ABSTRACT
How does emotion fit into the social world? Earlier chapters of this book have addressed this question in a number of ways, and at a number of levels. As we have seen, what counts as an emotion of a particular type partly depends on our cultural background. When and how it is regulated depend both on what society recommends and on what resources it provides for the task of regulation. Moving from the cultural to the group level, emotions are attached to objects of collective as well as individual concern, contributing to intragroup solidarity and intergroup differentiation. Other groups affect our group’s emotions, and our group’s emotions affect other groups, just as at the interpersonal level, other individuals affect our emotions and our emotions affect them. But how do these different kinds of social influences, effects, and functions interlock? What is the big picture? In this chapter, we sketch our impression of its basic shape.
