, to offer sympathy so she could be my friend. Then she’d suggest we get together. I couldn’t stand it!” (field notes). Also, the pediatrician in his fifties quoted in chapter 2 mentioned reactions to his first wife’s death. He felt “very appreciative and warm” over the sympathy most people showed. However, he was “cool” and unresponsive when people he barely knew asked for “specifics that were none of their business”: “It turned me off, period. It’s something I wouldn’t have done. If you’re going to offer your sympathies, you do so and that’s it” (interview). Consider also a young college professor’s description of a meeting

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with a student from her course on death and dying. After sympathizing with the young man’s recent loss, the professor found herselj-the proposed object of sympathy: He wanted me to start telling him all my problems. I thought to myself, ‘‘I don’t want to get any closer to you. I don’t want to tell you any more about myself. And what makes you think you can help me?” . . . I knew what I was doing: trying to preserve my position as professor. (Field notes; single WASP woman) The young man may not have intended to bring the professor down to his level, or bring himself up to hers, but she was alert to the possibility. Similarly, one freewriter said she probably should have opened up when co-workers tried t o get closer to her by offering sympathy, but she “just couldn’t” and ‘‘clammed up. ” A white twenty-three-year-old receptionist who found herself in the same situation said, “I would shut them out completely. I would hibernate, completely take myself away from everybody” (freewriting). These cases again illustrate the point that the parties’ original places in the hierarchy affect the meaning they attribute to an emotional display. Subordinates, inferiors, or nonintimates who do not stay in their places may face rebuffs. Similar offerings by equals, superiors, or intimates might not be rejected so quickly. Thus, although sympathy symbolizes both closeness and equality, this ideal confuses matters because some sympathizers have ulterior motives.

Strategy 4: Generating Socioemotional Debts Because sympathizing is an act of kindness that confers moral worth on the donor, a sympathizer may consciously or unconsciously show sympathy to generate the recipient’s-or the community’s-indebtedness. Some contributors to the Neediest Cases Appeal have made this strategy explicit. Through the years, several donors’ published letters have indicated that they donated so they could count on others’ charity in return, should they face bad luck themselves in the future (Atwater and Robboy 1972). The public and the sympathizee owe gratitude, deference, or future sympathy. Receiving sympathy can put the sympathizee not just one-down but by having his or her problems pointed out and, second, two-down-first, by incurring debts. The actor who is two-down may have a hard time recovering place. Jim Mulcahy described his mother’s guilt-inducing strat-

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egy: she sometimes gave him sympathy precisely in order to point out his failure to consider her plight. When he felt guilty, he tried to turn her strategy around:

My mother would say, ‘‘I haven’t heard from you in so long. Is everything all right?” . . . Then she’d say, “1 have a bad cold,” or something. . . . You feel terrible. You feel awful. You feel, “Why didn’t 1 call last night instead of waiting until tonight?” I tried to pass over it quickly and get on to something else. “Did you go to the hairdresser today and get a new hairdo? What else are you doing?” I liked to get her off feeling sorry for herself so I didn’t have to feel so bad myself for not having called or been sympathetic to her. Maybe I was shifting the burden back to her. Jim also felt indebted for his mother’s past gifts. He put it this way, “Mothers are probably a good example [of people to whom one owes sympathy], particularly as they get older. Probably younger, they would never ask for it. It was all giving. Then as she got older, she liked to get little feel-goods herself, which is only natural.” Yet, sympathizees often find indebtedness disagreeable. The professional woman whose remarks introduced this chapter gave the clearest evidence of having this reaction. She felt she owed gratitude for her coworker’s confusing and hurtful sympathy displays. She also felt obligated to continue meeting the co-worker socially. The sense of owing and the future entanglements it implies may be another part of the reason that recipients dislike nonintimates’ sympathy. A twenty-two-year-old Irish American woman, a single college student with two part-time jobs, reported an unusually public example of a sympathizer creating indebtedness. Her father, a divorced jazz musician in his late forties, had developed a malignant brain tumor. He had no means of supporting himself and no medical insurance to cover the mounting bills for surgery and routine medical care. I got a call one night from Fred -, another musician who used to play with my dad years ago. Fred hadn’t heard my dad was sick until that day, and when he found out he decided to fly out from California and put on a surprise benefit concert for my dad. We were so happy, my uncle, my grandmother, and me. About three hundred musicians from all over the country, famous musicians that everyone would know, were coming to honor my dad. The way it turned out, though, was very disappointing. My father was

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pretty weak, but my uncle got him to the hall, and the whole night he sat at a table away from the band so the noise wouldn’t hurt his head. When people came in, they’d come over and give him checks, or give them to one of the family, and then not know what to say. They’d try not to look at my dad so they wouldn’t show how shocked they were that he was in such bad shape. The worst part was that all they talked about was Fred being so wonderful. He was so generous to take time out to do the concert! An angel! I t turned out to be Fred’s night, not my dad’s. All the family just sat at that table, and we kept saying to each other, “How can we ever pay everyone back for this?” Even before the night was half over, my uncle said, “We have to start right now planning something to pay everyone back.” I tried to thank Fred as much as I could, and all the others too, but, really, the family will never get over the feeling, the burden, really, of owing him so much. The burden sure does take a lot away. (Field notes)

The magnanimous Fred managed to enhance his own place (strategy 2) and reduce the place of the man ostensibly being honored. Other cases of sympathizing to generate debts involved business people, acquaintances, and even family members who give sympathy to those who are recently widowed, hoping to profit materially by it. These sympathizers attempt to create a debt that the bereaved can erase by returning possessions, cash, or other favors. For example, several respondents told stories of relatives paying more than they had intended for caskets and funeral services because they felt they owed something to solicitous and sympathetic funeral directors. A retired personnel manager, a WASP woman in her fifties, talked about sympathy for her husband’s recent death that made her feel uneasy and suspicious. I was in denial at first, and all these people kept sending cards and calling on the phone. I kept saying to myself, “Hey, I’m alive. I have enough money. We didn’t have a good marriage anyway. Why are you feeling sorry for me? 1 can handle this.” Some of them were sincere, I guess, but some of them wanted to come to the funeral to get themselves fed and have a party. And some wanted me to be beholden to them. Like, take the city councilman. He was buddy of Bill’s, I suppose, in a way. But let’s be honest. All he really wanted was my vote. I guess he thought that I’d feel special he noticed me and that he could count on me in the next election. So, people would give me false sympathy to victimize me. Like, take also Bill’s supposed best friend. He called and carried on, “Oh, I loved him

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like a brother. If there’s anything I can do for you, anything in the world, I’ll do it. Let me take Bill’s car off your hands for you.” So I said to him, “What will you give me for it?” He said, “Honey, the best I can do for you is thirteen hundred dollars. That’s the very best I can do.” Well, that car only had twenty-eight hundred miles on it. I told the guy I didn’t need thirteen hundred dollars that bad. I feel a little guilty telling you about this other incident, but what the heck. When I came home after the funeral, I was a zombie. So then Charlie and Janice came running over from across the street saying, “Oh, my God! It’s so terrible! Let us help you.” Charlie wanted to help me unload my car. No one ever helped bring in my groceries in all these years before, so why were they helping now? See, we weren’t that close to start with. My husband’s not dead and in the ground long, and Charlie comes by wanting some books from Bill’s rare book collection. He came by later and said, “Let us men around here help you.” What he really wanted to say was, “You have to have a man around.” Like, sexual innuendo. Bill had hung out with Charlie some and told me about Charlie being flirty with women in the neighborhood. So Charlie scared me and made me uncomfortable. (Field notes) This recent widow was careful to point out that many sympathizers were sincere. Yet, even sincere sympathizers made her feel awkward or inadequate. She said, “Well, I did not want to face people like that, so I just checked into a motel.’’

