The emotions of powerlessness

Abstract

After briefly considering cognitive aspects of powerlessness, we propose that the affective basis of powerlessness is comprised of four primary emotions–acceptance–acquiescence, anticipation–expectation, sadness, and fear. Plutchik’s psychoevolutionary model of primary emotions, together with a partial classification of pairwise combinations of these four emotions, enables a theoretical model hypothesizing that powerlessness also involves six secondary-level emotions – fatalism, pessimism, resignation, anxiety, submissiveness, and shame. A quantitative content analysis of 564 life-historical interviews of Australian Aborigines and Euro-Australians was used for structural equations models relating objective and subjective powerlessness. The results of these analyses fit the data. Cultural and sex difference in the manifest variables were analyzed. This work aspires to contribute to alienation theory, to establish a linkage between alienation theory and the sociology of emotions, and to develop hierarchical, lexical categorization analysis.

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The emotions of powerlessness
Warren D. TenHouten
To cite this article: Warren D. TenHouten (2016) The emotions of powerlessness, Journal of
Political Power, 9:1, 83-121, DOI: 10.1080/2158379X.2016.1149308
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2158379X.2016.1149308
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The emotions of powerlessness
Warren D. TenHouten*
Department of Sociology, University of California at Los Angeles, 264 Haines Hall, 405
Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551, USA
After briefly considering cognitive aspects of powerlessness, we propose that
the affective basis of powerlessness is comprised of four primary emotions–ac-
ceptance–acquiescence, anticipation–expectation, sadness, and fear. Plutchik’s
psychoevolutionary model of primary emotions, together with a partial classifi-
cation of pairwise combinations of these four emotions, enables a theoretical
model hypothesizing that powerlessness also involves six secondary-level emo-
tions –fatalism, pessimism, resignation, anxiety, submissiveness, and shame. A
quantitative content analysis of 564 life-historical interviews of Australian Abo-
rigines and Euro-Australians was used for structural equations models relating
objective and subjective powerlessness. The results of these analyses fit the
data. Cultural and sex difference in the manifest variables were analyzed. This
work aspires to contribute to alienation theory, to establish a linkage between
alienation theory and the sociology of emotions, and to develop hierarchical,
lexical categorization analysis.
Keywords: powerlessness; emotion; alienation; Australian Aborigines; life-historical
interviews; shame; anxiety; resignation
Introduction
Power and powerlessness are key social-scientific concepts and figure prominently
in alienation theory (Marx 1932, Seeman 1959,1967,1972,1991, Seeman et al.
1988, Geis and Ross 1998, Maly et al.2013). Wielded by nation-states, complex
organizations, and individuals, power denotes social actors’ability to influence or
control events and outcomes, and to act in their own interests despite resistance
from others (Weber [1921] 1978, p. 53). While there has been much emphasis on
power (Coleman 1974, Lukes 1974, Foucault 1978, Gaventa 1982, Mann 1986,
1993, for a review, see Haugaard and Clegg 2009), and the closely related topics
of authority (Dahrendorf 1959, Sennett 1980), hierarchy (Chiao 2010), and domina-
tion (Gramsci 1971, Scott 1990, Bourdieu 1998, Sidanius and Pratto 1999), power-
lessness has received far less attention. Powerlessness means being subjected to
domination by others and unable to live according to the dictates of one’s judgment
and nature. Lukes ([1974] 2004) identifies three levels of powerlessness: (i) power-
lessness in a context of decision-making; (ii) a lack of control over an agenda, or
lacking the power to decide what is to be decided, so that grievances are not
expressed; and (iii), a level of being dominated that goes beyond Weber’s success-
ful imposition of legitimate orders, to mean ‘subjection-inducing acquiescence,
where power is an imposition or constraint, working against the interest of those
*Email: wtenhout@g.ucla.edu
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
Journal of Political Power, 2016
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subject to it’(Lukes [1974] 2004, p. 12). This paper aims to: (i) clarify the
distinction between objective and subjective levels of powerlessness; (ii), analyze
subjective ‘feelings’or ‘sentiments’of powerlessness in terms of specific emotions;
(iii) model objective aspects of powerlessness as this corresponds to negative expe-
riences of social relationships; and (iv), conceptually and empirically investigate
relations between objective and subjective levels of powerlessness.
Objective and subjective powerlessness in alienation theory
Distinctions between objective and subjective levels of powerlessness and other
varieties of alienation and estrangement have long been at issue among alienation
theorists, and have divided them into two camps, a development which has con-
tributed to a decline in interest in alienation. The first, objective, etiological per-
spective, articulated by Marx (1932), investigates the sociohistorical circumstances
and structural conditions that engender or even constitute alienation. This viewpoint
contends that, ‘alienation consists of the structural, organizational, and sociorela-
tional conditions that diminish human capacities in work and elsewhere’; it concep-
tualizes alienation as ‘an objective fact independent of individual sentiments’(as
described, but not endorsed, by Seeman 1991, p. 19). Many scholars have focused
on alienation’s precipitating workplace conditions, and have regarded alienation as
‘objective or structural in the sense that it is built into human relationships at the
workplace and exists independently of how individuals perceive and evaluate this
condition’(Rinehart [1975] 2001, p. 14). While allowing that cognitive and emo-
tional experiences can accompany alienation, practitioners of this ‘objective’per-
spective typically omit investigating them, instead cautioning that researchers must
‘not assume that the alienated are aware of their condition’, because alienation is
found ‘not in …intrapsychic processes but in …societal and political structures’
(Etzioni 1968, p. 618).
An alternative, ‘subjective’, social-psychological perspective on alienation, first
introduced by Rousseau (1754,1762; see also Campbell 2012), emphasizes the
alienated individual’s inner mental experience. Championing this approach, Seeman
(1991, p. 21) argues that varieties of alienation consist of intra-psychic mental
states, and must be defined ‘in terms of subjective sentiments’, even as we
acknowledge the ‘structural circumstances that generate such sentiments, condition
their interpretation, or influence their behavioral consequences’. Seeman (1959)
thus defines powerlessness in terms of social-psychological ‘sentiments’, which he
broadly defines as (i) thoughts, views, opinions, or attitudes, and (ii) the expression
or personal experience of one’s own feelings (Seeman 1972,1991). Sentiments typ-
ically refer to consciously experienced ‘feelings which involve an intellectual ele-
ment or are concerned with ideas’(Oxford English Dictionary online: meaning 7a).
A sentiment is thus a complex socio-affective state of mind based both upon emo-
tion and reason. Seeman (personal communication) uses the term, sentiment, not to
argue that varieties of alienation are either more or less cognitive than emotional,
but rather to situate varieties of alienation in subjective mental processes as
opposed to existing outside of, and independent of, the subject’s mental life.
We will briefly comment on the cognitive aspects of subjective powerlessness,
and then turn to the main theoretical intention of this paper, the identification and
description of the affective concomitants of powerlessness. The cognitive concomi-
tants of social powerlessness are well documented. These include a general sense
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of uncertainty (Briñol et al.2007), limited reliance on thought processes (Briñol
et al.2007), a diminished capability for abstract thought (Smith and Trope 2006),
and a reduced ability to accurately estimate others’interests (Keltner and Robinson
1997). Individuals high on powerlessness typically do not seek to acquire poten-
tially useful information, in part because they believe they cannot productively use
such information (e.g. Seeman and Evans 1962). Experimental studies indicate that
individuals subjectively experiencing powerlessness lack both interest in interna-
tional affairs (Seeman 1966) and political knowledge (e.g. Seeman 1971). Members
of powerless groups typically lack the language and analytic skills necessary for
grasping their own interests, and can consequently be rendered unable to mobilize
the grassroots structures that would enable access to political competition (Lukes
1974, Gaventa 1982). Powerlessness can generate maladaptive cognitive orienta-
tions, including low self-esteem, low success expectations, and weak motivation for
self-advancement (Obligacion 1996). It can contribute to a sense of distrust and the
amplification of perceived threat (Ross et al.2001), promote conspiracy theories
(Crocker et al.1999), and increase attention to peripheral information, inducing dis-
tractibility and reducing attentional flexibility (Guinote 2007). Comparatively less
social-scientific analysis addresses the feelings, sentiments, and emotions basic to
the personal experience of powerlessness.
The emotional basis of subjective powerlessness
While Seeman’s own work focuses on cognitive aspects of the sentiment of power-
lessness, he has also made useful suggestions involving its affective components.
Seeman (1967, p. 122, 1972, pp. 503, 511) suggests that powerlessness involves fa-
talism,pessimism, and anxiety. Using this as a beginning point, we develop a
model of these and three other emotions hypothesized to be the affective basis of
powerlessness. Drawing on emotions theory, we hypothesize that the specific emo-
tions that comprise the affective level of subjective powerlessness are (i) basic or
primary, and (ii) second-order pairings of these primary emotions.
Emotions researchers (Plutchik 1962,1983, Tomkins 1963, Izard 1977, Eibl-
Eibesfeldt 1989, Ekman 1989, Panksepp and Biven 2012) increasingly consider a
small subset of emotions to be elementary, natural, basic, or primary. Plutchik
addressed a question Darwin (1872) posed, but did not answer. If the most basic of
emotions are adaptive reactions to prototypical problems of life, then what are these
problems? Plutchik (1983) proffered a fourfold answer: the most fundamental, exis-
tential problems of life are identity,temporality,hierarchy, and territoriality.
Applying Darwin’s principal of antithesis (according to which once a state of mind
develops an associated habit, a contrary state of mind evokes an opposite reaction),
Plutchik suggested that, for each of these life problems, there can be positive
opportunities or negative problems, dangers, and challenges. Individuals’adaptive
reactions to these situations define the correspondingly positive or negative primary
emotions. These positively- and negatively-valenced (i.e. approach- and avoidance-
oriented) emotions and their associated functions are shown in Figure 1. Plutchik
also recognized that the concept of primary emotions is of little use unless they can
mix to form more complex emotions. Acting on this insight, he developed a
preliminary classification of the secondary emotions (Plutchik [1962] 1991,
pp. 117–118), in which he offered definitions of 23 of the 28 possible secondary
emotions.
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Ekman (1989) has demonstrated that six emotions possess cross-culturally
recognized facial expressions, all of which have been recognized as primary by
Plutchik: these are joy–happiness, anger, disgust, sadness, fear, and surprise. Du
and Martinez (2011) have studied the fifteen secondary emotions that pair these six
emotions, and found that the facial muscles involved in the combined secondary
emotions formed from Ekman’s‘big six’were the facial muscles also involved in
the component primary emotions. Their results lend important evidence in support
of the concepts of primary and second-order emotions. Plutchik’s model of four
pairs of opposite primary emotions is a useful classification. If it is valid, and
Ekman’s inventory is also valid, then it might well be the case that universally-rec-
ognized facial expression is a sufficient, but not necessary, condition for regarding
an emotion primary. Plutchik’s model can be put to use without asserting that it is
valid, because the assumption that is necessary here is not that the four founda-
tional emotions to be considered –acceptance–acquiescence, anticipation, sadness,
and fear, are all primary; instead, it only needs to be hypothesized that (i) they are
emotions, and (ii) they can combine with each other in a pairwise manner to form
more complex emotions.
