| The constructivist perspective on emotions opens a venue for studying emotions as a symbol system used for communication and individual meaning-making. The constant social use of emotions as a language, however, creates a normative emotional regime of expected feelings in relation to definite situations. These standards make up our emotion culture, which is time- and space-relative. The individual tends to abide by the adopted emotional norms of his/her social milieu, lest s/he should risk emotional deviance.; A critical review of the sociological literature on emotions discloses the construction of a culture of cheerfulness in the U.S. Historical studies bear witness to a persistent cultivation of cheerfulness as the model emotional state for individual experience and social interaction. Contemporary studies of emotion management describe the social effort to maintain a cheerful ethos in various environments. Cheerfulness proves to be the most productive and useful of emotions in a modern capitalist culture and, as such, has been socially encouraged and increasingly valued with rationalization tendencies.; In the living experience of persons, however, emotions and thought are inseparable, and their interaction plays a role in the formation of mental constructions of reality. This study explores the implications of the culture of cheerfulness for the meaning-making process of individuals and group-created constructions. The dominant emotional norm in the American social environment is grasped from an intercultural perspective and studied in the experience of ten informants who have lived in both a U.S. and a West European environment. The way they make sense of their experiences suggests that the culture of cheerfulness might be impacting the cognitive processes of the individual and the social knowledge of reality. Three main types of impact unfolded relating to the role of cheerfulness in shaping common constructions of the world, the self and social relationships. |
