Emphasizing the Social in Social Emotion Regulation: A Call for Integration and Expansion

The Future of Affective Science Special Issues illuminate where the field of Affective Science is headed in coming years, highlighting exciting new directions for research. Many of the articles in the issues emphasized the importance of studying emotion regulation, and specifically, social emotion regulation. This commentary draws on these articles to argue that future research needs to more concretely focus on the social aspects of social emotion regulation, which have been underexplored in affective science. Specifically, we discuss the importance of focusing on social goals, strategies and tactics, and outcomes relevant to social emotion regulation interactions, more closely considering these processes for all individuals involved. To do so, we draw on research from neighboring subdisciplines of psychology that have focused on the social aspects of interactions. Moreover, we underscore the need to better integrate components of the process model of social emotion regulation and approach empirical inquiry more holistically, in turn illuminating how piecemeal investigations of these processes might lead to an incomplete or incorrect understanding of social emotion regulation. We hope this commentary supplements the research in the special issues, further highlighting ways to advance the field.

When a Robot Is Your Teammate

Creating effective teamwork between humans and robots involves not only addressing their performance as a team but also sustaining the quality and sense of unity among teammates, also known as cohesion. This paper explores the research problem of: how can we endow robotic teammates with social capabilities to improve the cohesive alliance with humans? By defining the concept of a human-robot cohesive alliance in the light of the multidimensional construct of cohesion from the social sciences, we propose to address this problem through the idea of multifaceted human-robot cohesion. We present our preliminary effort from previous works to examine each of the five dimensions of cohesion: social, collective, emotional, structural, and task. We finish the paper with a discussion on how human-robot cohesion contributes to the key questions and ongoing challenges of creating robotic teammates. Overall, cohesion in human-robot teams might be a key factor to propel team performance and it should be considered in the design, development, and evaluation of robotic teammates.

Between victory and peace: Unravelling the paradox of hope in intractable conflicts

Previous research on group-based hope has predominantly focused on positive intergroup outcomes, such as peace and harmony. In this paper, we demonstrate that hope experienced towards group-centric political outcomes, such as a victory in a conflict and defeating the enemy, can be detrimental to peace. In Study 1, conducted among Israeli Jews, hope for victory over the Palestinians was uniquely associated with more support for extreme war policies, whereas hope for peace generally showed the opposite associations. In Study 2, we replicated these results among Muslim Pakistanis regarding the Pakistan-India dispute. Notably, in both Studies 1 and 2, only hope for victory significantly predicted personal violent extremist intentions. In Study 3, conducted with a representative sample of Israeli Jews, we found three latent profiles of hope: victory hopers, peace hopers, and dual hopers (hoping for both peace and victory). Finally, in preregistered Study 4, we longitudinally investigated how hopes for victory and peace changed from a relatively calm period in 2021 to the Israel-Hamas War of 2023, utilizing a Bivariate Latent Change Score analysis. Increases in hope for victory during the highly intense war explained the increase in support for violence. We discuss implications, limitations, and directions for future research.

The Intergroup Value Protection Model: A Theoretically Integrative and Dynamic Approach to Intergroup Conflict Escalation in Democratic Societies

SCIENTIFIC ABSTRACT

We review social-psychological evidence for a theoretically integrative and dynamic model of intergroup conflict escalation within democratic societies. Viewing individuals as social regulators who protect their social embeddedness (e.g., in their group or in society), the intergroup value protection model (IVPM) integrates key insights and concepts from moral and group psychology (e.g., group identification, outrage, moralization, protest) into a functional intergroup value protection process. The model assumes that social regulators are continuously looking for information diagnostic of the outgroup's intentions to terminate the relationship with the ingroup, and that their specific cognitive interpretations of an outgroup's action (i.e., as a violation of ingroup or shared values) trigger this process. The visible value-protective responses of one group can trigger the other group's value-protective responses, thus dynamically increasing chances of conflict escalation. We discuss scientific implications of integrating moral and group psychology and practical challenges for managing intergroup conflict within democratic societies.

PUBLIC ABSTRACT

The 2021 Capitol Hill attack exemplifies a major "trigger event" for different groups to protect their values within a democratic society. Which specific perceptions generate such a triggering event, which value-protective responses does it trigger, and do such responses escalate intergroup conflict? We offer the intergroup value protection model to analyze the moral and group psychology of intergroup conflict escalation in democratic societies. It predicts that when group members cognitively interpret another group's actions as violating ingroup or shared values, this triggers the intergroup value protection process (e.g., increased ingroup identification, outrage, moralization, social protest). When such value-protective responses are visible to the outgroup, this can in turn constitute a trigger event for them to protect their values, thus increasing chances of intergroup conflict escalation. We discuss scientific implications and practical challenges for managing intergroup value conflict in democratic societies, including fears of societal breakdown and scope for social change.

