by Clara Sophie Feldmann
Is there such a thing as morally legitimate capitalism? In modern capitalist societies, morality often appears curiously displaced from and at odds with the dominant economic values. Principles such as competition, profit maximisation, and efficiency sit uneasily alongside ethical ideals of justice, empathy, and solidarity. As Ute Frevert (2019) suggests, however, interpersonal and intimate relations may offer a crucial site for resistance, an arena in which alternative values can be articulated within a system that otherwise divides societies into winners and losers, profit and deficit.
Against this backdrop, Eva Illouz captures this tension with her concept of Emotional Capitalism. According to her, the economic and emotional spheres are no longer separate domains but have become mutually constitutive. This involves a dual process: Economic life increasingly adopts emotional language and practices, while interpersonal and intimate relationships are reorganised according to models of exchange, negotiation, and equity. This article focuses on the latter process. It probes how emotional life, and “love” in particular, has been reshaped by market rationality, and, more importantly, who benefits from this transformation.
Drawing on Illouz’s Cold Intimacies (2007) and Why Love Hurts (2012), I argue that emotional capitalism, while appearing gender-neutral in its emphasis on emotional competence, systematically benefits hegemonic masculinity by rewarding precisely those emotional styles, detachment, control, and strategic self-presentation that masculine socialisation has long cultivated. What emerges is not the disappearance of gender inequality, but its reconfiguration through emotional norms.
The History and Social Life of Emotions
If we now live under emotional capitalism, constituted by the rise of market societies and logic, what was the initial situation, the point of emotional departure? Do emotions have a history, and if so, why does it matter? Emotions are not timeless; rather, they are shaped by social structures, cultural norms, and institutional arrangements. Emotional life has not always been organised around personal calculation and choice. In pre-modern contexts, emotional bonds were often embedded in shared symbolic orders that extended beyond individual preferences. Consider, for instance, the practice of courtly love in medieval Europe. Devotion to an often unattainable beloved was valued precisely because it resisted reciprocity and calculation. The lover’s suffering was not a cost to be minimised but a meaningful expression of fidelity and spiritual refinement. Similarly, arranged marriages subordinated individual desire to family alliances and social continuity. Love, where it developed, was expected to follow commitment rather than precede it. Historically, emotional commitment derived its force from external frameworks such as religion, kinship, and honour that structured relationships beyond individual choice. Importantly, the historical ideas of romantic love and marriage were not based on what we might understand as love today, and we must be careful not to conflate love and emotional commitment when comparing the past and the present, as one does not necessarily confirm the presence of the other. Oftentimes, relations were also historically forged based on calculation, for example, marrying into a wealthy family to secure someone’s future, marrying one’s cousin to keep the estate under the family name, and the finality of marriage in general for women, so that they can have a secure place in society. However, having supposedly moved on from calculated and economic marriages to relationships based on love, we can see a new decline into capitalisation and algorithmisation. Something that became more human through modernity and is reverting to monetisation and profit-oriented behaviour. Illouz argues that late capitalism has progressively eroded frameworks of love and commitment, replacing them with systems of knowledge, control, and calculation. Love has not disappeared, but it has been transformed. It no longer overwhelms the self in the same way; it is instead negotiated, managed, and often constrained by the implicit rationalities of market society. Importantly, this calculation is not only happening in external frameworks, such as the family, but also much deeper: in our internal frameworks.
To understand this transformation, it is crucial to recognise that emotions are not purely internal or natural phenomena. As Illouz insists, they are socially and culturally shaped forms of meaning-making. Emotional responses depend not only on individual psychology but also on context, relationships, and social hierarchies. Illouz argues that emotions, while certainly psychological, are rooted in culture and social relations rather than solely in the individual psyche. Emotions realise and express cultural forms of personhood. For example, the emotional reaction to the sentence “You are late again” is fundamentally influenced by the sender of the sentence. If it comes from one’s boss, the emotional reaction will most likely be shame; if it comes from a colleague, it might be anger; and if it is one’s child waiting in front of a closed school, it will most likely be guilt.
