Searching for “the Nicest, Kindest, Gentlest Way of Asking”: Affective Risk Management as Gendered Emotion Work

• In Event: Examining Gender Inequality through the Lens of Social Psychology

Abstract

How do individuals in different-gender relationships approach conflict discussions? Contrary to the enduring stereotype that women are overly emotional or over-reactive, our data show that men’s feelings strongly shape the affective climate of the home and the communicative tactics their partners deploy to ask for behavior change, particularly regarding household support. We find that compared to their male partners, women devote substantially more cognitive and emotional energy to finding the best way to ask their male partner for help or to adjust specific behaviors, for fear that asking “poorly” would send him into emotional dysregulation. For women the act of requesting help often involves careful reflection about when to initiate the conversation and how to deliver such comments so as not to trigger a male partner’s emotional backlash. In contrast, the men in our study, in addition to seeking less partner change overall, tend to express their concerns without fear of partner reprisal.

In this article, we use data from 50 joint interviews with 100 individuals in middle- and upper-middle-class couples to study the cognitive-emotion work associated with anticipating and accommodating a partner’s emotional needs, a gendered process we term “affective risk management.” Timed poorly or delivered too brashly, overtures regarding joint decisions about family life stall or, worse, inflame emotional reactivity. To avoid this strained reception while trying to meaningfully include their partner in collaborative decision-making and housework, we find that women in different-gender relationships often conduct invisible emotion work to preemptively assess the potentially discomfitting nature of the request, read their partner’s emotional state before asking for assistance, and carefully manage the delivery of their request. Ultimately, we show how the gendered nature of affective risk management reinforces unequal gendered power dynamics in the household, advancing scholarship on gender inequality, marital power, and the sociology of emotions.

Authors

• Taylor Schedeen Barrett, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Allison Daminger, University of Wisconsin-Madison