Emotion Template Matrix Analysis
Emotion Template Matrix Analysis (ETMA) builds on the ideas about the key role
emotions play in our life, yet it derives its inspiration from a
philosophical line of inquiry that goes back to American pragmatism
and that explores emotions from a sociological rather than a psychological
perspective. Psychologists start with the premise that our feelings,
actions, and thoughts reflect relatively stable, predictable personality
patterns which persist over time and manifest themselves across
situations. Psychological testing tends to privilege tools that
reveal enduring personality traits and discriminate against personal
qualities which attest to the volatility of our actions and sentiments.
ETMA
finds such indeterminacy to be a normal reflection of conflicting
social pressures. It treats human beings as nonclassically propertied
objects akin to particles in micro physics: when we don’t
look at a particle, it is everywhere at once, it is a bundle of
probabilities that require a measurement event to materialize as
a particle with a definite mass, position, momentum, and other properties.
In a similar fashion, our affect continuously and subconsciously
scans the world for saliency; it generates conflicting feelings,
it is pulled in different directions at once, and it takes a special
occasion for a human agent to adopt an emotional attitude. Predictable
though such an attitude might be, it is only a matter of probability
that a person will show this or that affective stance in any given
situation.
This is how an article published in the
New York Times described George Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees
baseball team: “As always, there are at least two distinct
sides to him: brash bully and charitable gentleman. . . . He is
a loyal friend who turns distrustful. He’s the calm and the
storm. Kindness turns to cruelty. He is just as apt to tear apart
as blow up.” Rather than seeing such inconsistency as an aberration,
ETMA treats it as a common occasion and focuses on the patterns
of uncertainty and structures of indeterminacy distinguishing human
existence in the world.
ETMA offers
a broad gauge of human agency as it finds itself in the world with
a particular body to inhabit, social status to enjoy, opportunities
to take advantage of, and disabilities to contend with. Affect is
understood here as a body index of arousal; affects are the body
indicia of the arousal the agent experiences in a situation that
implicates the agent's well-being, calls for an appraisal, and requires
taking a stance. Emotion is an affect filtered through the symbolic
grid supplied by culture; emotions are affects aroused by a situation,
processed through a rhetorical frame, and disposing the agent to
react in a certain fashion. E-motions (emos) designate affectively
charged motions, actions, and situations that signal how the agent
is likely to feel/act under the circumstances (e.g., “playful,”
“alienated,” “stoic,” “subservient”).
Human agency is a somatically-grounded, emotionally-laden, self-referentially
guided, culturally informed, and structurally-constrained capacity for action. Given
that affect is an unlabeled emotion and emotion is a recognized
affect, we can define the unconscious as a mislabeled affect and
a misrecognized emotion.
ETMA operates with a chart that functions as a kind of a periodic table of emotions that features four primary
color emotions – Joy, Anger, Fear, and Serenity (ataraxy).
These emotions mirror the distinction between four humors or temperaments
– sanguinic, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic. The term
“ataraxy” comes from stoic philosophers who used it
to stress the importance of tranquility, self-mastery, and ethical
action. Although less precise, the term “serenity” is
used here as a better known equivalent. ETM Chart is segmented in
several ways. Its coordinates point to the intensity/valence of
affect and the strength and the type of agency. The upper half of
the chart harbors positive emos that gain in affect strength as
we move upward. The lower half is the region of negative emos that
intensify as we move downward. The left side denotes the outwardly
directed agency, which increases leftward, and the right side points
to the inwardly directed agency, which gains momentum as we move
to the right. The intersection of the coordinates signifies a zero
point where affect is neutralized, the outwardly directed agency
turns inward, and vice versa.
Each quadrant contains 5 columns, comprising e-motions
of roughly the same affect strength. There are 10 templates in a
column and 50 templates in a quadrant, combining for a total of
200 emo labels in the chart. A template is identified by three digits,
the first one indicating its quadrant, the second its affect strength,
and the third one its position within the column, which in turn
designates a qualitative aspect/dimension of human agency. Every
template has counterparts in other quadrants mirroring its affective
qualities. Thus, the 1.5.1 joyful emo “exhilarated”
is echoed in the 2.5.1 choleric emo “infuriated,” the
3.5.1 fearful emo “terrified,” and the 4.5.1 serene
emo template “nirvanic.” There is a total of 50 matched
e-motion sets, with four templates in each set.
All e-motion terms are calibrated to express a particular
dimension in which the agency is appraised. The number alongside
a template points to the dimension in question. If you scan the
identically numbered templates diagonally, you can see how the sense
of agency changes from one column to another and from one quadrant
to the next. The following 10 dimensions map human agency as it
is apprehended by the agent or by outside observers:
1. Vitality/Mood – the sense of well-being,
felt quality of life, emotional tone.
2. Energy/Arousal – agency mobilization, affect strength,
proactive stance, stress level
3. Self/Confidence – temporal orientation, confidence, self-esteem,
self-mastery
4. Charity/Others – generosity, gratefulness, willingness
to cooperate, attitude toward the other
5. Recreation/Romance – desire, romance, sublimation, ritual
action, competitiveness
6. Wit/Discursivity – discursive prowess, wordplay, humor,
edifying discourse, dissimulation
7. Polity/Society – the public sphere, civic virtue, political
leanings, the sense of justice, ecumenical sentiments
8. Community/Civility – the private sphere, manners, ethical
bearings, volunteerism, community involvement
9. Sacred/Infernal – the sacred sphere, blessedness, supernatural
powers, evil tidings, ominous feelings
10. Power/Status – authority, public standing, leadership
style, the subordinate-superordinate status
ETM Survey offers a kind of "mood count" -- hence, we call this technique MoodCounts. Intended for individual and group development, the survey encourages participants to explore their emotions, feelings, and moods, to understand their affective cultures. However, the survey is not a psychological tool testing some enduring qualities or comparing the respondent to a norm. Rather, it is a sociological instrument based on the premise that our sentiments are situational, that we often have contradictory feelings about ourselves, and that our actions reflect the ambivalent way in which we experience the world and its crosscutting pressures.
The ETM Survey can be used to compile
e-motional profiles for individuals, groups, and cultures. The e-profile
scores show areas where our emotional life is particularly intense
and where our affect remains flat. Cumulative indexes reveal overall
patterns of affect, such as the e-motional ambivalence and the ratio
of positive to negative emos. Quantum affect dynamics postulates that
no agent falls squarely into one quadrant or maintains the same
affect strength. Nonclassically-propertied objects that we are,
we leap from one quantum emotional field to another, appropriating
discrete labels from the culturally certified terminological frames
in terms of which we can terminate indeterminacy in any given situation.
Many people lean toward
one or another ideal-typical family of e-motions in their self-construction, but it is the movement across the affective boundaries that reveals the most enduring and interesting patterns in our affective life.