Social sharing of emotions

Context (historic view of emotion) In 1991, Rimé et al. that attachment theory rendered emotional regulation to be of an interpersonal nature for children, yet to become mature adults one must become autonomous and capable of regulating emotions independently. In the field of psychology a healthy individual is typically seen as "self-contained, independent and self-reliant, capable of asserting himself and influencing his environment". Riger also suggests that this individualistic view of emotional regulation could have been influenced by the context within which it had been studied, i.e. the United States. Relevant literature In 1954 Leon Festinger, a well known social psychologist, presented his influential social comparison theory, which proposes that people seek to obtain accurate self-evaluations by comparing themselves to similar others. Furthermore, people turn to their social environment to search for clarification when faced with obscure or confusing environmental situations or sensations. Thus extending this theory to emotions would posit that after experiencing emotional situations that do not conform to held expectations or that are ambiguous, one would be expected to later share that emotional experience with others. So after experiencing an emotion, people would be expected to communicate the event with others in order to help reduce their cognitive dissonance. emphasizes the importance of the ability of others to assist in the process of coping. Other people are able to offer new perspectives on interpretations of the emotional event. In previous studies, Rimé concluded that emotions necessitate "cognitive articulation" because of their dense, complex nature. By using language to express an experience, people are forced to classify and organize the contents of the emotions, and furthermore can concretize and objectivize the experience into a script that can be more easily understood. Other studies produced similar findings for people who experienced natural disasters and for cancer patients. Rimé later proposed the term "social sharing of emotions" to describe this phenomenon. Research indicates that the strong emotional experiences that are present during and following trauma and crises can be inherently adaptive and can lead to growth in resilience, altruism, and community engagement. In order for this growth to occur, collective engagement and processing of these emotional experiences is necessary.{{cite journal|last1=Kieft|first1=J.|last2=Bendell|first2=J|year=2021|title=The responsibility of communicating difficult truths about climate influenced societal disruption and collapse: an introduction to psychological research ==Definition and central characteristics==

Social sharing of emotions can be defined as an "interpersonal process" wherein, after an emotional event, "individuals will initiate interpersonal behaviours in which discussing this event and their reactions to it is central". In other words, the social sharing of emotions is the process of reactivating the emotion at a more symbolic level, all taking place as part of ensuing interpersonal interactions. Furthermore, Rimé et al. offered two defining characteristics of the phenomenon: • That the emotion is recalled in a "socially shared language". • That this recall is shared with an addressee (even if the addressee is symbolic). ==Initial studies==

The first studies about social sharing of emotion explore individual aspects of the process. These studies aimed to answer questions concerning when it occurs, with whom, how long after the emotional event, if there are age, gender or cultural differences, how often it occurs for a given emotional event, etc. The first empirical research 58% of emotional events were shared the same day that the event occurred. There were also further follow-up studies conducted using a different approach. the experimenters contacted certain individuals after foreseeable emotional experiences, such as the birth of a child, giving blood, or taking an exam. This way, the experimenters chose not only the emotional event to be recalled, but furthermore the types of emotional events they would be studying so that they could examine possible differences between types of emotional events. The findings of these studies supported those of the retrospective studies: 96–100% of emotional events were socially shared. Furthermore, no significant difference was found in the frequency of social sharing between different types of emotional events. While these two methodologies did help to eliminate some of the possible biases of the original studies, they still operated under the assumption that there is a causal link between the emotional experience and the development of the process of social sharing. Therefore, a true experimental method was used to study the phenomenon. In these studies, two friends came together to the laboratory, and they were then split up. One of the subjects watched an excerpt of one of three films: either from a documentary about animals (weak emotion), a violent scene between animals (moderate emotion), or a scene depicting humans committing cruel acts towards animals (strong emotion). During this time, the other subject was given a trivial task to complete. Then, the two subjects were reunited and asked to wait a few minutes for the next part of the experiment. During this time, their conversations were recorded and analyzed for the presence of social sharing. Research on preadolescents