What Makes Groups Emotional?

When people experience emotions in a group, their emotions tend to have stronger intensity and to last longer. Why is that? This question has occupied thinkers throughout history, and with the use of digital media it is even more pressing today. Historically, attention has mainly focused on processes driven by the way emotions are shared between people via emotional interactions. Although interactions are a major driver of group emotionality, I review empirical findings that suggest that understanding group emotionality requires a broader view that integrates two additional processes: how emotions unfold within the social infrastructure in which they are shared and how these processes are affected by people's cognition about emotions. I propose to summarize the literature using an infrastructure-cognition-interaction framework that contributes to a broader understanding of group emotionality, which should improve our ability to predict group emotionality and to change these emotions when they are undesired.

Emotion Regulation in Couples Across Adulthood

Intimate relationships are hotbeds of emotion. This article presents key findings and current directions in research on couples' emotion regulation across adulthood as a critical context in which older adults not only maintain functioning but may also outshine younger adults. First, I introduce key concepts, defining qualities (i.e., dynamic, coregulatory, bidirectional, bivalent), and measures (i.e., self-report versus performance-based) of couples' emotion regulation. Second, I highlight a socioemotional turn in our understanding of adult development with the advent of socioemotional selectivity theory. Third, I offer a life-span developmental perspective on emotion regulation in couples (i.e., across infancy, adolescence and young adulthood, midlife, and late life). Finally, I present the idea that emotion regulation may shift from "me to us" across adulthood and discuss how emotion regulation in couples may become more important, better, and increasingly consequential (e.g., for relationship outcomes, well-being, and health) with age. Ideas for future research are then discussed.

Shared social identity and media transmission of trauma

When an individual or group trauma becomes a shared public experience through widespread media coverage (e.g., mass violence, being publicly outed), sharing a social identity with a targeted individual or group of victims may amplify feelings of personal vulnerability. This heightened perceived threat may draw people to engage with trauma-related media because of increased vigilance for self-relevant threats, which can, in turn, amplify distress. We studied this possibility among two U.S. national samples following the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, FL (N = 4675) and the 2018 Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court Senate hearings (N = 4894). Participants who shared LGBT or Hispanic identities with Pulse massacre victims reported greater exposure to massacre-related media and acute stress. Participants who shared Dr. Blasey Ford's identities as a victim of interpersonal violence and a Democrat reported more hearings-related media exposure and acute stress. Indirect effects of shared single identity on acute stress through self-reported event-related media exposure emerged in both studies. Results for sharing dual identities with victims were mixed. These findings have implications for media use and public health.

Social-Historical Accounts of Hope and Resilience: Experiences of Prominent Sexual Orientation Minority Elders

Despite the challenges faced by sexual orientation minority (SOM) individuals, many SOM individuals are able to persist and develop resiliency over the course of their lives. The present study explored how prominent SOM elders perceived the LGBTQ+ community as developing hope and resiliency in relation to major events of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ+) rights development. Using a basic qualitative approach, we analyzed interview data and three categories emerged. More specifically, these categories were: (1) internalization of societal views; (2) fostering safety and acceptance by creating a sense of community; and (3) sources of inspiration for initiating change. The resulting categories show the complex interaction of social influences and resiliency during times of societal reformation. We discuss the implications of how group-based emotions and identity processes during times of societal reformation foster a life-long resilience.

Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies Predict Burnout in Geriatric Nursing Staff

OBJECTIVES

Burnout contributes to high turnover rates, medical errors, and poor patient satisfaction in geriatric nursing staff. Nurses' cognitive emotion regulation (ER) strategies are emerging as an important personal resource related to burnout that are modifiable with intervention. This study examined the association between cognitive ER strategies and burnout among geriatric nursing staff.

METHODS

Participants were 54 nurses (RNs, LPNs, CNA/UWs) with a mean age of 43.1 years (SD = 12.2), majority female (96.3%), and racially diverse: Black (20.4%), White (63.0%), and Other (13.0%).