The primary emotions of powerlessness
We postulate in this paper that four primary emotions are interior to powerlessness,
namely sadness, fear, acceptance–acquiescence, and anticipation–expectation. The
rationale for inclusion of these emotions will be presented, and we then further
propose that the six secondary emotions defined as the pairings of these primary
emotions form the affective basis of subjective powerlessness.
Sadness
Sadness has been linked to a deficiency in personal control over one’s environment
(Smith and Ellsworth 1985). Individuals experiencing sadness are likely to view
outcomes as governed by situational forces and chance, rather than a result of their
own actions. Research has shown that efforts to establish a modicum of personal
control can reduce experience of sadness; for example, even the bit of control over
Figure 1. (A) Plutchik’s model of the primary emotions and (B) Plutchik’s‘wheel’, with
tags on emotions of powerlessness (PL).
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one’s environment provided by shopping decisions can reduce sadness levels, a
phenomenon called ‘retail therapy’(Rick et al.2014). Belief in an external locus of
control, an aspect of powerlessness, is an important factor in the development of
clinical-level sadness, that is, of depression (which is associated with a phenomeno-
logical flattening of object-perception and self-perception) (Kunzendorf et al.
2010). The perception of being subjected to an external locus of control has been
found to increase sadness and clinical-level depression (Gilbert 1992).
Fear
Fear is the adaptive reaction to the negative experience of social hierarchy (Plutchik
1962); it is a reaction to the exercise of power which is seen as damaging the wel-
fare and interests of the powerless. Powerlessness can induce dysfunctional habits,
low expectations, and fears that deform individuals’choices and even wishes for
their own lives (Nussbaum 2000, p. 114). Out of prudence, fear, and the desire to
curry favor, public performances of the powerless are often shaped to appeal to the
expectations of the powerful (Lukes [1974] 2005, p. 126), while accepting the
social order’s status quo as natural and inevitable (Scott 1990, p. 72). Fear is an
adaptive reaction, and continuing defeats of the powerless lead to a lack of chal-
lenge and to a pattern of withdrawal from competition either on economic or ideo-
logical grounds, in part as an effort to escape the unpleasant subjective sense of
powerlessness (Freire 1970). The prospect of challenging dominant elites can result
in fear of defeat and subsequent reprisals. Gaventa (1982) illustrates the role of fear
in powerless Appalachian coal miners, who were hesitant to complain about their
working conditions or the condition of the environment, or to organize unions, out
of fear for their lives, homes, and jobs; the consequences of resistance could be a
loss of food stamps, loss or credit at the company store, or being beaten (Heavener
1978, Gurr 1979). Gaventa (1982, p. 206) quotes a local post-mistress, referring to
the industrial capitalists who control their lives, who said: ‘Everybody’s afraid of
them …and nobody would dare say anything to them because if they did they
would be reprimanded, they’d have to move out of their home, or they’d lose their
job or they’d be persecuted in some form’.
Acceptance–acquiescence
Acceptance, by itself, is considered a positive emotion associated with the incorpo-
ration of resources or social involvements with other persons or groups. Acceptance
of social powerlessness has received considerable attention in ethology but not in
the sociology of emotions. Animal researchers have found that losers in skirmishes
with conspecifics (usually taking place at territorial boundaries) who are able to
escape their situations experience minimal consequences. But if there is no escape,
losers become depressed, droopy, even paralyzed, and are apt to experience a ‘com-
ing to grief’as a result of having their rank in a status hierarchy, or ‘pecking
order’, reduced (Schjerlderup-Ebbe 1935). A state of defeat triggers a ‘yielding sub-
routine of ritualistic agonistic behaviour’(Price and Sloman 1987). MacLean
(1985) noted that reptiles who lose rank then lose their bright coloring and die
shortly thereafter. In human society, individuals can find themselves enslaved,
incarcerated, trapped in poverty, excluded from full participation in society, or
experience an erosion of their value systems. All of these situations involve
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powerlessness together with inability to escape, which compels acceptance of situa-
tions in which opportunity for resource competition is lacking, and the result can
be dysphoria, deterioration of mental and physical health, mortality and morbidity,
and inability to acquire resources and opportunities (Wilkinson and Pickett 2004).
In dogs and humans, uncontrollable, inescapable trauma leads to a pathological
state of ‘learned helplessness’(Seligman 1975, Gilbert 1992, pp. 174–180). For
humans, acceptance, or acquiescence, can come about as a result of the most bla-
tant forms of exploitation, which can make allies out of the exploited, so that, ‘Dis-
content is replaced by acceptance, hopeless rebellion by conformist quite, and
suffering …by cheerful endurance’(Sen 1984, p. 309). Acquiescence to domina-
tion has been described as a necessity for the effective exercise of political power
(Santayana 1951, pp. 415–421). For those subject to inescapable power or domina-
tion, acquiescence is an aspect of adapting to rank-degrading or exploitative situa-
tions. Referring to members of coal-mining communities in an Appalachian valley,
Gaventa (1982, p. 193) argued that their ‘enforced quiescence over a period of time
tended to develop internalized acceptance of the appropriate relationship of the led
to the leaders’. And Gaventa (1982, p. 194) adds, ‘Where leadership was not to be
questioned and exit was not a choice, then loyalty was the only response possible’.
Anticipation–expectation
In developing his power-status theory of emotions, Kemper (1978, pp. 72–85) dis-
tinguishes emotions of powerlessness that are either ‘anticipatory’or ‘consequent’.
In organizational contexts, the exercise of executive power is essentially the antici-
patory control of future outcomes and realization of goals, which requires central-
executive cognition together with associated affective states (TenHouten 2013,
pp. 114–122, 136–162). While anticipation, by itself, is an adaptive, positive-
valenced, resource-seeking emotion, mixtures of anticipation and negatively
valenced emotions can be affective expressions of powerlessness: as examples,
anticipation and fear comprise anxiety; anticipation and sadness, pessimism. Such
pairings of primary or basic emotions are emergent, secondary emotions. Given that
four basic emotions linked to powerlessness, we can now classify all six such
pairings, conceptualizing them as the emotions of powerlessness.
The six secondary emotions of subjective powerlessness
We now define and discuss the six secondary emotions hypothesized to be interior
to the sentiment of powerlessness. We propose that the six secondary-level emo-
tions of powerlessness are fatalism,pessimism,resignation,anxiety,submissiveness
(involuntary subordination), and shame. We begin with the one positively-valenced
emotional component of the sentiment of subjective powerlessness which pairs the
two positively valenced primary emotions (acceptance–acquiescence and anticipa-
tion–expectation), which, on its affective level, will be interpreted as fatalism, or a
sense of destiny.
Fatalism
The feeling of powerlessness is characterized by a low expectancy that one can
control the attainment of personal and social rewards, together with the perception
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that control is rather ‘vested in external forces, powerful others, luck, or fate’
(Seeman 1972, p. 472). Fatalism is not ordinarily regarded as an emotion, but
clearly possesses affective content; it can indeed be seen as a secondary emotion.
Fatalism can be conceptualized as a special case of resourcefulness, which has been
modeled (TenHouten 2007, pp. 85–88) as a mixture of anticipation and acceptance,
and their associated functions of exploration and incorporation, respectively. On the
functional level, resourceful individuals are able to go into, and explore, their envi-
ronments, locate resources, and then incorporate these resources. Fatalism, we pro-
pose, is a special case of resourcefulness, wherein resources are hoped to be gained
not by one’s own effort, but by some ineffable external agent.
Plutchik ([1962] 1991, p. 118) was not mistaken when he proposed that ‘ex-
pectancy + acceptance = fatalism’. For present purposes, we propose that ‘ex-
pectancy & acquiescence = fatalism’. This essentially means that an individual will
expect having no choice but acquiesce whatever might happen, whether fortunate
or unfortunate, because important life outcomes are seen as either predetermined or
controlled by the will of unseen, powerful entities or forces, or by fully visible,
powerful others. A sense of powerlessness, Gaventa (1982) observes, ‘may manifest
itself as an extensive fatalism, self-deprecation, or undue apathy’. Fatalism, and the
closely related term, ‘destiny’, refer to a belief in the nearly inevitable succession
of events whose outcome can be favorable or unfavorable. Gramsci (1971) saw
subordination as entailing a relation of domination, such that those subjected to
hegemonic forces are deprived of their self-reliance, which he described both as an
objective condition of powerlessness and as a view of oneself as hostage to an
ineffable destiny.
The fatalist believes that a person’s future, be it ‘lucky’or not, is brought about
not by the person’s efforts, knowledge, talents, and capabilities, but through some
subtle external agency. The fatalist, invoking the lazy-reasoning principle of ignava
ratio, might say, ‘If God wants me to win the lottery, I will win the lottery’. While
the long odds of winning a lottery, as calculated by probability theory, renders
investment irrational, the person who sees a possible win as an act of God or Fate
sees the odds as much better, because, as ethnographic research has shown, almost
all people feel they are trying to do what is right or good, see themselves as mak-
ing an effort to be morally deserving, and believe that God rewards moral behavior
(Lambek 2010, p. 1). The lottery, the fatalist believes, is predetermined, or predes-
tined, by an agency beyond human control, which in addition to God might be
called Lady Luck, the Wheel of Fortune, astrological alignment, lucky or unlucky
numbers, or predestination (see Weber [1904–1905] 2002, pp. 82, 198n46,
202n76).
It is no accident that the most economically disadvantaged, and powerless, indi-
viduals are prone to investing their scarce resources in lotteries, gambling, and
games of chance (Blalock et al.2007). In its simplest form, Veblen ([1899] 1931,
p. 280) explained, belief in luck ‘is this instinctive sense of an inscrutable teleologi-
cal propensity in objects or situations’. Veblen defined this as a simple animism,
which shades by gradation into a second, derivative, ‘more or less articulated belief
in an inscrutable [spiritual or] preternatural agency, …which partakes of the attri-
butes of personality to the extent of somewhat arbitrarily influencing the outcome
of any enterprise, and especially of any contest’(Veblen [1899] 1931, p. 280).
There is a moral dimension to this belief, as the subtle agent who wields an unseen
hand is often believed to be concerned with the equity or legality of the
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contestants’claims. This is articulated in the maxim, ‘Thrice he is armed who
knows his quarrel just’. Veblen added that the worker subject to the lowest level of
such animistic thinking is not apt to engage in effective causal thinking, which
reduces performance at work and engagement in critical analysis of his objective
economic situation, and ‘will therefore palpably affect his thinking at every turn of
…life’, which provides the perplexed individual ‘a refuge’,‘a fund of comfort’,
and ‘a means of escape from the difficulty of accounting for phenomena in terms
of causal sequence’(Veblen [1899] 1931, pp. 286, 287).
Pessimism
Plutchik ([1962] 1991, p. 118) proposed that, ‘sorrow + expectancy = pessimism’.
This formula can be restated slightly, as ‘pessimism = expectation & sadness’. This
simply means that powerless individuals have accepted a pessimistic view of their
futures, and expect that things are not going to turn out well. Pessimists see the
future as out of their control, so that whatever happens must either be passively
accepted, with one’s future apt to be seen as bleak and saddening. Individuals with
a pessimistic explanatory style systematically make negative attributions for unde-
sirable events by seeing such events as personal and internal (‘It’s my fault’.),
stable or permanent (‘It will never change’.), and global or pervasive (‘I can’tdo
anything right’.) (Abramson et al.1989). The pessimistic explanatory style has
been linked to negative affectivity, and aversive emotional states are known to be
predictive of poor psychological adjustment (Luten et al.1997).