Strategy 5: Creating Emotional Imbalance Another strategy that can improve one’s place (or lessen another’s) is creating an emotional imbalance. That is, actors can display sympathy that evokes more emotion from sympathizees than they themselves feel. There are several variations on this theme. Giving sympathy for, say, the loss of a loved one, impending surgery, or a disability or disfigurement propels these problems into the interactional foreground. As a result, the one with the problem may begin to feel again the sadness, worry, or humiliation that he or she had carefully pushed beneath the surface in order to get on with everyday life. Thoughts and feelings about the problem may crowd out thoughts about events at hand. Emotional displays such as tears, agitation, or blushes may follow, putting the person at an interactional disadvantage in the present and in the future. Self-doubts may arise. As Jim Mulcahy said, “It makes me uneasy when people come and are expressing sympathy.

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I turn it off quickly and get on to something else. I’ve settled my mother’s death in my mind. That was two weeks ago. I don’t want to dwell on the sorrowful aspects of it. I don’t want to sit and talk about sadness.” Moreover, even if a sympathizee does not begin to relive the problem with its attendant emotions, he or she may be surprised or flustered, becoming more emotional than the sympathizer. In this way, receiving sympathy can destroy the sympathizee’s composure. As Stephen Potter noted long ago in his humorous but telling books on “gamesmanship,” “lifemanship” and “one-upmanship” (1948, 1950, 1952), unsettling a person can make him or her interactionally inferior. A forty-four-year-old white woman described this strategy in general terms: “Sympathy’s the greatest put-down. When you say you feel sorry for me and I know it’s a put-down, I get angry but usually hurt. Sometimes I feel inadequate and ‘defensive-offensive’ . . . I attack back, then get angry that I got so angry” (freewriting). Jim Mulcahy provided an example: I’ve seen situations where it isn’t an outpouring of sympathy but somebody trying to play a power game with you. A guy comes up and says, “Gee, don’t you feel well?” And all of a sudden you say to yourself, “Don’t I look well?” or this or that. I had a guy who walked in every morning saying, “Gee, ya feeling all right?” I’d say, “I feel fine.” I’d think, Why do I have to justify myself to this SOB first thing in the morning? He wasn’t feeling sorry for me. Maybe he wasn’t playing any games, but I didn’t go for it. Sympathy can produce embarrassment, and embarrassment can be “befuddling almost to the point of paralysis” (Scheff and Retzinger 992, 135).

REJECTING SYMPATHY TO PROTECTP L A C E Because sympathy can belittle in many ways, giving sympathy can create or perpetuate hierarchy. Like the professional woman quoted at the beginning of the chapter, the sympathizee may feel lowered and accept that reading of the place configuration. For example, when sympathizees believed donors were not acting purposely, they often reported feeling hurt. Hurt is a place-marking emotion that signals more inferiority or distance than one expected. Other subjects mentioned feeling embarrassed, incompetent, inferior, and stunned-all emotions that mark or make a lower place. Giving sympathy can also have negative consequences for a relation-

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ship. For example, a young white woman who works as an account specialist described a friendship that fell apart: One of the last times someone said that they felt sorry for me it turned out to be a terrible conflict between the two of us. I immediately became angry and defensive and started to argue as to why this person felt this way. I didn’t want this person feeling some kind of sympathy for me. . . . I became so angry that someone could feel that way and say it without really thinking of how I felt. . . . Sometimes saying it and meaning it are two different things. . . . My pride has been hurt. (Freewriting) As her description suggests, receiving belittling sympathy can result in an emotional blend or sequence that starts with a feeling of inferiority and shifts to an urge to make counter place claims. A young white man worhng as a stock boy put it succinctly, “First I feel hurt, then I get angry” (freewriting). The middle-level manager in his fifties quoted previously, who said one must figure out people’s motives for sympathizing, wrote in surprising language to warn against accepting loss of place: Many people receiving unwanted sympathy would immediately take a defensive attitude and assume a role of being convicted rather than an assertive role of “You must justify your comment!” If cooler heads prevail, then the discussion should assume proportions of questions and answers that would define the situation and validate whatever comments are behind the initial sympathy. If the accuser persists in the attack, the attackee must counter with strength and courage. (Freewriting) Also, a w h t e homemaker in her mid-thirties gave an example of an encounter that set off a chain of emotions and actions: Last year we had a problem with Jennifer’s teacher, so we took it to the principal who was extremely patronizing with his sympathy. . . . Then we took it to the superintendent. . . . When something like this happens, I figure out how to deal with it to make me feel better that I didn’t let it bother me too long and that I did the best I could to work out a solution. (Freewriting) The solution she refers to, taking the case to the school superintendent, reasserted her place and lowered the patronizing sympathizer’s.

Here in our final outing, we have inspected the microhierarchical substructure of the socioemotional economy. W e have seen several varieties of

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sympathy giving that carry disagreeable micropolitical messages. People may feel hurt, betrayed, or angered by others’ sympathetic gestures, because receiving sympathy can leave a person one-down or even two-down. A person who accepts sympathy is in essence admitting to being in a bad situation (that is, worse than the sympathizer’s) and owing a debt for the emotional gift. It is not surprising, therefore, that many respondents found receiving sympathy oddly humiliating or infuriating. Whether a sympathizer acts with awareness or not, deliberately or not, giving sympathy can call forth emotions in the recipient that diminish self-concept and the felt sense of place. Consciously or unconsciously, sympathizers can give sympathy strategically. They may set up obligations, get in someone’s good graces, underscore the other’s problems, underscore their own superior moral worth and magnanimity, or create fluster and throw the other person off-balance. To the degree that an actor’s cultural and social capital help establish place, the larger social structure is reproduced in the micropolitics of the sympathy transaction. Social actors usually want to preserve or enhance their interpersonal power, social place, and self-concepts; we have seen that the postures they take toward giving and getting emotions such as sympathy can help them do so. Can other positive emotions be used micropolitically? Gratitude can also work this way if the donor implies that the recipient merely played the minor role of helper. So, I believe, can patience, liking, love, and other emotions that we think of as marking closeness or equality. Patience, for instance, can signify A’s understanding and concern. I t can also convey the message that B is deficient or slow and that A is resisting the use of strategy 1 by being very nice not to point out the deficiency in a more hurtful way. However, I believe that sympathy is uniquely suited to emotional micropolitics. Sympathy is predicated on people’s problems, and people with problems are vulnerable to others’ micropolitical advances. As powerful as sympathy can be for cementing a social bond, it is also a wedge that works like no other for widening the microhierarchical distances between people.

8 E p i 1og u e

The lk teach us that our much vaunted human values are not inherent in humanity at all, but are associated only with a particular f o r m

of

survival called society, and that all, even society itself; are luxuries that can be dispensed with. That does not make them any the less wonderful or desirable, and tffhumankind] has any greatness it is surely in [our] ability to maintain these values, clinging to them in a n often very bitter end, even shortening an already pitijiully short lijie rather than sacr$icing [our] humanity. But that too involves choice, and the Ik teach us that [people] can lose the will to make it. That is the point at which there is an end to truth, to goodness and to beauty; an end to the struggle f o r their achievement, which gives ltfe to the individual while at the same time giving strength and meaning to society. . . . We [Westerners] are already beginning to pay the same price, but the dgerence is that we not only still have the choice (though we may not have the will or courage

to make it). Colin M. Turnbull, The Mountain People, 1972

0

ur journey has come to an end now. Sympathy has proved to be difficult territory to cover, but all the more interesting for being so craggy and uneven. Our exploration of sympathy processes has taken us t o the crossroads of social bonds and the individual, culture and physiology, history and biography, social structure and the microworld. O n the way, we have pored over several varieties of quantitative and qualitative data and reexamined some previously accepted concepts and theories. As tour guide, I have tried to show that the emotional experience modern-day Americans call sympathy has a history, a logic, and a life of its own. No single roadmap or simple set of directions can explain how sympathy works, how sympathy getting meshes with sympathy giving, and how sympathy bonds and divides people. It can arc from one person to another, connecting them in ways no other emotion does. It can build a bridge of intersubjectivity and concern. But sympathy also has its seedy precincts: getting sympathy can serve a malingerer trying to avoid responsibility, much as giving sympathy can serve a micropolitician trying to establish superiority in everyday microhierarchies. Every sympathy interchange reveals something about the moral order of the day. It is little wonder, then, that philosopher David Hume called sympathy the most remarkable of human propensities. I could justly be accused of tunnel vision if I claimed that understanding sympathy alone could account for the social order or the micro-macro link. Many other factors-and many other emotions-contribute. The study of sympathy processes has, I believe, taken us to several vantage points from which we have been able to glimpse realms beyond sympathy that are also in need of mapping. One of the most promising is the full range of the socioemotional economy, with its micropolitical substructure, where everyday interactions unfold and social bonds are formed and broken. I t is within this economy that sympathy plays its part, alongside obligation, affection, gratitude, honor, respect, trust, and the sense of justice. Yet, sympathy itself is a more common aspect of everyday life and a 253

