in regards to their level of happiness and/or ‘emotional well-being’. So, whilst there continues to be a small amount of research focused on the way that adolescents perform these emotions, this has been primarily focused on the creation of emotional scripts (Hochschild 1983; Dykas, Woodhouse, Cassidy and Waters 2007), which are primarily focused now on the hidden world of the adolescent and the space where feeling and thinking takes place (Forgas 1995). Access to the inner world of the child is challenging. Little, if any, research has focused on the adolescents themselves. How the adolescent performs has been assumed to be how they are feeling. It is not clear if this is the case or not. In this thesis it will be important to explore how their actions and performances match what they are internally feeling. If they do not match, then how does the adolescent reconcile these tensions, and what does this mean for their performance. But more than this is the need to gain an appreciation of what the adolescents understand about their emotions and the effect that they can have on their performance. It will be important to explore if they manage their emotions to influence situations and social exchanges; to question if they use emotions as a currency to access areas which they are normally restricted from. This will reveal if they see emotions as resource which they can access and mobilise, thereby manipulating the emotion to produce a desired and considered outcome and response. In other words, to see emotional performance as a way of demonstrating a level of emotional competence, thereby realising the power that emotional management can have when under their control. 1.4 The concept of emotional competence The concept of emotional competence is not new, however the way in which it is to be applied within this thesis is new. White (1959) defined it as the ‘the capacity to engage with a variable social-physical environment, resulting in growth and mastery for the individual’. It
Recalling the history of the events, as she presumes it had happened, appears to have extended the unhappy and sad feelings for her. Whilst the details remain unconfirmed she has had periods of sadness where she has explored possible permutations of the events, and even as she speaks now, some 9 years later, her speech is in the present tense suggesting that this episode continues to make her feel sad. The emphasis seems to have shifted from the ‘breakup’ of her parents to the lack of information, and to the fact that she has unconfirmed details as to why her parent’s relationship ended. It leaves her with a feeling of disconnection to the family and particularly her parents, because of the way she has been excluded from the information. Once again, it can be seen that the emotional management is challenging because of the position that they occupy as a child. They have been judged by the adults in these situations to not be emotionally competent, in the traditional developmental way (Saarni 1990), being able to deal with the reality of what is occurring, and are therefore they given limited information. Both Jessica and Mary however view the world differently to the adults. They see that they there is more to the story, and have to not only deal with these feelings of rejection, where they are seen as not able to hear the information, but also to manage the feelings it generates. This could be viewed as them managing their emotions in a complex set of circumstances and are in deep demonstrating an emotional competence in the way in which they are responding to their audience. They are both engaged in a considerable amount of deep acting, which involves significant relationships in their lives, but neither of them share their feelings with the adults concerned. For others the loss of control was not around information specifically, but more to do with life events and dying. For Penny the loss was of a grandparent which created feelings of
Penny : so like a trivial thing to make you unhappy would be like …………..you wanted to do something like after school but now like your mum has said you’ve got to do something else like I don’t know some chores or something and then something major to make you feel sad…………would be something like a death or something like that major. Both of their personal histories enabled them to identify that the death of a significant person in their life created feelings of sadness. Both of them used this as a reference point of what sadness was. It was within their personal history and gave them an event to locate the emotion. There was an acknowledgement in the embodiment of the emotion, acting as a marker for unhappiness. Bob had not experienced any significant losses in his life. He lived with his parents and brother in a home that he had lived in all of his life. When asked what he thought unhappiness, was his response was also rooted within his own lived experience. He said. Bob: well………..say if you did a bad tackle on somebody and they didn’t like it then they’d do one onto you……………….. For me what this indicates is that unhappiness is textual, as both Penny and Louise had experienced the death of a close relative. Their accounts illustrate a personal and individualism in how it is recorded. The need to anchor emotions within their personal histories was identified in the previous chapter. In this regard it is concurring with Hochschild (1983) and Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgy analogies where the individual has to draw on emotions which they feel can relate to the social situation that they are currently experiencing. I would argue that the participant’s ability to do this will reflect their level of emotional competence that they demonstrate. For Bob, his experiences remain limited and therefore his range of
competence may be challenged with extreme situations such as a death, because his repertoire of experiences are less intense. Interestingly, when asked what happiness was Louise responded. Louise: um I think happiness is being generally content with your life and you really enjoy it or whatever it is that you are really happy with and you have got no issues with it so that’s what it is. This quite abstract concept of ‘contentment’ suggests that for Louise there are complexities to life which she identifies as ‘issues’ and that in order to feel happy it is necessary for these to be under ‘control’, not invading or influencing her internal thoughts and feelings. This was mirrored in Penny’s response when she said. Penny: ummm…………….. I think happiness is such a light feeling it’s really good it really makes you feel good about yourself. For Penny and Louise, they saw happiness as an enjoyable experience; it is the absence of complications of their daily life which creates an internal feeling of positivity. Their internal thoughts and feelings are positive and controlled and whilst happiness may be externally performed it was the internal and personal registering which was of significance to them. Bob roots the emotion of happiness in a lived experience of playing on his X box computer game and captures the positive feeling; the notable difference between the illustrations is that Bob’s is very much based on his external performance of winning and being noticed and admired through the game by others. He said. Bob:…………. if you kill someone …………………..it’s like happiness cos the better shot you do the more happy you’ll be, cos the more people will look at you, cos you can say what shots you shoot with……………………….. Therefore his level of happiness is changeable, intensified by the audience validation, and