Inducing feelings of being powerful as opposed to powerless tends to foster
optimism and action (Anderson and Galinsky 2006). Optimism and pessimism are
prospective emotions that are half opposites (as ‘optimism = anticipation & joy–
happiness’), which show two opposite expectations of the quality of one’s future,
as these can either be an expectation that good things are going to happen (bonum
futurum), or that bad things will occur (malum futurum) (Carver and Scheier 2001).
The pessimist believes that, ‘If something can go wrong for me, it will’. Optimism
and pessimism are thus global orientations to the future, both for oneself and for
close others. These orientations are largely a matter of life quality, which includes
factors such as good social networks, realistic expectations and aspirations, and
satisfaction with experiences of work, leisure, family, and community (Headey and
Wearing 1992). Dissatisfaction in any sphere of these and related life domains can
be a cause of pessimism; pessimism is a saddening state of being in which
circumstances in general mean things are seen as not working out, or not being
good even if they do.
Resignation
Powerful individuals, including those in executive positions, develop ability to
envision desired future states of affairs and persist in carrying out plans for attain-
ing these anticipated goals, thereby turning their intentions into realities (Bernard
1964, Goldberg 2001). Powerless individuals, in contrast, are apt to anticipate only
that outcomes are beyond their control, and react to goal-blockage with a sense of
frustration, acquiescence, and resignation, as opposed to renewed goal-seeking
behavior (see e.g. Van Steenburg et al.2013). In their study of miners of ‘Coal
Town’, Lantz and McCrary (1958, see also Lantz 1964, Alix and Lantz 1973,
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pp. 257, 258) found a predominant ‘resignation’, rendering these miners unable to
mobilize in their economic self-interest; they did not conform to the view of the
‘economic rational, self-seeking man’. Lantz assumes the existence of an open
political system in which these workers could participate. This unrealistic assump-
tion places responsibility for quiescent, apathetic resignation on the miners them-
selves, a failure of effort by the powerless to display persistence and persuasion,
and to thereby attain ‘successful adaptation’, which would transcend their being ‘a
serious economic burden for the country’(Plunkett and Bowman 1973). Anticipat-
ing that efforts for a better future will lead only to failure and disappointment, the
resigned individual shrinks from goal-attainment, develops resistance to change,
and accepts the status quo, even if the present situation is one of poverty and depri-
vation; such a situation is often adapted to by limiting one’s needs, becoming
adverse to goal-oriented activities, and not making plans for the future (Lewis
1966).
In normal life, individuals engage in search activities, displaying a broad and
holistic approach to behavior, adapting as best they can to their social environ-
ments. However, if search activity cannot be linked to an ability to predict the out-
comes of such activity, either changing a problematic situation or adjusting to it,
search activity can be renounced, leading to deficits in problem-solving, inadequate
coping, and a drop in the activity of monoamines, all of which can predispose an
individual to what Weinberg (2000) calls ‘the ultimate resignation’, suicidal
thoughts and feelings, possibly suicide. Feelings of powerlessness, then, are apt to
include a profound sense of resignation, and are a common sign of suicide (B.
Beck et al.2005). Resignation comes about when an individual is faced with
unsolvable situations, where one’s reaction is ‘giving up, surrender, fixation upon
obstacles or feelings of hopelessness …’ (Beck et al.1993, p. 114), together with a
renunciation of search activities, which comprises a resignation reaction. Extreme
mental pain, or psychache, is a form of ‘distress that automatically leads to resigna-
tion’(Beck et al.1993, p. 117).
While resignation has cognitive content, it can also be seen as having an emo-
tional aspect. Plutchik ([1962] 1991, p. 118) proposed a useful but problematic def-
inition: ‘acceptance + sorrow = resignation, sentimentality’. Sentimentality means to
be moved easily by sentiments in a general way, and can be excluded from this
formulation. Resignation includes in its definition ‘passive acceptance’(Oxford
English Dictionary online). Ortony, Clore, and Collins (1988, pp. 131, 132) link
resignation to acceptance, as they assert: ‘the focus of resignation is not on the
[undesirable] event in question …but on beliefs about likelihood and on a corre-
sponding reluctant acceptance of the event’s inevitability’. When a person is
resigned to a powerless situation, or to the loss of social position, there is with-
drawal from a social field and consequent feeling of loss. Moreover, ‘[i]n light of
the profound negative evaluation of our situation it contains, sadness is typically
not associated with putting up resistance but with passivity and resignation in the
face of everyday affairs’(Ben-Ze’ev 2000, p. 466). Lazarus (1991), in his model of
socio-environmental appraisal, identified a set of emotions dealing with loss or the
threat of loss. If there is active coping to avoid loss, to restore what has been lost,
or to manage the distress of loss, then ‘emotions of adaptational struggle’come
into play. But when such efforts fail, there will be a process of grieving, of intense
sadness. On this, Lazarus wrote:
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Sadness belongs at the low end of the dimension of engagement and involves
resignation rather than struggle, at which time the person has been moving toward
acceptance of and disengagement from the lost commitment …. Therefore, sadness
is a step toward resignation, which emerges from a difficult coping struggle in
which the emotional outlook is often contradictory, fragile, and changing. –Lazarus
(1991, p. 247, emphasis in original expanded)
Thus, resignation would appear to incorporate both acquiescence and sadness,
so that it can be defined, on its affective level, as a secondary emotion: ‘resigna-
tion = acquiescence & sadness’.
Anxiety
Anxiety can be facilitative and motivate the individual to meet challenges, or debil-
itating, resulting in a fearful shrinking away from encounters or challenges. For
individuals who perceive themselves as powerless in their situation, anxiety is apt
to be debilitating (Lefcourt 1976, pp. 86–90). While anxiety can be elicited by
internal threats such as inappropriate impulses, it can become a defensive mecha-
nism responsive to external threats. Anxiety, especially of the debilitating kind,
involves fear as a response to a threat in the external environment, or a fear-
provoking social situation, thereby evokes a ‘flight’response. While basic fear is
largely concentrated in the present, anxiety adds an anticipatory emphasis to fear.
Consequently, efforts to understand anxiety have focused on distinguishing it from
fear. Perhaps the basic difference between fear and anxiety is temporal focus, with
fear a present-oriented emotion and anxiety future-oriented. Reber (1995, p. 271)
provides a clear definition: ‘fear is a reaction to a present danger, anxiety to an
anticipated or imagined one’. Krauss (1967) also defines anxiety as fear (or dread)
of a future event. Personality theorists (e.g. Allport 1955), and reinforcement sensi-
tivity theorists (Gray and McNaughton 2000, p. 286) have appreciated the anticipa-
tory nature of anxiety as a signal of impending threat requiring a self-protection
response. Anxiety is the apprehension of a danger whose source is largely
unknown, whereas fear is a response to a consciously recognized and usually extant
danger or threat. Anxiety can either be focused on an objective situation or activity
which is avoided (phobia) or can be unfocused and free-floating. Plutchik ([1962]
1991, p. 118) exuberantly defined ‘fear + expectancy = anxiety, caution, dread,
cowardliness, distrust’. Plutchik’sdefinition can be improved be reducing this list
of emotions and other affective states to just anxiety. Thus, ‘anxiety = anticipation
& fear’.
When social structures of power threaten the ability to meet basic human needs
for competence, self-esteem, and a benevolent world, the resulting trait anxiety can
lead to various social-cognitive and impression-formation strategies in an effort to
cope with powerlessness, or to establish a modicum of control (Fiske et al.1996).
Mirowski and Ross (1983, see also Ross and Mirowsky 2009), in their study of life
in threatening, noxious, dangerous, and normatively disorderly neighborhoods,
found a pervasive sentiment of powerlessness which was associated with high
levels of mistrust, anxiety, depression, and anger. Similarly, South Africans who
endured violence during the apartheid era (e.g. being attacked, having one’s house
burned down) experienced feelings of powerlessness, anxiety, depression, and low
self-esteem (Hirschowitz and Orkin 1997). Recent studies indicate that low social
status, which carries the message of social inferiority and powerlessness, heightens
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people’s social evaluation anxieties, a process which has intensified as status and
wealth differences have increased; indeed, greater inequality has been accompanied
by increased status competition and increased status anxiety among those with low
status and power (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009, pp. 43, 44).
Submissiveness
Subjective powerlessness is a submission, or subjugation, whether voluntary or
coerced, such that one cannot resist the dominator’s monopoly of power. When
faced with an irreducible discrepancy of social power, powerless individuals will
feel compelled to submit to a paternalistic reality, to assume a social identity in
which they are less than adults. To submit to power is an expression of passivity
and of acquiescence. Being subjected to power is not necessarily painful or abu-
sive, but even if power is benevolent, resistance can bring about an angry reaction,
punishment, and retribution. Thus, submission to power is motivated both by acqui-
escence and fear.
Dominance and submission are not emotions but kinds of behavior. Nonethe-
less, they have affective content which can be specified. The affective component
of dominance was defined by Plutchik ([1962] 1991, p. 118), with unnecessary ten-
tativeness, as ‘anger + acceptance = dominance (?)’.Asdefined here, ‘domi-
nance = anger & acceptance’. This means that the action of domination is moving
forward to a goal with the acceptance, acquiescence, or submission, of others. Plu-
tchik also defines ‘acceptance + fear = submission, modesty’. Modesty, however,
can be considered a behavioral manifestation of shame, and can therefore be
excluded from the present definition. To accept the anger of another (functionally,
their moving ahead toward their goals or objectives) is to defer, to step aside, to
comply with, to submit quietly or to acquiesce, to fearfully retreat, rather than insist
on one’s own goals and interests; it means to submit to the dominance of the other.
To be dominated is to be subjected to discipline, to be rendered fearful and there-
fore docile, and to respond by turning one’s energies, capabilities, and aptitudes
into the production of what is useful to those who dominate (Foucault [1978] 1995,
p. 138). The following can be defined: ‘submissiveness = fear & acceptance–
acquiescence’.
Anger and fear have been shown to be linked to dominance and submission by
a set of complex neural mechanisms (involving plasma and cerebrospinal levels of
certain peptide hormones) that maintain a state of anger or fear, and consequent
aggressive, power-motivated or vigilant, powerlessness-motivated behaviors,
through neural entrainment, after the initial anger- or fear-inducing stimuli is no
longer perceptible (Sewards and Sewards 2003). According to Plutchik, anger and
fear are opposite emotions that result in opposite behavioral tendencies leading to
forward-moving dominance and the reactive defensiveness of submission, respec-
tively. This opposition can be seen, for example, in the aggressive, dominating
behavior of psychopaths who have a dispositional fearlessness, resulting in ‘fearless
domination’(López et al.2013).
While anger, at least as manifested in the behavior of advancing toward a goal-
state, would appear to be interior to the affective level of dominance, it should be
mentioned that individuals with lower social status have been reported to express
more anger than those more dominant, and there appear to be significant cultural
differences in the expression of anger in situations in which dominance–submission
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is at issue. In Western cultures, especially among Americans, those who are
dominated are apt to express anger in order to vent their frustration at being domi-
nated, experiencing adversity, or having their goals blocked (Berkowitz 1989).
Japanese adults were more apt to use anger to display their authority (Park et al.