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more important source of cohesion and division than most Americans realize. Taking sympathy seriously, and following it where it led, has produced insights into otherwise paradoxical features of private lives, public debates, the nature of our society today, and what it might become. For instance, the evidence regarding gender differences in sympathy giving alerts us to an important consideration for any study of emotions, namely, the existence of emotional subcultures-niches in our social environment-which generate unique feeling rules, values, and definitions. When men and women use the word “sympathy” (or invoke any other emotion, for that matter), they may have entirely different ideas in mind. They may be, in essence, spealung a different emotional language-and the same may be true for the proliferating emotional subcultures of our day. The general emotional culture and the sympathy logic of American society not only evolve, they also articulate into emotional subcultures that may be based on age, ethnicity, social class, and occupation in addition to local logics tied to relationship histories and informal norms. Also, a t the most micro microlevel, the concept of sympathy margin applies to encounters in families, work groups, and communities. It makes sense of many cases in which people do or do not get sympathy and do or do not give it. Also more comprehensible is the irritation or anger one social actor may feel when another social actor makes an overt claim to too much sympathy or fails to appreciate a gift. Furthermore, with an awareness of the micropolitical uses sympathy can be put to, we can appreciate better some of the hurts and resentments that sour friendships and produce enmity. A t a more general level, pursuing the ideas of emotional culture and socioemotional economy makes it more clear why the disabled, the chronically ill, the elderly, the homeless, and AIDS sufferers get less sympathy than their circumstances would seem to warrant. Since these groups often have limited cultural and social capital, they may have little to offer in the socioemotional economy. Their sympathy margins may be small to begin with and therefore easily overdrawn. I t is also easier to see why people who several decades ago would have hidden certain stigmatizing problems are now rushing to join lay recovery programs modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous. Recovery programs offer new conceptions of bad luck, of forces beyond individuals’ control, that have generated new grounds for sympathy. Finding a sympathetic audience, and getting one’s share of connection and moral worth, is one motivation for joining. Sympathy may provide a new dynamic for understanding social move-

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ments and public debates. Many debates over prescriptions for change become extremely heated because they mobilize and channel not only people’s self-directed emotions but their sympathies. Such debates are often moral dramas rather than mere questions of fact. They center on social worth and deservingness, and they engender many problems of cognitiveemotional inconsistency. Their outcomes depend on where the majority’s sympathies come to rest. For instance, the public assistance issue is in part a question of sympathies. Should we view the poor and the homeless as victims of an economic system that simply cannot accommodate everyone? O r are they unworthy societal members? Do they deserve help, indifference, or wrath? Our sympathies intertwine with our thinking about these groups. People with unsympathetic views are likely to envision the poor as able-bodied men and women having a good time spending their welfare checks. Those with sympathetic views are more likely to have pictured the poor as blamelessas not responsible for the state of the economy or its social repercussions. How do the poor view themselves? Cole and Lejeune (1 972) have argued that mothers receiving public-assistance payments are likely to regard themselves as sick, because sickness is grounds for sympathy and it legitimates what could otherwise be seen as failure. The most emotional public issues divide our individual and collective sympathies in zero-sum contests. For instance, in the abortion debate, the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade made it clear that one can sympathize with the unborn fetus or with the woman whose body and life are appropriated by a pregnancy. Which one is the victim? Who is more of a victim? Who deserves our sympathy and protection? Pro-choice and rightto-life advocates have come up with different answers to these questions and are trying to channel others’ sympathies in line with their own. Another example is the debate over affirmative action programs. In this debate, sympathies may lie with groups whose parents, grandparents, and greatgrandparents were denied the most basic economic opportunities. Collective guilt over past injustices, combined with suspicions that these injustices could easily be repeated, fuel sympathy for current generations of job seekers. Yet many sympathize instead with majority group members whose opportunities appear to be reduced by mandated remedies for discrimination. A close-up view of the process of dividing public sympathies came before the public in the contention between Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas. In 1991, in televised Senate confirmation hearings on Thomas’s

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nomination to the Supreme Court, law professor Anita Hill testified that he had previously sexually harassed her and other women staffers, charges he vehemently denied (New York Times, 7 October 1991). The riveting spectacle unfolding before the cameras, in which the two gave “gripping but completely contradictory testimony” (New York Times, 12 October 1991), brought millions of Americans into the drama. Since neither Hill nor Thomas could provide absolute proof, the contest became an emotional one-again, a question of sympathies. Clarence Thomas won the contest. Not only did the Senate confirm his appointment, but also public opinion registered in his favor (New York Times, 15 October 1991). Why? I believe he was able to evoke more sympathy than she. To have sympathy for Hill’s distress meant having little or none for Thomas. Having sympathy for Thomas’s crisis meant blaming Hill for causing it. The more sympathy one could win, the more the other lost. Also, empathizing is necessary for sympathizing, and people had difficulty putting themselves into both Hill’s and Thomas’s shoes at the same time. Many women, especially those who had been harassed themselves, empathized with Hill’s situation. Many who commented on her testimony were articulating their own previously repressed pain and humiliation as much as hers. O n the other side, those who had been falsely accused of harassment, as well as the larger numbers who feared they might be vulnerable to such accusations, could empathize with Thomas. Moreover, some did not believe that putting up with a little sexual harassment was “bad” enough to warrant sympathy for Hill. It is also the case that people can more easily sympathize with an immediate plight than a stale one. Hill’s claim to sympathy came from longpast incidents. However disturbing her predicament, it was over. She lived through it and managed to keep her career on track. O n the other hand, Thomas’s plight was in the here and now. He was being accused-perhaps that very moment. His family was freshly upset. His future unjustly-at career on the Supreme Court was hanging in the balance (few people called attention t o the fact that he would still have had a powerful and lucrative career as the U. S. appeals court judge for the Washington, D. C. circuit were his hopes for the Supreme Court defeated). His plight was current, and it seemed grave. I believe Thomas (and his advisors) implicitly recognized the sympathy factor and exploited it more effectively than did Hill. The two made very different bids for sympathy, following different strategies for enlarging their sympathy margins. Thomas invited onlookers’ physical and emotional em-

