Emotional Sensibility
Exploring the Methodological and Ethical Implications of Research Participants' Emotions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3230241 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Wendy Pearlman (0000-0002-0141-4569, Northwestern University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 117 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1241-1254 |
| Publication date | 2023-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Political Science Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0003055422001253 |
| OpenAlex | W4311399838 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 16 |
| References cited | 112 |
Although political science increasingly investigates emotions as variables, it often ignores emotions' larger significance due to their inherence in research with human subjects. Integrating emotions into conversations on methods and ethics, I build on the term "ethnographic sensibility" to conceptualize an "emotional sensibility" that seeks to glean the emotional experiences of people who participate in research. Methodologically, emotional sensibility sharpens attention to how participants' emotions are data, influence other data, and affect future data collection. Ethically, it supplements Institutional Review Boards' rationalist emphasis on information and cognitive capacity with appreciation for how emotions infuse consent, risk, and benefit. It thereby encourages thinking not only about emotional harm but also about emotions apart from harm and about emotional harms apart from trauma and vulnerability. I operationalize emotional sensibility by tracking four dimensions of research that affect participants' emotions: the content of research, the context in which research occurs, researchers' positionality, and researchers' conduct
Affect (linguistics · Cognition · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Harm · Operationalization · Political science · Sensibility · Vulnerability (computing · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Psychology · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics · Social Psychology · Social Science and Policy Research
Ethics and Equity
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Emotional experiences and stigma among families benefiting from Barcelona's shock plan against school segregation and for inclusion and equal opportunities and educational success
To Report or Not to Report on Research Ethics in Political Science and International Relations
Fieldwork in Fragile Borderlands and Conflict Zones
Does Memory Make Safe in the Wake of Atrocity? Pacification of Violent Pasts, Memory Labor, and Everyday Security
The True, the Good, the Spiteful
Varieties of Political Ethnography
Beyond Retraumatization
Uncomfortable interviews
Social Researching
Focus Groups for the Social Science Researcher
Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences
Emotion and culture
Moving Politics
Ethics of Research in Conflict Environments
The Limitations of “Vulnerability” as a Protection for Human Research Participants
Sensitive Interviewing in Qualitative Research
The efficacy of empathy training
Doing research on sensitive topics
Campaigning for Hearts and Minds
Emotions in the Field
When the State Meets the Street
Prenatal Care Use Among Women of Low Income
Uninformed Why People Seem to Know So Little about Politics and What We Can Do about It
Feeling Politics
The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research Ethics
Undertaking Sensitive Research in the Health and Social Sciences
Surviving Field Research
Emotional and Ethical Challenges for Field Research in Africa
Emotions and Fieldwork
The Active Interview
Anxious Politics
Researching the Vulnerable
The Managed Heart
Psychological and Social Risks of Behavioral Research
Do electronic devices in face-to-face interviews change survey behavior? Evidence from a developing country
Intended and unintended consequences of democracy promotion assistance to Georgia after the Rose Revolution
It's a Mad, Mad World
Calling Mogadishu
Stop Stealing Our Stories
The Ethics of Security Research
Working with emotion
Qualitative bereavement research
Emotions and Research
Reforming Institutional Review Board Policy
Effects of Interviewer–Respondent Gender Interaction on Attitudes toward Women and Politics
Understanding the Willingness to Participate in Mobile Surveys
Doing global fieldwork
The Anger Gap
Ethnography Beyond Method
Religiosity-of-Interviewer Effects
Political Ethnography
Election Night’s Alright for Fighting
Can We Reduce Deception in Elite Field Experiments? Evidence from a Field Experiment with State Legislative Offices
White Respondents and Race-of-Interviewer Effects
The Differential Effects of Stress on Voter Turnout
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Did that Scare You? Tips on Creating Emotion in Experimental Subjects
Silent Voices
Beyond the Field
The Feeling of Rationality
Violence Exposure and Ethnic Identification
(Dis)courtesy Bias
Who’s Asking? Interviewer Coethnicity Effects in African Survey Data
Emotions in Politics
Advances in Survey Methods for the Developing World
Ethics of Field Experiments
An Empirical Validation Study of Popular Survey Methodologies for Sensitive Questions
Emotional Reactions to the Economy
The ethics of silence
Researching Under Fire
Research Ethics 101
Upheavals of Thought
Feeling and thinking
Shades of truth and lies
Ethics, empathy, and fear in research on violent conflict
The Ouch! Factor
Sensitive questions in surveys
White-Knuckle Research
The Ethical Challenges of Field Research in Conflict Zones
Bringing Emotion and Personal Narrative into Medical Social Science
The ethics of ethnographic methods in conflict zones
The Study of Sensitive Subjects
The Psychology of State Repression
Local Positionality in the Production of Knowledge in Northern Uganda
Emotional Intelligence and the Qualitative Researcher
Emotions in human research ethics guidelines
Harm, change and unpredictability
The emotional labour of gaining and maintaining access to the field
Researching sensitive topics
Qualitative Interviewing as an Embodied Emotional Performance
Dominance Through Interviews and Dialogues
Ethics, Reflexivity, and "Ethically Important Moments" in Research
The Unstructured Interactive Interview
Open-Ended Interviews, Power, and Emotional Labor
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How Close Is Too Close? Balancing Closeness And Detachment In Qualitative Research
Getting Close to Rwandans since the Genocide
| Unique citing works | 16 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 5,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 16 |