2013). In the former case, anger appears in the aftermath of, but is not interior to,
the submissiveness itself; in the latter case, anger is interior to the affective
expression of dominance.
Shame
A few emotions researchers have declared shame to be a primary or fundamental
emotion (e.g. Tomkins 1963, pp. 118–481, Izard 1977, pp. 90–92, 385–419, Emde
1980, Heller 1985), but none of these, or other, scholars have suggested what other
primary emotions might possibly join shame in defining any secondary or tertiary
emotions existing as ‘combinations of emotions (patterns of fundamentals)’(Izard
1977, p. 93). The only emotions researcher that defined shame as a secondary emo-
tional combination of more basic or primary emotions was Plutchik ([1962] 1991,
p. 118), whose equation, ‘fear + disgust = shame, prudishness’is, however, ques-
tionable insofar as the combination of fear and disgust might be better defined as
repugnance (TenHouten 2007, pp. 81–82). Prudishness would appear to be a per-
sonality or character trait rather than an emotion. We propose that ‘shame = fear &
sadness’.
First, consider the hypothesized fear component of shame. Both guilt and shame
involve fear, but while the fear of guilt is of mere retribution or punishment for
one’s transgressions or norm violations, the fear of shame goes much deeper, as it
is the fear of being excluded from human society. Fear is a basic emotional reaction
whose behavioral concomitant is that of withdrawing, fleeing, hiding, as if one had
disappeared from society itself. According to Plutchik, fear is a reaction to the
negative experience of hierarchy, or to powerlessness. Referring to humiliation as
deep shame, Kaufman (1992, pp. 23, 197) observes, ‘There is no more humiliating
experience than to have one’s relative lack of power in relation to another continu-
ally rubbed in one’s face. There is no doubt that powerlessness activates shame’.
Kaufman (1992, p. 201) explains that, ‘There is an inverse relation between shame
and power: to the degree that one is powerless …, one is …vulnerable to shame’.
Even in childhood, there can be a binding relationship between fear and shame.
Parents, for example, can shame children for being afraid of monsters in their
room, or of not standing up to a bully, which could take the form of statements
such as ‘Big boys don’t get scared of silly things’,or‘Don’t be a coward! Real
boys aren’t afraid to fight’(Kaufman 1992, p. 45).
Fear, as a basic emotion, is a direct response to a physical threat, and fear is
also involved in a threat to a valued or needed social bond, the more general reac-
tion being that of shame. An obvious characteristic of shame is its avoidance moti-
vation, which might well imply its inclusion of fear. That fear is interior to shame
can be seen in shame-driven behavior, which involves looking down or away from
the gaze of others (Keltner et al.1995), a desire to ‘hide’,to‘crawl under the rug’,
and engage in various other forms of what Plutchik sees as the core behavior of
fear, ‘moving away from’, all directed toward disappearing or escaping the psycho-
logical pain of a shame-eliciting situation (Lewis 1971, pp. 196–250). Shame is
typically hidden, and this hiding behavior involves concealment of one’s shame, or
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the anticipation of future shame, from the self. When one anticipates a future
outcome will be embarrassing or shameful, the potential for such shame is hidden
both from the self and from others (Scheff 2000,2003). Atkinson (1957) proposed
that individuals high in fear of failure experience more shame after failure than do
those low in fear of failure, a result supported by McGregor and Elliot (2005). The
interiority of fear to shame can also be seen in shyness (a form of shame), in which
an individual is predisposed to withdraw (the behavior of fear) from social life,
even from being seen, by keeping a profile so low that it cannot be further reduced.
As a well-known example, when an individual commits an inadvertently embarrass-
ing act, there is apt to be a flurry of rapid verbalization which is intended to ‘cover
up’the offending act. A related way of hiding shame is to not talk about shame
itself, but ‘cover up’unacknowledged shame with an opposite emotion, that of
‘false’or ‘hubristic’pride (a possibility explored in data analysis below).
Sadness is also interior to shame. In the experience of shame, there is a sense
of loss. In the affective experience of shame, what is anticipated that will be lost
following an adverse outcome is the perceived worth of the self. Plutchik located
the opposite primary emotions sadness and joy–happiness at the negative and posi-
tive poles of his ‘temporality’dimension of existential problems, and associated
these two emotions with the function of losing and gaining. Clearly he was correct
in associating sadness with loss, especially with loss of social bonds. The prospect
of impending shame is particularly acute in society where great value is placed on
maintaining ‘face’, the need to maintain one’s reputation or gain respect and avoid
the shame that one would perceive as reflected in the eyes of others (Ting-Toomey
1994). This shame-orientation, and rejection sensitivity, is the case, for example, in
Eastern societies with predominantly Chinese populations (Lim 2009, p. 322), espe-
cially for ego-oriented, competitive individuals who define success in terms of out-
performing others in social domains such as education and career (Elliot and
Church 2003). The worried individual, for example, is apt to feel overwhelmed by
intense and painful emotions that permeate contemplation of the possibility of an
impending failure. It is the anticipation of shame, recognized or not, that dominates
this inner dialog, and this experience of shame has been highly associated with sad-
ness and depressive symptomatology (Tangney et al.1995, Andrews 1998).
The hypothesized components of shame, fear and sadness, have been linked to
powerlessness, often being described as expressions of ‘vulnerability, helplessness,
and powerlessness’(Fischer 1993, p. 312). The definition of shame proposed here,
based on the two negative emotions interior to powerlessness, suggests that shame
is also an emotional aspect of powerlessness. This would appear to be consistent
with sociological theorizing, according to which emotions are seen as resulting
from dynamics of status and power in social interactions (Kemper 1978), and
shame is seen as the key social emotion (Scheff 2000,2003). Powerlessness is a
sociorelational situation that can derive from conditions of life, or from traumatic
events that place one in a compromised, painful, or abusive situation. There is a
vast literature linking shame to situations and conditions of powerlessness. Mem-
bers of social groups and communities who have been subjected to undeserved and
unjust treatment they are powerless to prevent experience intense shame, even
humiliation (Leidner et al.2012). Parents and their children who have been victim-
ized by domestic violence find their shame (and guilt) a barrier to disclosure and
the seeking of relief (Stanley et al.2012). In the experience of being traumatized
by war and armed conflict, survivors are apt to experience post-traumatic stress
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disorder (PTSD), together with shame, and the associated reactions of avoidance
(the behavioral concomitant of fear) and loss of self-integrity (sadness being the
prototypical reaction to loss). Shame has been shown to be a nearly inevitable con-
comitant of PTSD (Stone 1992). Female soldiers subjected to sexual assault are apt
to experience and internalize shame, self-blame, helplessness, hopelessness, and
powerlessness (Weiland et al.2011). Women who have been subjected to harmful
and abusive treatment, and who have experienced being trapped, isolated, and pow-
erless, have been helped with the resulting shame by means of shame-resilience
theory, which is intended to increase awareness and understanding about shame
(Hernandez and Mendoza 2011).
Given that shame can be defined as a mixture of fear and sadness, the two
negatively-valenced primary emotions of powerlessness, there should be a concep-
tual relationship between shame and powerlessness. Shame is a painful emotions
felt by individuals who see themselves, as represented by the disapproving eyes of
others, as possibly in violation of the authority of social customs, codes of behav-
ior, and norms. It is a sociomoral emotion serving as a mechanism of social con-
trol, for shame-avoidance in individuals comes about through socialization to, and
internalization of, the normative order of one’s culture. The individual’s capacity
for shame is an acknowledgment of the power of the normative order, and of one’s
being powerless to challenge this order with impunity, as the suffering that shame
causes is, in and of itself, a debt paid to one’s community. Shame is the affect
which induces us to conform to the authority, the power, of one’s cultural environ-
ment (Heller 1985, Scheff 2000,2003). Table 1summarizes the proposed defini-
tions of the six secondary emotions of powerlessness
The sociorelational basis of objective powerlessness
A complete description of objective powerlessness is far beyond the scope of this
work. What can be accomplished is to briefly describe selected aspects of such
powerlessness, and in the data analysis to follow use them as indicators. Here, just
five sources of powerlessness will be considered, namely social inequality, social
inferiority, social invisibility, economic distress, and an external locus of control.
Social inequality
In social relationships of an egalitarian nature, the participants typically share
equally in risks and rewards. If social relations are not equal, then they are by
Table 1. Definitions of the six proposed emotions of powerlessness.
Secondary emotions Constituent pairs of primary emotions
Fatalism Acceptance–acquiescence & anticipation–expectation
Pessimism Anticipation–expectation & sadness
Resignation Acceptance–acquiescence & sadness
Anxiety Anticipation–expectation & fear
Submissiveness Acceptance–acquiescence & fear
Shame Fear & sadness
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definition hierarchical, which means those in lower positions are apt to have deni-
grated social identities, and to be treated as less than equal, or as inferior. Hierar-
chy, the ‘vertical’dimension of social life, involves power, domination, authority,
leadership status, and prestige (Schwartz 1981). Those with social power gain first
access to shelter, comfort, and the enjoyments of life. For an existing social hierar-
chy, there are two basic adaptive reactions, which are to strive for a high or domi-
nant position, or to submit to a lower status (Boehm 1999).
Here we are focused not just on the perceptions of those treated unequally, but
rather on the objective social situation in which members of groups –while seeing
each other as equals within the group are, as a social fact, seen, and treated, as less
than equal by others; this can result in discrimination, denigration, ridicule, abuse,
and various kinds of exclusion from full participation in the life of a society and its
dominant culture. Under these conditions, members of less-than-equal groups and
categories are apt to be powerless to prevent unequal treatment. Members of such
groups and categories will lack input into decision-making. They are apt to be
invidiously stereotyped, are treated as if their social identities are unacceptable, and
their desires and ambitions are seen as unrealistic and therefore irrelevant. They are
apt to receive treatment that is unfair, hostile, and aggressive.
Social inferiority
With the exception of some remaining hunting-and-gathering societies with a strong
egalitarian orientation, most societies have a vertical taxonomy of power, or system
of social stratification, according to which some are ‘above’, or have ‘high’status,
while others are ‘below’, having ‘low’status. This reality has led to the retention
of ancient dual-symbolic classification systems, according to which those who are
above are superior and those who are below are inferior. This classification system
is a structure, meaning it has multiple channels which convey much the same infor-
mation. Accordingly, distinctions are made between above/below, up/down, skilled/
unskilled, strong/weak, leading/following, etc. These assembled verbal forms ‘con-
stitute an intelligible universe of power’(Schwartz 1981, p. 5), according to which
superiority and inferiority symbolize social power. The redundancy of these polar
opposites conveys the social importance of social hierarchy, which has deep evolu-
tionary roots, being manifested in dominance and submission display by lizards,
monkeys, and humans (MacLean 1990); hierarchy is a fundamental problem of life,
widely distributed in the animal kingdom (Plutchik 1983), and social domi-
nance/subdominance is central to human history and human social organization
(Mason 1971, Boehm 1991, Sidanius and Pratto 1999, Haugaard and Clegg 2009).
Thus, the verbal taxonomy of power reflects the objective realities of power and
powerlessness, and is the ‘controlling archetype’of power relationships in the
social order (Schwartz 1981, p. 81).