RESULTS

After controlling for CVs, cognitive ER strategies accounted for unique variance in depersonalization, but did not account for unique variance in emotional exhaustion or personal accomplishment. Rumination was associated with greater depersonalization, and greater refocus on planning was associated with lower depersonalization.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggest that depersonalization may be most impacted by ER; however, other ER strategies may be important that were not included in the current study (e.g., experiential avoidance, mindfulness). Future research is needed with additional ER strategies and larger samples.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS

Findings support the use of person-centered interventions, such as cognitive-behavioral and mindfulness-based techniques, to improve stress management and decrease depersonalization.

The neurophysiology of the intervention strategies of Awareness Training Program on emotion regulation

Emotion regulation is essential for healthy living. Previous studies have found that mental training such as compassion meditation could help with emotion regulation. However, the underlying neural mechanism and possible intervention strategies of group-based Mahayana Buddhist intervention involved in emotion regulation are still unclear. This event-related potential (ERP) study investigated how compassion and wisdom meditations, two key components of the Awareness Training Program (ATP), may regulate emotion during different mental processing stages, namely attention deployment, cognitive change, and response modification. Eighty-five middle-aged working adults with moderate stress were voluntarily recruited for this study, using a 128-channel electroencephalogram system. After 7 weeks of training, participants (ATP attendance, n = 42; waitlist control, n = 43) were instructed to view negative pictures while practicing compassion or wisdom meditation, with corresponding priming words. Another normal priming condition and a neutral picture condition were set as control conditions. ERP results in the ATP group showed that negative pictures induced greater prefrontal activity (N400 component) in both compassion and wisdom meditation conditions compared with the normal condition, while the control group showed little difference between the conditions. Significantly higher heart rate variability was found in the compassion but not wisdom meditation when compared with the neutral priming condition. Correspondent changes in behavioural data were also found. Converging evidence showed that compassion meditation training could modulate negative emotion processing in stages of attention deployment, cognitive change, and behavioural responses. The prefrontal lobe could play an important role in the process of emotion regulation by compassion meditation, possibly due to the emphasis of the ATP on contemplative practices.

Individual vs. Team Sport Failure-Similarities, Differences, and Current Developments

The construct of "choking under pressure" is concerned with the phenomenon of unexpected, sudden, and significant declines in individual athletes' performances in important situations and has received empirical attention in the field of sport psychology. Although a number of theories about the reasons for the occurrence of choking under pressure exist and several intervention approaches have been developed, underlying mechanisms of choking are still under debate and the effectiveness of existing interventions remains contested. These sudden performance declines also occur in team sport. "Collective sport team collapse," which describes the situation when an entire sport team underperforms significantly within an important competitive situation, has received less empirical attention, in comparison to individual choking research. While there are a few studies that have investigated causes of collective team collapse, understandably, there has been limited empirical investigation of preventative and intervention strategies. Although the two constructs appear to share several similar characteristics and mechanisms, research has not yet examined the conceptual, theoretical, empirical, and practical links between choking under pressure and collective sport team collapse. In this review article, we seek to examine these similarities and differences and identify new ways of thinking about future interventions. Furthermore, current empirical understandings in the field of choking under pressure and collective sport team collapse are presented and the most effective intervention approaches for both constructs are introduced. On the basis of this examination, we modestly make some initial recommendations for sport psychological practitioners and future research.

How emotions, relationships, and culture constitute each other: advances in social functionalist theory

Social Functionalist Theory (SFT) emerged 20 years ago to orient emotion science to the social nature of emotion. Here we expand upon SFT and make the case for how emotions, relationships, and culture constitute one another. First, we posit that emotions enable the individual to meet six "relational needs" within social interactions: security, commitment, status, trust, fairness, and belongingness. Building upon this new theorising, we detail four principles concerning emotional experience, cognition, expression, and the cultural archiving of emotion. We conclude by considering the bidirectional influences between culture, relationships, and emotion, outlining areas of future inquiry.

Protected by the Emotions of the Group: Perceived Emotional Fit and Disadvantaged Group Members' Activist Burnout

Psychological processes that hamper activism, such as activist burnout, threaten social change. We suggest that perceived emotional fit (i.e., perceiving to experience similar emotions as other disadvantaged group members) may buffer activist burnout by mitigating the deleterious effects of stressors that are associated with partaking in collective action. We investigated the relation between perceived emotional fit and activist burnout using three-wave longitudinal survey data of Palestinians in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We hypothesized that both higher general tendencies to fit emotionally with the ingroup (general perceived emotional fit) and increases over time in perceived emotional fit (change perceived emotional fit) would relate negatively to activist burnout. Supporting our hypotheses, both aspects of emotional fit were associated with lower activist burnout, even when controlling for classical predictors of collective action. This research highlights perceived emotional fit as an additional dimension to the role of emotions for sustainable collective action.

