Social explanations of emotion Flashcards
How emotion is transmitted from person to person
1) Facial feedback hypothesis (FFH)
2 possible mechanisms?
Strack et al(1988) - pen experiment
suggests that people’s facial activity influences their affective response
2 possible mechanisms:
- cognitive: people make inferences about what they’re feeling based on their facial expression
- physiological: the affective response can occur in the absence of cognitive interpretation (automatic)
Strack et al (1988) used pen experiement to support FFH WITHOUT cognition
- holding a pen with teeth requires the zygomaticus major or risorius muscles that are used in smiling; whereas holding it with lis inhibits the use of those muscles
(between lips = grumpy/ between teeth = more likely to laugh as laughing muscles activated)
found:
- p’s more amused by cartoons when holding pen between teeth (+less amused with lips)
–> shown for amusement (affective) but not funniness (cognitive)
-this was not effective when pen was only held at time of making judgement (= experience of emotional stimulus, not just cognitive judgement that was affected)
- some replications, some haven’t replicated
= FFH not invalid, may require cognition (Wagenmakers et al, 2016)
How emotion is transmitted from person to person
2) motor mimicry
motor mimicry = emotions communicated through unintentional imitation of expressive gestures, in a process known as ‘motor mimicry’ (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999)
- motor mimicry, followed by facial feedback results in emotion contagion (observer experiences same emotion) –> probably part of a more general perception - behaviour link in which perceiving behaviour triggers the same action codes in observer
- Neuman & Strack(2000) demonstrated that simply listening to emotional tone of voice was sufficient to induce a congruent emotion
= 1 of the 2 components reared for primitive emotion contagion (2nd is FFH)
- emotion can be produced ‘by simply seeing in another individual the expressive phenomena, the gestures of emotion (Maranon, 1950)
–> evidence from Friedman & Riggio (1982) study:
asked 3 groups of p’s to sit facing each other in silence for two minutes
- pre-tested to show that 1 p scored high and 2 scored low on Affective communication test (measure of charisma)
found: unexpressives changed their mood more than the expressives, and their mood changed to look more like the expressives initial mood
–> mimic same muscular pattern = receive feedback from this movement (=same emotional state as the other person)
Emotion contagion
- 2 types of processes?
= enables congruent emotions to spread from person to person
function (Hazy & Boyatzis, 2015)
- enables emotional understanding and identification with others
- provides proto-organising state that enables or prevents cooperation
occurs through 2 types of process, which can act out in tandem:
1) reactive processes = occur automatically without awareness (‘primitive emotional contagion’ by Hathield, Cacioppo & Rapson, 1994 is one example)
2) inferential processes = occur consciously, for example by appraisal of other people’s motives or by social comparison (eg. my friends seem happy, maybe i am too)
Deng & HU(2018) suggest:
- happiness contagion involves mimicry, while anger processing involves social appraisal
contagion effect:
- competes with other influences on emotion so small effect
- influenced by a number of factors eg. susceptibility and situational certainty
-but may have cumulative and far-reaching effects
social effects of emotion contagion dyad organisation community online networks (2 studies)
Dyad
- joiner(1994) - more likely to become depressed if you live with depressed roommate
Organisation
- Totterdell (2004) - affect in employee networkds
found
affect of 2 employees was more related if they were connected in the network
an employees affect could be predicted from the weighted affect of everyone elses in the network
Community
- Fowler & Christakis (2008) - used 20yr community study to show people’s happiness was related to the happiness of the people to whom they were connected (even when indirect ie. via another person)
Online networks
1) Kramer, Guillory & Hancock(2014) looked at emotional contagion through social networks by manipulating content of peoples facebook feeds
found:
when positive expression was reduced people produced fewer positive posts
(when negative reduced = fewer negative posts)
2) Coviello et al (2014) - rainfall influenced the emotional content of user’s status messages (DIRECT) and also the emotional content of status messages of friends in cities where it wasn’t raining (INDIRECT)