Social invisibility
Tuan (1984, p. 2) observes that for objects standing in the way of those who wield
power, ‘the shakers and doers of the world, they are removed –unless they are per-
ceived to have use and are so used’.Tobe‘removed’means to be put out of sight
and mind, to be rendered marginal to one’s community. The powerless easily
become victims, subjected to exploitation or cruelty. For the dominators, ‘the victim
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has little or no interest and is barely part of his visible landscape’, which is focused
not on the suffering of the victim, but rather on ‘pleasure, adornment, and prestige’.
Thus, for the powerful, those they dominate are nearly invisible. Far from sharing
in the suffering of those they dominate, the exercise of power and exploitation can
be a source of pleasure, which contributes to its pervasiveness. Bourdieu ([1998]
2001, pp. 1, 2) describes a form of ‘symbolic violence’, a subtle form of domina-
tion that relies on bypassing the conscious will by setting up an embodied, insidi-
ous ‘habitus’, wherein dominance is developed as ‘a gentle violence, imperceptible
and invisible even to its victims’, which by suggestive metaphors such as ‘alchemy’
and ‘magic’somehow produces ‘a durable way of standing, speaking, walking, and
thereby of feeling and thinking’(Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 138). Lukes ([1974]
2005, p. 141) notes the vagueness of this conceptualization, but agrees with Bour-
dieu that the effectiveness of power as domination is enhanced by being disguised
or rendered invisible, as what is ‘conventional and position- or class-based appears
to the actors as natural and objective’, and is imposed not consciously but rather as
the ‘imposition of a scale of values’. For the powerless, invisibility can become an
aspect of ‘quietude’, a passive condition of being subjected to ‘invisible power’that
is internalized to result in a sense of powerlessness (Gaventa 1982), and a ‘culture
of silence’(Freire 1970). The understanding that those with status and power do
not wish to see or hear members of subordinate groups and classes stimulates adap-
tive responses in which, out of concern and even fear for their well-being, members
of such groups strive be ‘invisible’,‘hidden’, and ‘unobserved’. Members of low-
status groups and categories are apt to be subjected to a pattern of microaggressive
slights on the part of individuals with higher status, which on the surface seem triv-
ial or banal, but which, if repeatedly experienced, can have a cumulative, highly
deleterious effect, which can induce stress, anger, and feelings of invisibility and
marginalization (Pierce 1988). Social invisibility is a perception of not being val-
ued, noticed, or acknowledged, wherein one’s talents, abilities, and personality are
not recognized (Franklin 1999). Often, individuals with ascribed or acquired char-
acteristics that render them invisible are faced with the unhappy choice of resisting
(and possibly being seen as paranoid) or acquiescing and suffering in silence
(Pierce 1988, Sue et al.2007). Franklin (1999), in his study of African-Americans
subjected to racial microaggression, describes an ‘invisibility syndrome’, in which
they reported feeling powerless to question subtle acts of discrimination, being
inhibited by reluctance to be described as ‘hostile’or an ‘angry black man’. Other
kinds of social labeling can result in individuals being ignored or shunned. Exam-
ples are being diagnosed and treated as ‘retarded’(Smith 2009), and the experience
of being a socially-isolated, ‘invisible’child, who is not actively disliked by their
peers but is neglected and ignored both by peers and teachers. Such social
invisibility can lead to the development of characteristics such as low self-esteem,
low creativity, shyness, discouragement, defensiveness, and, more generally,
powerlessness (Byrnes 1985).
Economic distress
The negative experience of economic social relations means to be poor, to lack
money and resources, and to lack opportunities. The most powerless individuals in
a society will typically lack useful economic skills, training, and education, all of
which places them at a disadvantage in competition for jobs and other opportunities
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of life. Even when work is obtained, it is insecurely held, and can involve low-
paying, demeaning, unhealthful labor. Those who live outside of, or are marginal
to, the economy become dependent upon governmental and private aid, which
together form a social safety net; individuals, families, and groups in such situa-
tions experience lack of access to organizational resources such as health care, child
care, job training and suitable employment, food insecurity, inadequate housing and
potential homelessness, as well as risk of being victimized by crime (Eve and Eve
1984), and economic exploitation.
Poverty can result in life conditions that consist of comparative simplification of
the experienced world, of powerlessness, deprivation, and insecurity. The restricted
material conditions of the poor limit their socioeconomic participation, so that they
do not fill specialized occupational roles and rarely are involved in roles of leader-
ship (but cf. Harding 2014). There is evidence that the poor, being objectively pow-
erless, are apt to perceive, and feel, that they are, indeed, powerless. In one study
of poor people, race and welfare dependency (but not income and family size) were
predictive of low self-confidence and inability to influence their destiny (Rogers
and Hayes 1984). Thus, while economic distress, and more generally, poverty, is an
objective source of powerlessness, it is not limited to low income or access to
money but is rather embedded in a broader tangle of pathology.
External locus of control
An external locus of control was originally conceptualized as the degree to which
individuals believe that the significant events they experience occur independently
of their actions (Rotter 1966,1975). This concept includes being subjected to the
authority of others, but this is not necessarily a negative experience, as we saw
with the example of the individual who believes that the two external sources of
control –powerful others and chance, can work together to control outcomes on
his or her behalf. A subtle external force controlling one’s destiny, if malicious, can
create a sense of despair; but if perceived of as benevolent, it can generate a
blissful feeling of being protected and cared for by a guardian angel or some other
spiritual being or force.
The emphasis in locus-of-control research has focused on the subjective percep-
tion of control or lack thereof (Lefcourt 1976,1991, Fournier and Jeanrie 2003), but
here we are considering external locus of control as an objective social fact, which
exists independently of any beliefs or illusions an individual might hold about power-
ful others, corporate actors, or luck. Generally, control-orientation theorists see the
social situation as providing a range of reinforcing alternatives available to the indi-
vidual, with the individual typically choosing the alternative that has previously been
rewarding. Thus, expectancies, perceived reinforcement value, and situational param-
eters interact to determine behavior. There is, in general, congruence between envi-
ronments and individuals (Sandler et al.1983): (i) individuals who believe they can
control their environments adapt best in environments that respond to their control
efforts; (ii) individuals who believe they have little control over their situations adapt
best to environments unresponsive to individual control attempts. Those who are
objectively controlled by others are subject to abuse, neglect, and exploitation, as
those powerless in their limited control efforts can provide services, money, and labor
power, all of which can be both useful and profitable. Thus, the objective reality of
external control is one aspect of structural powerlessness.
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Now that we have established sociorelational aspects of sociorelational
powerlessness and of the specific emotions comprising the subjective experience of
powerlessness, these variables can be studied empirically.
A content-analytic study of life-historical interviews
The above conceptual model requires extensive empirical evaluation. As a prelimi-
nary step, we present structural equations models of objective and subjective pow-
erlessness (OP, SP) and their manifest indicators using, as a data-set a corpus of
732 life historical interviews obtained by the author, over three years, throughout
Australia, in environments ranging from large urban areas to remote outback set-
tings. About a third of these interviews were conducted by the author, with the bal-
ance obtained from libraries, institutions, and published oral histories. After
eliminating interviews of less than 2000 words, 563 remained, consisting of 298
Australian Aborigines (46% female), and 265 Euro-Australians (45% female). Sev-
eral interviews had multiple informants, in which case only the text produced by
the informant that spoke the most was included. The mean interview length was
10,534 words (standard deviation 11,659, maximum 100,663). Of the informants
whose year of birth could be calculated, the percentages were: 1862–1890s 7%,
1900s 17%, 1910s 24%, 1920s 18%, 1930s 14%, 1940s 13%, 1950–1960s 7%; the
median age was 64, with the middle 99% ranging from 30 to 98. While Australia
is a multicultural society, the non-Aboriginal interviews were restricted to infor-
mants who trace their ancestry to the British Isles or Northern Europe. A total of
26,633 words were compiled to represent 334 of the 1042 folk-concepts in Roget’s
([1852] 1977) International Thesaurus. Usages of individual words were calculated
using the Oxford Concordance Program. Wordlists were constructed using Roget’s
folk-concepts, together with several other thesauruses and dictionaries. All gram-
matical variations of each root word were considered, but only those consistent
with the concept in question were included. For each category, a summated rating
of word use was measured by the number of times words in the concept wordlist
were spoken, as a proportion of the total words in the transcript (weighted by
10,000). Once provisional wordlists were compiled, words with negative part-whole
correlations were eliminated.
Wordlist indicators of objective and subjective powerlessness
Five social and economic variables were conceptualized as indicators of OP; to
attain measures of these variables, wordlists were constructed to measure each of
the five criteria described above. (i) Inequality was measured by words selected to
express disgust and disapproval, including ‘degraded’,‘despised’,‘odious’, and
‘scruffy’, as shown in Table 2. (ii) Inferiority is closely related to a lack of socioe-
conomic status and other resources, and is indicated by terms such as ‘inferior’,
‘unskillful’,‘weak’,‘mediocre’, and ‘incompetent’. (iii) Invisibility was measured
by terms including ‘disguised’,‘hidden’, and ‘concealed’. (iv) Economic distress,
or poverty, can be described by terms salient to those who lack money. Such indi-
viduals speak of commodities as ‘costly’and ‘expensive’, and remark that they
have ‘overpaid’for services such as check cashing, are prone to being ‘swindled’,
‘demoted’, or facing ‘eviction’. (v) An External locus of control was measured by
a wordlist that concerned not feelings and beliefs but rather expressions of real
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social circumstances. Words selected for this purpose include ‘comply’,
‘conformed’,‘dutiful’,‘obey’,‘oppressed’, and ‘enslaved’.
Subjective Powerlessness was modeled as a quaternary sentiment, comprised of
six secondary emotions combining the distinct pairs of formed primary emotions.
Representative words used as indicators of the four primary and six secondary
emotions are also presented in Table 2.
Analyses of variance
Prior to assessing OP and SP in measurement models, and showing their relation-
ship through a causal model, we examined the effects of Culture (Aboriginal, Euro-
Australian) and Sex on the four primary emotions of interest. Because the number
of cases in the categories Culture and Sex differ, analyses of variance (ANOVAs)
were carried out using the SAS general linear model procedure (GLM, with Type
III sums of squares). The mean for each Culture–Sex group for variables with sig-
nificant effects (and Invisibility) are shown in Figure 2. The Aborigines were sub-
stantially lower on Acceptance–Acquiescence than were Euro-Australians
(F= 62.75, p< .0001. For the other positively-valenced primary emotion, Anticipa-
tion–Expectation, Aborigines were again significantly lower (F= 75.43, p< .0001).
For Sadness, Aborigines were higher than Euro-Australians (F= 8.94, p= .003),
Table 2. Word categories and partial wordlists for secondary emotions of powerlessness
and for social and economic sources of objective powerlessness.
