Affectivity and Social Expression

An essential dimension not only of mental life, but also of relationships, the affectivity is built socially, its conventional manifestations varying depending on the social values acknowledged within a given group. An individual relates to the world simultaneously by cognition and emotion, so that the reason/passion dichotomy which, for a long period of time, has represented a red thread in the history of Western philosophy has been revised. Emotions are not opposed to reasonable conduct, but respond to a personal logic and certain implicit social norms, being in a direct relationship with the meaning the individual gives to events. Emotions are connected to social communication, represent “a way of affiliation to a social community†(David Le Breton) and the expression of relating to a situation, interlocutors, message. In this article we insist on the idea that affectivity, emotions correspond to certain reactions of the individual to a given situation which manifest by a series of physiological and psychological changes translated into mimicry, gestures, attitudes, words expression modalities which are acquired during a learning process and by constantly relating to the other members of the social group.