while young adults confide equally in family, friends, and partners (study 2), addressed this question by analyzing data from a cross-sectional study of girls in elementary school, middle school, high school, girls pursuing an undergraduate education in college, and girls pursuing a master's degree. Despite possible reasons to believe that education might increase the capacity to and likelihood of sharing behaviors, no differences were found. Culture Similar to the problems of a restricted educational background, the subjects of the first studies on the social sharing of emotions were limited to Belgian and French populations. While later studies conducted in Netherlands, Italy, and Spain produced similar results to the first studies, the question of whether social sharing exists in non-Western cultures. The first intercultural study compared Dutch subjects to Turkish and Surinamese immigrants, and the findings showed that social sharing was a prominent behavior in each group, although slightly less so for the Surinamese subjects. Other studies comparing Western and Eastern cultures produced similar results, finding that Eastern cultures had slightly lower rates of social sharing. Furthermore, several general qualitative differences were found between Western and Eastern populations. On average, Western subjects shared an emotional event more often (5–6 times) than Asian subjects (2–3 times). There was also a longer delay between the emotional event and the social sharing for Asian groups than for Western ones. In this case, these differences could reflect the extent of social networking typically seen in each culture. In an individualistic culture, this social networking is more diversified than in the collectivistic cultures, where family is generally the center of the network. Additionally, these differences could reflect the closeness of the interpersonal relationships in collectivistic cultures, where it can be difficult for individuals to recognize when the social sharing occurs because they are so often together. ==Sharing vs. not sharing an emotional experience==

The results of the above studies on the social sharing of emotion reveal that such behaviors are very common and are in fact the norm, transcending boundaries of gender, age, level of education, culture, etc. However, if social sharing occurs on average for 80–95% of emotional events, that leaves 5–20% that are not discussed and are perhaps purposefully kept secret. sought to determine why people believe they share emotional episodes. According to self reports by participants, there are several main reasons why people initiate social sharing behaviors (in no particular order): • Rehearse—to remember or re-experience the event • Vent—to express or alleviate pent-up emotions, to attempt catharsis • Obtain help, support, and comfort—to receive consolation and sympathy • Legitimization—to validate one's emotions of the event and have them approved • Clarification and meaning—to clarify certain aspects of the event that were not well understood, to find meaning in the happenings of the event • Advice—to seek guidance and find solutions to problems created by the event • Bonding—to become closer to others and reduce feelings of loneliness • Empathy—to emotionally arouse or touch the listener • Draw attention—to receive attention from others, possibly to impress others • Entertain—to engage others and facilitate social interactions that the extreme nature of such experiences would play an important role in determining whether an emotional event is shared or not. Additionally, they thought that people would be motivated not to deliberately revisit such events because they would reactivate the extreme negative emotions that accompanied the events. However, their studies revealed that there was no difference in the average emotional intensity between events that were shared compared to those that were kept secret. While the intensity of the emotion does not seem to influence whether an emotional event is shared or kept secret, the type of emotion involved does appear to play a role. Specifically, emotional experiences involving feelings of shame and guilt tend to be shared less frequently, less often, and with fewer people. While sharing of emotional events involves self-disclosure, feelings of shame and guilt are associated with concealment of the self. were: wanting to avoid hurting someone, preserving one's image in the eyes of others, protecting one's private life, and protecting one's self. Such reasons, which together constituted the responses of over 75% of participants, all concern one thing: protection. According to Baumeister and Leary, this idea of protection pertains to protection from undesirable consequences in the realm of the social sphere, namely that the revelation of such secrets would be harmful to social relationships. Therefore, instead of social integration and the strengthening of relationships, the revelation of certain emotional events could be harmful to a relationship and could thus result in social disintegration and deterioration of relationships. ==Social considerations==