If emotions are socially constituted, they are also historically mutable. The rise of industrial capitalism brought with it profound changes, not only in economic organisation, but also in emotional life. A key driver of this transformation was the emergence of psychology as a dominant framework for understanding the self. Particularly in the twentieth century, with the rise of psychoanalysis, psychological discourse established norms of behaviour and feeling, defining what counts as “healthy,” “normal,” or “deviant”. This development was not merely intellectual and personal; it had institutional and economic consequences: a vast market for advice in the form of literature, pharmaceuticals, workshops, or therapy, all offering recipes to achieve the norm. Illouz argues that this normativity is institutionalised, with the goal of diminishing deviations through psychological discourse and the pursuit of “self-realisation”. Implied is not only a homogenised society, but also one that is hierarchically organised in normal and deviant individuals. Illouz describes how the state ultimately institutionalised the psychological approach in the twentieth century, especially after the Second World War. We still see (maybe even more than ever) the budget allocation for psychosocial services increasing, with the aim of encouraging individuals to pursue social adaptation and well-being. The state, too, played a role in institutionalising this framework, integrating psychological expertise into education, healthcare, and social policy. As Foucault (1978) observed, modern power operates not only through coercion but through the shaping of subjectivity itself. The state organises its power by drawing on conceptions and models of the individual and what this is ought to look like, making it a public issue regulated and disciplined by institutions.
Feminism played an ambivalent role in the rise of what Illouz calls emotional capitalism. In challenging the constraints of the nineteenth-century “separate spheres” and pushing women into public and economic life, disembedded emotional life from the private household and made it speakable, negotiable, and mobile, conditions that also made it more easily absorbed by capitalists and pushed into market logics. Feminism was not innocent here either: in deploying therapeutic language, categorising emotional experience, and insisting on communication, self-reflection, and emotional rights, it contributed to the turn of feelings into objects that could be evaluated, managed, and optimised. At the same time, capitalism and feminism became deeply intertwined, as feminist demands for autonomy and emancipation unintentionally converged with capitalism’s ongoing reorganisation of social reproduction. Feminism was opening up intimate life to new forms of economic rationalisation and exchange, while capitalism could keep taking emotional and care work for granted and rely on it deeply.
Psychologisation and the Marketisation of Emotional Life
Within this context, Illouz identifies a crucial shift: the psychologisation of social life. Psychologisation refers to the tendency to reframe structural or relational problems as individual emotional deficiencies requiring personal intervention. A related process is Intellectualisation, more precisely the translation of diffuse, embodied feelings into objects of reflection, analysis, and strategic management – as learned from the market-driven culture around us. Communicating emotions requires understanding, verbalising, and contextualising one’s subjectivity, turning the self into something enacted, staged, and adjusted. However, love is diffuse and multifaceted, operating in varied ways. Foucault (1978) contends that the topic of sex and love cannot be reduced to discourse, emphasising that the problem lies not in the content of the discourse, but in the very attempt to render it factual through discourse.
Psychologization and intellectualisation of emotions are central to the imposition of capitalist logic on emotional life. They render emotions legible: measurable, comparable, and open to optimisation. At the same time, they individualise emotional difficulties, obscuring their social and structural origins. When dissatisfaction at work is interpreted as a lack of resilience or as a relational strain due to a failure of communication skills, for example, the solution invariably offered is self-work rather than a structural critique of the work environment, where one is discouraged from expressing oneself according to one’s own capabilities or from questioning structural constraints to free self-expression.
In this way, emotional life becomes amenable to market logic. Feelings are treated as resources to be managed, and well-being becomes something to be cultivated through investment of time, effort, and increasingly: money. The self becomes a project, a financial investment, constantly monitored, adjusted, improved.
