Comment on “Methodological Innovations From the Sociology of Emotions – Methodological Advances”

Historically, the sociology of emotion has been relatively long on theory and short on methods. This collection of articles seeks to remedy this by introducing new ways to capture the four factors of emotion, as articulated by Thoits (1989): meaning, expression, label, and physiology. As a group, these studies reify existing dichotomies in the literature—that is, emotional experience versus emotional expression—and seek to reconcile them. Additionally, they all champion the use of mixed methods—either simultaneously or sequentially—adopting some combination of direct or indirect observation, subjective understanding/experience, and physiological change. Using examples drawn for their own research, the authors provide new ways to capture emotion that will carry emotion scholars into the next four decades of research.