Understanding “Socially Just Emotions” Through a Framework of Compassionate, Ambivalent, and Ideological Feelings

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Socially Just Emotions, Environmental Justice, and Cultural Capital (Table 13)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore a proliferation of socially just emotions through a framework of compassionate, ambivalent, and ideological feelings. We conducted a survey in which US college students responded to 14 statements under three categories, along with 2 follow-up interviews. Each statement was accompanied by a scale to express the degree of feeling and a space for brief justification. As with a One-Way ANOVA and emotional/value coding methods, our preliminary data analysis (N=62) demonstrates emotional engagements: gender difference, strongly sensitive to a specific race/racism-related statement, and emotional diversity. The significance of this research is to relate types of socially just emotions to the level of theoretical underpinnings.

Authors

• Jeasik Cho, Texas Tech University

• Aaron S. Zimmerman, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Taylor Beadles, University of Texas - Permian Basin

• Lara Alvarenga, Tarrant County College

• Hien Ngo, Texas Tech University