Beyond the emotional event: Six studies on the social sharing of emotion

Abstract

We argue that emotion cannot only be conceived of as a short-lived and intrapersonal phenomenon. Rather, based on five theoretical arguments, we propose that the social sharing of an emotional experience forms an integral part of the emotional processes. A series of six studies investigated different aspects of this hypothesis. Study 1 showed that an overwhelming majority of people reported sharing their emotional experiences and that the memories of these experiences tended to come back spontaneously to their consciousness. No difference was found among emotions. Using a different procedure, Studies 2 and 3 replicated these findings in two different populations. In addition, these studies provided indications that women share their experiences with a wider array of individuals than do men. The first three studies did not find any differences among emotions, but they did not include shame. It could be argued that people are less inclined to socially share shame experiences which are typically elicited by breaking social rules. Study 4 specifically investigated this hypothesis. No differences among shame and other emotions were found except for the delay of the first sharing of the experience. Study 5 constituted a first investigation of whether the social sharing of emotion is also a significant process in now Western cultures. A comparison between Dutch and Surinamese people failed to reveal any significant difference. Based on the findings of the first five studies, a correlational model was designed in Study 6. It tested the interrelationships among disruptiveness of the emotion, social sharing, mental rumination, and recovery from the emotion disruption. A coherent pattern of findings emerged, showing that social sharing can be conceived as a bi-dimensional concept defined by features of amount and delay of sharing. In addition, both social sharing and mental rumination varied according to the disruptiveness of the emotion. Surprisingly, however, recovery could not be related to social sharing, mental rumination, or to the time elapsed since the episode.     

Social learning modulates the lateralization of emotional valence

Although neuropsychological studies of lateralization of emotion have emphasized valence (positive vs. negative) or type (basic vs. complex) dimensions, the interaction between the two dimensions has yet to be elucidated. The purpose of the current study was to test the hypothesis that recognition of basic emotions is processed preferentially by the right prefrontal cortex (PFC), whereas recognition of complex social emotions is processed preferentially by the left PFC. Experiment 1 assessed the ability of healthy controls and patients with right and left PFC lesions to recognize basic and complex emotions. Experiment 2 modeled the patient’s data of Experiment 1 on healthy participants under lateralized displays of the emotional stimuli. Both experiments support the Type as well as the Valence Hypotheses. However, our findings indicate that the Valence Hypothesis holds for basic but less so for complex emotions. It is suggested that, since social learning overrules the basic preference of valence in the hemispheres, the processing of complex emotions in the hemispheres is less affected by valence.     

The activation of representative emotional verbal contexts interacts with vertical spatial axis

Several experimental studies have shown that there exists an association between emotion words and the vertical spatial axis. However, the specific conditions under which this conceptual–physical interaction emerges are still unknown, and no study has been devised to test whether longer linguistic units than words can lead to a mapping of emotions on vertical space. In Experiment 1, Spanish and Colombian participants performed a representative verbal emotional contexts production task (RVEC task) requiring participants to produce RVEC for the emotions of joy, sadness, surprise, anger, fear, and disgust. The results showed gender and cultural differences regarding the average number of RVEC produced. The most representative contexts of joy and sadness obtained in Experiment 1 were used in Experiment 2 in a novel spatial–emotional congruency verification task (SECV task). After reading a sentence, the participants had to judge whether a probe word, displayed in either a high or low position on the screen, was congruent or incongruent with the previous sentence. The question was whether the emotion induced by the sentence could modulate the responses to the probes as a function of their position in a vertical axis by means of a metaphorical conceptual–spatial association. Overall, the results indicate that a mapping of emotions on vertical space can occur for linguistic units larger than words, but only when the task demands an explicit affective evaluation of the target.     

Blue or red? The effects of colour on the emotions of Chinese people

Two experiments were performed to examine the effects of red and blue on the emotional pleasure of Chinese people. Experiment 1 explored the effects of the ‘physical’ colours red and blue on emotion, and the results showed that red induced positive and negative emotion, while blue only induced positive emotion. Experiment 2 further explored the effects of the ‘verbal’ colours red and blue on emotion, and the results showed that red induced only positive emotion, while blue induced neither positive nor negative emotion. The findings indicate that the influence of colour on emotion is rooted in both natural and social associations. For Chinese, the associations between blue and positive emotion, and red and negative emotion, were natural associations; however, the associations between red and positive emotion were social associations. Moreover, physical colour and verbal colour stimuli induced emotions by activating different mechanisms: physical colour induced emotions via both natural and social associations, whereas verbal colour induced emotions via social associations.     

