ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the social bases of five emotions to illustrate how important social interaction is in experiencing and defining some of people most important social processes. The five emotions are shame, love, jealousy, and embarrassment. Sigmund Freud believed that repressed childhood sexual desires were the sources of emotions. Although many of Freud's ideas have been discredited over time, he did contribute to the study of emotions in several ways. When computers or smart-phones are able to recognize the emotions that users are feeling based on facial expressions, they can measure the efficacy of particular media—whether it be a commercial or movie trailer—at eliciting the desired emotion. The chapter describes where emotions originate from, including the physiological, psychological, and social bases of emotions, as well as the importance of social context. It explains how, and why, people psychologically and socially control the expression of emotions through both suppression and production.
