EMOTIONS, HABITUATION, AND MACRO‐SOCIOLOGY: THE CASE OF INEQUALITY

Abstract

Habituation is one of natural selection's tools to limit the activating role of positive emotions. It is a barrier to expanding needs. The structural requirements for getting around this barrier are similar to the characteristics of a system of expanded inequality. Such inequality was the most likely social structure to first break this barrier. Only much later in human history could mass production technology offer an alternative means to bend habituation rules.

Citation

Hammond, M. (1996), "EMOTIONS, HABITUATION, AND MACRO‐SOCIOLOGY: THE CASE OF INEQUALITY", International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 16 No. 9/10, pp. 53-74. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb013269