Emotional change and political disengagement in the twentieth‐century United States: A case study in emotions History

Abstract

One of the major contributions of historical study of emotion, along with the analysis of changing emotional standards, involves exploring the consequences of change. This article sketches the principal features of the historical approach in emotions research. It focuses particularly on the emergence of a new, twentieth‐century emotional style in the United States, more informal but also more hostile to intensity than the characteristic nineteenth‐century style. This change itself resulted from a number of forces, including the rise of corporate management and the service sector, and the new culture helped translate these forces into novel behaviours. The culture helped shape alterations in public life, after the new standards were consolidated. In the United States, changes in law, including defence in jealousy‐motivated homicide and in divorce law, reflected the shifts in emotional norms. The same norms also helped to reshape the presentations of political candidates, including oratorical forms, debate formats and the organization of political conventions. More broadly, changes in emotional norms played a role in the decline of union movements and in rates of voter participation. The article suggests several specific formats for analyzing the causal or intermediary role of emotional norms and their relationship to larger structural changes.