Development of positive intergroup emotions amongst youth in contexts affected or threatened by conflict

Social‐psychological research has established the importance of positive emotions for creating and maintaining positive intergroup relations in contexts affected or threatened by conflict (intergroup reconciliation). Building on existing body of evidence, we conceptualised intergroup reconciliation as a process aimed at regulating negative intergroup emotions such as hatred and creating more positive and relationship functional emotions such as trust. This review presents theoretical and empirical insights into the emotion regulation perspective on intergroup reconciliation. Regulation of negative intergroup emotions amongst youths affected by conflict is feasible through social‐psychological interventions.

Affective health and countermeasures in long-duration space exploration

Background

Space research is shifting attention toward interplanetary expeditions. Therefore, whether long-duration spaceflight may influence affective health is becoming an urgent issue.

Method

To this end, we undertook a literature search and reviewed several behavioral simulation studies on Earth that focused on affective components in space. We concluded with studies showing how spaceflight can impact on affective health of astronauts with a positively laden trajectory.

Results

By analyzing the multifaceted theoretical concept of affective health, we show that there is a variety of affective states (e.g., stress, coping, adaptation, and resilience) that can be differently affected by spaceflight.

Conclusions

Countermeasures geared toward promoting positive emotions could play a key role in positive adaptation to extreme environments and thus during long-duration space missions may benefit. Subjective resilience plays a mediating role in adaptation, but its definition needs to be deepened in order to develop robust countermeasures that may prevent the onset of emotional disorders.

Group-Based Emotions and Support for Reparations: A Meta-analysis

In the aftermath of intergroup harm, victim groups often claim rights for restitution. Research has assessed how members of perpetrator groups respond to such claims, revealing that group-based guilt, shame, and anger can predict support for reparations. Though they have distinct foci, these group-based emotions are based on appraisals of ingroup harmdoing and victim group disadvantage as illegitimate. This meta-analysis investigates the relationship between these three group-based emotions and support for reparations, defined as symbolic or material policies that address historical injustices or the legacies thereof. An overall estimate based on 101 effect sizes from 58 samples, N = 10,305, showed a strong effect, r = .44, and revealed no significant difference between the three types of emotions. Moderator analyses revealed that the relationship between group-based guilt and reparations was weaker when the reparations required effort and stronger when the victims were Indigenous people; for shame, the relationship was weaker when the reparations required effort and stronger when the reparations contained symbolic elements; and for anger, the relationship was stronger when the victims were Indigenous people. Future research can further disentangle the conceptual overlap between these group-based emotions by explicitly testing heretofore under-examined yet important facets of intergroup contexts such as the timeframe of harm and the nature and meaning of the proposed reparations.

Person Perception, Meet People Perception: Exploring the Social Vision of Groups

Groups, teams, and collectives-people-are incredibly important to human behavior. People live in families, work in teams, and celebrate and mourn together in groups. Despite the huge variety of human group activity and its fundamental importance to human life, social-psychological research on person perception has overwhelmingly focused on its namesake, the person, rather than expanding to consider people perception. By looking to two unexpected partners, the vision sciences and organization behavior, we find emerging work that presents a path forward, building a foundation for understanding how people perceive other people. And yet this nascent field is missing critical insights that scholars of social vision might offer: specifically, for example, the chance to connect perception to behavior through the mediators of cognition and motivational processes. Here, we review emerging work across the vision and social sciences to extract core principles of people perception: efficiency, capacity, and complexity. We then consider complexity in more detail, focusing on how people perception modifies person-perception processes and enables the perception of group emergent properties as well as group dynamics. Finally, we use these principles to discuss findings and outline areas fruitful for future work. We hope that fellow scholars take up this people-perception call.

Bridging the gap between emotion and joint action

Our daily human life is filled with a myriad of joint action moments, be it children playing, adults working together (i.e., team sports), or strangers navigating through a crowd. Joint action brings individuals (and embodiment of their emotions) together, in space and in time. Yet little is known about how individual emotions propagate through embodied presence in a group, and how joint action changes individual emotion. In fact, the multi-agent component is largely missing from neuroscience-based approaches to emotion, and reversely joint action research has not found a way yet to include emotion as one of the key parameters to model socio-motor interaction. In this review, we first identify the gap and then stockpile evidence showing strong entanglement between emotion and acting together from various branches of sciences. We propose an integrative approach to bridge the gap, highlight five research avenues to do so in behavioral neuroscience and digital sciences, and address some of the key challenges in the area faced by modern societies.