Les passions : aspects émotionnels et sociaux

Passion is defined as a strong inclination toward an activity that people love and in which they invest time and energy (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85 [2003] 756–767). Whereas various studies investigated the motives that people allege for engaging in sharing emotions, no data exist about motives for sharing passion. As passions have a strong emotional component and as emotions are virtually always socially shared (e.g. Rimé, B., Finkenauer, C., Luminet, O., Zech, E., & Philippot, P. (1998). Social Sharing of Emotion : New Evidence and New Questions. In W. Stroebe and M. Hewstone (Eds.), European Review of Social Psychology (Vol. 9., pp. 145–189). Chichester : Wiley), we hypothesized that passionate people would strongly incline in sharing their passion with people around them. A first study examined the link between passion and emotion and showed that the more the activity was invested by passion, the more emotions are intense and positive. In a second study, we considered the relations between passion and social sharing and concluded that the social sharing of passion does not result solely from the emotional component of the shared passion. A third study explored alleged motives for sharing passion and revealed that the more the target is amateur, the larger the sharing is. Motives alleged by respondents for sharing their passion varied broadly as a function of target type. Exchange, learning, pleasure and affiliation motivate social sharing with other amateurs; promotion, information and proselytism are the most salient motives for sharing with the non connoisseur; ego-defence, activity justification, interest in other's opinion and proselytism dominate when addressing critic persons.     

Emotion-regulation choice

Despite centuries of speculation about how to manage negative emotions, little is actually known about which emotion-regulation strategies people choose to use when confronted with negative situations of varying intensity. On the basis of a new process conception of emotion regulation, we hypothesized that in low-intensity negative situations, people would show a relative preference to choose to regulate emotions by engagement reappraisal, which allows emotional processing. However, we expected people in high-intensity negative situations to show a relative preference to choose to regulate emotions by disengagement distraction, which blocks emotional processing at an early stage before it gathers force. In three experiments, we created emotional contexts that varied in intensity, using either emotional pictures (Experiments 1 and 2) or unpredictable electric stimulation (Experiment 3). In response to these emotional contexts, participants chose between using either reappraisal or distraction as an emotion-regulation strategy. Results in all experiments supported our hypothesis. This pattern in the choice of emotion-regulation strategies has important implications for the understanding of healthy adaptation.     

The effects of nonconsciously priming emotion concepts on behavior

Current empirical evidence regarding nonconsciously priming emotion concepts is limited to positively versus negatively valenced affect. This article demonstrates that specific, equally valenced emotion concepts can be nonconsciously activated, remain inaccessible to conscious awareness, and still affect behavior in an emotion-specific fashion. In Experiment 1A, participants subliminally primed with guilty emotion adjectives showed lower indulgence than did participants subliminally primed with sad emotion adjectives; even after the addition of a 5-min time delay, these results were replicated in Experiment 1B. Participants in the different priming conditions showed no differences in their subjective emotion ratings and were unaware of the emotion prime or concept activation. Experiments 2A and 2B replicated these findings using a helping measure, demonstrating that individuals primed with guilt adjectives show more helping than do individuals primed with sadness adjectives. In all studies, effects were moderated by individuals' specific emotion-response habits and characteristics.     

Shared emotions

Existing scientific concepts of group or shared or collective emotion fail to appreciate several elements of collectivity in such emotions. Moreover, the idea of shared emotions is threatened by the individualism of emotions that comes in three forms: ontological, epistemological, and physical. The problem is whether or not we can provide a plausible account of “straightforwardly shared” emotions without compromising our intuitions about the individualism of emotions. I discuss two philosophical accounts of shared emotions that explain the collectivity of emotions in terms of their intentional structure: Margaret Gilbert's plural subject account, and Hans Bernhard Schmid's phenomenological account. I argue that Gilbert's view fails because it relegates affective experience into a contingent role in emotions and because a joint commitment to feel amounts to the creation of a feeling rule rather than to an emotion. The problems with Schmid's view are twofold: first, a phenomenological fusion of feelings is not necessary for shared emotions and second, Schmid is not sensitive enough to different forms of shared concerns. I then outline my own typology that distinguishes between weakly, moderately, and strongly shared emotions on the basis of the participants’ shared concerns of different degree of collectivity, on the one hand, and the synchronization of their emotional responses, on the other hand. All kind of shared emotions in my typology are consistent with the individualism of emotions, while the question about “straightforward sharing” is argued to be of secondary importance.     