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pathy by looking strained and allowing tears to trickle. According to the New York Times, the “raw anguish of Thomas’s defense [left] audiences gasping” (12 October 1991). Discreetly but directly, he described his own imminent losses, urging cognitive empathy. A number of center stage sympathy brokers also helped. His former secretaries, co-workers, and several senators pleaded or indignantly exhorted others to sympathize with the worthy and innocent judge. In the background, his family members looked supportive and grim. Offstage, the presidential staff brokered too, organizing “nasty, personal” attacks on Hill’s character (New York Times, 14 and 15 October 1991). Hill, on the other hand, gave a “cool, dispassionate account” (New York Times, 1 2 October 1991). She did not show strong emotion. When she presented her case against Thomas, she sent out nonverbal cues of embarrassment and distress but not of humiliation or devastation. Further, her team of supporters appeared sincere but not “emotional.” They did not point out her need for sympathy or her right to it. Hill’s team’s bid was more for respect than for sympathy (New York Times, 14 October 1991). In the micropolitics of everyday encounters, there are many ways t o win. One is to validate one’s claims to worth by displaying cultural capital and interactional resources-credentials, reputation, knowledge, interactional skills, valued social statuses, and the like. Another way to win is t o claim sympathy. Predicaments and vulnerabilities, deftly displayed, can net an actor valuable socioemotional resources. The Hill-Thomas contest showed that when establishing truth is next to impossible, manipulating sympathies can prove a highly effective tool. As American society moves further from its traditional, preindustrial roots and into late modernity, several societal trends are likely t o modify the sympathy patterns we have seen, W e should expect to find some passing fads in grounds for getting sympathy but a general increase in sympathy for conditions that “scientific” workers define and control. For example, physicians are predicting that if a pending medical cure for obesity materializes, the obese will receive more sympathy than in the past (New York Times, 25 November 1995). Other grounds for sympathy that seem likely to escalate in importance concern the self. No end is in sight to forces that produce ontological insecurity or promote tolerance for attention to self. Thus, unless emotionally exhausted Americans create an unsympathetic backlash, psychic pain will continue t o merit sympathy and definitions of cruelty and abuse will probably widen. It might seem that with the increasing division of labor, specialization

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of work, and shift t o a service economy, emotion specialists (e.g., therapists, social workers, funeral directors, and the like) and emotion agents and brokers (such as charity organizers, insurance agents, and lawyers) could take over sympathetic functions from intimates. However, it seems more likely that the professionalization of labor will lead workers in these fields to become more important as sympathy entrepreneurs than direct sympathy givers. Already, as occupations rush to stake claims to professional standing, many workers are creating a detached stance toward their clienteles. For instance, physicians have come, in David Rothman’s words, to “inhabit a world unto themselves”: “Practically every development in medicine in the post-World War 11 period distanced the physician and the hospital from the patient and the community, disrupting personal connections and severing bonds of trust” (1992, 23, 24). Nurses also, as they have sought professional recognition and greater autonomy and pay, have adopted a more impersonal approach to their work. Nursing textbooks now emphasize nursing diagnoses and de-emphasize “tender loving care. ” Thus, the main work of sympathizing will probably remain outside specialized, professional domains. Other modern trends such as increased societal scale and population diversity could make empathizing-and hence sympathizing-more difficult for Americans. Yet the popularity of self-help groups and twelve-step recovery programs, mentioned above, seems to indicate a countertrend bringing together people who are facing similar plights. Besides providing new conceptions of bad luck and new ways of framing the self, recovery programs offer weekly or daily meetings in which people can find faceto-face camaraderie, understanding, and sympathy. Thus, societal fragmentation does not necessarily mean that individuals will remain isolated. With a little time and effort they can find and participate in groups and communities of sympathetic others. And, conveniently enough, although Americans may be working longer hours in recent years, decreases in family and household commitments make more leisure time available for these pursuits. As more and more jobs in the monetary economy shift from primary and secondary industrial production to service industries, the workplace may take on a more emotional and therefore more sympathetic cast. Unemotional specialists, whose occupational roles call specifically for unsympathetic behavior (e.g., bill collectors, disciplinarians, corporate “downsizers, and governmental budget cutters) have also arisen. Unemotional specialists concentrate the “dirty work,” leaving others free t o feel and 9 ,

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show sympathy. Societies moving away from traditionalism and a culturally prescribed belief in fate or the “just world” may therefore have more room for interpersonal intimacy and sympathy sentiment. W e might reasonably expect to see a further rise in sympathy in everyday encounters and, indeed, additional growth in the prominence of the socioemotional economy in general. The emergence of the sociology of emotions may be one indicator of movement in this direction. Yet, one trend could undo all the others. Much of the work of sympathizing in the future is apt to fall to friends and family members and to lower-level emotional laborers such as receptionists and other front stage clerical workers, salespeople, and customer-service representatives. In families, friendship groups, and service work, women currently predominate as active sympathizers. However, the changing parameters of women’s lives could leave them with less time and inclination to specialize in sympathy display. Such a development would certainly transform the picture of sympathy in America, unless men were to acquire a more expressive emotionality. Although many forces are militating in the direction of men’s increased expressivity, if my respondent Frank DeLucca is an indicator of things to come, we should not be unreservedly sanguine. Speculating about the future of sympathy is a chancy activity. I am confident, however, about one forecast: barring disaster of major proportions, Americans’ feeling rules, social logics, and moral practices will remain much more sympathetic than the Ik’s.Within limits, Americans will continue to build emotional bridges to those facing trouble and misery.

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A P P E N D I X :

R E S E A R C H

S T R A T E G I E S

Studying emotions sociologically feels something like being chained in Plato’s cave, allowed to look only at the shadows that the fires of reality in the cave’s center cast on the walls. No single vantage point on the shadows, and perhaps no combination of vantage points, yields a complete picture. Experimental research that elicits emotion is likely to be unethical and the findings not generalizable to everyday situations. Survey research on emotions is also fraught with problems of reactivity: respondents have little time to get comfortable with interviewers, and questionnaires such as depression inventories (see, e.g., Radloff 1977) suggest responses that may create bias. Also, social desirability response set (Crowne and Marlowe [ 19641 1980) may be operating, as people answer in terms of feeling and display rules rather than their own sentiments. Thus, the advantages of obtaining large, random samples may be outweighed by the disadvantages of response error. Intensive interviews provide more time for subjects to become relaxed with the interviewer, and they permit respondents to explain the inner as well as the outer aspects of their emotions, but problems still exist. Many respondents have paid scant attention to their emotions and to the causes and consequences of those emotions. In mainstream American society, many people have little practice in talking about emotions, especially sympathy. As I argue in chapter 2, they are not likely to disentangle feeling rules and values from actual experiences. For these reasons, asking people to describe the social and individual ramifications of a sympathy exchange often results in “thin” accounts. Also, a researcher relying solely on observation techniques will inevitably miss part of the phenomenon under study. Even though an emotion is shaped by social and cultural factors and is displayed in social settings, a part of it is individual, interior, and private. It is known only to the An earlier version of this appendix was published as “Studying Sympathy: Methodological Confessions,” in The Sociology $Emotions: Original Essays and Research Papers, ed. David D. Franks and E. Doyle McCarthy (Greenwich, Conn., and London: JAI Press, 1989). I have previously described my adaptation of freewriting to sociological purposes in “Freewriting Emotions,” a paper that I, with Mario E. Kravanja, presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Washington, D. C., August 1990. 261