–> 1 - 2 people were indirectly affected for every one person directly affected by the weather
= don’t need interaction for contagion effect to occur
Other means of emotion transmission
- indirect effects
- affective presence
- interpersonal regulation
- affective process theory of affective linkage
indirect effects
- vicarious affect. Exposure to unpleasant emotions can induce similar feelings, so onlookers to social interactions can be affected by emotions they witness (Eg. Porath & Erez, 2009)
Affective presence
- individuals are almost as consistent in emotions they elicit in others (trait affective presence) as they are in the emotions that they experience themselves (trait affect), even after controlling for contagion
(Eisenkraft & Elfenbein, 2010)
Interpersonal regulation
- behaviours that change how someone else feels (eg, praise, helping, criticism, avoiding)
(Niven, Totterdell & Holman 2009)
Affective process theory of1 affective linkage
-identified 10 mechanisms by which affect can be linked
(Elfenbein, 2015)
Emotion transmission in groups
one individual can affect the mood of a group
The ripple effect (Barsade, 2002)
- a confederate could bring down the mood of the others in line with their emotion being expressed
- groups induced into a pleasant mood showed greater cooperation and less conflict on a decision-making task (Sy, Cote & Saavedra, 2005) –> showed individuals moods changed with mood of a team leader
Moods of individuals within a group can become linked:
- work teams (Totterdell, 2000) individuals moods can change in synchrony with the collective mood
- -> this occurs independently of shared events, and it can affect how an individual performs
Group mood
- when the mood of the individuals in a group is sufficiently consistent, the group can be said to have an ‘affective tone’ (George, 1990) –> under these circumstances , the mood of the group can be treated as a variable in its own right, and may have unique properties
Emotion is not just: a) personal b) local c) individual WHY?
a) depends on social processes (as well as physiological and cognitive processes)
b) can affect people who are one step (or more) removed from us, and can affect by standers (emotion contagion via online networks etc)
c) can be a property of a group (eg. develop an affective tone)
- -> emotion has interpersonal functions, one of which may be to help coordinate activity
Social functions of emotion
‘emotions are social’ (Parkinson, 1996)
‘The social functionality of emotion’ (Niedanthal & Browler, 2012)
emotions are social:
- many of the causes of emotion are interpersonally, institutionally or culturally defined
- emotions serve interpersonal and cultural functions
- emotions are communication, rather than internal and reactive
- cognitive and physological approaches need supplementing or supplanting by social psychological approaches
the social functionality of emotion:
- emotions can result from real, anticipaed, imagined or recollected outcome of social relationships (Kemper, 1978). so the audience can be internalised
- emotional expressions increase when there is an audience, even if audience is imagined (Fridlund, 1991) ie. are communicative, not reactive
- emotions are ways of aligning and realigning interpersoanl and intergroup relations (Parkinson, Fischer & Manstead, 2005)
- emotions ‘make claims about the personal meaning of a topic of potential mutual interests in an ongoing relationship (Parkinson, 1996) eg. sadness requests comort from others; fear requests protection
Emotion as social information model
(EASI; Van Kleef, 2009)
- effectiveness depends on?
- 2 routes?
emotions regulate social interactions by triggering affective reactions and inferences in observers
These can:
converge OR compete
- effectiveness of this depends on observers info processing (eg. motivation) & relational factors (eg. appropriateness of expression)
2 routes:
1) automatic
2) inferences about emotional expressions
can be modified by:
1) observers info processing (attention)
2) social-relational factors (who person is you’re interacting with)
Social functions
- what emotions do
- function of sharing emotions - beneficial?
- sharing emotion helps 2 things
- tell us how we’re doing in relation to social goals
- regulate the things that cause them (eg. maintain social status through certain expression eg. anger)
- create and break social relationships
- communicate our goals to others
Function of sharing emotions
- to make us feel better - problem shared= problem halved?
