Anger and Aggression: An Essay on Emotion by James R. AverillReview by: Peter LymanContemporary Sociology, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Mar., 1984), pp. 202-203Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2068914 .

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202 BOOK REVIEWS

"Households Headed by Women and Urban Poverty in Brazil," in Buvinic, Lycette, and McGreevey, Women and Poverty in the Third World, 1983). Treatment of regional in- equalities, rural-urban differences, and an un- satisfactory definition of changes in lower- class status are other problems with this book. Nevertheless-approached with caution-this study offers new insights concerning mobility in a highly inequitable and generally immobile society.

Measures of Socioeconomic Status: Current Issues, edited by MARY G. POWERS. Boulder: Westview, 1982. 205 pp. $21.00 cloth.

REEVE VANNEMAN

University of Maryland

Two decades after the publication of the Duncan Socioeconomic Index (SEI), the status measurement establishment has discov- ered gender. One hopes it won't take them so long to notice class, industry, and the other dimensions of work that are ignored by the SET.

Nevertheless, this collection of papers, if overdue, represents a step in the right direc- tion. Most of the seven studies included in this volume focus on incorporating gender dif- ferences into the measurement of occupational status. Their main concern is that the usual occupational status scales are based on the average education and income of the men in each occupation and that these male-based scores are then assigned to both men and women. What would happen if status scores were recomputed, including women in the av- erage education and income of each occupa- tion?

Unfortunately, this unity of purpose, matched by a similar conformity in research methods, is not rewarded by any clarity of conclusions. The most important results are distressingly contradictory. After all the re- sources that have been poured into socioeco- nomic indexes, David Featherman and Gillian Stevens can only tell us that "the estimation of socioeconomic status scores for occu- pations should remain experimental" (110).

On simple matters there is some agreement. First, the male-based SEI inflates the status of predominantly female occupations such as clerical workers. Male clerical workers are not typical of the category-they make much higher incomes-so when women are added to

the samples, their !ower incomes pull down the clerical status scores. Instead of clericals having higher status than skilled workers, as in the SEI, they have roughly the same status or lower in the revised scales. Second, be- cause predominantly female occupations re- ceive lower scores on the revised indexes, the women's mean status score is lower than men's on the revised indexes-a change from the much-criticized earlier indexes by which men and women were reported as having equal occupational status despite their vast income differences.

These two results are entirely predictable, and we hardly needed the empirical research to confirm them. More interesting is whether the process of status attainment (i.e., the coefficients in the regression equations) are much affected by the revision of the male- based scales. On these matters there is almost no agreement. Boyd and McRoberts report only slight differences based on the scales used. Featherman and Stevens find important differences; for instance, the usual Wisconsin result that women's occupations depend more on education and less on past jobs while men's depend more on past jobs and less on educa- tion is true only when the male-based scales are used-the revised scales reverse this in- teraction. The research by Cooney and co- workers also finds that choice of scales mat- ters in the gender-education interaction, but their interaction is the exact opposite of the Featherman and Stevens finding.

Is there a way out of this quantitative jungle? The book. sorely needs an integrative essay. The best introduction can be found in the Boyd and McRoberts paper (chapter 6). Readers are well advised to begin their read- ing there. We will hear more on these matters-the male bias of the old scales is too blatant to be ignored. But any future research will have to contend with the contradictory welter of results reported in this volume.

Intimacy, Emotions, Human Sexuality

Anger and Aggression: An Essay on Emotion, by JAMES R. AVERILL. New York: Springer- Verlag, 1982. 402 pp. $29.90 cloth.

PETER LYMAN Michigan State University

James R. Averill argues that emotions are better understood as social relations than as

Contemporary Sociology, March 1984, Volume 13, Number 2

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BOOK REVIEWS 203

biological facts, and thus are governed by cultural norms which guide our interpretation of our own feelings and their expression to others. Thus, "The person who says, 'I am angry with you' or 'I love you' is not simply labeling a state of physiological arousal; he is entering into a complex relationship with an- other person. The meaning of the relationship, not only for the individuals involved but also for the larger society, is embedded in the feeling rules (social norms) for that emotion" (25). This "social constructivist" perspective is applied to the problem of understanding anger by exploring literature from biology and psychology to law, anthropology, and philosophy. This prepares the way for con- structing questionnaires to identify the feeling rules which govern our anger.

In five studies Averill reconstructs angry relationships: anger as it is subjectively expe- rienced; as experienced by its target; the dif- ference between anger and annoyance; the du- ration of anger; and sex differences in the experience of anger. The sample included college students in a small town, thus the study does not encompass possible class, ethnic, or racial differences in feeling rules. Following are some of his findings:

A friend or loved one is more likely to be the target of anger than is a stranger. Averill explains that we have more opportunity to be angry at those we care for, and this in turn means that our anger is more likely to be constructive than malevolent. Psychoanalytic theory might point to the ambivalence of emotions and the aggressive content of sexu- ality here, but Averill is focusing upon every- day anger, not aggression or sexuality.

Anger is likely to be self-centered, intended to assert our authority or improve our image in order to achieve personal control and status. Yet anger is not necessarily aggressive. While 93 percent felt like engaging in aggres- sive conduct, and 83 percent actually did so, nonaggressive responses were also very com- mon; 73 percent chose to talk over the inci- dent with the instigator or a third party. Av- erill argues that anger can be a form of problem-solving, pointing to the constructive uses of rule-governed anger.

Averill challenges the feminist view "that women do not experience anger as frequently, intensely and/or in the same manner as men" (287), concluding that there are no major dif- ferences between the sexes in everyday anger. This conclusion is curious given his findings. Women rated their anger a more intense expe-

rience than men rated their anger; women were more likely to view their anger and that of others as inappropriate; women were more likely to feel like talking the incident over, and more likely to do so; women were more likely to respond to anger with crying or a shaking voice; and women were more likely to react to being a target of anger with hurt feelings, whereas men were more likely to be defiant. The feminist point is that anger is a resource for social control unequally given to men and women by the feeling rules embedded in gen- der; Averill's findings seem to lend support to this argument.

Anger is the emotion with which we protest and seek redress against unfair treatment when ordinary means are unavailable. Al- though Averill views anger as a social rela- tion, except for sex differences he does not attempt to investigate the way the feeling rules he defines are implicated in domination. He has accomplished the task he set himself, however: to define a social theory of emotion against the claims of sociobiology and to use it to investigate the norms which govern anger in everyday life.

Loneliness: A Sourcebook of Current Theory, Research and Therapy, edited by LETITIA ANNE PEPLAU and DANIEL PERLMAN. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1982. 430 pp. $37.95 cloth.

HOWARD M. BAHR Brigham Young University

I rarely envy someone the editorial work involved in an anthology or handbook, but as I imagined Peplau and Perlman's six-year journey, from a coffee-break conversation in 1976 through the 1979 UCLA Loneliness Conference, to the transmutation of the con- ference proceedings and other papers into this invaluable sourcebook, I envied them the trip. While producing this admirable volume they built a national network of researchers and theorists of loneliness.

The unevenness in style and quality that shows up in many anthologies is not evident here. That achievement reflects the editors' personal contributions; they are themselves authors or co-authors of five chapters and are explicitly credited by other authors with as- sistance in five others. The 22 chapters cover aloneness, conceptual and methodological is- sues in studying loneliness, theoretical ap-

Contemporary Sociology, March 1984, Volume 13, Number 2

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