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person experiencing it, and sometimes not even to him or her. Making the interpretive leap from subjects’ outward signs to their inner sentiment is likely to be dangerous, since subjects may align their displays and expressions more closely with feeling rules when an outside observer is present. Introspection is an alternative (as, e.g., in Scheler 1954 and Stark 1978), but one that has problems of sample representativeness and objectivity. Because standard methods seemed somewhat or totally inappropriate for studying sympathy, I decided to use as many techniques as I could think of. Apart from the advice of a few qualitative researchers (e.g., Glaser and Strauss 1965; Lofland and Lofland 1984; Scheff 1990; and Kleinman and Copp 1994), discussion of research strategies appropriate for opening a field of inquiry into microprocesses is hard to find. I followed as a rough guide the work of Erving Goffman (1952, 1956, 1959, 1964, 1967, 1971, 1983), Barry Schwartz (1967, 1973), and Arlie Russell Hochschild (1983, 1989), although Goffman and Schwartz, unlike Hochschild, provided little in the way of a systematic record of their research techniques. I base the assumption that I have used approaches similar to those of Goffman and Schwartz on what I have read into their published works. To my knowledge, neither Goffman nor Schwartz spelled out his field methods in detail. In Relations in Public, for example, Goffman characterized his method as unsystematic, naturalistic observation” (1 971, xv), but did not say how he did it. I had to tailor some methods for my studies and invent others. The methods I used in my research are: “distanced reading” of fiction; content analyses of greeting cards, the Bible, charity appeals, and sociological studies of the downtrodden; “intensive eavesdropping”; participant observation; l 1 focused conversations’ ’ ; surveys designed as Piagetian “experiments”; intensive, face-to-face interviews; spot surveys; and freewriting. In “On Cooling the Mark Out” (1952), Goffman cited a number of personal communications from his colleagues a t the University of Chicago, from which I infer that he engaged in something akin to what I term “focused conversations.” In addition, many of Goffman’s examples seem to come from what I am calling “intensive eavesdropping.” And since both Schwartz and Goffman cited passages from novels, I infer that they engaged in a variety of “distanced reading,” which I have extended and tried to systematize. To the extent that sympathy is a representative sentiment, I believe that my methods may serve as something of a model for studying social aspects of emotions. Sympathy differs from other emotions in several ways, though, and the differences point to the limits of my techniques. I use the 1‘

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term “sympathy” to refer to one person’s feelings for someone else who is experiencing problems. Unlike emotions such as fear or sadness, sympathy is always a social, role-taking emotion (Shott 1979)-that is, it can arise only through social interaction. I t is, further, not a simple or “pure” emotion, since it can include a blend of feelings or sentiments-sorrow, frustration, indignation, or shock-perhaps mixed with impatience, envy, or boredom, depending on the other’s and one’s own situations. Therefore, the methods I used may be more suited to studies of social emotions that are complex and blended (e.g., liking, enmity, embarrassment, homesickness, or righteous indignation) rather than “coarse” emotions (Scheff 1985, 252) such as anger. The reader should also note that in the inventory below the techniques as I discuss them appear to be separate and distinct, yet in practice I often merged and overlapped them. The first several varieties can be classed together as content analysis.

C O N T E NA TN A L Y S E S Distanced Reading: Fiction First, and perhaps ironically for a study of “real” life, I read fiction. The first category was composed of novels. I asked literature professors from several universities to suggest novels that had something to do with sympathy. The novels they recommended are: Middlemarch, by George Eliot; Sister Carrie and An American Dream, by Theodore Dreiser; The Dean’s December, by Saul Bellow; Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, by Anne Tyler; Falling in Place, by Ann Beattie; The Color Purple, by Alice Walker; A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway; Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck; Rabbit Redux, by John Updike; and many more. These books sometimes told of characters giving and receiving sympathy. More important, they evoked the reader’s sympathy for some of the characters. A second category was murder mysteries, of which I have read thousands. In detective fiction, manipulating the reader’s sympathies is a key device for producing suspense-one that is usually transparent. The character of the sleuth is portrayed most sympathetically. Clever and sensitive to injustice, he or she is usually a “rebel, existentialist, provocateur and critic of the status quo” (Lehmann-Haupt 1992). Of the remaining charac-

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ters, the majority are suspects, but they are given “sympathetic” qualities inconsistent with dastardliness-for instance, vulnerability, kindliness, or good looks-leaving the reader puzzling over which of the portrayed could have committed the dreadful deed. And, to further mislead the reader, “ innocent” characters may be given dastardly qualities, such as deceitfulness, stinginess, or sloth. When reading fiction for clues to life, I think that one should always keep uppermost the awareness that the portrayal of feeling, interaction, and motivation is the author’s view, not “objective reality.” Many authors avoid calling the reader’s attention to their own artistry. The naive reader can sometimes slip into believing that authors are not directing and shaping the flow of events they depict-but they are. The fact that authors make descriptions of feelings is important for students of emotions. First, contemporary novelists are often steeped in one or another psychodynamic or psychoanalytic school of thought. Their accounts of emotionality are interpretive and may not even be intended to provide accurate pictures of action, thought, and feeling. They are, therefore, suspect as raw data. Second, most “realistic” storytellers provide a linear, chronological, organized, cognitively consistent account of what might seem like chaos if it were experienced in an unmediated way in the real world. For reasons such as these, literature is more useful for gauging one’s own reactions to it-for providing grist for “systematic introspection” (Ellis, 199 1)-than for providing accounts of how emotions work in social life. Fiction is, in general, better suited t o studying “reader-emotions” such as sympathy, boredom (see Darden and Marks 1985), or fright than it is for studying “character-emotions” like love or anxiety. Studying one’s own emotional reactions as they are occurring has the great advantage of eliminating problems of recall (see Ellis and Weinstein 1986). Still, as Kemper (1978), Scheff (1 979) and others have warned, emotions we feel in response to fiction may not be the same as real-life emotions with the same names. Any insights that arise from reading must be checked using other techniques. A special reading style is required for the analysis of emotion-provoking literature. Borrowing from Scheff (1979), I call it “distanced reading.” One cannot allow oneself t o get “lost” in the story but must enter into it enough to permit feeling. The distant reader must maintain a distinct awareness of the distance between what George Herbert Mead called the “I” and the “me” ([1934] 1962, 175-78): I read, and almost instantane-

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ously I can observe me reading. One of the problems of this technique is that it is difficult to tell someone else how to do it. Interobserver reliability may, therefore, be quite low. Ideally, a team of sociologist-readers should read and rate the same works, discussing in detail differences in what they read out of a passage, what they read into it, and what reactions arose. Despite its flaws, however, distanced reading of fiction uncovered some workings of many sympathy processes that I was able to confirm with other methods. As I read introspectively, I began to reflect on a well-known literary principle. The best authors create what are called sympathetic characters. They usually accomplish this by providing enormous detail about these characters’ inner lives, worries, internal conversations, vulnerabilities, and motivations-much more than we ever do or can learn about even our most intimate of intimates in the real world (see also Scheff 1979, 155). Some of the details are “positive,” others “negative,” but they add up to detailed extenuation and mitigation. The total package invites empathy (identification) and sympathy if a problem arises. In effect, the author acts as a “sympathy broker,” a go-between who links sympathizee and sympathizer. Sometimes, like Theodore Dreiser, the author also acts as a sympathy entrepreneur, urging sympathy for whole classes of people and plights. I paid close attention to what makes for a sympathetic character. I continually scanned my own reactions to see for whom I was feeling sympathy, for whom I was not, what I was feeling if not sympathy, and what details seemed to be producing my sympathy or lack of it. As I analyzed my own reactions to the characters and their plights, I also tried to imagine how other readers would be reacting. How did my gender and my political beliefs influence my responses? Would readers of other stripes be feeling my feelings or different ones? Reading mystery books, I rarely felt sorry for the victim. for the culprit when I had figured out who done it-or How did Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, Tony Hillerman, P. D. James, and Georges Simenon make sure that neither their murderers were unsympathetic nor their victims perfect angels? With novels, I often felt the author posed to the reader a moral test with preset right and wrong answers: which characters are more creditable and deserving, whose circumstances most extenuating? Why was I feeling sorry for Dean Corde (in The Dean’s December) and not for his pathetic, self-proclaimed rival, Spangler? Both were experiencing painful emotions. But Corde was contemplative and altruistic, a radical “new man” who nurtured his physicist wife and her career. Spangler, on the skids in his professional and personal