To make emotional capitalism more concrete, consider the example of self-presentation and partner selection in online dating. Dating platforms encourage individuals to present themselves in highly standardised formats designed to maximise appeal to a broad pool of potential partners. The self is broken down into discrete, comparable elements and evaluated using preselected profile structures, in which users simply insert a name, photos, short prompts, or test results. In this process, individuality is filtered through market-like criteria of visibility, desirability, and efficiency. Users are prompted to continuously assess and optimise their self-presentation based on feedback from matches, likes, and messages. Romantic interest thus becomes measurable and comparable while emotional connection is approached through strategies of branding, choice, and competition, exemplifying how intimate life is increasingly organised according to market logics. This logic shapes not only how individuals present themselves, but also how they select potential partners. Users are encouraged to browse through profiles as if through a catalogue, comparing options, filtering, and making rapid decisions based on limited information, with the ambition of minimising risk and maximising personal satisfaction. What emerges is a distinctly market-oriented form of intimacy: one in which emotional connection is mediated by calculation, and romantic life is organised around choice, competition, and risk. All existing within a technological system in which your “emotional work” becomes more efficient and insightful if you pay for the full app or splurge on in-app purchases.
The Ambivalence of Emotional Capitalism
Yet, the consequences of this emotional transformation are equivocal. Emotional capitalism is best understood as a deeply ambivalent process. The same developments that subject emotional life to market logic have also produced genuine gains. Workplaces, for instance, have become more attentive to employees’ emotional experiences. Hierarchical command structures have partially given way to management approaches that value communication, empathy, and collaboration. Similarly, the rise of psychological language has enabled individuals to articulate forms of suffering that were previously unrecognised, like trauma, burnout, and emotional abuse, thereby opening avenues for recognition, and feminism made society aware of the deeply embedded inequalities carried within.
At the same time, these gains are inseparable from processes of standardisation and control. Emotional expression is increasingly regulated, codified, and evaluated according to institutional norms. Intimate relationships, while more egalitarian in aspiration, are often stripped of spontaneity and reconfigured as matters of negotiation and utility. The ideal of self-realisation, while democratising the pursuit of a meaningful personal life, also subjects individuals to continuous self-surveillance, optimisation, and the reproduction of what is regarded as the norm in our current system of thought (including all its internalised inequalities).
Emotional capitalism, then, does not simply oppress; it offers real goods: recognition, voice, therapeutic relief, while simultaneously being embedded within market logics and ideals of inequality.
Emotional Capitalism and Gender
As indicated above, emotional capitalism does not operate in a neutral social field. Rather, it intersects with existing power structures, particularly those of gender. The connection between emotions and gender is multifaceted and complex. Common assumptions portray women as the more emotionally attuned gender; however, research suggests that men often outperform women on measures of emotional intelligence (Ahmad et al., 2009). These tests assess the ability to recognise emotional cues, interpret them contextually, regulate emotional responses, and deploy emotions strategically. This should not surprise us if we take Illouz seriously, as emotional capitalism does not reward raw emotional vulnerability but rather emotional self-regulation. Such competencies align closely with masculine-coded ideals of control and detachment, thereby reinforcing male advantage within emotional economies.
Illouz herself focuses primarily on the system of emotional capitalism and is careful not to advance a crude claim of domination of the kind I am developing here. I would argue, however, that her analysis implicitly points toward asymmetrical advantages produced by emotional capitalism rather than universally shared ones. Notably, these advantages are not evenly distributed even among men: rather, they are hierarchically ordered, as masculinities are shaped by class, institutional position, race, and sexual orientation (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). It is therefore important to specify that emotional capitalism advantages Hegemonic Masculinity, not masculinity in general. In the following, I will use the words ‘men’ and ‘hegemonic masculinity’ somewhat interchangeably for the sake of simplicity (even though what we are trying to examine is certainly not a simple relation). Moreover, I would like to remark that my aim is not to blame this tragedy on any male individual nor on the community of people identifying as male. It is rather a critique of the Western societal conception of masculinity, economic structures, and hierarchical power dynamics.
Interestingly, the concept of hegemonic masculinity itself is grounded in Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony of capitalism. Gramsci argued that the inequalities produced by capitalism are sustained less through direct coercion than through the everyday consent of individuals to a dominant cultural order (Gramsci et al., 2015). This culture defines which values, behaviours, and ways of life are considered normal, reasonable, and desirable. Gramsci argued that this is also applicable to masculinity. In this sense, hegemonic masculinity can be understood as the culturally dominant form of masculinity that is taken to be natural and legitimate, not because it is universally embodied, but because it is widely recognised as the standard and carried by its ascendant pursuit. Central to this concept of masculinity is the privileging of traits such as physical strength, competitiveness, independence, and, crucially, emotional control. These traits define the ideal, even though only a minority of men “naturally” and fully embody them (Connell, 1988). As Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) argue, hegemonic masculinity functions as a social practice that legitimises gender hierarchy by subordinating both women and alternative masculinities. It establishes a framework of what is acceptable, structured in part by the fear of being associated with subordinated positions. Within this framework, men often follow a dynamic social script of “what a man is like,” adjusting their behaviour, mostly unconsciously, to avoid social sanctions.
