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To provide a comprehensive review of theoretical and research advances in affect control theory from 1988 to 2013 for academic and student researchers in social psychology.

Against the background of a concise history of affect control theory from its beginnings in the 1960s to its maturation in the late 1980s, a comprehensive review of research and publications in the last 25 years is reported in five sections: Theoretical Advances (e.g., self and institutions, nonverbal behavior, neuroscience, artificial intelligence); Technological Advances (e.g., electronic data collection, computer simulations, cultural surveys, equation refinement, small groups analysis); Cross-Cultural Research (archived data and published analyses); Empirical Tests of the Theory; and Substantive Applications (e.g., emotions, social and cultural change, occupations/work, politics, gender/ideology/subcultures, deviance, criminology, stereotyping, physiological behavior).

Reveals an impressive number of publications in this area, including over 120 articles and chapters and four major books, and a great deal of cross-cultural research, including European, Asian, and Middle-Asian cultures.

Because of limitations of space, the review does not cover the large number of theses, dissertations, and research reports.

No other review of affect control theory with this scope and detail exists.

Most of the research on stereotyping and intergroup relations in social psychology has been conducted within the social cognition paradigm of psychological social psychology. In this paper we identify three deficits of the social cognition approach to stereotyping and intergroup relations that have hindered its developing a satisfactory explanatory model: first, an overemphasis on cognition and a concomitant neglect of affect; second, the confounding of affect and cognition by recent attempts to redress this imbalance; and, third, the tendency to treat the relations among cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of intergroup relations as a one-way causal process, rather than as a system of reciprocal effects and cybernetic control. We show how affect control theory, with its twofold emphasis on affect and control, and its clear distinction between cognition and affect, provides a comprehensive, explanatory model for analyzing stereotyping and intergroup relations. To illustrate this claim, we report three studies based on intergroup attitudes for Canadian regional identities. The first applies the in-group bias/ethnocentrism and out-group homogeneity hypotheses from social cognition research on intergroup perceptions to affect control theory data on intergroup attitudes. The second employs the attribution equations of affect control theory to demonstrate how stereotypic traits can be generated from intergroup attitudes for social identities. The third applies the impression formation equations of the theory to analyze the affective outcomes of intergroup relations between Canadians with different regional identities. Our findings reveal qualified support for the application of the in-group bias and out-group homogeneity hypotheses to affect control theory data on intergroup attitudes. In addition, the generation of stereotypic traits from intergroup relations, yield plausible results. Following a discussion of the limitations of our research, we show how social cognition theory and affect control theory are complementary approaches to the study of stereotyping and intergroup relations.

Using semantic differential ratings of evaluation, potency and activity of American and German undergraduates, I will test the general hypothesis that if both cultures agree on the sexual‐ erotic denotation of sentiments, sentiments will differ disproportional in their affective representations. It will be demonstrated that there is an interconnection of role‐identities and emotions. Affective representation between sexual role‐ identities differs in German and American culture. Emotions associated with sexual‐erotic role‐identities have a deviant and violent quality for Americans. The same role‐identities associate with emotions of impression and passion for German subjects.

Gender remains a politically charged and powerful ideological social identity dimension that categorically essentializes and reproduces opportunities and limitations in organizations. Addressed in Chapter 6 are assumptions about gender and ways that gender classifications and gender roles form and spill forth into both work and home life for an overlap of public and private spheres that disadvantage women and privilege men. Furthermore, femininity and masculinity constructs strengthen the power system that undergirds them, reinforces their meanings, and perpetuates behaviors, changing over time, across and within cultures, and over the life course.

In organizations, the glass ceiling metaphor has become a popular representation of inequality in the workplace for women, people of color and sexual minorities; a phenomenon expanded in recent years to include glass walls and glass cliffs to describe advancement barriers. Gender-neutral mindsets and blame-the-victim strategies found in organizations are examined, as well as the breadwinner role and intersectionalities of gender with social identity dimensions of age, ethnicity, and social class. Chapter 6 is divided into these subthemes: gender, roles, femininity, and masculinity; power and gender inequality at work, and effects on women; gender, parenting, and the second shift; the breadwinner role, hegemonic masculinity, and masculinity in crisis; gendered occupations and feminization of career fields; intersectionalities of gender with age, ethnicity, and social class; and shattering schemas with androgyny and transgenderism.

An employee who is eligible to make a complaint for unfair dismissal has to prove that he has been dismissed by the employer if the employer contests that the employee has in fact been dismissed. If the dismissal is not contested, all the employee has to do is to show that he has been dismissed. This constitutes the first stage of the proceedings in an industrial tribunal.

We propose an elaboration of the social structure and personality framework from sociological social psychology that is intended to promote integration across social psychological traditions and between social psychology and sociology, using the study of inequality as an example.

We develop a conceptualization of “generic” proximate processes that produce and reproduce inequality in face-to-face interaction: status, identity, and justice.

The elaborated framework suggests fundamental questions that analysts can pose about the macro-micro dynamics of inequality. These questions direct attention to the “how” and “why” of macro-micro relations by connecting structural and cultural systems, local contexts, and the lives of individual persons; highlighting implicit processes; making meaning central; and directing our attention to how people act efficaciously in the face of constraint.

Applying this framework, scholars can use existing theories and generate new ones, and can do so inductively or deductively.

Research on inequality is enriched by social psychological analyses that draw on the full complement of relevant methods and theories.

We make visible the social psychological underpinnings of sociological research on inequality and provide a template for macro-micro analyses that emphasizes the centrality of social psychological processes.