In time, we will simply disappear: Racial demographic shift undermines privileged group members’ support for marginalized social groups via collective angst

The racial demographic shift occurring in many Western countries provides a unique context to study the reactions of a high-power group (White people) to the potential loss of their privileged position in society. Three experiments (N = 77, N = 302, N = 555) conducted in Canada, the US, and the UK showed that White people who are reminded about the ongoing demographic changes and who see race relations as a zero-sum game whereby any gains by minorities must come at the expense of the majority, experience stronger collective angst and, to a lesser extent, fear (but not anger). In turn, collective angst, but not the other negative group-based emotions, fuels their motivation to protect the existing intergroup hierarchy by withdrawing support for progressive social movements and increases anti-immigration sentiments. Downregulating the existential threat experienced by White majorities in the face of a racial demographic shift may be one way to reduce acrimonious behavioral intentions aimed at preserving their place in the social hierarchy.

Cognition and Emotion in Extreme Political Action: Individual Differences and Dynamic Interactions

Who is most likely to join and engage in extreme political action? Although traditional theories have focused on situational factors or group identity, an emerging science illustrates that tendencies for extreme political action may also be rooted in individuals’ idiosyncratic cognitive and affective dispositions. This article synthesizes cutting-edge evidence demonstrating that individuals’ cognitive and affective architecture shapes their willingness to support ideological violence. In the cognitive domain, traits such as cognitive rigidity, slow perceptual strategies, and poor executive functions are linked to heightened endorsement for ideological violence. In the emotion domain, characteristics associated with emotional reactivity and impaired emotional regulation, such as sensation seeking and impulsivity, can facilitate readiness for extreme political action. The review homes in on the roles of cognitive rigidity and sensation seeking as traits heightening proclivities for extreme pro-group behavior and recommends that future research should assess cognition-emotion interactions to reveal different subprofiles of political actors. A theoretical framework focused on cognitive and affective information-processing traits—and their interactions—opens up tractable empirical questions and a future research agenda. Identifying subsets of ideologues is an endeavor with potential to inform the design of evidence-based interventions aimed at reducing ideological extremism and fostering social understanding.

Activism in the time of COVID-19

In many countries, COVID-19 has amplified the health, economic and social inequities that motivate group-based collective action. We draw upon the SIRDE/IDEAS model of social change to explore how the pandemic might have affected complex reactions to social injustices. We argue that the virus elicits widespread negative emotions which are spread contagiously through social media due to increased social isolation caused by shelter-in-place directives. When an incident occurs which highlights systemic injustices, the prevailing negative emotional climate intensifies anger at these injustices as well as other emotions, which motivates participation in protest actions despite the obvious risk. We discuss how the pandemic might shape both normative and non-normative protests, including radical violent and destructive collective actions. We also discuss how separatism is being encouraged in some countries due to a lack of effective national leadership and speculate that this is partially the result of different patterns of social identification.

Trustworthiness and Ideological Similarity (But Not Ideology) Promote Empathy

The current highly polarized U.S. political culture impedes people's ability to live and work together effectively. Here we examine one factor that may play a role: selective empathy based on shared political ideology. Across seven studies (N = 3,476), participants read about a hypothetical politician and his political ideology, trustworthiness, or both. Participants reported their empathy for the politician after learning he was fined (Studies 1-6) or injured (Study 7). When trustworthiness alone was manipulated, liberals and conservatives expressed similar levels of empathy, with greater empathy for the more trustworthy politician. However, when the politician's ideology alone was manipulated, participants reported greater empathy for the politician who shared their ideology. When trustworthiness and ideology were manipulated, selective empathy was observed when the politician was trustworthy. Participant ideology alone had little effect on empathy. The results suggest that empathy is sensitive to both trustworthiness and ideological match, but not ideology itself.

Exploring collective emotion transmission in face-to-face interactions

Collective emotion is the synchronous convergence of an effective response across individuals toward a specific event or object. Previous studies have focused on the transmission of cyber collective emotion; however, little attention has been paid to the transmission of collective emotion in face-to-face interactions. Using an experimental design, we examined how emotions are transmitted from some members to the whole group in face-to-face situations. We used a news report of a social event as an emotion stimulus to induce anger and disgust in 158 middle school students aged 12 to 15, with an average age of 13.20 years (SD = 0.651) We randomly assigned one-third of the participants to be "transmitters," while the others were "receivers." Transmitters shared their feelings with receivers; then, receivers communicated with other group members. The results indicated that negative collective emotions were transmitted from high- to low-intensity members, which converged through the effect of emotional contagion. It accumulated through the effect of an emotional circle, during which the feedback reinforced emotion intensity. The collective emotion transmission model comprised emotion diffusion, contagion, and accumulation. This model elucidates the intrinsic features of collective emotion transmission, enriches the research on collective emotion, and provides theoretical references for monitoring and managing future public events.

