ABSTRACT
Attention to the situational and social nature of psychological phenomena like emotions has hovered around the edges of psychological research but these topics have never become central. In recent years, some social scientists have argued that greater attention should be paid to how phenomena change—that is, in relation to their social, cultural, and historical situations (e.g., Gergen, 1985, Hutchins, 2010; Lave, 1988; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Payr & Wallis, 2011; Rogoff, 1997). Similarly, some emotion researchers have begun to study affect as a situational process. 1 In this chapter, we will review current approaches to studying affect and emotion as arising from the specific context in which they occur. We begin by contextualizing the notion of situative psychological research and providing a rationale for the study of situative approaches to studying emotion. We continue with a discussion of methods currently used in studying situated emotions, and we evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of each. We then reflect on the conceptualization of “situativity” and its relation to the kinds of methods that researchers may choose. We close with some thoughts on future directions in methodology.
