{"id":72967,"date":"2019-11-21T11:21:22","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T16:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=72967"},"modified":"2019-11-21T11:21:26","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T16:21:26","slug":"visualizing-emotions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2019\/11\/21\/visualizing-emotions\/","title":{"rendered":"Visualizing Emotions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sociologists\nstudying emotion have opened up the inner, private feelings of anger, fear,\nshame, and love to reveal the far-reaching effects of social forces on our most\npersonal experiences. This subfield has given us new words to make sense of shared\nexperiences: emotional labor in our professional lives, collective\neffervescence at sporting events and concerts, emotional capital as a resource\nlinked to gender, race, and class, and the relevance of power in shaping\npositive and negative emotions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite\nthese advances, scholars studying emotion still struggle to capture emotion\ndirectly. In the lab, we can elicit certain emotions, but by removing context,\nwe remove much of what shapes real-life experiences. In surveys and interviews,\nwe can ask about emotions retrospectively, but rarely in the moment and in\nsitu. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One\nway to try to capture emotions as they unfold in all of their messy glory is\nthrough audio diaries (Theodosius 2008). Our team set out to use audio\ndiaries as a way to understand the emotions of hospital nurses\u2014workers on the\nfront lines of healthcare. We asked nurses to make a minimum of one recording\nafter each of 6 consecutive shifts. Some made short 10-minute recordings. Some\ntalked for hours in the midst of beeping hospital machines and in break rooms,\nwhile walking to their cars, driving home, and as they unplugged after a long\nday. With the recorders out in the world, we couldn\u2019t control what they\ndiscussed. We couldn\u2019t follow-up with probing questions or ask them to move to\na quieter location to minimize background noise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what this lack of control gave us was a trove of emotions and reflections, experienced and processed while recording. One fruitful way to try to distill these data, we found, was through visuals. We created wavelength visualizations in order to augment our interpretation of diary transcripts. Pairing the two reintroduces some of the \u2018texture\u2019 of spoken word often lost in the transcription process (Smart 2009:296). The following is from our new article in the journal, Qualitative Research<\/em> (Cottingham and Erickson Forthcoming).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this first segment, Tamara (all participant names are pseudonyms) describes a memorable situation in which a patient\u2019s visitor assumed that Tamara was a lower-level nursing aid rather than a registered nurse (the full event is discussed in greater detail in Cottingham, Johnson, and Erickson 2018). This caused her to feel \u201cticked\u201d (angry), which is the word she uses after a quick, high-pitched laugh that peaks the wavelength just after the 30-s mark (Figure 1). The wavelength peak just after the 1:15 mark is as she says the word \u2018why\u2019 with notable agitation in \u2018I\u2019m not sure why<\/em>. Maybe cuz I\u2019m Black. I don\u2019t know.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 1. Tamara\u2019s \u201cTicked\u201d Segment (shift 2, part 1)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We can compare Figure 1 that visualizes Tamara\u2019s feelings of\nanger with the visualization of emotion in Figure 2. \u201cDraining\u201d is the\ndescription Tamara gives at the beginning of this second segment. The peak just\nafter the 15-second mark is from a breathy laugh as she describes her sister \u201cwho\nhas MS is sitting on the bedside commode\u201d when she gets home from work. After\nthe 45-second mark, she has a similar breathy laugh but in conjunction with the\nword \u2018compassionate\u2019 as she says \u2018I\u2019m trying to be as empathetic and\ncompassionate as I want to be, but I know I\u2019m really not. So I feel kinda\ncrappy, guilty maybe about that.\u2019 Just before the 1:30 mark she draws out the\nwords \u2018draining\u2019 and \u2018frustrating\u2019 before finishing: \u2018because you leave it and\nyou come home to it\u2026you know\u2026yeah.\u2019 We can see that the segment ends with\nlonger pauses, muted remarks, and sighs, suggesting low energy and representing\nthe drained feelings she expresses, particularly in comparison to the lively\nenergy seen in the first segment when she discusses feeling angry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 2. Tamara\u2019s \u201cDraining\u201d Segment (shift 2, part 2)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A second example comes from Leah, recorded while driving to work. Here she is angry (\u201cpissed off\u201d) because she has to work on a day that she was not originally scheduled to work. This segment is visualized in the waveform shown in Figure 3. