Sociologists have written surprisingly little about the role emotions play in medical decision-making, largely ceding this terrain to psychologists who conceptualize emotional influences on decision-making in primarily cognitive and individualistic terms. In this article, I use ethnographic data gathered from parents and physicians caring for children with life-threatening conditions to illustrate how emotions enter the medical decision-making process in fundamentally interactional ways. Because families and physicians alike often defined emotions as useful information to guide the decision-making process, both parties could leverage them in health care interactions by eliciting or demonstrating emotional investment, strategically deploying emotionally charged symbols, and using emotions as tiebreakers to help themselves and one another make choices in the midst of uncertainty. Constructing emotions as valuable in the decision-making process and effectively marshalling them in these ways offered a number of advantages. It could make decisions easier to arrive at, help people feel more confident in the decisions they made, and reduce interpersonal conflict. By connecting the dynamic role emotions can play in the interactive process through which medical decisions are made to the social advantages they can produce, I point to an underappreciated avenue through which inequalities in health care are perpetuated.

中文翻译：

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情绪与医疗决策

社会学家几乎没有写出令人惊讶的关于情绪在医疗决策中所起的作用的文章，这在很大程度上将这种领域割让给了心理学家，后者主要以认知和个人主义的概念化了情绪对决策的影响。在本文中，我使用从父母和医生那里收集的人种学数据，这些孩子照顾有生命危险的儿童，以从根本上互动的方式说明情绪如何进入医疗决策过程。由于家人和医生都经常将情感定义为指导决策过程的有用信息，因此双方都可以通过引发或展示情感投资，策略性地部署带有情感符号，并使用情绪作为决胜局帮助自己和彼此在不确定的情况下做出选择。在决策过程中将情感构建为有价值的事物并以这些方式有效地将其编组起来具有许多优势。它可以使决策更容易达成，使人们对他们所做的决策更有信心，并减少人际冲突。通过将动态角色联系起来，情感可以在互动过程中发挥作用，在此过程中，医疗决策将决定他们可以产生的社会优势，我指出，这种渠道未得到充分理解，从而使医疗保健不平等现象得以持续。它可以使决策更容易达成，使人们对他们所做的决策更有信心，并减少人际冲突。通过将动态角色联系起来，情感可以在互动过程中发挥作用，在此过程中，医疗决策将决定他们可以产生的社会优势，我指出，这种渠道未得到充分理解，从而在医疗保健中的不平等现象得以延续。它可以使决策更容易达成，使人们对他们所做的决策更有信心，并减少人际冲突。通过将动态角色联系起来，情感可以在互动过程中发挥作用，在此过程中，医疗决策将决定他们可以产生的社会优势，我指出，这种渠道未得到充分理解，从而在医疗保健中的不平等现象得以延续。