People tend to feel the need to talk about their
emotional experiences. This phenomenon is called the Social Sharing of
Emotion. A research note recently published in International Review of Social
Psychology offers a new perspective on social sharing of emotions by focusing not
only on people who shared emotional experiences but also on those who listened,
and in particular by trying to understand what may lead someone to accept the
social sharing of emotion. In most cases, the narrator perceived the social
sharing of his emotions as useful and beneficial (see Rimé, 2007). However, what about the listener? The study
recently published in the IRSP originally investigates (1) why people listen
and (2) what are their perceptions of the narrator’s motives.
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After recovering a recent situation in which
participants listened someone’s emotional (positive or negative) episode, they
were asked to list reasons (1) why they accepted the social sharing and (2) why
they perceived that the narrator needed to speak with them. Results show that
the acceptance of social sharing is principally predicted by the need to afford
social support and preserve social relationship. However, depending on the
valence of the emotional experiences (i.e., sharing of positive or negative
emotions), different motives emerged. Indeed,
for positive events, the categories bonding,
empathy and information (i.e., being informed about what had occurred during the
event) were the main reported motives. For negative events, the categories of emotional support and social support were the most frequently reported. The perceived motives for narrator’s sharing are
mainly venting and bonding with the listener and did not
differ on the whole for positive or negative events.
Thus, this research provides new information about the
operation of social interactions during social sharing of emotion. Indeed, according
to the authors, people listen principally to reinforce relationship and to provide
support in view of the perceived narrator’s needs to comfort, express emotion
and avoid loneliness.
References :
Delelis, G. &
Christophe, V., (2016). Motives for the Acceptance of the Social Sharing
of Positive and Negative Emotions and Perceived
Motives of the Narrator for Sharing the Emotional Episode. International Review
of Social Psychology. 29(1), pp.99–104. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.4
Rimé, B. (2007). Interpersonal emotion regulation In: Gross,
J. J. ed. Handbook of emotion regulation. NY: Guilford Press,
pp. 466–485.
Download the article of Delelis & Christophe from the link:
http://www.rips-irsp.com/article/10.5334/irsp.4/
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