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life, was self-concerned and devious. How did Beattie keep me from feeling much of anything for the children in Falling in Place? Their media-filled, vapid, and dreary lives were perhaps pitiable, but their cruelty and violence obviated my sympathy. How did Eliot make me despise Dorothea’s husband, Edward Casaubon, on one page of Middlemarch yet relent and feel sorry for him on another page-and even feel guilty that I had originally despised him? First Eliot lets the endearing Will Ladislaw describe Mr. Casaubon, a clergyman and would-be scholar, thus: this dried-up pedant, this elaborator of small explanations about as important as the surplus stock of false antiquities kept in a vendor’s back chamber . . . first got this adorable young creature [Dorothea] to marry him and then pass[ed] his honeymoon away from her, groping after his mouldy futilities. ([1872] 1981, 202) Later, after thoroughly evoking our sympathy for the selfless, beautiful, virtuous Dorothea, Eliot introduces a chapter with these words: One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea-but why always Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible one with regard to this marriage? I protest against all our interest, all our effort at understanding being given to the young skins that look blooming in spite of trouble; for these too will get faded and will know the older and more eating griefs which we are helping to neglect. In spite of the blinking eyes and white moles objectionable to Celia [Dorothea’s sister] and the want of muscular curve which was morally painful to Sir James [Dorothea’sbrother-in-law and former suitor], Mr. Casaubon had an intense consciousness within him and was spiritually a-hungered like the rest of us. . . . He had not had much foretaste of happiness in his previous life. . . . [H]e was in painful doubt as to what was really thought of [his theological pamphlets] by the leading minds . . . and bitterly convinced that his old acquaintance Carp had been the writer of that depreciatory recension which was kept locked in a small drawer of Mr. Casaubon’s desk, and also in a dark closet of his verbal memory. . . . For my part I am very sorry for him. I t is an uneasy lot at best to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small, hungry, shivering self. (271-73) With her “poor Dorothea”s and “poor Ladis1aw”s and “poor Mr. Casaubon’ ’s, Eliot elicits her readers’ sympathies with strategic precision: as she changes the grounds for sympathy, her readers’ responses change

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accordingly. She guides her readers experientially through the sympathy process. In summary, I used literature to study sympathy primarily as a prod to my own sympathetic sentiments. One might call this introspection, and indeed it was. But it was introspection with a difference: it did not involve reverie or memory of past events I have experienced or witnessed; instead, it purposely evoked ongoing emotionality (see Ellis 1991). Reading the fictional accounts allowed me to observe myself in the act of applying feeling rules, holding people to standards of worthiness, “believing in a just world,” and sympathizing.

Sympathy Entrepreneurs In addition to reading fiction, I also read nonfiction. Newspaper accounts of sad “human interest” tales and the advice columns of “Ann Landers” and “Dear Abby” proved less suggestive than I thought they would-they confirmed other findings but added little. They may prove more useful, however, for studying emotions other than sympathy. I had much better success through examining the products of several other types of “sympathy entrepreneurs” (see chapter 3 ) who promote or evoke sympathy for certain situations and categories of people-namely, writers for Hallmark Cards and the New York Times’s Neediest Cases Appeal.

Store-Bought Sympathy Off-the-rack sentiment is an important element of our emotional culture. The greeting-card industry sells 3 to 4 billion cards every year (McGough 1986). Many of these are birthday, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, and Mother’s Day cards, but a growing number dispense sympathy of one variety or another. As an illiterate South American might use the services of professional letter writers with their typewriters set up in the town square, Americans who “care enough to send the very best” or who cannot find words to express their feelings resort to the writers from Hallmark and American Greetings. Commercial get-well and condolence cards concretize many aspects of sympathy giving and getting. The greeting card industry has expanded recently into a number of specialized markets, using more of society’s grounds for sympathy to make money. Until a decade or so ago, the subjects of most sympathy cards were death, illness, injury, and surgery. Now, new categories of store-bought sympathy are on the racks, either “per-

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sonal” or “suitable for office,” for a wide variety of situations: the anniversary of a bereavement, having birthdays (anything over age twenty-nine), being the child of divorced parents, enduring the everyday headaches of “modern life” (separate kinds of cards take up stress, job demands, the boss, depression, loneliness, unexpected household repairs, the strain of being a working mother, having messy or demanding children), and generally having trouble ‘ ‘coping. ’ ’ Typical get-well cards, I found, are the least “sympathetic.” They picture flowers or animals and command the recipient to “Cheer Up!” and “Get Well Soon!” Another type of card, offered as “Suitable for Serious Illness,” reads: Cover:

Thoughts to Cheer You Inside:

This special message just for you is being sent your way To let you know that many thoughts are there with you today.

One variety of sympathy card covers the death of pets: Cover:

WITHSYMPATHY In the Loss of Your Pet Inside: A pet can be a loving friend who’s dear in every way,

That’s why others understand the loss you feel today. “Coping” cards generally offer reprieve from everyday norms. One card listed “Sylvia’s Tension Tips” for coping with hassles ranging from making auto insurance claims to standing in line at the bank. Again, I tried to effect distanced involvement in their messages by imagining how I would feel if I had sent or received one. Some struck me as embarrassingly saccharine and gushy, some as corny, some as cheeky. I saw in sympathy cards evidence of the normative grounds for giving

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sympathy. The cards also made clearer what our culture considers the content of sympathy to be-caring, closeness, understanding, and the like. Further, the messages embodied formulas for how the recipient should deal with troubles and problems-and the implicit or explicit precept that people should not wallow too long in their misery but try to overcome it.

The New York Times’s Neediest Cases Appeal For over eighty years, the New York Times has sponsored a charity drive known as the Neediest Cases Appeal. During the winter holiday season, the newspaper publishes several poignant accounts of misery, neglect, and abuse each day meant to evoke sympathy and motivate people t o send money. Stories also relate the gratitude of previous recipients and the good uses to which they have put donors’ contributions. Analysis of the Neediest Cases Appeal provided many insights into the workings of sympathy entrepreneurs and their audiences over the years, from 19 12 to the present day.

Secondary Analysis of Sociological Data Another research strategy was to reexamine sociologists’ qualitative research that focuses on people in plights that we might expect to warrant sympathy. Examples are Sudnow’s study of the dead and dying in hospital settings (1 967); Wiseman’s analysis of how skid row residents are treated by police, judges, jailers, psychologists, religious and mission personnel, employers, family, and friends (1 979); and Hochschild’s research describing flight attendant’s dealings with rude and unruly airline passengers (1983). In effect, generations of ethnographers had been, kindly but unknowingly, collecting data for my research. At this point I came to see sociology itself as a sympathetic endeavor, and sociologists as sympathy brokers and / o r entrepreneurs. As Howard Becker noted, sociologists’ “sympathies” often lie with their subjects, who are primarily underdogs (1967). Like fiction writers, many sociologists spell out the complex reasons why we ought t o “understand” (and perhaps excuse and feel sorry for) people who are victims of circumstances and of social systems. As the French saying goes, Tout comprender c’est tout pardonner. To the degree that sociology takes a sympathetic stance toward people in plights, we might expect that historical eras when sympathy is in fashion will find sociology also in fashion, and the converse. Why have sociologists paid so little direct and serious attention to the

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effects that sympathy can have? I t seems a paradox, since many sociologists have been hard at work brokering sympathy. I have tentatively chalked up this lack of attention to two factors: a low level of self-awareness and a low level of concern for emotions in general. Two general methodological points can be made in summary. First, reanalyzing previous sociological work can provide a great deal of useful data for studies of specific emotions and emotional interplay. Examples of potentially fertile ground are Lillian Rubin’s family interviews (1 976; 1990), Ralph Larkin’s study of high-school students (1 979), Jaber Gubrium’s nursing-home observations (1 975), Marcia Millman’s data on the overweight (1 980), and classics like William Foote Whyte’s Street Corner Society (1 943) and Elliot Liebow’s Tu1Iy’s Corner (1967). Second, reanalysis can reveal much about the original observers themselves.