Feel Good or Do Good? A Valence–Function Framework for Understanding Emotions

Previous thinking has often categorized emotions as either pleasant or unpleasant or examined to what extent they are functional or dysfunctional. We suggest that researchers should consider the positivity or negativity of discrete emotions on both dimensions: subjective feelings and constructiveness of outcomes. We discuss how, across contexts, a specific emotion can potentially be categorized differently within the framework. We further suggest that this approach is particularly useful in unique, complex contexts that involve clashes among goals, interests, or values, such as violent intergroup conflicts. Using this context, we demonstrate how emotions that feel good to people can lead to behaviors and attitudes that sustain violence and thwart conflict resolution, whereas emotions that promote conflict resolution are often unpleasant. Such clashes may depend on the presence of embedded contextual factors, such as group membership and relative power. Thus, this framework will be useful for examining specific emotions while taking contextual factors into consideration. Finally, we examine several important questions stemming from our framework and suggest directions for future research.

The MAD Model of Moral Contagion: The Role of Motivation, Attention, and Design in the Spread of Moralized Content Online

With more than 3 billion users, online social networks represent an important venue for moral and political discourse and have been used to organize political revolutions, influence elections, and raise awareness of social issues. These examples rely on a common process to be effective: the ability to engage users and spread moralized content through online networks. Here, we review evidence that expressions of moral emotion play an important role in the spread of moralized content (a phenomenon we call moral contagion). Next, we propose a psychological model called the motivation, attention, and design (MAD) model to explain moral contagion. The MAD model posits that people have group-identity-based motivations to share moral-emotional content, that such content is especially likely to capture our attention, and that the design of social-media platforms amplifies our natural motivational and cognitive tendencies to spread such content. We review each component of the model (as well as interactions between components) and raise several novel, testable hypotheses that can spark progress on the scientific investigation of civic engagement and activism, political polarization, propaganda and disinformation, and other moralized behaviors in the digital age.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid! Motivated Intergroup Emotion Regulation

Group-based emotions can shape group members' behaviors and intergroup relations. Therefore, we propose that people may try to regulate emotions of outgroup members to attain ingroup goals. We call this phenomenon "motivated intergroup emotion regulation." In four studies, conducted in both hypothetical and real-world contexts, we show that deterrence and reconciliation goals influence how fearful or calm people want outgroup members to feel, respectively. We further show that such motivated intergroup emotion regulation can guide behavior toward the outgroup, influencing how outgroup members feel (Studies 1, 2, and 4) and behave (Study 4). We demonstrate how affiliation with the ingroup, which renders ingroup goals more salient, shapes what ingroup members want outgroup members to feel (Studies 3 and 4) and subsequently how outgroup members feel and behave (Study 4). Finally, we discuss how motivated intergroup emotion regulation might contribute to understanding motivation in emotion regulation, group-based emotions, and intergroup relations.

Collective Emotions

When analyzing situations in which multiple people are experiencing emotions together—whether the emotions are positive or negative and whether the situations are online or offline—we are intuitively drawn to the emotions of each individual in the situation. However, this type of analysis often seems incomplete. In many of the cases in which people experience emotions together, there appear to be emergent macrolevel affective processes that cannot be readily captured at the individual level. In this article, we examine these macrolevel affective phenomena, which are termed collective emotions. We open with a general review of research on collective psychological processes. We then define collective emotions and discuss their key features. Next, we focus our attention on the emergent properties of collective emotions and map them using three dimensions: quality, magnitude, and time course. Finally, we discuss pressing open questions and future directions for research on collective emotions.

Integrating Empathy and Interpersonal Emotion Regulation

When individuals experience empathy , they often seek to bolster others’ well-being. But what do empathizers want others to feel? Though psychologists have studied empathy and prosociality for decades, this question has yet to be clearly addressed. This is because virtually all existing research focuses on cases in which improving others’ well-being also comprises heightening their positive affect or decreasing their negative affect and helping them reach their own emotional goals. In this review, I argue that real-life empathic goals encompass a broader range—including sometimes worsening targets’ affect or contravening their wishes in order to improve their well-being—that can be productively integrated into the framework of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER). I review the empathic IER spectrum in a number of contexts, including close relationships, professional caregiving, and group-based emotions. Integrating empathy and IER provides a synthetic and generative way to ask new questions about how social emotions produce prosocial actions.

