Th us, there is evidence that mimicry is a fast and effi cient process that is independent of intentions or goals and diffi cult to control. Th e best known study demonstrating auto- maticity in feedback processes, the second step of primitive emotional contagion, is the experiment by Strack, Martin, and Stepper (1988). Th ey showed that even when manipu- lating facial expression in an unobtrusive manner (by holding a pen either between one’s lips or one’s teeth) activation of muscles implicated in smiling led to higher levels of per- ceived funniness in cartoons.
Social appraisal processes are likely to vary more with respect to automaticity.
Perceptions of specifi c emotions can occur effi ciently and outside awareness (Rohr, Degner, & Wentura, 2011) and may lead to specifi c infl uences on appraisal (Yang & Tong, 2010); however, social appraisal can also occur at a less automatic, more intentional and conscious level of processing. Th e passengers in the airplane turbulence situation reported having actively sought out relevant emotional information from others (in particular, the fl ight crew).
Given that the emotional contagion framework has been detailed elsewhere (see Hatfi eld et al., Chapter 8, this volume), the remainder of this chapter will focus on devel- oping the social appraisal account. In particular, we will consider the circumstances under which people are most likely to appraise others’ emotions; whose emotional expressions they are likely to appraise; and when this is likely to result in a convergent or divergent emotional response.
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expressions. Apparently monkeys also share the ability to use others’ expressions to evalu- ate unknown objects (Morimoto & Fujita, 2012).
Under what circumstances do we appraise others’ emotions?
The uncertainty hypothesis
We propose that both capacity and motivation to process others’ emotional expressions play a major role in predicting when people engage in social appraisal. Although social appraisal can occur even when exposure to others’ expressions is minimal, there is reason to believe that conditions that allow for full processing of others’ expressions and of the context in which they occur will result in social appraisal processes having a more power- ful infl uence.
Motivation to process social emotional information should also be critical. On any regular fl ight other passengers express a variety of emotions relating to topics such as infl ight entertainment or airplane meals. What sets the turbulence example apart is that passengers are highly motivated to understand what is happening. We therefore propose the uncertainty hypothesis : People will be especially motivated to attend to others’ emo- tions when they are uncertain about the emotional signifi cance of an event. If people are unable to arrive at a complete pattern of appraisals for a given situation (e.g., due to lack of information), or if they have low confi dence in their own appraisals, they will try to gain relevant information from others’ expressions or validate their initial appraisals by reference to others’ expressions.
Th e notion that people are motivated to use social information to understand them- selves and their environment is an old one. In his social comparison theory, Festinger (1954, p. 117) proposed a “drive to evaluate [one’s] opinions and [. . .] abilities.” Th is expressly includes the evaluation of cognitions about the situation at hand. Building on social comparison theory, Schachter (1959, p. 25), in his two-factor theory of emotion, suggested that individuals in ambiguous situations actively seek out social information to gain “cognitive clarity” about their emotional state. Indeed, a number of studies have found that when faced with threat, people affi liate with others who can provide cognitive clarity and thereby reduce uncertainty (Gump & Kulik, 1997; Kulik, Mahler, & Earnest, 1994; Kulik, Mahler, & Moore, 1996). However, whereas Schachter (1959) emphasized the role of contextual information in disambiguating physiological arousal, we propose that the appraisal information carried by others’ expressions has a more basic infl uence, by disam biguating the situation itself.
Studies of social referencing in infancy further support the idea that social appraisal pro- cesses occur in uncertainty-inducing situations. When infants are faced with ambiguous situations such as crossing a visual cliff (Sorce, Emde, Campos, & Klinnert, 1985) or play- ing with unfamiliar toys (e.g., Klinnert, Emde, Butterfi eld, & Campos, 1986; Zarbatany & Lamb, 1985), they turn to their caregivers presumably to “seek out emotional informa- tion from a signifi cant other person in the environment and to use that information to make sense of an event that is otherwise ambiguous or beyond the person’s own intrinsic appraisal capabilities” (Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde, & Svejda, 1983, p. 64).
Finally, a series of studies by van Kleef, De Dreu, and Manstead (2004) showed that people’s epistemic motivation, their motivation to develop an accurate understanding of a situation (and thereby overcome uncertainty and gain cognitive clarity), predicts the degree to which their appraisal of an ongoing negotiation and their bidding behavior is infl uenced by others’ expressions of emotion.
In sum, ambiguous or uncertain situations may motivate individuals to pay more atten- tion to others’ expressions and process their meaning more thoroughly (see Van Kleef, De Dreu, & Manstead, 2010, for a related account). When faced with such situations, people may therefore be more susceptible to adopting others’ appraisals. Th ere is also individual variability in people’s motivation to reduce uncertainty (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994).
