Department of Psychology.
Emotion. 2022 Aug;22(5):1030-1043. doi: 10.1037/emo0000890. Epub 2020 Sep 17.
Emotion dynamics vary considerably from individual to individual and from group to group. Successful social interactions require people to track this moving target in order to anticipate the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others. In two studies, we test whether people track others' emotional idiosyncrasies to make accurate, target-specific emotion predictions. In both studies, participants predicted the emotion transitions of a specific target-either a close friend (Study 1) or a first-year college roommate (Study 2)-as well as an average group member. Results demonstrate that people can make highly accurate predictions both for specific individuals and specific groups. Accurate predictions rely on target-specific knowledge; new community members were able to make accurate predictions at zero-acquaintance, but accuracy increased over time as individuals accrued specialized knowledge. Results also suggest that accurate emotion prediction is associated with social success in both individual and communal relationships and that such a relation might emerge over time. Overall, our studies suggest that people accurately make individualized predictions of others' emotion transitions and that doing so fulfills a meaningful function in the social world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
情绪动态在个体之间和群体之间差异很大。成功的社交互动需要人们跟踪这个不断变化的目标，以便预测他人的想法、感受和行为。在两项研究中，我们检验了人们是否会跟踪他人的情绪特质，从而做出准确的、针对特定目标的情绪预测。在两项研究中，参与者都预测了特定目标的情绪转变——要么是亲密朋友（研究 1），要么是大一的室友（研究 2），以及一个平均的群体成员。结果表明，人们可以对特定个体和特定群体做出非常准确的预测。准确的预测依赖于特定于目标的知识；新的社区成员在零熟人的情况下也能够做出准确的预测，但随着时间的推移，随着个人积累了专门的知识，准确性会提高。结果还表明，准确的情绪预测与个体和团体关系中的社交成功有关，并且这种关系可能会随着时间的推移而出现。总的来说，我们的研究表明，人们可以准确地预测他人情绪转变的个体化情况，而这样做在社交世界中具有重要的作用。