Word categories (number of
words) Representative words
Social and economic sources of objective powerlessness
Inequality (47) Unequal begged degraded despised disgrace odious scruffy
Inferiority (36) Inferior unskillful ineffective lowly weak mediocre
incompetent
Invisibility (25) Concealed disguise hidden invisible unseen unobserved
Economic stress (96) Costly expensive swindled demoted losses overpaid
evicted
External control (44) Comply conformed dutiful obey service oppressed
enslaved
Primary emotional components of subjective powerlessness
Acceptance (80) Admission admiration approval claps exalt favored invites
receptive
Anticipation (144) Anticipate alert expect prepared forecast future outlook
Sadness (68) Grim solemn blues dejection grief saddest sulk heartache
wail sobs
Fear (46) Afraid fear frightful panic scary scared terrifying unnerved
Secondary emotions of subjective powerlessness
Fatalism (43) Fateful lucky doom omen wish destiny uncanny astrology
Pessimism (23) Hopeless undone gloom bleak pessimistic futile dismal
Resignation (22) Accommodation resigned withdrew indifference detached
Anxiety (58) Worry disturbed nervous bothered anxious tense distressed
Submissiveness (47) Slavishly deference kneeling pliable grovel kowtow
submissive
Shame (39) Shamed ashamed shyly modest humbled comedown
humiliating
Vanity (16) Conceited cocky egotistical self-interest smug vain
individualistic
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and, in both cultures, females were substantially higher than males (F= 10.20,
p= .002). For the other negatively valenced emotion, Fear, the Aborigines were
again higher than the Euro-Australians (F= 5.94, p= .015), with females, in both
cultures, higher than males (F= 12.76, p< .001).
Two-way ANOVAs were then conducted for the five indicators of OP. There
were no significant interactions between Culture and Sex, and no direct effect for
Culture. Two Sex differences were found: males, in both Cultures, were signifi-
cantly higher than females for Inferiority (F= 10.05, p= .002) and Economic Dis-
tress (F= 10.69, p= .001).
For the secondary emotions, or SP variables, there were no significant effects
for Pessimism and Submissiveness. Aborigines, for both sexes, were significantly
lower than Euro-Australians for Fatalism (F= 4.78, p= .029), Resignation
(F= 41.68, p< .0001), and Anxiety (F= 4.08, p= .043), but were significantly
higher for Shame (F= 8.53, p= .004). There was just one significant Sex
Figure 2. Mean levels of primary emotions, sources of objective powerlessness, and sec-
ondary emotions, by culture–sex groups (Aboriginal (A), white (W), male (M), female (F)).
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difference, as females were higher than males for Shame (F= 4.61, p= .032).
Among the six secondary emotions, it was only Shame that was significantly
affected by both Culture and Sex. The Sex differences were remarkably consistent
across cultures: In Figure 2, it can be seen that, for all twelve variables, if females
are higher (lower) in one Culture, they are also higher (lower) in the other.
Two measurement models
The next step in data analysis was to assess the dimensionality of the manifest indi-
cators of OP and SP. Measurement models (using SAS Calis) were used to test the
hypotheses that each set of indicators derives from a single underlying factor. The
results of these analyses are presented in Figure 3. For the OP analysis, the pro-
gram converged after eight iterations. All indicators, as expected, had positively
valenced coefficients. The strongest effect was for Inequality (.61), followed by
Invisibility .34, Inferiority .32, External Locus of Control .25, and Economic Dis-
tress .18. The model fits the data, as the Root Mean Square Residual (RMR) was
.033 and the Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index (AGFI) was .978 (with RMR > .05
and AGFI < .95 indicating misfit). Thus, there is justification for considering OP a
latent variable.
A parallel analysis was carried out to assess the sentiment of SP, which is
hypothesized to find expression in six secondary emotions. In this analysis, the six
coefficients ranged from Anxiety .39, Fatalism .31, Resignation .30, Pessimism .28,
Shame .27, to Submissiveness .21. The program converged after eight iterations.
The data also fit this model, as the RMR was .030 and the AGFI was .984.
A confirmatory causal model
In assessing the dimensionality of the hypothesized latent variables OP and SP, re-
flective measurement models were used, with causal arrows directed from the latent
variable to their manifest indicators. For a causal model, this is certainly appropri-
ate for SP, because it is reasonable that a feeling, or sentiment, that one is in a
powerless situation is apt to trigger feelings of fatalism, a pessimistic outlook on
life, a sense of resignation, being gripped with a diffuse anxiety, feeling compelled
to act and feel in a submissive way, and, perhaps unconsciously, feeling shame.
But for OP, it makes more theoretical sense to see OP as an emergent,formative
Figure 3. Measurement models for objective powerlessness and subjective powerlessness.
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variable (see Edwards and Bagozzi 2000) that can come about through the deep
and persisting experiences of being treated as less than equal, of being reminded of
one’s inferiority, of being socially invisible to others, of living in poverty, or of
being controlled by external forces, institutions, or others. Thus, the causal arrows
will be reversed, so that the latent variable, OP, is seen as emerging through the
experience of one or more of its sociorelational sources. As for the relationship
between OP and SP, it would appear from macrosociological theories of power and
powerlessness, and alienation theory as well, that OP has an effect on, or causes,
SP. Separate analyses, by Culture and by Sex, produced very similar results, so
only results for the entire corpus are presented. The effects of the errors in the six
emotion terms and the two disturbances in the latent variables were set at unity
(with covariances not modeled); the error weights (1 −b
2
)
1/2
are not shown. The
results of this analysis are shown in Figure 4.
As predicted, all five sources of OP had positive coefficients, which were stron-
gest for Economic Distress, .44, and Inequality .43, followed by Inferiority .28,
Invisibility .25, and External Locus of Control .24. For the SP indicators, the path
weights were Resignation .36, Fatalism and Shame .32, Anxiety .31, Submissive-
ness .23, and Pessimism .19. The two latent variables were strongly related, with
the path coefficient from OP to SP .73. The program converged after 9 iterations.
The model fit the data (RMR .035, AGFI .973). The distribution of residuals was
approximately normal. Given the obvious crudity of the indicator variables, it is
encouraging that the model did not misfit the statistical results generated from the
input covariance matrix. It can also be observed that the probability that all 12 path
coefficients were, as predicted, positive, is 2
−12
= .000244. The ‘significance’of
these results is based on the assumption that the life-historical interviews were ran-
domly drawn from some population. While an effort was made to select representa-
tive interviews, random sampling was not used, so that the data-set is referred to as
a‘corpus’rather than a sample.
Multiple regression analyses of manifest variables
A closer look at these data can be obtained by examining relationships between the
OP and SP indicators. Six multiple-regression analyses were carried out, each
regressing one of the six secondary emotions on the five OP indicators. As can be
Figure 4. Causal model: subjective powerlessness as a function of objective powerlessness.
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seen in Table 3, the OP indicators most closely related to the emotions variables
were Inequality, which was a significant predictive of four of the six emotions vari-
ables. Inferiority and Economic Distress had three significant effects, and Invisibil-
ity just two. Of the six emotions variables, Shame was predicted by four of the five
OP variables, followed by Resignation and Submissiveness, predicted by three OP
variables, then by Fatalism and Anxiety, predicted by two variables, and by
Pessimism, predicted only by Inequality.
Discussion of results, additional analysis
Sex differences in aspects of objective powerlessness
Males, in both cultures, were prone to using words for Inferiority and Economic
Stress. There could be a connection between these two results, insofar as males
have experienced pressure to perform economically –to be immersed in the para-
digms of work and production (Heller 1985, pp. 57–70), and are apt to feel inferior
if they fail to do so. While this is less true today than in the past, it should be
noted that many life-historical interviews were acquired from elderly individuals,
and 80% of these informants were born before the beginning of World War II. If
this explanation is even partially valid, we might expect males to be higher for the
variable Inferiority
*
Economic-Distress, and this result was found (F= 18.04, two-
tailed p< .001). It was also found that Euro-Australians were higher on this vari-
able than were Aborigines (F= 4.35, two-tailed p= .04), with Euro-Australian
males conspicuously higher than the other three Culture-Sex groups (resulting in a
significant statistical interaction, with F= 4.38, two-tailed p= .04). These results
are shown in Figure 2(row 2, column 3).
Sex differences in primary emotions: fear and sadness
In comparison to men, women are faster and more accurate in identifying emo-
tional stimuli (Collignon et al.2010), have more intense emotional experiences
(Lang et al.1993), and have better memory for emotion-laded events (Ros and
Lattore 2010). Women show higher activation in brain regions associated with emo-
tional processing (e.g. the amygdala and prefrontal cortex) (Stevens and Hamann
2012). Consistent with these findings, females in both cultures showed significantly
higher levels of word-use for two primary emotions, fear and sadness, and one sec-
ondary emotion, shame. There is substantial evidence that females have more
involvement with these three emotions than do males.
During fear conditioning, females respond to conditional stimuli with signifi-
cantly greater activation, relative to males, in several brain areas (e.g. Lebron-Milad
et al.2012). In addition to evidence that women and men process fear differently
in the brain, the greater experience of fear experienced by females is undoubtedly
based on objective conditions of vulnerability and dangerousness, particularly with
respect to abuse and assault; fear, although a primordial emotion, is also socially
constructed through socialization about potential violence (Hollander 2001, Carro
et al.2010). Both verbally and non-verbally, women are more expressive of fear
than are men; they report fear with greater intensity (Allen and Haccoun 1976),
show more facial expressions of fear (Kring and Gordon 1998), and show more
reluctance to be close to feared objects such as spiders and snakes (Cornelius and
Averill 1983).
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Table 3. Multiple regression analyses: each of six secondary emotional components of subjective powerlessness regressed on five indicators of objec-
tive powerlessness, with significant results in boldface (t-test probabilities one-tailed).
Secondary
emotions
Indicators of objective powerlessness
Inferiority Invisibility Inequality
External locus of
control Economic distress
b tpb t pbt p b t pbt p
Fatalism .07 1.41 .07 .36 3.16 .001 .16 1.56 .06 .06 2.76 .003 .00 .03 .15
Pessimism −.00 −.15 –.03 .81 .21 .07 2.06 .02 −.00 −.53 –.00 .57 .28
Resignation .05 2.46 .01 .03 .05 .28 .11 2.76 .003 .01 1.14 .13 .02 3.71 <.001
Anxiety .58 1.83 .03 −.00 −.02 –.60 3.24 <.001 −.05 −1.27 –.04 1.41 .08
Submissiveness .02 1.17 .12 .02 .39 .35 .02 .46 .32 .02 2.42 .01 .02 2.70 .003
Shame −.00 −.27 –.18 2.39 .01 .15 2.24 .01 .04 2.45 .01 .04 3.60 <.001
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In the present study, female informants, in both cultures, used significantly more
words for sadness than did men. Theories of gender inequality, gender roles, and
exposure to stressors have been attributed to inequality and disadvantage of
women. Women report, discuss, and talk about distress and sadness more freely
than do men. There is also evidence that socialization to gendered discourse leads
to sadness being experienced differently by women and men (e.g. Fivush and
Buckner 2000), and being processed differently in the brain (e.g. George et al.
1996). Women express sadness with more intensity, and more frequently, than do
men (Oliver and Toner 1990); women also show more facial expressions of sadness
(Kring and Gordon 1998).
Culture and sex difference in secondary emotions
Shame is clearly a key emotion of powerlessness (see Fischer 1993, p. 312). We
have found that both criteria of relative powerlessness, being Aboriginal and being
female, were predictive of both fear and sadness. If shame is, as proposed here, a
fearful sadness, then we might also expect Aborigines to be significant more
shame-prone than Euro-Australians, and women more than men. These results were
obtained. As a further exploratory step in examining the definition of shame as a
secondary emotion, the variable Shame was regressed on the six products of pairs
of the four primary emotions, with the expectation that shame would be best pre-
dicted by the product of fear and sadness. The result was that Fear
*
Sadness was
the only pairwise product predictive of Shame (b= .0014, t= 4.60, one-tailed
p< .0001).
