Affecting qualitative health psychology

Abstract

The 'affective turn' is a contemporary movement within the humanities, social science and psychology to investigate affect, emotion and feeling as hybrid phenomena jointly constituted from both biological and social influences. Health and illness are themselves jointly constituted in this way, and many of the topics, concerns and methods of health psychology are strongly permeated by affective phenomena. Qualitative research in health psychology might therefore benefit by engaging with this work. This paper describes some features of the affective turn, and suggests theories, terminology and methods that might be useful.

The affective atmospheres of surveillance

“…Although Cromby (2011) argues that a linguistic epistemology is insufficient to analyse such phenomena, the third realm, unlike the pure realm of virtuality, offers a way in. Affective activity within this realm, we argue, can be traced through its partial emergence in speech acts.…”

The Social Construction of Death

“…This means that to investigate feelings we need some way of ordering them, and one of us has suggested elsewhere that we might do this by identifying three analytic categories (Cromby, 2007). The first category is emotional feelings, the somatic or corporeal element of emotions: the bodily weight of grief, the tight muscles of anger, and so on.…”

“…One of us has suggested elsewhere (Cromby, 2011) that some of these debates might be short-circuited simply by adopting a suitable theory of meaning. Once we acknowledge that meaning is already not exclusively a matter of language we can adopt a semantics reflective of that understanding.…”

Advancing and extending qualitative research in health psychology

“…Researchers adopting qualitative methods also need to ''develop and extend innovative methods for the exploration of psychological issues in health and illness'' (Chamberlain & Murray, 2008, p. 401) in relevant ways to answer their specific research questions. In his contribution, Cromby (2011) provides an excellent example of the processes involved in extending and innovating in qualitative research to make it appropriate for and able to explore specific topics or conceptualisations.…”

“…Furthermore, narrative approaches can bring a diverse range of benefits to health psychology, from developing in-depth understandings of experiences of illness and health care through to gaining in-depth knowledge and insight regarding health promotion and social inequalities in health (Stephens, 2011). Theories positing the centrality of affect, feeling, and emotion in understandings of health, illness, and the body can be investigated using qualitative research approaches, such as exploring experiences of pain, doctorÁpatient interactions, adherence to medications and lifestyle advice, as well as everyday activities and behaviours relevant to maintaining health and preventing illness (Cromby, 2011). These papers demonstrate that qualitative approaches to research offer health psychologists an array of diverse methods to enable fuller exploration of specific psychological issues in health and illness (Chamberlain & Murray, 2008).…”