INTENSIVE EAVESDROPPING Soon after I immersed myself in reading fiction and nonfiction, I began to scan my everyday encounters for signs of sympathy. For more than a decade, I became what might be called an “intensive eavesdropper.” In offices and restaurants, in hospital waiting rooms and funeral parlors, at social gatherings and on the street, I unobtrusively paid attention when I overheard discussions of sympathy and overt acts of sympathizing, as well as gossip about people who deserved or did not deserve, claimed or did not claim, sympathy. I put myself in situations that could provide data I would not normally encounter. I also monitored my own routine interactions, paying attention to both outer and inner search processes (Scheff 1990). Sometimes people “asked” me for sympathy. I kept records of how and in what circumstances these sympathy claims were made and of my own feelings about them. At other times, people gave me sympathy, and I noted how I had claimed sympathy and what I felt when I got it. In both types of cases, the distanced “I” and “me” came into play again. My field notes soon became a small mountain of paper napkins, envelopes, scrap paper, and notebooks. I followed an approach similar to Cressey’s (1953) and Spradley’s (1979). I wrote verbatim accounts in the field, expanded these accounts soon after the event, kept notes on personal reactions to the field research, and constructed and updated a provisional analysis as the research progressed. This strategy for gathering data is, of course, not new. I t is part of

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most participant observation research and, as Denzin noted, the source of many sociological theories (1970, 52). I use the term “intensive eavesdropping” to emphasize how important it is for those studying emotions to pay attention to everyday conversation. People often can keep their internal states invisible until they voice them in what they feel are safe arenas. Furthermore, their choices of words and gestures can tell how they construct emotions (e.g., “I know I should feel sorry for her, but after what she did . . . ”) as well as how their feelings feel (e.g., “My heart went out to him . . .”). Collins concurred in this assessment: as an empirical matter, if one wishes to describe accurately the condition of class consciousness, ideology, or culture across a society, the proper way to do so would be to sample the typical conversations across the landscape . . . in which people are actually talking and thus creating their mental realities

of the moment. (1987, 201)

Intensive eavesdropping has its ethical problems and threats to validity.

I tried to overcome the first by listening only in public places and by never citing the actual words I had overheard without obtaining the speaker’s permission. As Goffman also noted, the issues of validity and representativeness of the data remain, and they are serious (1971, xi-xv). Without this strategy, however, I could never have understood my subject. Intensive eavesdropping proved to be the most valuable method of all.

T H EFOCUSEDCONVERSATION Another of my research techniques overlaps somewhat with intensive eavesdropping. When tallung with others in social settings of all kinds, I often directed the conversation to sympathy. Usually, I would say something like the following: I’m doing a study of sympathy, and I heard you say that you were a lawyer, and I wondered if you have to try to get sympathy for your clients as part of your job. I’m studying sympathy, and some people have told me that they resent people who

try to manipulate them into feeling sorry for them. What do you think?

Do you think that people give sympathy to others without expecting anything in return?

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What ensued would be from ten minutes t o three hours of talk about some aspect of sympathy. I filled many napluns and envelopes in these focused conversations. My informants almost always expressed pleasure at being in the spotlight. Some told me that I made them feel like experts. They were typically gratified that I paid them serious attention and took notes on what they had to say. (At times, a few of my friends and colleagues did communicate their satiation with the topic.) Stranger and friend alike assented when I asked if I could quote them in my study. I used these focused conversations, or quasi interviews, primarily as ways of searching for “negative evidence” to assess the validity of the analysis I had put together to that point. The results often led me to elaborate a point, to qualify, or to specify more carefully and sometimes t o reject ideas entirely.

T H EP I A G E T I A“ N EXPERIMENT” Yet another method involved “experimentally” manipulating people’s levels of sympathy. In the tradition of Jean Piaget’s work, I devised four vignettes portraying characters in plights. Each vignette had two versions. For example, the age or sex of a character was altered, the location of interaction was varied between urban slum and suburban country club, or the main character acted alone or on the suggestion of another. In one of the stories, three characters were all implicated in creating the plight; sympathies in this case could be divided. Each of the vignettes is presented below, with the alternate wording indicated in brackets. Vignette 1

John and Catherine Brown, now in their late [sixties/twenties], have saved their money over the last few years in order to buy a [retirement] house [that their grandchildren can visit / where they can raise their children]. Although they have had to sacrifice, they were very happy when they moved into their seven-room cottage by the ocean. The following summer was a bad one for hurricanes. Their house was hit by a major storm and floated off its foundation. Most of their possessions were ruined.

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Vignette 2 A twenty-one-year-old white woman has been brutally beaten and left in [an alley off Forty-second Street in New York (a somewhat blighted area of bus terminals, warehouses, theaters, pornographic cinemas, and small shops) / the driveway behind the country club of her suburban neighborhood]. When the police arrive, she tells them that her assailant was a young Hispanic male whom she had met in passing in a bar. Vignette 3 Mary and Steve are both in their mid-twenties, and they have been married for two years. [Mary/Steve] works as a manager, and [Steve/Mary] holds a part-time job while [he/she] continues law school. Until recently, they were quite happy. In the past three months, [Steve/Mary] has been drinking after work and doing poorly in school. [Steve’s/Mary’s] father, who is a lawyer himself, calls often to check on how [Steve/Mary] is doing and to give advice whenever possible. [Mary/ Steve] has been willing to sacrifice to finance [Steve’s/ Mary’s] education and to pay the bills. [She/He] has been patient with [Steve’s/ Mary’s] recent binges and tries to encourage [him/her]. [Steve/Mary] ignores [her/him] and continues to do poorly in school and at work.

Vignette 4 [Susan/ Michael], a twenty-six-year-old (wife and mother / husband and father), works in the meat department of the local Pathmark Supermarket. One day the poultry distributor accidentally delivered an extra carton of two dozen chickens not listed on the invoice. [Susan/Michael] asked a coworker what to do and he said, “Take it home. That’s what everybody else does.”] Although [she/he] had never done it before, [Susan/Michael] decided to take the chickens home and put them in [her/his] freezer instead of reporting the overshipment. A shopper in the parking lot saw [her/him] loading the chickens into [her/his] car and told the store manager. When the manager asked [Susan/ Michael] about it, [she/ he] apologized.

Trained student interviewers presented one version or another of these vignettes to 1,177 adult New Jersey residents and to 60 schoolchildren in 1986 and 1988. The questionnaire asked respondents to read the vignette and indicate their levels of sympathy with the characters by placing an X

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on a line labeled from “extremely sorry” to “somewhat sorry” to “not sorry at all.” They were also asked to explain what parts of the story made them feel as they did. In the last vignette, respondents were asked t o describe what they would do if they were the store manager. Finally, they indicated their sex, age, occupation, marital status, religion, and ethnicity .

I N T E N S I V EI N T E R V I E W S Since the above techniques had yielded few detailed first person accounts of the internal aspects of sympathy processes, I decided to conduct standard intensive interviews. Several trained assistants and I interviewed a snowball sample of 63 residents of northern New Jersey about their own experiences in giving and getting sympathy. Later, we also interviewed 30 Hispanic respondents. The interview schedule focused on people’s definitions of sympathy; their attitudes toward giving and receiving it; the grounds they would consider appropriate for giving sympathy to both men and women, and their experiences with owing, giving, receiving, rejecting, and not giving sympathy. One of the major purposes of the interviews was to discover to what extent sympathy roles are linked to gender roles, so both male and female interviewers conducted interviews with 29 male and 34 female respondents. One Hispanic interviewer conducted interviews with the Hispanic sample of 15 males and 15 females. Intensive interviewing revealed a problem that I believe is endemic to research on the emotions: respondents had difficulty understanding and answering questions about how they felt. In some cases, they simply refused to say. In other cases, they asked that questions be repeated and rephrased several times. The interviewers, for their part, were sometimes frustrated both with my inability to provide clear questions for them to ask and with what they perceived as the inarticulateness or secretiveness of the interviewees. The basic format of the interview guide asked respondents to think of one case in which, say, they felt sorry for someone, or did not receive sympathy when they asked for it, or received sympathy when they did not want it. They were to describe the situation and then t o describe how they “felt inside.” (Pretesting had shown that omitting the word “inside” almost guaranteed that respondents described behavior instead of feeling.)