情绪分享和感知恋人回应对亲密关系满意度的影响

研究通过问卷星收集了150对异性恋情侣的情绪分享、感知恋人回应、亲密关系满意度的数据,并采用行动者-对象互依模型进行统计分析。结果显示：（1）情绪分享通过感知恋人回应的中介作用影响亲密关系满意度。女性的积极情绪分享与男性的消极情绪分享直接正向影响自身亲密关系满意度。（2）男性的积极情绪分享正向影响女性的亲密关系满意度。研究揭示了亲密关系中情绪分享和感知恋人回应对关系满意度的影响特点。     

Reality compared with its alternatives: age differences in judgments of regret and relief

Three experiments examined developmental change in children's understanding of regret and relief, two second-order emotions whose quality depends on a comparison between reality and "what might have been." In Experiment 1, participants 7 years of age and older, but not 5-year-olds, made regret-related emotion-response judgments that took into account a comparison of reality with its alternatives. In Experiment 2, 5-year-olds judged that an individual would feel better, rather than worse, when a counterfactual outcome was better than what actually occurred (the opposite of the pattern found with older children and adults). Experiment 3 focused on the understanding of relief. In contrast to the findings from Experiment I, the 7-year-olds in Experiment 3 made their judgments solely on the basis of what actually occurred.     

Escaping affect: how motivated emotion regulation creates insensitivity to mass suffering

As the number of people in need of help increases, the degree of compassion people feel for them ironically tends to decrease. This phenomenon is termed the collapse of compassion. Some researchers have suggested that this effect happens because emotions are not triggered by aggregates. We provide evidence for an alternative account. People expect the needs of large groups to be potentially overwhelming, and, as a result, they engage in emotion regulation to prevent themselves from experiencing overwhelming levels of emotion. Because groups are more likely than individuals to elicit emotion regulation, people feel less for groups than for individuals. In Experiment 1, participants displayed the collapse of compassion only when they expected to be asked to donate money to the victims. This suggests that the effect is motivated by self-interest. Experiment 2 showed that the collapse of compassion emerged only for people who were skilled at emotion regulation. In Experiment 3, we manipulated emotion regulation. Participants who were told to down-regulate their emotions showed the collapse of compassion, but participants who were told to experience their emotions did not. We examined the time course of these effects using a dynamic rating to measure affective responses in real time. The time course data suggested that participants regulate emotion toward groups proactively, by preventing themselves from ever experiencing as much emotion toward groups as toward individuals. These findings provide initial evidence that motivated emotion regulation drives insensitivity to mass suffering.     

Perceiving emotions: Cueing social categorization processes and attentional control through facial expressions

Individuals spontaneously categorise other people on the basis of their gender, ethnicity and age. But what about the emotions they express? In two studies we tested the hypothesis that facial expressions are similar to other social categories in that they can function as contextual cues to control attention. In Experiment 1 we associated expressions of anger and happiness with specific proportions of congruent/incongruent flanker trials. We also created consistent and inconsistent category members within each of these two general contexts. The results demonstrated that participants exhibited a larger congruency effect when presented with faces in the emotional group associated with a high proportion of congruent trials. Notably, this effect transferred to inconsistent members of the group. In Experiment 2 we replicated the effects with faces depicting true and false smiles. Together these findings provide consistent evidence that individuals spontaneously utilise emotions to categorise others and that such categories determine the allocation of attentional control.     