Whereas initial studies were focused on the behaviors of the person who shares their own emotions, later studies examined the impact of such interaction on the "recipient" of the social sharing (the person who listened to the recounting of the emotional event). Findings from these experiments led to the emergence of further questions exploring other aspects of social sharing of emotions, such as which emotions are elicited in the recipient, what processes occur after listening an emotional episode, how this type of sharing affects intimate relationships, etc. These new lines of study allowed the identification of other elements of the process, such as the 'secondary social sharing' of emotions. Recipient of social sharing There is scientific evidence suggesting that exposure to the narration of an emotional experience has several effects on the target person: increased autonomic arousal among subjects listening to a distressed person, heightened anxiety among subjects who listened to other people disclosing intimate aspects of themselves and depressive and hostile sentiments for subjects exposed to a 15-minute conversation with someone who is depressed Secondary social sharing of emotions From the above evidence it can be concluded that exposure to the social sharing of an emotion is itself an emotion-eliciting event, it would follow that the listener too would later share that experience with other people. Christophe et Rimé called this subsequent phenomenon secondary social sharing of emotions. Moreover, for 41% of cases, secondary social sharing occurred the very same day as the primary social sharing situation. Yet secondary sharing is not necessarily a short-lived occurrence; participants reported that they sometimes still talked about the episode several times, and sometimes talked about it several months later. However, there were some qualitative differences between secondary sharing for each: for positive emotional episodes, secondary social sharing was initiated faster and with a higher number of repetitions and targets than for negatives emotional episodes. Extension of secondary social sharing of emotions Social sharing of emotions can and does extend beyond just the secondary level. these 'tertiary' individuals will again share the experience with 2 or 3 people, at least in 64% of cases. In total, 5 people are implicated by primary social sharing, then 18 more people by secondary social sharing, and finally 30 additional people by tertiary social sharing, summing to over 50 people total from the one event. This idea has important implications concerning the link between the individual and the collective, as well as with ideas such as collective memory, as discussed below. Social dynamics between actor and recipient Confidentiality Despite the fact that in certain situations people share personal or emotional information with non-intimate others, data shows that the target of the social sharing is usually a close relative or an intimate other, about 85% of the time. a classification of the recipient's general behaviors and responses during social sharing of emotions was created. Five general classes of behaviors have been identified: • Social support: attempts at comforting, expressing unconditional support, showing empathy and understanding • Physical gestures: non-verbal comfort or consolation, such as hugging, kissing, or touching • Concrete actions: talking about or attempting to do something outside of the emotional situation (i.e. distraction) • De-dramatization: putting the situation in perspective, telling the person that it happens to other people, that it is not so bad, etc. • Questioning: asking more information or clarifying things about the experience These responses could vary depending on the magnitude of the emotional episode heard. Subjects who listened to highly emotional experiences exhibited less verbal expression, attempted less de-dramatization, and much more nonverbal comforting. Further studies tried to understand the behaviors and roles of each person during the interaction through a series of three studies. In the first two experiments, subjects were invited to watch a short film (non-emotional, moderate and intense emotional conditions) while their partner (a real friend) was given a non-stimulating task to complete. Right after that, they were put in the same room together while they waited for the second part of the experiment. During this time, their conversation was recorded in order to analyze it for any manifestations of social sharing. In these studies, the duration of social sharing was significantly higher in the intense emotion condition than in the non-emotional and moderate emotion conditions, and was the only condition in which social sharing was substantial enough to justify calculating the individual contributions of targets and partners to the social sharing process. Consistent with the hypothesis that a person exposed to an emotion would socially share it, targets contributed to the social sharing component of the conversation to a much greater extent than did partners (81.8% and 18.2% of the time, respectively). In the second experiment, the social sharing tended to decline as time passed, but the intense emotion condition elicited significantly more sharing during the first two minutes that the subjects were together. The findings again suggest that intensity of the emotion and the extent of sharing are not linked monotonically. In both studies, about 90% of the verbal exchanges were comments by targets. Targets' expressions predominantly consisted of "giving information" and "expressing feelings" about the movie, thereby conforming to the formal definition of the social sharing of emotion. On the other hand, the partners' comments were found to be brief and to consist mainly of requests for further information and expressions of feelings elicited by the