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N o amount of probing could get some of them to report how they felt. A typical encounter of this kind went: Interviewer: And how did y o u f e e l inside when your parents refused to feel sorry for y o u and lend y o u the money?

Respondent: Well, I just did not talk to them for either.

a

long time or write them

Interviewer: And what were y o u feeling inside at the time?

Respondent: That was in 1981, and I didn’t have anything to do with them for about two years. This respondent did not use words like “betrayed” or “hurt” or “angry,” although further questioning showed that she did experience these emotions. There are several possible reasons for oblique responses. First, emotions are preverbal, produced in the brain before words arise to explain them (Wentworth and Yardley 1994). Second, as I noted before, many people are simply unaccustomed to talking about emotions and lack the appropriate vocabulary. Third, some are unwilling to disclose their feelings to an interviewer, as I also found in research on humiliation among the elderly (Baillif and Clark 1988). Fourth, some are afraid that talking about emotions will reevoke those same painful emotions. In fact, a number of interviewees cried at some point, usually when they were recalling another’s lack of sympathy during a difficult time. Fifth, some emotions are currently out of favor, and people are reluctant to admit t o them. Ellis and Weinstein provided a case in point regarding jealousy: one of their ‘i swinger” respondents, when “asked . . . what she felt when her husband was with another woman, . . . replied: ‘Just a stabbing pain in my heart, not jealousy’ ” (1986, 340). Finally, some people are externally oriented and read their exterior behavior as evidence of interior feeling (see Rosenberg 1979, 202), an act that some cultures promote (Tuan 1982). The interviewee quoted above, for example, gave an account of her actions toward her parents as shorthand for how she felt.

FREEWRITING Freewriting is a writing technique developed by English instructors t o help students overcome writer’s block and collect their thoughts (see Elbow

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1973). I borrowed this technique because I believed it could generate introspective data on emotions that traditional methods might not. Asking respondents to write about emotions is not in itself a new technique. For example, Gross and Stone (1 964) collected students’ written accounts of embarrassing events; Hochschild (1983) asked students to write about working up or working down emotions to fit feeling rules; and Baillif and Clark (1988) asked members of senior citizens’ centers and nursing-home residents to write about joy, sympathy, anger, and humiliation. However, subjects sometimes get bogged down in the process of writing per se and in their fear of it. Freewriting is fundamentally different from normal writing, and it has the potential to reduce writing inhibitions and to allow subjects to tap into their emotional experience a t a deep level. I t is nonstop writing on an assigned topic without regard for spelling, word usage, style, organization, sentence structure, rules of grammar, or anything (including an anticipated reading by someone else) that inhibits word flow. To freewrite, one simply sits with whatever writing tools he or she likes best (number 2 pencil or gold-nibbed fountain pen, lined yellow pads or stacks of white bond) and writes whatever comes to mind. The writer is given (or chooses) a topic, and simply lets the thoughts flow from the brain through the hand to the paper. The writer’s goal should be to get all thoughts about the topic onto paper. To get thoughts to flow freely, the writer must follow some “ negative” rules: (1) ignore all the rules of formal writing of final drafts that can inhibit thinking about the topic; (2) repeat the last word over and over until a new thought comes, but do not stop to decide what to write; (3) do not write for a real or imagined audience but for oneself. With the help of my student assistants, I identified several samples of people of different ages, social classes, and sexes to undergo training in freewriting. For example, 10 subjects were employees of a medium-sized corporation, representing all levels from clerical to upper management; 20 subjects were students in an introductory sociology class; 15 were highschool students in an English course; and the rest were acquaintances (not close friends or relatives) of the student assistants. In total, I had 52 subjects who freewrote on from one to five topics, for a total of 207 freewritings. The vast majority were white, 85 percent were women, and, except for the high-school students, most were between the ages of twenty-one and

fifty. The student assistants trained subjects both in groups and individually. They explained freewriting, showed the subjects an example, and con-

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ducted one or two practice sessions with them. They read the following instructions to the subjects: Freewrite. Write whatever comes to your mind about ~. Make lists, write sentences or phrases, anything. Don’t stop to reread anything you write until later. Don’t stop to think of words, sentences, spelling, organization, etc. If you get stuck, write the last word over and over until an idea comes. Or write that you can’t think of anything to say. Write as fast as you can for at least twenty minutes. Keep your pencil moving. (Repeat as necessary.) The practice topics included ‘‘most embarrassing moment, ” ‘‘buttering someone up, ’ ’ and “love. ’ ’ The topics I assigned to subjects for their final freewriting had to do with various aspects of micropolitics and emotion (see chapter 7). The question of particular relevance to this study was, “How do you feel when someone says they feel sorry for you and it hurts your feelings?” As I mentioned above, one of the rules of freewriting is to write for oneself. To preserve privacy and anonymity, I did not collect writing samples unless the subjects agreed to have us read them. If they agreed, I asked them to write their sex and age on the writing samples and mail them to me or to a student assistant. As noted previously, I did not ask for other identifying characteristics because 1 wanted subjects to feel their anonymity was guaranteed. Several subjects did withhold some of their freewritings. As one might expect, this technique for collecting data on emotions has its problems as well as its advantages. Most of the drawbacks are similar to those one would find with other methods. It was not easy to get people to volunteer to spend several hours learning and freewriting. Students cooperated willingly in the classroom setting, but nonstudents were more reluctant. More women than men agreed to participate, and I suspect that our sample was weighted toward people who were both more verbal than average and, although they did not know that the study was about emotions, more accustomed to thinking about emotions. Once the data were collected, I found that the task of analysis was a messy one. First, handwriting was sometimes hard to decipher. Interestingly, many people’s handwriting became larger and messier and even changed the direction of its slant as their writing became more emotional. Second, many people got off the subject a t times, and the dross rate was high. Several sprinkled comments such as “I’m bored” or “I’m getting writer’s cramp” amid their observations. Occasionally, a subject’s stream

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of consciousness swept him or her away from the point entirely, as with this twenty-one-year-old white woman: keep pens, listen to the voice hearing, keep. I am whispering you can hardly hear, don’t stop keep going, I am writing you a letter to let you know how a song keeps going in my mind what are you doing. I am writing how do you spell writing? I am sure you know how. look at the board. . . . I am tired lay down keep your head above water, little mermaid-when

are we

through hungry.

Third, the information was simply too abundant, too complex, and too subtle to code easily. I found descriptions of emotions (both mild and intense) but also arguments for and against certain feelings, explanations of eliciting situations, display rules, prescriptions for dealing with upsetting emotions, theories of how emotions work interpersonally and what their consequences are likely to be, and more. However, this problem is also a plus. The data’s “messiness” says much about the way people understand emotions. People do not experience or think about emotions as isolated, distilled feeling. Their descriptions of an emotion weave together situational features, rules, definitions, reactions, and consequences. Overall, I believe the advantages of freewriting were greater than the drawbacks. First, one can provide respondents a high degree of anonymity, especially when research assistants train them and they mail their freewritings directly to the researcher. Some respondents explicitly stated that because they felt confident of anonymity, they revealed secrets. For example, one young African American woman remarked to a research assistant: “Oh, I don’t know if I should write this about my boss. Oh, what the hell. Nobody’s going to know it’s me.” A young white woman said, “I shouldn’t be writing this about my friend, but it’s the truth.” Another freewriter, a thirty-one-year-old man, revealed for the first time in his life a fraternity hazing incident in which he and his colleagues had nearly pushed a recruit over a California mountainside. Second, most subjects got involved in the task a t more than a superficial level. The changes in handwriting seem to reflect this involvement. 1 doubt that other techniques could have elicited some of the detailed and personal information our respondents freewrote about. The freewriting technique, I felt, pressed respondents to delve more deeply into their emotional experiences than other techniques do. For instance, some subjects wrote the introductory words over and over until a situation or a feeling surfaced. They then went on for pages describing feelings they might have denied

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