面孔表情和声音情绪信息整合对返回抑制的影响

返回抑制(inhibition of return, IOR)与情绪刺激都具有引导注意偏向、提高搜索效率的特点, 但二者间是否存在一定的交互作用迄今为止尚不明确。研究采用“线索-目标”范式并在视听双通道呈现情绪刺激来考察情绪刺激的加工与IOR的交互作用。实验1中情绪刺激以单通道视觉面孔或一致的视听双通道呈现, 实验2通过在视听通道呈现不一致的情绪刺激进一步考察视听双通道情绪一致刺激对IOR的影响是否是由听觉通道一致的情绪刺激导致的, 即是否对听觉通道的情绪刺激进行了加工。结果发现, 视听双通道情绪一致刺激能够削弱IOR, 但情绪不一致刺激与IOR之间不存在交互作用, 并且单双通道的IOR不存在显著差异。研究结果表明仅在视听双通道呈现情绪一致刺激时, 才会影响同一阶段的IOR, 这进一步支持了IOR的知觉抑制理论。     

“上下意象图式”对汉语成语感情色彩加工的影响

通过两个实验,考察了＂上下意象图式＂对汉语成语感情色彩加工的影响。实验一发现,成语感情色彩加工存在＂隐喻一致效应＂,褒义的成语呈现在屏幕上方加工得更快,贬义的成语呈现在屏幕下方加工得更快、更准。实验二消除了具体空间信息的影响,发现仅有抽象符号水平的联结,＂上＂、＂下＂概念不能影响汉语成语感情色彩的加工。研究结果支持隐喻理论和具身认知观。     

Judgment under emotional certainty and uncertainty: the effects of specific emotions on information processing.

The authors argued that emotions characterized by certainty appraisals promote heuristic processing, whereas emotions characterized by uncertainty appraisals result in systematic processing. The 1st experiment demonstrated that the certainty associated with an emotion affects the certainty experienced in subsequent situations. The next 3 experiments investigated effects on processing of emotions associated with certainty and uncertainty. Compared with emotions associated with uncertainty, emotions associated with certainty resulted in greater reliance on the expertise of a source of a persuasive message in Experiment 2, more stereotyping in Experiment 3, and less attention to argument quality in Experiment 4. In contrast to previous theories linking valence and processing, these findings suggest that the certainty appraisal content of emotions is also important in determining whether people engage in systematic or heuristic processing.     

Emotional Responses to Disfigured Faces: The Influences of Perceived Anonymity,Empathy, and Disgust Sensitivity

Two experiments investigated self-reported emotional reactions to photographs of people with attractive, unattractive, or structurally disfigured faces. In Experiment 1, participants viewing disfigured faces reported raised levels of sorrow and curiosity but not raised levels of negative emotions. In Experiment 2, there was more negative emotion and less positive emotion reported under conditions of relatively high anonymity, compared to low anonymity, specific to disfigured faces, suggesting that self-reports are influenced by social desirability. Trait empathy was associated with sorrow and negative emotions when viewing disfigured faces. Disgust sensitivity was associated with negative emotions and inversely associated with positive emotions.     

死亡意识的恐惧管理和悲伤管理

基于悲伤情绪的功能及效应,提出死亡意识的“悲伤管理假设”。实验1采用电生理、微表情、主观报告等方法探索死亡意识伴随的情绪变化;实验2和实验3对比死亡意识的“悲伤管理”和“恐惧管理”,并探索情绪的中介作用。结果发现：死亡意识诱发悲伤和恐惧(尤其是悲伤),且死亡反思诱发更多的悲伤;恐惧在死亡意识与外在人生目标间起中介作用;悲伤(而非恐惧)背景音乐下,死亡意识使个体更重视内在人生目标。上述结果为死亡意识的“悲伤管理”提供了实证依据,表明在悲伤的情绪中加工死亡意识可能促进个体的内在成长,这对疫情等社会灾难时期的心理救援具有启示意义。     

Left hemisphere specialization for response to positive emotional expressions: a divided output methodology

An extensive literature credits the right hemisphere with dominance for processing emotion. Conflicting literature finds left hemisphere dominance for positive emotions. This conflict may be resolved by attending to processing stage. A divided output (bimanual) reaction time paradigm in which response hand was varied for emotion (angry; happy) in Experiments 1 and 2 and for gender (male; female) in Experiment 3 focused on response to emotion rather than perception. In Experiments 1 and 2, reaction time was shorter when right-hand responses indicated a happy face and left-hand responses an angry face, as compared to reversed assignment. This dissociation did not obtain with incidental emotion (Experiment 3). Results support the view that response preparation to positive emotional stimuli is left lateralized.