For Aborigines their conquest, subjugation, and continuing oppression have
been, and continue to be, a source of shame. It is hardly unusual for members of
indigenous or aboriginal groups who systematically experience long-term discrimi-
nation they are powerless to overcome to be psychologically wounded, which can
take the form of anger, an undifferentiated bad feeling, and shame (Mellor et al.
2009). In the case of Australian Aborigines, shame is arguably the most powerful
emotion in the province of their sociocultural being (Stanner 1968, p. 95). In their
tribal life, shame is a central control mechanism, contributing to maintenance of the
authority, or power, of social custom (rituals, codes, schedules of behavior, kinship
rules, and tribal law) (Myers 1986, pp. 120–124). While Aborigines are increasingly
detribalized, their mentality remain heavily influenced by their long history of life in
small-scale societies, where tribal Law is based on a stable cosmology, is imbued
with unquestioned authority, and provides clear guidelines that regulate human con-
flict, with the exception of their highly complex tribal subsection rules (White
1963), which are a source of ambiguity, social blunders, and potential shame. The
authority of their abiding Law is deeply internalized, and like other small-scale soci-
eties without social stratification and basically closed, shame plays a central role as
a mechanism of social control (Heller 1985). In such shame-based societies, the nor-
mative order holds absolute power over all individuals. Apart from sanctions and
punishments for incorrect behavior, shame itself, as a thoroughly negative affect, is
itself a punishment, and provides a powerful incentive for social conformity. Thus,
the significant effect of Culture on Shame might reflect the continuing impact of
tradition of life in small-scale, shame-based societies (Myers 1986, pp. 120–124).
Contemporary, post-tribal Aboriginal communities are defined not by physical
boundaries but by networks of fragile social relations sustained over time and space
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only with some difficulty; power is vested not in political authority but rather in a
jurisdiction of intermittently autonomous individuals, where correct behavior in
face-to-face interactions is culturally defined, and intended to promote egalitarian-
ism. Under these conditions, it is important to be able to gauge how, when, and
where to express feelings of shame; shaming is a central control mechanism of
thought, word, and deed (TenHouten 2005b, pp. 129, 141).
The significant Sex difference for Shame is consistent with research indicating
that women are more shame-prone than are men. In a meta-analysis of 697 data-
sets representing 236,304 individuals, it was found that females are higher on
shame (especially for shame measured as a trait rather than a state), but only for
samples drawn from whites or unspecified ethnic groups (Else-Quest et al.2012).
Given that fear and sadness are the emotions that women express more than do
men, a vulnerability to negative emotions largely resulting from having less status
and less power (Fischer 1993, p. 312, Brody and Hall 2010), it should not be sur-
prising that women also experience the mixture of fear and sadness, interpreted
here as shame.
For researchers who do not acknowledge the existence of primary emotions,
and who see fear and anxiety distinguished only by ‘differences in intensity and/or
duration rather than fundamental distinctions in the nature of the emotions them-
selves’(Madden et al.2000, p. 278), the conclusion that females experience more
anxiety than do men is easily demonstrated, but no such sex difference was
detected here. What was found was a Culture difference, according to which Abo-
rigines spoke significantly less of anxiety than did Euro-Australians.
1
It is worth noting that, for the two secondary emotions for which there is a sig-
nificant Culture difference, there is a relationship between the primary emotions
and the secondary emotions consistent with the definitions proposed above. Aborig-
ines are significantly lower than Euro-Australians on Fatalism, and they are also
significantly lower on the two primary emotions hypothesized to be components of
fatalism, Acceptance–Acquiescence and Anticipation–Expectation. And Aborigines
are significantly higher than Euro-Australians for Shame, and also higher for the
two primary emotions hypothesized to be the primary components of shame,
Sadness and Fear.
Australian Aborigines have lived, and continue to live, under oppressive cir-
cumstances, having been dispossessed of their lands, having their culture and way
of life deeply eroded, and being forced into a cash economy under highly exploita-
tive circumstances (Rowley 1970, Hughes 1987, Elder 1988, Millis 1994). But,
apart from shame, the present data do not suggest they are prone to talking about,
and using words that pertain to either their objective or subjective experiences of
powerlessness. One possible reason for this is that because there were no significant
Culture differences for the OP measures, it follows from the causal model that Cul-
tural differences should not be expected for the SP measures. It is possible, how-
ever, that there are cultural factors which have suppressed both OP and SP
variables among the Aborigines: (i) the egalitarian nature of Aboriginal culture
could have rendered the OP variables less salient; and (ii), Aboriginal time-con-
sciousness could have resulted in sparse usage of words for the three SP variables
that include Anticipation–Expectation and are thus future-oriented.
First, Aboriginal culture, especially in its tribal form, is not oriented to power-
based social relations; there is no political stratification, no chiefs or headmen,
beyond an expectation that the elders will be highly involved in collective
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decisions. Tribal-living Aborigines exert little power over things, as there is little
use for a large store of food that will not keep, or a pile of spears too heavy to
move about. They have little use for status, are not self-promoting, and do not wish
to draw attention to themselves. Young men, among the Pintupi, rarely stand up to
speak, out of concern that them might make too much out of themselves, and initi-
ate what they do say with self-deprecating remarks. Even a venerated elder might
preface his remarks but saying, ‘I don’t expect you to listen to me …’ or ‘I’m just
going to tell you a little story …’. This lack of competitiveness for power and sta-
tus has carried over to the community life of detribalized, urban Aborigines. The
primary virtues of Aboriginal communities are generosity and fair dealing, and on
equality-matched social relations (Stanner 1968, Samson 1981, TenHouten 2000,
2005b). This does not mean that they live without conflict, for the notion of equal-
ity carries over even into physical violence. Stanner (1968, p. 48) provides an
example of
two men, both with a grievance each clasping the other with an arm and using the
free arm to gouge the other’s back with a knife; or two unreconciled women, giving
each other whack for whack with clubs, but in strict rotation.
Of course, while Aborigines do not render each other powerless, they are indeed a
powerless minority group (comprising about 3% of Australia’s population) with
respect to the dominant ‘White’society. Early colonizers were frustrated at the level
of disinterest Aborigines showed for European culture and its technology, begin-
ning with Captain Cook in 1770, who ordered Aborigines they met on a beach to
be given items of clothing, mirrors, etc., only to feel disappointment upon discover-
ing these items had been quickly abandoned. In a further effort to impress the Abo-
rigines, a fireworks display was presented, which also drew little notice. Thus,
Aboriginal culture emphasizes not hierarchy but equality, and while experiencing
inequality in their relationships to the dominant Western culture, they are far from
preoccupied with this situation, and rather focus on their extended families and
communities, not only in tribal setting but in rural areas and in the largest cities of
Australia. Thus, while the Aborigines experience powerlessness on a systematic
basis, this situation lacks salience and is not a persistent focus of attention.
And second, Aborigines are not future-oriented, so it makes sense that they
would have limited experience of the three secondary emotions which involve
anticipation or expectation, as anticipation is mixed with acquiescence in fatalism,
with sadness in resignation, and with fear in anxiety. These are the three emotions
variables for which the Aborigines were significantly lower than were the Euro-
Australians. Aboriginal time consciousness is not future-oriented but is rather pat-
terned-cyclical and immediate-participatory, which links them to their past, to their
cosmology of the Dreaming, and to immersion in the present. It has been argued
that this time-orientation derives from the nature of their social relationships, so
that communally-shared involvements with their extended families and tribal cus-
toms and traditions contribute to a cyclical (as opposed to ordinary-linear) time-
consciousness, and their egalitarian social relations contribute to a present-oriented
(as opposed to episodic-futural) time-consciousness. Especially for tribal-living
Aborigines, life is lived from day to day and planning for the future has a low pri-
ority (TenHouten 2005b).
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Emotions variables and indicators of objective powerlessness
The regression analysis results shown in Table 3can be given substantive interpre-
tation. Fatalism was predicted by just two OP variables, Invisibility and External
Locus of Control. This result is entirely consistent with the theoretical discussion
of fatalism offered above, as fatalism can indeed be seen as a condition of being
controlled by an external yet invisible or unseen force. Pessimism was predicted
only by Inequality, a result that is not counter-intuitive but is difficult to interpret.
Resignation is related to a concern with Inferiority, Inequality, and Economic Dis-
tress: If one is, for example, a member of a group considered inferior and treated
unequally, together with being poorly placed in the economy, then a likely response
is to give up, to become resigned to a situation that cannot be escaped or over-
come. Submissiveness appears to result from Inferiority, External Control, and Eco-
nomic Distress: This finding also makes intuitive sense, as individuals subjected to
an external source of control are apt to be viewed by these others as inferior, and
are easily denied economic and social opportunities.
Shame is arguably the emotion central to the subjective experience of power-
lessness. In Table 3it is shown as impacted by four OP variables, all but Inferior-
ity. The one insignificant result, on the surface, suggests that shame does not result
from a sense of one’s own inferiority, but this conclusion would be inconsistent
with the above interpretation of shame and with the shame literature. Individuals
gripped by shame are prone to repress, hide, and deny this painful emotion, which
includes not talking about shame. As one example, Wurmser (1981, p. 22)
describes an obsequious psychiatric patient who feared being exposed, laughed at,
and being treated with contempt by others, and who was clearly ashamed of his
passivity, weakness, and disturbing sexual fantasies. This patient manifested ‘shame
resistance’, which ‘was expressed …in halting speech and frequent silences’.
Many other examples can be found in Lewis (1971), who describes nonverbal
indications of shame as including lowering of the voice, long or filled pauses
(‘well’,‘uh-uh-uh’), repetitions, self-interruptions, and vague references to feeling
‘insecure’,‘awkward’, and ‘uncomfortable’, where shame is evoked but not
acknowledged (Scheff 1998, pp. 192–194).
Shame can be hidden in another way, which is to ‘cover up’one’s shame with
talk infused with an opposite emotion not sincerely felt, namely false or hubristic
pride (HP) (Tracy and Robins 2014). To explore this possibility, a 16-word indica-
tor of hubristic pride was constructed, based on Roget’s folk-concept Vanity (see
Table 2). An exploratory regressing analysis showed Inferiority was the only OP
variable with a significant effect of HP (b= .51, t= 3.77, two-tailed p< .001). An
ANOVA showed only a Culture difference, with Aborigines –well known for
being highly self-effacing, were significantly lower for HP than were Euro-Aus-
tralians (F= 5.86, p= .008). These results are consistent with the view that individ-
uals experiencing shame might well cover up, and disguise, their shame with an
inauthentic show of pride.
General discussion
The objective of this paper has been to develop and test a theoretical model of one
of Seeman’s original varieties of alienation, the sentiment of powerlessness. Seeman
identified three emotions that are interior to the subjective experience of powerless-
ness, which are fatalism, pessimism, and (in passing) anxiety. All three of these
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affective states are defined as secondary emotions, which share the primary
emotions acquiescence, expectation, sadness, and fear. Given that there are six
ways to pair four objects, it follows that there must be three additional secondary
emotions involved in powerlessness that Seeman did not identify, and indeed these
pairs of primary emotions have been interpreted as three additional secondary
emotions, Resignation (acceptance–acquiescence & sadness), Submissiveness
(acquiescence & fear), and Shame (fear & sadness).
