L5 Emotion is Social

Question 1

What is the Facial Feedback Hypothesis?

Answer 1

States that people’s facial activity influences their affective response. There are 2 possible mechanisms:

1. Cognitive - people make inferences about what they are feeling based on their facial expression
2. Physiological - the affective response can occur in absence of cognitive interpretation

Question 2

What did Strack et al. (1998) do to support the FFH without cognition?

Answer 2

Holding a pen with one’s teeth requires the zygomaticus major or risorius muscles that are used in smiling; whereas holding it by the lips inhibits the use of those muscles
The pen exercise was used for future study of psychomotor coordination (shown cartoon and decide how amused you are)

Question 3

What did Strack et al. (1998) find?

Answer 3

PPs are more amused by cartoons when holding the pen with their teeth and less amused when holding the pen by the lips
The control condition = holding pen in non-dominant hand
This was shown for amusement (which is affective) but not funniness (cognitive)
Mixed findings in support of this effect, so the FFH isn’t necessarily invalid but may require cognition

Question 4

What has FFH got to do with the transfer of emotion?

Answer 4

It is the second of 2 components required for primitive emotion contagion, the first component is motor mimicry
Emotion can be produced by simply seeing the expressive phenomena or gestures of emotion in another individual

Question 5

What evidence did Friedman et al. (1982) find for emotion transfer?

Answer 5

Asked groups of 3 PPs to sit facing each other in silence for 2 mins
Pre-tested so that 1PP scored high and 2PPs scored low on the affective communication test which measures charisma
Found that inexpressives changed their mood more than expressives and their mood changed to look more like the expessive’s initial mood

Question 6

What is motor mimicry?

Answer 6

Emotions communicated through unintentional imitation of expressive gestures
MM followed by facial feedback results in emotion contagion
Probably part of a more general perception-behaviour link in which perceiving behaviour triggers the same action codes in the observer

Question 7

What did Neumann and Strack (2000) find?

Answer 7

The simply listening to the emotional tone in a voice was sufficient to induce a congruent emotion

Question 8

What does emotion contagion do?

Answer 8

Enables congruent emotions to spread from person to person

Question 9

What is the function of emotion contagion according to Hazy and Byoatzis (2015)?

Answer 9

Enables emotional understanding and identification with others
Provides proto-organising states that enables or prevents cooperation

Question 10

What two processes does emotion contagion occur through?

Answer 10

They act in tandem
Reactive processes: which occur automatically without awareness e.g. primitive emotional contagion
Inferential processes: occur consciously e.g. by appraisal of other people’s motives or by social comparison ‘my friends seem happy maybe I am too’
Deng and Hu (2018) suggest that happiness contagion involves mimicry while anger processing involves social appraisal

Question 11

What did Joiner (1994) find as a social effect of emotion contagion?

Answer 11

Showed that individuals living with a depressed roommate were more likely to become depressed themselves

Question 12

What did Totterdell et al. (2004) find about organisational emotion contagion?

Answer 12

The affect of two employees was more related if they were connected in the network
An employee’s affect could be predicted from the weighted affect of everyone else in the network

Question 13

What did Fowler et al. (2008) find about emotion contagion in communities?

Answer 13

A 20 year community study found that people’s happiness was related to the happiness of the people to whom they were connected, even when the connections were indirect (e.g. via another person)

Question 14

What did Covrello et al. (2014) find about FB users and emotion contagion?

Answer 14

Rainfall not only influenced the emotional content of user’s status messages (direct influence) but it also affected the emotional content of the status messages of friends in cities where it was not raining (indirect influence)

Question 15

What is interpersonal emotion regulation?

Answer 15

Behaviours that change how someone feels e.g. praise, helping, criticism

Question 16

What can be seen in emotion transmission in groups?

Answer 16

One person can affect the mood of the group
The ripple effect - a confederate can bring the mood of other group members into line with the emotions expressed
Linkage of mood in teammates can happen independently of shared events and it can affect how the individual performs

Question 17

What is an affective tone?

Answer 17

When the mood is sufficiently consistent within a group

The group can then be treated as a variable in its own right

Question 18

What is the argument for emotions are social by Parkinson (1996)?

Answer 18

Many of the causes of emotion are interpersonally, institutionally or culturally defined
Emotions serve interpersonal and cultural functions
They are communicative
Cognitive and physiological approaches need supplementing by social psychological analysis

Question 19

What has been suggested to be the social functionality of emotion?

Answer 19

Emotional expressions increase when there is an audience even if that audience is imagined
They make claims about the personal meaning of a topic of potential mutual interest in an ongoing relationship
Emotions are ways of aligning and realigning interpersonal and intergroup relations

Question 20

What is the emotions as social information model? (van Kleef, 2009)

Answer 20

Emotions regulate social interactions by triggering affective reactions and inferences in observers
These can converge or compete
Effectiveness of this depends on the observer’s information processing and relational factors

Question 21

What do emotions do in relation to social function?

Answer 21

Tell us how we are doing in relation to our social goals (e.g. we become angry if our status is threatened)
Regulate the things that cause them (e.g. we stay angry to maintain our status)
Create and break social relationships (e.g. we use anger to declare conflict)
Communicate our goals to others (e.g. we use anger to demand respect)

Question 22

What is the function of sharing emotions?

Answer 22

To make us feel better (a problem shared is a problem halved)
It strengthens social bonds
Means we can distribute knowledge about important evens across a social community

Question 23

What did Rime (2009) find?

Answer 23

The impulse to share emotions is strong
People report about one episode a day being shared with them (primary sharing) and share about 75% of these (secondary sharing)
More intense episodes more likely to be shared but it doesn’t seem to reduce the impact of the emotion and can even heighten it by reactivating the memory

Question 24

What did Keltner et al. propose?

Answer 24

That there are 3 main types of social motivation and that emotions move us in relation to these:

1. Attachment (offers protection): anxiety, comfort
2. Affiliation (offers bonding): sadness, joy
3. Assertion (offers status): shame, anger

Question 25

What did Gottsman & Levenson (2000) find when studying married partners?

Answer 25

4 most damaging behaviours were criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling and contempt
Use of these during discussion of conflict predicted whether couple would be divorced 17 years later with 93% accuracy
Contempt was most toxic because it diminishes the partner

Question 26

What was found with forgiveness in close relationships?

Answer 26

That less forgiveness may be better for maintaining satisfaction of couples with problems even though it is associated with negative emotions

Question 27

Why might anger be beneficial in close relationships?

Answer 27

As it can readjust the relationship when one person feels wronged
But sometimes angry negotiators achieve less successful outcomes

Question 28

What is the proposed undoing effect of positive emotion?

Answer 28

Shown that positive emotions undo the after effects of negative emotions
Positivity ratio: flourishing is promoted when positive experiences exceed negative experiences but only up to a point

Question 29

What has been found surrounding distress and behaviour?

Answer 29

People prioritise immediate gratification when distressed

People will eat more cookies when they feel sad

Question 30

What did Baumeister et al. (2007) propose?

Answer 30

That emotional outcomes are used as feedback to guide future behaviour
Emotions are rarely the immediate cause of behaviour, instead behaviour is used to pursue or avoid anticipated emotions