Rothman Naomi B, Magee Joe C
a College of Business and Economics , Lehigh University , Bethlehem , PA , USA.
b Tisch Hall, Leonard N. Stern School of Business , New York University , New York , NY , USA.
Cogn Emot. 2016;30(1):150-66. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2015.1020050. Epub 2015 Mar 26.
Our findings draw attention to the interpersonal communication function of a relatively unexplored dimension of emotions-the level of social engagement versus disengagement. In four experiments, regardless of valence and target group gender, observers infer greater relational well-being (more cohesiveness and less conflict) between group members from socially engaging (sadness and appreciation) versus disengaging (anger and pride) emotion expressions. Supporting our argument that social (dis)engagement is a critical dimension communicated by these emotions, we demonstrate (1) that inferences about group members' self-interest mediate the effect of socially engaging emotions on cohesiveness and (2) that the influence of socially disengaging emotion expressions on inferences of conflict is attenuated when groups have collectivistic norms (i.e., members value a high level of social engagement). Furthermore, we show an important downstream consequence of these inferences of relational well-being: Groups that seem less cohesive because of their members' proud (versus appreciative) expressions are also expected to have worse task performance.
我们的研究结果提请人们关注情绪中一个相对未被探索的维度的人际沟通功能——社会参与度与脱离度的水平。在四项实验中，无论情绪效价和目标群体的性别如何，观察者从具有社会参与性（悲伤和感激）与脱离性（愤怒和自豪）的情绪表达中推断出群体成员之间的关系幸福感更高（凝聚力更强且冲突更少）。为支持我们的论点，即社会（脱离）参与是这些情绪所传达的一个关键维度，我们证明：（1）对群体成员自身利益的推断介导了具有社会参与性的情绪对凝聚力的影响；（2）当群体具有集体主义规范时（即成员重视高水平的社会参与），具有社会脱离性的情绪表达对冲突推断的影响会减弱。此外，我们还展示了这些关系幸福感推断的一个重要下游后果：由于成员的骄傲（而非感激）表达而看似凝聚力较低的群体，其任务表现也预计会更差。