Powerlessness, as a variety of alienation, refers both to an objective sociorela-
tional situation or condition and to the subjective experience of the individual. On
the social-psychological level, powerlessness is a sentiment that has both cognitive
and affective aspects. Seeman has emphasized that alienation should be studied not
as a general concept but in its specific manifestations, as powerlessness, normless-
ness, meaninglessness, etc. Once this commitment is made, the general concepts of
alienation (and estrangement) become somewhat supererogatory, as can be seen by
the literature on powerlessness considered here, little of which is grounded in alien-
ation theory. Alienation theorists have posed an important problem but have
expended precious little energy addressing its solution, either theoretically or empir-
ically. It is an open question as to whether the complex set of emotions at the basis
of the sentiment of powerlessness can be intentionally induced, but they most cer-
tainly can be socially constructed through the socialization process and moral
norms.
One aspect of powerlessness is social invisibility, so that the powerful do not
want to see or hear the powerless, and the powerless tend to comply. The invisibility
of the poor and the oppressed extends to facial expressions, or rather to the lack
thereof. The four primary emotions hypothesized to be basic to the sentiment of
powerlessness include both emotions that do not possessness cross-culturally
recognizable facial expressions, namely acceptance–acquiescence and Anticipation–
Expectation. This means that only one of the six secondary pairings might have a rec-
ognizable expression, which is shame. But shame does not possess cross-culturally
recognizable facial expressions. Ekman and Friesen (1975) have shown that individu-
als cannot identify facial expressions of shame across cultures. Recent studies have
shown that fewer than 20% of subjects can recognize faces portraying shame (Crozier
1981, Haidt and Keltner 1999, Widen et al.2011).
Members of societal subpopulations who develop a collective apprehension that
their way of life, and level of social entitlement, are apt to fear that the sociopoliti-
cal advancement of previously marginalized groups and classes will undermine
their power to defend their values and their social space. Gripped by this fear, these
groups experience a sense of relative deprivation and suffer insecurity. As a result
they are apt to experience strong feelings of resentment (Wettergren and Jansson
2013). This resentment makes their suffering meaningful, but this complex emo-
tional state –that of resentment, is experienced as a concomitant of a loss of rela-
tive power, but this loss is not yet total, so that they need not anticipate having to
acquiesce to their perceived worsening situation. What is experienced under such
circumstances is not an abject powerlessness, but rather a perceived loss of power.
Once this process begins, it can lead to a helpless form of resentment, and a des-
cent into true powerlessness, or to a forceful kind of resentment, where the loss of
power is contested and rights to power reasserted. In the case of suffering a descent
into powerlessness, into Lukes’s third level of powerlessness –that of ‘subjection-
inducing acquiescence’–then the emotions described in this paper will come to
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the fore. But in the case of forceful resentment, there will rather be a mobilization
of personal and political power, the result can be an active contestation of a deterio-
rating situation, and an effort to overcome a perceived decline of fortune. In this
case, powerlessness comes to be experienced at the second and first stages, and the
involved emotions, resentment, certainly anger, and so forth, become dominant as
the affective level of an overall adaptive response. Modeling these possible key
emotions of relative powerlessness is an obvious additional step to the models of
powerlessness examined here.
The distinction between objective and subjective levels of powerlessness con-
ceptualized and analyzed here has to do with constraint and agency (Haugaard
2008). The objective constraints, such as an external locus of control, or a sense of
inferiority, all act as constraints on individuals’ability to act in their interests, or
the interests of their community. The result, on the affective level, is that the emo-
tions that are articulated by the objectively powerless are adaptive reactions to this
situation, as it is perceived and lived. This means that certain emotions are unlikely
to be expressed. Being controlled, and exploited, by others is a cause of unhappi-
ness and can be depressing (Gilbert 1992), so we would not expect OP to generate
feelings of happiness. The powerless are weak, and in no position to articulate and
act upon any feelings of anger they might experience. The experience of socio-
moral disgust directed toward others who constrain and control one’s behavior and
life chances can occur among members of a group who sense they are losing their
social position, their social power, but when a state of powerlessness is reached,
expressions of anger and disgust become highly constrained, and the oppressors are
apt to be characterized in a positive manner, with a show of gratitude for any ges-
ture of aid or support. As for surprise, when one has almost no resources or terri-
tory to defend, the orienting response to defense of resources is also inhibited, if
not disabled. Thus, objective conditions that constrain the social power of individu-
als or groups contribute to the primary emotions of acquiescence, sadness, fear, and
the mixing of these negative emotions with expectations, which yield a pattern of
secondary-level emotions expressing, and adapting to, a condition of powerless-
ness.
The intended contribution of this paper is not only theoretical but also method-
ological. The data-set used here is a corpus of in-depth interview from which words
are categorized under keywords largely based on Roget’s inventory of folk-
concepts. This method, Hierarchical, Lexical Categorization Analysis (HLCA),
which has previously been applied to social relations and primary emotions
(TenHouten 2005a, pp.195–205, 217–219) and to time-consciousness (TenHouten
1999,2005b). In HLCA, the unit of analysis is not strictly speaking the individual
informant. As one example, with respect to pessimism, the informant could express
his personal pessimism, his perception that others see him as a pessimist, his opinion
that others are pessimistic, that one other describes yet another as pessimistic, that
the prospects for one’s own culture and society are cause for pessimism, or that
there is no reason for pessimism. What is measured, then, is not the level of pes-
simism of the individual but rather the salience of pessimism as he or she is embed-
ded in a dynamically changing social environment and engages in telling stories
about his or her various experiences. The resulting data are not psychometric, neuro-
metric, or phenomenological, but they are sociolinguistic and sociohistorical; they
are inseparable from everyday realities and actualities. The unit of analysis, then, is
not the individual, but the individual in his or her social context (Emirbayer 1997,
112 W.D. TenHouten
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Lyng and Franks 2002, pp. 38–49), as it cannot be detached from its web of group
affiliations, from the social environment within which the informant has experienced
life. The informant, in this view, does not have essentialist characteristics indepen-
dent of a complex social milieu, but rather is embedded in one’s family, friendship
networks, work involvements, community, and possibly clan and tribe, more gener-
ally in one’s culture. Thus, HLCA accepts that social identity is never self-contained
or self-sufficient but rather emerges in the flexible roles people play within unfold-
ing social transactions. In the text-based methodology explored here, there is quan-
tification of qualitative data, but the individual’s life-historical interview does not
make him or her available as a ‘thing’constitutive of a unit of analysis; the data
obtained through such interviewing are rather a set of interrelated stories about the
individual’s life experiences, which are imbedded in social relations, social situa-
tions, and even in sociohistorical processes. The oral history so generated, in Emir-
bayer’s(
1997, p. 281) terms, does not reveal the essence of the informant, but rather
‘depicts social reality …in dynamic, continuous, and processual terms’. The texts
of such interviews or autobiographies, then, do not measure individuals in the same
way as structured interview schedules or batteries of psychometric tests; they rather
reveal socially-embedded, sociorelational realities. In order to attain transactional data
of a narrative form, it is necessary that the individual providing the data not be ren-
dered powerless in the process. While there are power dynamics at work in the struc-
ture interview –with the interviewee in a relatively powerless position, having almost
no control over the topics covered and scant opportunity to share their experience of
the world (Vahasantanen and Saarinen 2013)–this is not the case in the life historical
interview; this is especially the case where the informant is not asked to agree or dis-
agree with statements, but is rather encouraged to tell stories about his or her life and
times. While the model of the affective basis of powerlessness presented here is con-
sistent with the results of data analysis, it is of course the case that testing of this the-
ory will also require acquisition of data from validated psychometric measures of
emotions and better measures of objective conditions of power and powerlessness in
which the individual is clearly the unit of analysis.
Finally, comments on alienation theory are in order. Despite a gradual decline
in alienation studies since the late 1970s, the phenomenon of alienation has hardly
disappeared. On the contrary, alienation might well have become newly relevant in
contemporary fragmented and increasingly unequal societies, where many have
degraded experiences of work, where veterans and civilians traumatized by war
confront severe challenges (as do the countries where those displaced by war flee),
and where increasingly overpopulated and ecologically despoiled nations leave mul-
titudes of youth facing futures without realistic chances of educational and occupa-
tional advancement, or meaningful participation in economic and political life, and
where greed and corruption run rampant. Accompanying these trends is a pervasive
cynicism concerning government, an alienation from state power, a breakdown of
civic culture, and growing efforts to resist the relentless financialization of the glob-
alizing economy, as economic elites increasingly consolidate wealth and power.
Thus, it becomes important to revitalize alienation theory, and we propose that
doing so will require a research program that articulates the affective bases of
specific varieties of alienation, including normlessness (TenHouten in press), mean-
inglessness, self-estrangement, and cultural estrangement (TenHouten forthcoming).
This task would appear prerequisite for understanding alienation as a more general
phenomenon.
Journal of Political Power 113
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Acknowledgements
The author wishes to acknowledge the many helpful suggestions, criticisms, and discussions
provided by Maria Gritsch, Melvin Seeman, and Charles Kaplan. The data analyzed in the
study were acquired with the aid of the New South Wales Aboriginal Family Education
Centres Federation, with special thanks to, and Alex Grey, Maisie Cavanagh, and Kevin
Cavanagh.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note
1. There was no significant Sex difference detected for the variable Anxiety, which merits
a brief comment. That women are more anxious than me is a long-held stereotype. One
component of anxiety, fear, is often defines as a prototypical ‘female’emotion, and
would appear central to the emotion-based stereotypes of men and women (Fabes and
Martin 1991). On the other hand, the other hypothesized component of anxiety, antici-
pation/exploration, is strongly linked to the brains and behaviors of men. Men tend to
be disproportionately involved in anticipation and exploration, which has been widely
attributed to evolutionary adaptation. From mice to humans, in the sexual division of
reproduction-related behavior, females have been disproportionately responsible for
infant care, and are adept at detecting and using protection-oriented cues for coping
with emotional events (Kret and De Gelder 2012), and do so automatically when they
occur. In contrast, males, from an evolutionary standpoint, have borne responsibility for
exploration of their environments, seeking resources, hunting for prey, and facing preda-
tory enemies, all of which requires planning and a deliberate, controlled allocation of
attentional resources. In a sense, females are specialized for close attention to tasks for
which the body is a frame, whereas males are more oriented to the processing and plan-
ning of activities with respect to distant information: Motor control is exerted better for
the arm by men, but by the hand for women; visual processing is performed better by
women for stimuli within hand reach (near space) as opposed to beyond hand reach (far
space) (Sanders 2013). This evolved sexual division of labor has not disappeared from
the human brain, and has been reflected in event-related-potential studies, where expec-
tancy with respect to emotion-laden stimuli for men involves controlled information pro-
cessing, whereas women respond to the same stimuli with automatic processing, being
adept at incongruity detection and the anticipatory processing of potentially negative or
dangerous events (Meng and Yuan 2009, see also Meyers-Levy and Loken 2015).
Notes on contributor
Warren D. TenHouten is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Sociology, University of
California at Los Angeles. His current research is focused on the affective bases of varieties
of alienation. His fields of interest include neurosociology (including the study of
alexithymia), reason and rationality, the sociology of emotions and emotions classification,
and time-consciousness. His recent books include Time and Society (SUNY Press, 2005), A
General Theory of Emotions and Social Life (Routledge, 2007), and Emotion and Reason:
Mind, Brain, and the Social Domains of Work and Love (Routledge, 2013).
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