In the context of emotional capitalism, this means that men are incentivised to master their emotions, as control and regulation of emotions increasingly become central to social and economic life rather than to emotions themselves. They may even incorporate selected elements of emotional expressiveness, traits historically coded as feminine, in order to appear reflective, communicative, or progressive, without relinquishing structural advantage. This can be understood as a pragmatic adaptation to a social environment that formally promotes gender equality while still rewarding traditionally masculine forms of control. Capitalist values thus shape and reinforce hegemonic masculinity, setting the standard by which all forms of masculinity are measured and legitimised. Patriarchy, capitalism, emotional capitalism, and hegemonic masculinity therefore operate not as separate systems, but as mutually reinforcing structures.
Men do not fail at emotional capitalism; on the contrary, they often master this affective-economic system. This provides them with an advantage in reproducing the gender hierarchy, as their emotional behaviour aligns with the prevailing relational norms of contemporary Western societies. Emotional competence, for example, when intellectualised, is automatically redefined in ways that privilege masculine-coded traits such as rationalisation and control, while devaluing forms of emotional labour associated with care, such as interdependence, maintenance, and vulnerability. Given that men are socialised to withhold emotions, while women are more often socialised to provide and manage them (Suazo et al., 2021), men benefit from a system in which emotions become measurable, manageable, and detachable from their relational context. Tools such as emotional intelligence assessments or communication training further reinforce this shift, rewarding those who can strategically regulate and deploy emotions. This closely maps onto Connell’s (1988) account of hegemonic masculinity, in which control and self-discipline are central markers of dominance. From this follows that emotional expression itself becomes hierarchically organised; it is not equally valued across genders. While structural inequalities may appear to diminish in the wake of the “emotional revolution,” the psychologisation and intellectualisation of emotions under capitalism ensure that patriarchal power persists in less visible but no less powerful forms. Privilege comes to appear natural, while inequality is reframed as a matter of individual psychology.
When emotions are increasingly framed as matters of self-work, self-regulation, and self-optimisation, the consequence is that structural inequalities seemingly disappear from view. When emotional labour is treated as an individual capacity rather than a socially distributed burden, the disproportionate responsibility inter alia women in heterosexual relationships carry for managing relationships, smoothing conflicts, and providing care is no longer recognised as a structural issue. Instead, it is reframed as a question of personal disposition or competence. A woman who feels exhausted by the constant demand to regulate not only her own emotions but also those of others is encouraged to interpret this exhaustion as a failure of boundaries, resilience, or self-care, rather than as the result of an unequal distribution of emotional labour. In this way, patriarchal power relations do not vanish but are recast as personal emotional deficits. Hence, this transformation benefits dominant groups in several ways. First, privilege appears natural: those who perform less emotional labour seem simply more autonomous or better adjusted. Second, inequality appears psychological: differences in emotional burden are attributed to personality rather than social structure. Third, the hierarchy appears merit-based: those who succeed within this system appear to do so because they possess superior emotional skills, rather than because the system itself is structured in their favour.
Drawing on Connell’s (1988) concept of hegemonic masculinity, we can understand masculinity not as a fixed set of traits but as a socially dominant ideal, one that values control, autonomy, competitiveness, and emotional restraint. Crucially, these are precisely the qualities that emotional capitalism rewards. Emotional competence, in this system, does not mean vulnerability or openness; it means the ability to regulate, manage, and deploy emotions strategically. This alignment produces a structural advantage. Men, socialised into emotional detachment and control, are better positioned to succeed within a system that treats emotions as resources. Structural inequalities thus appear to vanish, even as they persist. Privilege is naturalised, inequality is psychologised, and the hierarchy appears meritocratic.
