Emotions as evaluative judgements: understanding volunteers’ evaluative feelings about things that matter to them

Abstract

This article examines people’s emotional experience of volunteering. It offers an account of emotions as first-person evaluative judgements about things that are important to them. People’s relation to the world is one of concern, and they continually have to monitor and evaluate how the things they care about are faring, and decide what to do. The article moves away from accounts that treat emotions either as merely subjective or as only a product of social conventions. It discusses how volunteers’ emotions are evaluative feelings about the nature of their voluntary tasks and roles, their social relationships with fellow volunteers, and their orientation to the world. It also explores how social positions can affect emotions.