Building visual worlds: using maps in qualitative psychological research on affect and emotion

Abstract

One challenge facing psychological studies of affect and emotion is how we can capture the situated, located assemblage of practice involved in affective experiences: the where, how, when, who, and what of affective meaning making. Here we argue for a place for map-making in the methodological toolbox of qualitative Psychology. Participatory mapping is a wellestablished technique used in geography, planning and community development, with a growing tradition in psychology and sociology. The examples drawn upon here are from two studies, exploring experiences of space in mental health service use, and in an intentional community for people with learning disabilities. Mapping is argued to be useful both as a process and product within the construction of sense making in qualitative research. Particular strengths are argued to be: locating specific affective experiences, exploring layers of ambiguous or contradictory experiences, and making materiality visible in participants' narratives. The potential of mapping as a tool for qualitative research in affect and emotion is discussed. 1. Affect, emotion and psychology The affective turn across the social sciences (e.g.

Emotion mapping: Exploring creative methods to understand the psychology of long-term injury

“…A holistic understanding of emotion mapping also unveils the possibility of application to the wider social science research community outside of its origins in family therapy. An example of this is the study by McGrath et al (2020) of emotional experiences of space by people with learning disabilities using mental health services. The authors argued that emotion mapping was efficacious as 'both a process and a product' (p. 75) in understanding the relationship between emotion and space and was useful in 'the construction of sense making in qualitative research ' (p. 75).…”

“…Emotion mapping as a research method is usually paired with a form of participant-led qualitative inquiry to allow the participant the opportunity to explain their map to the researcher, as opposed to the researcher interpreting it themselves as is typical of a positivist approach in sport psychology (McGrath et al, 2020). A holistic understanding of emotion mapping also unveils the possibility of application to the wider social science research community outside of its origins in family therapy.…”

Researching Identities as Affective Discursive Practices

“…But this would be a mistake; for, as we will demonstrate, the turn to affect presents a generative and useful opportunity to clarify and refine the study of identity in a manner that explicitly takes account of domains that might more usually have been left to one side: for example, embodied experience, material objects, sounds and places. There are several exciting lines of work taking up this challenge (Cromby, & Willis, 2016;McGrath, Mullarkey, & Reavey, 2019;Sullivan, 2018;Taylor, 2015) and finding ways to broaden the scope of identity-based inquiries without relinquishing the strengths and benefits of discourse and narrative-based approaches. We focus in particular on Margaret Wetherell's important theoretical work on 'affective discursive practices' (Wetherell, 2012(Wetherell, , 2013(Wetherell, , 2015aWetherell et al, 2019) which we argue offers a flexible and fruitful way forward for identity scholars.…”

Moving Beyond Text-and-Talk in Qualitative Health Research: Methodological Considerations of Using Multiple Media for Data Collection

“…With the increasing interest in what has been termed "the affective turn" in social sciences (Clough, 2008;Zembylas, 2014), the issues of emotion, feeling, and embodiment have come increasingly to the fore, including in the field of qualitative health research (Cromby, 2011(Cromby, , 2012a(Cromby, , 2012bLyons & Chamberlain, 2012). Limitations of space preclude us from commenting in detail on this large movement, but relevant to this article is the fact that some researchers have argued that accessing emotion in research is difficult, but possibly eased through the use of methods other than traditional talkand-text methods (Baumann, Merante, et al, 2020;Cromby, 2012a;Greene et al, 2018;McGrath et al, 2020). Although there may be something intuitively correct about the claim that methods such as photo-elicitation (Edmondson et al, 2018), for example, may provide easier access to emotion than more traditional methods, there is little systematic research on the various contributions of different methods and media to understanding emotion in health and illness.…”