EMOTIONS, SENTIMENTS, AND PERFORMANCE EXPECTATIONS

Expectation states theories linking status and behavior enhance our understanding of how social structures organize behavior in a variety of social settings. Efforts to extend behavioral explanations anchored in state organizing processes based on emotions and sentiments have proceeded slowly. This chapter presents a theory of how emotions organize observable power and prestige orders in groups. Emotions are conceptualized as transitory, intense expressions of positive and negative affect communicated from one actor to another by interaction cues. These cues become the basis of long-lasting sentiments conceptualized as liking and disliking for other actors. Sentiments become the foundation for differentiated social structures and hence, performance expectations. This chapter describes how such a process may occur and develops theoretical principles that link emotions, sentiments, and performance expectations.