What Drives Our Emotions When We Watch Sporting Events? An ESM Study on the Affective Experience of German Spectators During the 2018 FIFA World Cup

There is ample evidence that watching sports induces strong emotions that translate into manifold consequential behaviours. However, it is rather ill-understood how exactly spectators’ emotions unfold during soccer matches and what determines their intensity. To address these questions, we used the 2018 FIFA World Cup as a natural quasi-experiment to conduct a pre-registered study on spectators’ emotional experiences. Employing an app-based experience-sampling design, we tracked 251 German spectators during the tournament and assessed high-resolution changes in core affect (valence, activation) throughout soccer matches. Across the three German matches, multi-level models revealed that all spectators exhibited strong changes on both affective dimensions in response to Germany’s performance. Although fans experienced slightly more intense affect than non-fans, particularly during losses, this moderating effect was very small in comparison to the magnitude of the affective fluctuations that occurred independent of fan identity. Taken together, the findings suggest group emotions (collectively felt emotion irrespective of individual affiliation) rather than group-affiliation based emotions (individually felt emotion because of an affiliated group), as the dominant process underlying spectator affect during the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Social Allostasis and Social Allostatic Load: A New Model for Research in Social Dynamics, Stress, and Health

Theories such as social baseline theory have argued that social groups serve a regulatory function but have not explored whether this regulatory process carries costs for the group. Allostatic load, the wear and tear on regulatory systems caused by chronic or frequent stress, is marked by diminished stress system flexibility and compromised recovery. We argue that allostatic load may develop within social groups as well and provide a model for how relationship dysfunction operates. Social allostatic load may be characterized by processes such as groups becoming locked into static patterns of interaction and may ultimately lead to up-regulation or down-regulation of a group's set point, or the optimal range of arousal or affect around which the group tends to converge. Many studies of emotional and physiological linkage within groups have reported that highly correlated states of arousal, which may reflect failure to maintain a group-level regulatory baseline, occur in the context of stress, conflict, and relationship distress. Relationship strain may also place greater demands on neurocognitive regulatory processes. Just as allostatic load may be detrimental to individual health, social allostatic load may corrode relationship quality.

Mobilizing IDEAS in the Scottish Referendum: Predicting voting intention and well-being with the Identity-Deprivation-Efficacy-Action-Subjective well-being model

In the month approaching the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum, we tested the Identity‐Deprivation‐Efficacy‐Action‐Subjective Well‐Being model using an electorally representative survey of Scottish adults (N = 1,156) to predict voting for independence and subjective well‐being. Based on social identity theory, we hypothesized for voting intention that the effects of collective relative deprivation, group identification, and collective efficacy, but not personal relative deprivation (PRD), should be fully mediated by social change ideology. Well‐being was predicted to be associated with PRD (negatively) and group identification (positively and, indirectly, negatively). Unaffected by demographic variables and differences in political interest, nested structural equation model tests supported the model, accounting for 82% of the variance in voting intention and 31% of the variance in subjective well‐being. However, effects involving efficacy depended on its temporal framing. We consider different ways that social identification can simultaneously enhance and diminish well‐being and we discuss ramifications of the model for collective mobilization and separatist nationalism. Findings also suggest new directions for research on social identity, collective efficacy, and collective action.

Academic freedom, the boycott of Israel, and what psychologists can do: against the politics of normalization

This article uses the Recognition, Reparation and Reconciliation Conference held at Stellenbosch University in December 2018 as a lens to argue for an academic boycott of Israel while maintaining the principle of academic freedom, specifically as it pertains to the discipline of psychology. I argue that Israel is an apartheid state, that there is a need to isolate Israel politically, economically, culturally, and academically, and that the objection to the academic boycott of Israel is a selective application of the concept of academic freedom and is therefore a spurious argument. Rather than infringing on academic freedom, the boycott may increase the likelihood of academic freedom in Israel–Palestine. I provide possible suggestions about how the international community, including psychologists, might engage with the Israeli academy in the interests of furthering a human rights agenda.