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 3. Leah\u2019s \u2018Righteous Indignation\u2019 Segment (shift 2, part 1)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Figure 4. Leah\u2019s \u2018I Don\u2019t Want to Stay\u2019 Segment (shift 2, part 3)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In contrast to her discussion of being pissed off and working to \u2018retain enough righteous indignation\u2019 to confront her boss later (in figure 3), we see a different wavelength visualization in her second segment (figure 4). In that segment, she describes her lack of enthusiasm for continuing the shift. She reflects on this lack of desire (\u2018I don\u2019t want to stay\u2019) by stepping outside her own feelings and contrasting them with the dire circumstances of her young patient. This reflexivity leads her to conclude that she has reached the limits of her ability to be compassionate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\nbe sure, waveform visualizations are only meaningful in tandem with what<\/em> our nurses say. And they do not\nprovide definitive proof of certain emotions over others. They can\u2019t fully\nidentify the sighs, deep inhales, uses of sarcasm, or other subtle features of\nspoken diary entries. They do, however, offer some insight into how speed,\npitch, and pauses correspond to different emotional expressions and, arguably,\nlevels of emotional energy (Collins 2004) that vary across time and interactions.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While\nthere is little that can serve as a substitute for hearing the recordings\ndirectly, the need to protect participants\u2019 confidentiality compels us to turn\nto other means to convey the nuances of these verbalizations. Visualization of\nwavelengths, in combination with transcripts, can lend themselves to further\nqualitative interpretation of these subtleties, conveying the dynamics of a\nsegment to others who do not have direct access to the recordings themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check\nout the full, open-access article on this topic here<\/a> and more on the experiences of nurses\nhere<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marci Cottingham<\/strong> is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam. She researches emotion and inequality broadly and their connection to healthcare and biomedical risk. She is a 2019-2020 visiting fellow at the HWK Institute for Advanced Study. More on her research can be found here: www.uva.nl\/profile\/m.d.cottingham<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collins, Randall.\n2004. Interaction Ritual Chains<\/em>. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton\nUniversity Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cottingham,\nMarci D. and Rebecca J. Erickson. Forthcoming. \u201cCapturing Emotion with Audio\nDiaries.\u201d Qualitative Research<\/em>. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/1468794119885037<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cottingham,\nMarci D., Austin H. Johnson, and Rebecca J. Erickson. 2018. \u201c\u2018I Can Never Be\nToo Comfortable\u2019: Race, Gender, and Emotion at the Hospital Bedside.\u201d Qualitative\nHealth Research<\/em> 28(1):145\u2013158. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/1049732317737980<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smart,\nCarol. 2009. \u201cShifting Horizons: Reflections on Qualitative Methods.\u201d Feminist\nTheory<\/em> 10(3):295\u2013308.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theodosius,\nCatherine. 2008. Emotional Labour in Health Care: The Unmanaged Heart of\nNursing<\/em>. NY: Routledge.
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Sociologists studying emotion have opened up the inner, private feelings of anger, fear, shame, and love to reveal the far-reaching effects of social forces on our most personal experiences. This subfield has given us new words to make sense of shared experiences: emotional labor in our professional lives, collective effervescence at sporting events and concerts, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1851,"featured_media":72978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,329,2100,274,76],"class_list":["post-72967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-emotion","tag-gender-work","tag-methodsuse-of-data","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2019\/11\/VisEmote-e1574353137452.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1851"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72967"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72980,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72967\/revisions\/72980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}