Previous research has distinguished between two general ways of sharing emotions: socio-affective sharing, which occurs when the listener. Furthermore, popular colloquialisms such as "getting it off your chest" refer to the inner relief embedded in the process of sharing emotions. While the positive effects of sharing emotions are recognized and accepted, the mechanism by which sharing emotions provides therapeutic benefits in the context of.
In contrast, the social-affective mode of sharing social emotions occurs when the listener responds sympathetically to the sharer to validate the sharer's emotional experience and provide social support (Rimé, 2009). Instances of social-affective emotion sharing (1) were identified and classified based on the degree of (i) understanding, (ii) validation, (iii) empathy, and (iv) sympathy expressed in the writing. Instances of cognitive emotion sharing (2) were identified in terms of (i) advice given, (ii) articulation and (iii) changing perspective.
Results
Of note, self-reported SA was more closely related to gratitude, perceived social support, and inversely to loneliness, supporting the hypothesis that socio-affective responses to sharing emotions are stronger. Self-reported CW was most significantly related to life satisfaction and outcome satisfaction and inversely to perceived stress and depression, supporting the hypothesis that cognitive work responses to emotional sharing result in better resolution. big problem. The three measures of cognitive work (advice given, perspective shifting, and articulation) were scored to yield the overall type of emotion sharing cognitive work described in responses or coded CW.
However, contrary to previous research, cognitive work responses to emotion sharing were also more significantly correlated with emotion resolution. Relative differences between coded SA and coded CW outcome measures were compared by performing a median split of the data and t-tests. The median split data were used to compare outcome measures between high-coded SA responses versus low-coded SA responses and high-coded CW responses versus low-coded CW responses.
For the median split of SA, 82 participants were categorized in the 'below median' group and 65 participants were categorized in the 'above median group'. For the median split by CW, 54 participants were categorized in the 'below median' group and 93 participants were categorized in the 'above median' group. The difference between high and low SA participants in emotion resolution versus problem solving is summarized in Figure 1.
The difference between high and low CW participants in emotion resolution compared to problem solving is summarized in Figure 2. Comparing the mean difference data from median split by SA and median split by CW ( Figure 3 ), participants coded for high CW had. higher degrees of coded emotion resolution (ER) and problem solving (PR), higher self-reported outcome satisfaction (OS), gratitude (GRAT), perceived social support (SS), and satisfaction with life (SWL), and.
Discussion
The decrease in perceived stress could be directly related to the greater outcome satisfaction reported among the participants engaging in cognitive emotion sharing. Participants who reported a higher degree of cognitive emotion sharing indicated higher degrees of problem solving and emotional resolution in the writing response compared to participants who reported a higher degree of socio-affective emotion. The observed correlations support the hypothesis that socio-affective emotion sharing would have a greater overall positive impact on emotion resolution compared to problem solving.
However, because sharing social-affective emotions does not always imply a shift in the respondent's emotional appraisal or concrete advice, the underlying problem that caused the emotional problems was not always addressed. Participants who engaged in emotion sharing cognitive work experienced higher levels of both emotion and problem solving, which can be attributed to cognitive work encouraging emotional recovery through reappraisal. The observed correlations between self-reported type of emotion sharing and resolution did not support the hypothesis that cognitive work would lead to higher levels of problem solving compared to emotion resolution.
Because both forms of emotion sharing are significantly more correlated with emotion resolution than with problem solving, a possible explanation lies in the nature of many of the stressful experiences described. To adequately compare the levels of emotion and problem solving in response to an emotion sharing experience, the type of “problem” described must be standardized to be somewhat solvable. The median split of the data based on the median of social-affective emotion sharing indicated that participants who engaged in higher levels of social-affective sharing had significantly higher levels of emotion resolution, problem solving, gratitude, and outcome satisfaction, and significantly lower degrees of.
