Revisiting the Intersection of Identity, Emotion and Social Structure: The Case of Chinese Students

• In Event: 606 - Section on Social Psychology Roundtable Session (co-sponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Self and Identity

Abstract

Identity theory has been tackling the question of the link between identity, emotion and social structure for decades. Grounded in interactionist theory, Stryker and colleagues’ social structural identity theory puts social structure in the forefront. Structural identity theory considers emotion the effect of the confirmation of identity process within social networks. Built on structural identity theory, Burke and colleagues delineate how identity processes impact emotion and how emotion functions to either strengthen or weaken the commitment to identities. We provide two critiques to this model. First, we agree with previous authors who posit that identity does not result only from role mechanisms. Second, we add that emotion cannot be simply added to this role identity model as a postconfirmatory outcome. Findings of this study show that individuals are agentic in managing their emotion to maintain old identities despite the lack of confirmation of such identities in a new social context and that they maintain certain identities while having negative emotions toward their identity performances. Thus, we argue that structural identity theory would benefit from a reconceptualization of emotion. Combining the emotion management perspective in an interactionist framework, we demonstrate this theoretical argument through a case study of Chinese students in two major research universities in the United States.

Authors

• Cynthia Baiqing Zhang, Colorado State University-Pueblo

• Natalia Ruiz-Junco, Auburn University