Intragroup Emotion Convergence: Beyond Contagion and Social Appraisal

Mimicry-based emotion contagion and social appraisal currently provide the most popular explanations for interpersonal emotional convergence. However, neither process fully accounts for intragroup effects involving dynamic calibration of people’s orientations during communal activities. When group members are engaged in shared tasks, they simultaneously attend to the same unfolding events and arrive at mutually entrained movement patterns that facilitate emotional coordination. Entrainment may be further cultivated by interaction rituals involving rhythmic music that sets the pace for collective singing, dancing, or marching. These rituals also provide an emotionally meaningful focus for group activities and sometimes specifically encourage the experience of intense embodied states. Intragroup emotion convergence thus depends on interlocking processes of reciprocated and context-attuned orientational calibration and group-based social appraisal.

The role of hedonics in the Human Affectome

Experiencing pleasure and displeasure is a fundamental part of life. Hedonics guide behavior, affect decision-making, induce learning, and much more. As the positive and negative valence of feelings, hedonics are core processes that accompany emotion, motivation, and bodily states. Here, the affective neuroscience of pleasure and displeasure that has largely focused on the investigation of reward and pain processing, is reviewed. We describe the neurobiological systems of hedonics and factors that modulate hedonic experiences (e.g., cognition, learning, sensory input). Further, we review maladaptive and adaptive pleasure and displeasure functions in mental disorders and well-being, as well as the experience of aesthetics. As a centerpiece of the Human Affectome Project, language used to express pleasure and displeasure was also analyzed, and showed that most of these analyzed words overlap with expressions of emotions, actions, and bodily states. Our review shows that hedonics are typically investigated as processes that accompany other functions, but the mechanisms of hedonics (as core processes) have not been fully elucidated.

When to reveal what you feel: How emotions towards antagonistic out-group and third party audiences are expressed strategically

In intergroup conflicts, expressed emotions influence how others see and react to those who express them. Here, we investigated whether this in turn implies that emotions may be expressed strategically. We tested whether emotion expression can differ from emotion experience, and whether emotion expression (more than emotion experience) is used to pursue specific goals. Specifically, we focused on whether support-seeking emotions (fear and sadness) are used to call for support from a powerful third party and contempt to distance from an antagonistic out-group. In two studies, using the same ostensible conflict, we manipulated whether participants communicated their emotions towards the out-group (no vs. yes) and third party (no vs. yes) and employed a between-subjects design in Study 1 (N = 86) and a within-subjects design in Study 2 (N = 83). In both studies, we found that members of a disadvantaged group expressed reduced support-seeking emotions towards the out-group than they experienced (i.e., in conditions without an audience), providing support for the assumption that emotion expression does not necessarily reflect experience. Further, in Study 2, we found in line with expectations that the goal to call for support was more important in the communication with the third party than with the antagonistic out-group. The goal was best predicted by expressed support-seeking emotions, providing support for the assumption that emotion expression is used to pursue goals. Interestingly, we only found this association for a beneficial goal (i.e., calling for support) and not for distancing, a destructive goal. These results support the proposed strategic use of emotion expression and as such advance our understanding of the function of expressed emotions.

When we want them to fear us: The motivation to influence outgroup emotions in collective action

Prior work has shown that the experience of group-based emotions can motivate disadvantaged group members to engage in collective action. In the current research, we tested whether such action can also be driven by the motivation to induce certain emotions among the outgroup to the extent that disadvantaged group members believe this would help them attain their social change goals. We tested this hypothesis in three studies (two correlational and one experimental) within the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Study 1 showed that individuals’ motivation to induce outgroup regret was associated with nonviolent collective action tendencies, whereas the motivation to induce outgroup fear was related to violent action. Study 2 moved beyond Study 1 by assessing corrective and punitive goals of social change. We found that preferences for inducing outgroup regret mediated the relationship between endorsement of corrective goals and nonviolent action tendencies, whereas preferences for outgroup fear mediated the relationship between punitive goals and violent action. Study 3 provided experimental support for the causal effect of goals on emotion motivations and collective action tendencies. Together, our findings are in line with the notion of instrumental emotion regulation as applied to collective action.

Social identities and shared realities

People are fundamentally motivated to establish a shared reality with others to validate their identity and experiences. Guided by social identity theory, we examine how social identity processes, such as self-categorization and depersonalization, create a shared identity and a sense of shared reality. Research demonstrates that internal states such as attitudes, feelings, and emotions are often shared among members of a group. Furthermore, research has shown that self-uncertainty motivates people to establish shared realities through group identification, often with highly entitative groups that are associated with a self-saturating reality that is shared absolutely. Finally, we review research on how group-defining norms that serve as the bases of these identity-related shared realities are constructed and communicated through group-membership based influence.