While social-affective emotion sharing correlated with many of the predicted effects, such as increased social support and gratitude and decreased loneliness, and was more related to emotion resolution than problem solving, as hypothesized, shared social- of affective emotions correlates less highly than cognitive emotion sharing in terms of general resolution of emotions. One possible explanation could be that the reappraisal process inherent in many instances of cognitive emotion sharing has a stronger influence on emotion resolution than socio-affective effects on emotion resolution, such as validation and sympathy.
Limitations
Previous studies have shown that sharing socio-affective emotions is associated with initial reductions in negative emotions, but the effects were not sustained over time; while cognitive work was most beneficial in promoting long-term emotional recovery (Lepore et al., 2004). The initial social support and reduced loneliness felt by the socio-affective participant during the emotion exchange experience could moderate negative emotions in the moment but dissipate after the exchange interaction. In contrast, because cognitive sharing of emotions is associated with a shift in emotional appraisal, changing the way the sharer views the stressor may allow the participant to experience greater emotional resolution over time.
To further explore the immediate and long-term effects of sharing interpersonal emotions, future research could design a longitudinal study in which participants are asked to keep a diary about a stressful experience and share emotions in response to that experience, directly at the moment it occurs, with a follow-up investigation. journal entry about emotions and problem solving related to the initial stressor over time. However, of the 222 external participants who began the Emotional Experience Survey, only 68 participants submitted complete data sets. Of those 68 complete external data sets, 25 of the writing prompt responses were coded as 0 on all seven measures of emotion sharing, indicating that a large portion of the external writing responses did not follow the prompt directions and were not relevant to the research question.
Future research might consider asking participants several shorter prompt questions that separate components of the emotion sharing. Because more than one-third of the external responses were coded as 0 across all emotion-sharing measures, the overall totals of coded SA and CW were diluted. Due to the smaller sample size of the internal sample (n = 79) compared to the overall sample (n = 149), fewer measures were found to be significantly different between low SA/CW and high SA/CW, respectively.
Since emotion resolution and loneliness are two of the measures expected to be most strongly related to socio-affective emotion sharing, mean-split analysis of the internal data supports the hypothesis of socio-affective emotion sharing effects. While no definitive conclusions can be drawn from the limited data of the mean internal separation analysis, preliminary results seem to suggest that a more complete data set might have shown stronger support for the experimental hypotheses.
Conclusion
Higher patterns of outcome satisfaction, emotion resolution, and problem solving for cognitive emotion sharing support previous research findings that cognitive sharing results in the greatest degree of overall recovery consistent with the appraisal theory of emotion (Nils & Rime, 2008; . Lepore et al. ., 2004 ). In support of previous research and hypothesized outcomes, cognitive emotion sharing was significantly correlated with increased life satisfaction. While cognitive emotion sharing itself was found to be more positively correlated with emotion resolution than problem solving, contrary to the expectation that cognitive emotion sharing leads to the greatest overall benefit in problem solving, it is possible that the time frame of the emotional experience in relation to the writing exercise allowed participants longer to process the experience which in retrospect led to higher emotion resolution.
More research is needed to assess the immediate and long-term effects of each method of sharing emotions and to identify mediating variables. Additional research is needed to fully elucidate the various differences between modes of emotion sharing in context, but the findings of this study generalize several laboratory findings to the real-world context of emotion sharing. While both ways of responding to emotion sharing offered therapeutic benefits to the sharer, cognitive emotion sharing was found to have a greater impact on emotion and problem solving and in different ways.
The strong negative correlation between socio-affective emotion sharing and loneliness suggests that when engaging in an emotion-sharing interaction, the listener should try to understand and validate the participant and show empathy and sympathy to maximize the participant's perception of the emotional network. their social support. However, the study's findings indicate that the most meaningful method of supporting the participant in an emotion-sharing interaction is to help the participant engage in cognitive work to reevaluate it. Describe the stressful situation, why it was stressful, and your emotional response to it.
Validation – to what extent did the participant indicate that he/she felt that his/her feelings were validated (the feeling that he/she has the right to feel what he/she feels) through the response to sharing emotions . Resolution of emotions - to what extent did the participant feel that their emotions in response to the stressful event or problem were resolved after the emotion sharing interaction.
