In his book named after the idea, sociologist Stjepan Meštrović describes contemporary Western societies as postemotional. By invoking the prefix “post,” he doesn’t mean to suggest that we no longer have any emotions at all, but that we have become numb to our emotions, so much so that we may not feel them the way we once did.
This, he argues, is a result of being exposed to a “daily diet of phoniness”: a barrage of emotional manipulation from every corner of culture, news, entertainment, infotainment, and advertising. In this postemotional society, our emotions have become a natural resource that, like spring water, is tapped at no cost to serve corporations with goals of maximizing mass consumption and fattening their own wallets. Even companies that make stuff like gum.
As examples, Meštrović describes how our dramas and comedies feed us fictionalized stories that take us on extreme emotional roller coasters, while their advertisements manipulate our emotions to encourage us to buy. Serious media like the news lead with the most emotionally intense stories of the day. Our own lives are usually rather humdrum, but if you watch the news, you vicariously experience trauma every day. A cop killed another kid. An earthquake has killed thousands. Little girls are kidnapped by warlords. Immigrants die by the boatload. Do you feel sad? Angry? Scared? Your friends do; you know because of Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Do you need a pick me up? Here’s a kitten. Feel happy.
Importantly for Meštrović, the emotions that we encounter through these media are not our own. The happiness you feel watching a baby laughing on YouTube isn’t really your happiness, nor is it your sadness when you watch a news story about a tragedy. It’s not your daughter who has treasured your tiny offerings of love for 18 years, but you spend emotional energy on these things nevertheless.
In addition to being vicarious, the emotions we are exposed to are largely fake: from the voiceover on the latest blockbuster movie trailer, to the practiced strain in the voice of the news anchor, to the performative proposal on The Bachelor, to the enthusiasm for a cleaning product in the latest ad. These emotions are performed after being carefully filtered through focus groups and designed to appeal to the masses.
But they are so much more intense than those a typical human experiences in their daily lives, and the onslaught is so constant. Meštrović thinks we are emotionally exhausted by this experience, leaving us little energy left to feel our own, idiosyncratic emotions. We lose our ability to detect our own more nuanced emotions, which are almost always small and mundane compared the extraordinary heights of grief, rage, lust, and love that we are exposed to when the news chases down the latest mass tragedy or the movies offer up never-ending tales of epic quests. Meanwhile, in consuming the emotions of others, we get lost. We end up confused by the dissolving of the boundary between personal and vicarious; our bodies can’t tell the difference between friends on TV and those in real life.
Meštrović is worried about this not just on our behalf. He’s worried that it inures us to real tragedies because our hearts are constantly being broken, but only a little. When we are triggered to constantly feel all the feelings for all the people everywhere — real ones and fake ones — we don’t have the energy to emotionally respond to the ones that are happening right in front of us. His work was originally inspired by the bland global response to the Bosnian genocide in the ’90s, but applies equally well to the slow, stuttering response — both political and personal — to the refugees fleeing the Syrian Civil War and the constant news of yet another mass shooting in America. The emotional dilution that characterizes a postemotional society makes us less likely to take action when needed. So, when action is needed, we change our Facebook profile picture instead of taking to the streets.
Cross-posted at Business Insider and Pacific Standard.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 20
Disqus_eh_um_saco — September 28, 2015
" It’s not your daughter who has treasured your tiny offerings of love for 18 years, but you spend emotional energy on these things nevertheless." Isn't that empathy? I see no problem with it.
Tristian Lopez — September 28, 2015
The moral is great because it shows that people show emotion and meaning to the smallest or largest things in life like in the commercial were a girl cherishes and holds little gifts from her father. If it's an "earthquake who kills a lot of people or a girl kidnapped " will get people to show these emotions but to do so in the moment it's happening is the emotional energy you put into the feelings we have towards different events in life. This is a very important because it shows that people have strong feelings based off of emotion and morals based on their own individual beliefs.
Josie — September 29, 2015
Coca Cola is particularly adept at this sort of emotional advertising; for example see this "heartwarming Coca-Cola Life commercial from Argentina showing trials [and] tribulations [of] parenting." This despite the fact that the company sells a high-sugar-content drink that siphons calcium and phosphorus from women's bones - including presumably those of the child-bearing woman in the ad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRqUTA6AegA
Josie — September 29, 2015
For more on the calcium/phosphorus siphoning effect of Coke: http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/07/diet-cola-drains-calcium-in-women/comment-page-1/
Satiricalifragilistic ! — September 29, 2015
I have to say I'm not entirely convinced of this thesis, since I don't think human beings have ever been particularly good at caring about mass casualties that happen to other people. For all the annoyances of awareness campaigns, I think we're a little better at donating & generating political pressure toward fixing problems in other countries, compared to the influence of 19th century abolitionists*, suffragists, and overseas missionaries.
*(No, I'm not giving them credit for the Emancipation Proclamation, as more people in the North were against slavery for their economic interests rather than human rights. Actual abolitionists were a tiny fringe.)
Tom Megginson — September 29, 2015
As an advertising person, I can see this desensitization being an issue in all media. People encourage each other to be over-the-top, emotionally, all the time. ("This gives me ALL THE FEELS!") It reminds me of the reported problem of people growing up masturbating to extreme porn, then being disappointed by actual sex.
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