Emotional arousal and affiliation

Schachter's 1959 emotional comparison theory was criticized by Sarnoff and Zimbardo 1961, who demonstrated that there are certain kinds of emotional arousal in which isolation is preferred. The generality of the theory was restricted and the direction of affiliative behaviors in different emotional-arousal conditions was questioned. In an attempt to reconcile the opposing findings, affiliative reactions to general and specific emotional arousal were compared. General arousal, anxiety state, was experimentally induced by confronting subjects with unspecified and cognitively unclear threat which allowed undetermined modes of personal interpretations. Specific arousal was induced by replicating Sarnoff and Zimbardo's experimental procedures. As predicted, general arousal increased affiliation while specific arousal decreased it. Birth order failed to interact significantly with any variables, and did not affect affiliation.Based on present and previous findings, some generalizations about emotional comparison and affiliation were offered, and problems of studying underlying motivations for affiliation were discussed.