Bridging Emotions: Affect In Overcoming Social and Political Divides

The sociology of emotions has produced remarkable insights into the role of emotions in social and political conflict. This includes affective polarization, intergroup conflict, social exclusion, rejection, devaluation, and misrecognition. Negative emotions such as anger, spite, fear, resentment, humiliation, and hatred have been shown to shape collective identities, fuel antagonism, and harden boundaries between groups. Less attention has been paid to the constructive role of emotions in overcoming divides and restoring pressured social relations: how emotions enable recognition, foster accountability, and make cooperation imaginable amid pronounced disagreement. Existing research here has focused mainly on historical injustices and intractable conflict, with little attention to less visible divides between transient groups, such as opinion groups, social classes, partisanship, issue coalitions, or social movements. Still, some existing work is highly conducive to understanding what we term "bridging emotions": (a) research on collective emotions in rituals and their consequences for identity-building and social integration; (b) studies on conciliatory affective stances such as forgiveness, excusing, and condoning; and (c) work on discrete emotions including hope, guilt, remorse, regret, and compassion. Although valuable, these strands remain largely unconnected across disciplines. This session brings together contributions from colleagues placing emotions at the center of research on conflict transformation, reconciliation, and the bridging of social and political divides.