targets' sharing. In this regard, the findings are quite consistent with previous research showing that the sharing of an emotion elicits emotional responses for the listeners. According to Luminet et al. these results suggest that social sharing fulfills informational goals as well as emotional ones. For the third study, subjects were invited to watch a short film and to answer some questionnaires two days later. The goal of this study was to determine whether the same social sharing occurs in the real life. The results showed once again that a higher level of sharing results from exposure to the intense emotion condition. The findings observed in the first two experiments were therefore reproduced in this third study, despite the different method of measuring social sharing. Together, these results strongly suggest that the emotional intensity of the event determined the extent of social sharing. Effect on relationships According to Rimé, if the social sharing experience is a pleasant one, it could help to strengthen socio-affective links between the two people. As seen in the diagram, social sharing can result in reciprocal affection between the two people involved, and can play an obvious role in attachment. When the social sharing is done between partners in an intimate relationship, it could be seen as a reinforcement of their affective bond. ==Collective aspects==

The phenomenon of the social sharing of emotions extends beyond just the realm of psychology; it also has been considered in the context of anthropology. However, there are many nuances to this idea; it must also be considered in terms of the processes of remembering and forgetting events. may produce interpersonal benefits, and this can result in further social integration. Humans have long been aware of such processes, and have been using and even exploiting them for a long time. A particularly prominent example of such purposeful collective social sharing is the celebration or commemoration of collective events (such as war victories and defeats or natural disasters), ceremonies, symbols, symbolic characters or stories, etc. According to Frijda, such collective instances of social sharing are created for similar reasons to those for individual instances; the event has not been fully integrated into the lives of the participants. For collective social sharing, this may mean that the emotions elicited by the event are reactivated in the people who actually experienced the event, or that the emotional event is being reproduced for successive generations who did not actually experience the event because the event represents an important memory of the group. Following this idea, the collective rituals and symbols are likened to conventional social sharing situations, which both cause a reactivation of the emotions that were lived or relived. The symbolic universe People possess an inherent ensemble of basic beliefs about themselves, others, the world, etc. Such "naïve theories" are what compose our symbolic universe. One's symbolic universe is part of a socially shared knowledge, transmitted principally as a result of education and social communication, with a large emphasis on the process of attachment through which parents impart their visions of the world, their symbolic universes, to their children. Such symbolic universes guide how we make sense of the world, and are composed of a relatively stable network of ideologies. Therefore, if one of these beliefs is compromised, the stability of the entire network could be jeopardized. It is very important for people to maintain a sense of stability within such a system of beliefs, so they have a natural psychological motivation to try to protect these beliefs. Because such beliefs have a fundamentally social origin, their revalidation can only be legitimized through a social consensus. Along these lines, aforementioned social rituals came to be used as a more structured way of re-substantiating beliefs that have been invalidated as a result of an emotional event. Nuances of collective memories Primary social sharing of emotions involves "repeated reproduction", where the same individuals report their memories of an episode on several different occasions. Secondary social sharing involves a different process in which recalled information is transmitted through a chain of people. During social sharing, originally unclear cognitive aspects were likely to be modified into meaningful ones. However, memory is also affected by the people's store of relevant prior knowledge. Thus, in secondary social sharing of emotion, people are likely to process the emotional information they are exposed to through the filter of their preexisting beliefs and views (i.e. their symbolic universe). When people encounter events and information that fits into these beliefs, those events and information tend to blend in and thus be overlooked. On the other hand, those that do not fit within their schemas will be very salient and therefore memorized, being reproduced later when recounting the event. For episodes of weak emotional intensity, the process is likely to have limited consequences for social knowledge of the emotion because the number of serial repetitions recounting the event will usually be low. For strong emotional episodes however, there is reason to expect that, due to the combination of the number of repeated reproduction and the related number of serial reproductions, the collective memory of the emotional event will be affected. ==See also==