So how do emotional contagion and social appraisal processes play out in situa- tions in which uncertainty (and, therefore, motivation to attend to and process others’
expressions) is low or high? Under conditions of low uncertainty, we propose that there will be some automatic infl uence of both processes in the direction of interpersonal emotional convergence. Increasing uncertainty will have relatively little impact on the role played by emotional contagion processes. In contrast, social appraisal processes are likely to be much more infl uential when uncertainty is high, and may result in anything from strong convergence with others to divergence, depending on the social context. Next we detail the conditions under which we would expect convergence or divergence to occur.
Whose emotional expressions do we appraise? The reliability hypothesis
To whom do we attend when we are motivated to seek (more) information about a situa- tion? And when do we converge with or diverge from another person’s emotion? Th e tur- bulence example provides anecdotal evidence that sender characteristics matter in social appraisal. Paul Gibson, another passenger on the fl ight, is quoted as saying, “I could hear there was somebody sort of crying or sort of yelping as the plane shook. My fi rst impres- sion was that it was a passenger so I didn’t really think anything of it” (BBC News, 2006b).
Two sender characteristics are likely to have been of prime importance in appraising the emotional expressions of other people in the course of phylogeny and ontogeny. Th e fi rst is whether the person’s emotional displays are trustworthy . Th e second is whether the emotional expression is based on a competent appraisal of the situation. Together, these two factors determine the reliability of the perceived appraisal information. In proposing the reliability hypothesis , we argue that emotional expressions that are appraised as reli- able will have a diff erent impact on the perceiver than will expressions regarded as being of doubtful reliability.
Who is considered to be reliable has been studied in the domain of person percep- tion (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2008; Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007). Th is research shows that two dimensions, warmth/trustworthiness and competence, are central to our perceptions of others, and are stable across cultures (Abele, Uchronski, Suitner, & Wojciszke, 2008;
Trapnell & Paulhus, 2012). Th ese dimensions have also played a major role in the fi eld of
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persuasion. In particular, source credibility is generally believed to be shaped by trustwor- thiness and expertise (i.e., whether a person is perceived as competent to judge the issue in question; Pornpitakpan, 2004).
How do perceptions of warmth and competence combine to determine the perceived reliability of expressions? Research in person perception suggests that judgments of warmth/trustworthiness are primary (Wojciszke, Bazinska, & Jaworski, 1998). Th ey are more cognitively accessible and determine the valence of interpersonal judgments, whereas the competence evaluation predicts the degree to which a person is judged posi- tively or negatively (cf. Fiske et al., 2007, p. 78). In the context of emotion communication, this leads to the hypothesis that warmth/trustworthiness appraisals should predict the direction of interpersonal infl uence: senders perceived as warm/trustworthy should elicit convergence in appraisals, whereas senders perceived as low in warmth/trustworthiness should elicit divergence in appraisals. Supporting this assertion, there is evidence that friends more strongly converge in their appraisals, feelings, and emotional expressions than strangers (Anderson et al., 2003; Bruder, Dosmukhambetova, Nerb, & Manstead, 2012a) and that objects are liked more when looked at by trustworthy rather than untrust- worthy individuals (King, Rowe, & Leonards, 2011).
Shared group membership may also aff ect appraisals of warmth/trustworthiness, lead- ing to higher levels of emotional convergence with ingroup as compared to outgroup members. Th is is consistent with fi ndings by Weisbuch and Ambady (2008) who, in one study had Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees supporters read aloud scenar ios describ- ing the happiness or fear experiences of either a Red Sox or a Yankees fan. Ratings of the aff ective tone of participants’ voices showed that those who read the expe riences of an ingroup member converged with the emotion described in the scenario, whereas those reading about an outgroup member diverged. Research on convergence in emo- tional expressions has also found that liked senders are mimicked more than disliked senders (Likowski, Mühlberger, Seibt, Pauli, & Weyers, 2008), and that ingroup mem- bers are mimicked more than outgroup members (Bourgeois & Hess, 2008; Mondillon, Niedenthal, Gil, & Drolt-Volet, 2007; van der Schalk et al., 2011).
Perceptions of senders’ competence should predict the magnitude of the convergence or divergence. Th us the more competent perceivers consider a sender to be, the more likely it is that they will share his or her appraisals, as inferred from his or her emotional expres sions. Group-related variables are likely to infl uence perceptions of another person’s com petence. For example, there is evidence that high levels of competence are attributed to individuals who have high ingroup status (Fiske et al., 2007). Furthermore, high- and low-status group members are thought to experience and express diff erent emotions (Conway, Di Fazio, & Mayman, 1999; Tiedens, Ellsworth, & Mesquita, 2000). Because members of low-status groups are generally regarded as less competent, their emotions may also be seen as less reliable, and thus less likely to be informative. Low-status indi- viduals may also be more likely than their high-status counterparts to converge towards another’s emotion (Anderson et al., 2003; Sy, Côté, & Saavedra, 2005; but see Spoor &
Kelly, 2009).