– Rime (2009)
- impulse to share emotions is strong
- people report about one episode per day being shared with them (primary sharing) and share about 75% of these (secondary sharing)
- more intense episodes likely to be shared
BUT, sharing emotion does NOT seem to reduce the impact of the emotion and can even heighten it by reactivating memory of the associated events
Recovery requires socio-cognitive, not a socio-affective response(when someone reflects emotion)
sharing emotion does help;
1) strengthen bonds - feel similar due to contagion (FFH and motor mimicry) = like each other more
2) propagate knowledge around social network
emotion in relationships
- 3 main types of social motivation ? (Keltner et al)
3 main types of social motivation, and that emotions move in relation to these:
1) attachment (offers protection): anxiey —- comfort
2) affiliation (offers bonding): sadness ——- joy
3) assetion (offers status): shame —– anger
Emotion in close relationships (based on attachment/ affiliation motives)
4 horsemen of the apocalypse in a close relationship (Gottman & Levenson, 2000)
foregiveness in close relationships
anger in close relationships
- love often nominated as a prototypical emotion (Shaver et al, 1987)
- adult love built on a template of infant attachment (Bowlby, 1979) eg. interest in affection may depend on being a parental object of affection
4 horsemen:
studied 79 married partners discussing a conflict, neutral and pleasant event in their relationships
identified 4 most damaging behaviours:
1) criticism
2) defensiveness
3) stonewalling (blocking convo)
4) contempt
–> use of these, especially by women, during discussion of conflict predicted whether couple would be divorced 17 years later with 93% accuracy
- contempt = most toxic, because it diminishes partner (as does criticism)
- defensiveness and stonewalling block resolution, and are more destructive to a relationship when done by men
Foregiveness
- less foregiveness may be better for maintaining the satisfaction of couples with problems, even though it is associated with negative emotions (McNutty, 2010)
Anger
- Averill(1982) found that anger can sometimes be beneficial because it can readjust the relationship when one person feels wronged
(negative emotions have functions = not always negative outcomes)
emotions in assertive relationships
- anger
anger
- associated with thoughts about injustice and revenge
- more likely to punish others when angry (even if anger is due to unrelated source)
- associated with power: high status often attributed to displays of anger (Tiedens, 2000)
- powerful negotiations tend to benefit from anger
(Overbech et al, 2010)
- although people negotiating with angry opponent concede more, angry negotiators achieve less successful outcomes (Jager, Loschelder & Fries, 2015)
- gender expectations (Fischer & Manstead, 2000)
greater expectation for men to display anger, pride and contempt (associated with assertiveness) and for women to display happiness and fear (associated with affiliation)
Social causes & consequences of emotions
affective event –> emotion –> behaviour
bad is stronger than good
- Baumeister et al (2001) - on average a bad event has a much greater event on how people feel than a good event
the undoing effect of positive emotion
- Frederickson et al (2000) showed positive emotions undo the after effects of negative effects
- Positivity ratio: ‘flourishing’ is promoted when positive experiences exceed negative experiences but only up to a point (Frederickson, 2013)
Distress and behaviour
- Tice et al (2001) showed people prioritise immediate (ST) gratification when distressed ie. unpleasant emotion causes a shift in behaviour (eg. people will eat more cookies when they start to feel sad)
Mood freezing (Manucia, Baumann & Cialdini, 1984) - when people are led to believe their moods are frozen they stop pursuing behaviours that are associated with these moods (eg. don't help when in sad mood) so, perhaps moods/ emotions don't cause behaviours --> maybe behaviours are used to pursue emotions rather than emotions causing behaviours
emotion as a feedback system
- Baumeister et al (2007) proposed that emotional outcomes are used as feedback to guide future behaviour
- in this view, emotions are rarely the immediate cause of behaviour, instead behaviour is used to pursue or avoid anticipated emotions
(we can stimulate what we want to feel based on what we’ve done in past) – Damasio!