Conclusion
Rationality functions as an institutionalised cultural force that shapes emotional life through means–end relationships. To rationalise love is to weaken its emotional intensity by translating it into knowledge, traits, and explanations. Love, however, resists full justification or cognitive grounding. It requires enchantment, and its disenchantment is therefore a fundamental cultural, cognitive, and institutional process of modernity.
In line with Illouz’s arguments, I argued that emotional capitalism reshapes not only how we feel and love but how power operates within emotional life. By rendering emotions calculable, manageable, and subject to optimisation, it aligns intimate relationships with market logics. Yet these transformations do not unfold on neutral ground. They intersect with gendered patterns of socialisation, producing asymmetrical advantages that favour hegemonic masculinity. What this diagnosis reveals is not simply that capitalism has entered the realm of emotion, but that it has done so in ways that obscure its own effects. Inequality no longer appears primarily as domination but as a difference in emotional competence. However, this competence is measured in an unequal competition. Emotional modernisation under capitalism changed which emotions are valued, but not who defines that value. Prevailing masculine norms make masculine-coded emotional styles the benchmark, effectively masculinising emotions. The gender hierarchy persists through emotional means rather than despite them, and power is exercised not despite emotional life, but through it.
Men can be advantaged and emotionally alienated at the same time. The norms that reward emotional control and detachment also limit access to forms of intimacy that require vulnerability and openness. Men who successfully conform to these norms may gain power and autonomy within relationships, but they often do so at the expense of emotional depth. Their inner lives become constrained by the standards that grant them advantage. This is not an accidental by-product but a structural feature of hegemonic masculinity: emotional restriction sustains the gender hierarchy by discouraging identification with more vulnerable, “feminised” positions.
To recognise this is not yet to offer a solution. But it is to make visible what would otherwise remain hidden: that even our most intimate experiences are shaped by structures of capitalism and power, and that these structures continue to organise who benefits, and at whose expense.
Clara Sophie Feldmann holds a degree in psychology, with a specialisation in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, complemented by studies in Philosophy and Gender & Sexuality. Her academic work is grounded in neuroscience, practical philosophy, psychology and transdisciplinary feminist thought, focusing on how systems of knowledge and power shape individual identity, social structures, and political life. Influenced by critical theory, she examines unsettling questions such as how our sense of self is shaped, whether free will is more illusion than fact, and how much of “us” is really just our surroundings speaking through us. Analysing and diagnosing individuals and society, particularly in issues of representation, gender and class inequalities, and the ways knowledge is produced and shared, she often has to leave her own questions unanswered.
References
Ahmad, S., Bangash, H., & Khan, S. A. (2009). Emotional intelligence and gender differences. Sarhad Journal of Agriculture, 25(1), 127–130.
Connell, R. W. (1988). Gender and Power: society, the person, and sexual politics. Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 17(5), 595. https://doi.org/10.2307/2073932
Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept. Gender & Society, 19(6), 829–859. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243205278639
Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality. Volume I: An Introduction (R. Hurley, Trans.; Vol. 1, p. 3-13, 15-49). Vintage Books.
Frevert, U. (2019). Kapitalismus, Märkte und Moral. Residenz Verlag.
Gramsci, A., Hoare, Q., & Nowell-Smith, G. (2015). Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. http://www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?SOTH;S10019883
Hegemonic masculinity. Research Starters, EBSCO Research. (n.d.). EBSCO. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/political-science/hegemonic-masculinity#full-article
Illouz, E. (2007). Cold Intimacies: the Making of Emotional Capitalism. Polity.
Illouz, E. (2012). Why love hurts: A sociological explanation. Polity.
Siebeck, M. (2016). Bodies and Affects in Market Societies (A. Schmidt & C. Conrad, Eds.; pp. 1–10). Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Suazo, N. C., Reyes, M. E., Contractor, A. A., Thomas, E. D., & Weiss, N. H. (2021). Exploring the moderating role of gender in the relation between emotional expressivity and posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity among Black trauma‐exposed college students at a historically Black university. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 78(2), 343–356. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23226
Raffia 