Exposing the “Wellbeing Gap” Between American Men and Women: Revelations From the Sociology of Emotion Surveys

Abstract

Population surveys of emotion offer great potential to understand subjective wellbeing, though most do not reveal how emotions other than happiness and satisfaction impact on daily lives. This article presents a case study analysis of data from Kahneman and Krueger’s (2006) Princeton Time and Affect Survey to demonstrate that the choice of emotions or affects measured in surveys does matter in determining wellbeing in contexts such as those in which gender plays an important role. It finds that that tiredness and interest (excluded from Kahneman and Krueger’s wellbeing construct) comprise a large part of American women’s but not men’s unpleasant education, unpaid housework, and childcare. The article concludes by suggesting that the most appropriate method for establishing a “minimum” set of emotions is to conduct survey-based “audits” of emotions experienced in daily activities.

Relational happiness through recognition and redistribution: Emotion and inequality

“…Happiness' has material and symbolic elements linking Emotional states associated with happiness shape a sense of self, justice and social connectedness, as well as being shaped by them. The sociology of emotion has attended to the importance of trust, confidence, envy and shame in social life and social relations (Barbalet, 1996;Kemper, 1978;Patulny, 2015;Scheff, 2000), but without linking these to happiness and to misrecognition as reproducing inequalities. A relational approach to happiness as complex can contribute to retheorising inequality as both material and as reproduced through feelings about self and others.…”

“…Social inequalities may mean, for example, that fear of crime or fear of revolutionary rebellion (Barbalet, 2001: 149-169) can mar even the wealthy's enjoyment of aspects of social life by limiting such things as freedom of movement 2 and freedom from fear. Further research is needed on how other emotions such as envy and anger amongst the poor (Patulny, 2015) might be experienced in relation to the rich 3 Some evidence indicates that Americans at least, are happier if their near neighbours are rich but the point is that richer neighbourhoods advantage everyone in them, while poorer neighbourhoods reduce happiness for all living there (Firebaugh and Schroeder, 2009).…”

The emotional trade-off between meaningful and precarious work in new economies

“…There is now a well-established tradition of measuring emotions through scaled emotion measures in numerous surveys (US GSS, HILDA, World Gallup Poll, etc.). See our previous work (Patulny, 2015;Patulny et al, 2017Patulny et al, , 2019 for a more detailed discussion of the issues and robustness of surveying emotions. The 2015-16 AUSSA survey included a number of measurements of emotional experience and EM, which will serve as the dependent variable for this study.…”

The sociology of emotions: A meta-reflexive review of a theoretical tradition in flux

“…It recognises emotional experience as integral to social life. While the field is often associated with interactionist and dramaturgical sociology (Hochschild, 1983a; James, 1989), SoE also consists of more macro-theoretical work (Barbalet, 1998; Burkitt, 1997), quantitative analysis (Moon et al, 2009; Patulny, 2015) and phenomenological inquiry (Denzin, 1983). The identity and direction of the subdiscipline draws from a broad range of disciplines, yet there are unifying methodological premises that arguably provide a sense of commonality among researchers.…”