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This article analyses the assessments of Truth Commissions (TCs) and their association with positive socio-emotional climate and trust in institutions in six South American countries The sample con...

Among the four components proposed by Sbarra and Coan (2018) to guide the research aimed at understanding the role of emotion in the connection between social relationship and health, I view the fourth one, labeled “transactional dimensions,” as offering particularly rich promises in this regard. To illustrate, I sketch the example of individual, interpersonal, and collective effects entailed by the process of social sharing of emotion. The example rests on the bidirectional flow of transactions that develops continuously between these three levels.

To disclose emotional experiences, people can either talk or write. Our research was intended to address content differences between social sharing of emotion and expressive writing. In the first study, 92 participants either talked to an experimenter or wrote alone about an emotional experience. In the second study, after watching an emotion-inducing film, 112 participants were asked to disclose their emotions by either writing, talking alone to a recorder, talking with an unknown peer, or talking with someone close to them. Computerised lexical analyses were conducted on all material collected with a central focus on affective and cognitive processes as well as on narrative style indices like personal pronouns. Consistently, results showed a higher proportion of emotion words in writing than in oral conditions. Personal pronoun use, emotional tone, and proportion of cognitive words also appeared to vary depending on disclosure mode and type of narrative target.

Collective memory theories propose that groups' remembrances of their past depend upon their current social situation. In Belgium, a significant proportion of Dutch speakers share a collective memory of past victimisation by French speakers and fight for an ever-larger autonomy of their region. Yet, as the respective economic, political and social situations of the linguistic regions of Belgium recently evolved with a reversal of fortunes, the current experience of younger Dutch speakers does not fit the traditional memory anymore. We thus predicted that the collective memories of victimhood would decline amongst them, thus bringing changes in intergroup attitudes and political aspirations. Three generations were compared in a survey of 1226 French-speaking and 1457 Dutch-speaking individuals. For both groups, younger generations evidenced less regionalist and more integrative positions than older ones. However, these effects were stronger for Dutch-speaking respondents, and for them, collective memory of victimhood mediated the relation linking age and identification with Belgium, intergroup attitudes and political aspirations. We concluded that the current social context has decisive consequences for collective remembrances, which, in turn, impact intergroup relations and political attitudes and choices.

Perceptions of the ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ and ‘Political Imprisonment and Torture’ commissions and related beliefs, emotions and socio-emotional climate were analysed in people affected and unaffected by past political violence in Chile (N = 1278). People directly affected regard institutional apologies as less sincere and effective, and they were more critical of the commissions. Those who have a positive appraisal of the commissions, compared with people who disagree with the commissions activities, are less prone to forget past collective violence; report higher levels of negative emotions, such as shame, and positive ones, such as pride and hope, about the collective past; and consider that the commissions contributed to knowing the truth about what happened to victims and helped bring human rights violators to justice. Those appraising the commissions in a positive fashion also perceive a more positive emotional climate and inter-group trust, have more confidence in institutions and report more universalistic values. A multiple-regression analysis suggests that commissions play a relatively successful role as transitional justice rituals, reinforcing reconciliation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Beliefs, emotions, and perception of socioemotional climate were analyzed in people affected and unaffected by past political violence in Chile (N = 1278). Compared with unaffected people, affected people reported a more positive attitude toward transitional justice procedure, were better informed, were more likely to reject an attitude of forgetting about the past, regarded institutional apologies as less sincere and effective, judged the current social climate as less positive, reported higher negative emotions related to the past, and showed less purpose in life. No differences were found for forgiveness or for outcomes of the transitional justice procedures or Truth Commissions, such as documentation of the truth or creation of an inclusive collective memory. Across groups, a negative view of forgiveness and a positive view of Truth Commissions dominated the picture. However, compared with nonvictims, victims also reported more pride and were more likely to endorse Universalist values, and this suggested that victims were subject, simultaneously, to a long-term negative impact of past events and a process of posttraumatic growth.

Introduction Passion as a concept but also as a way of life seems to generate an ever-growing interest among researchers and even employers. The Dualistic model of Passion ( Vallerand et al., 2003 ) has suggested that passion could take two distinct forms: harmonious or obsessive passion. However, the debate still remains open on the factors (contextual or dispositional) that are likely to influence the tendency to develop a passion for an activity. Objective This research was designed to explore the relations between passion and personality and to determine the strength of those links. Method To this end, 241 participants completed an online questionnaire comprising one measure of passion along with one measure of personality, namely an assessment of the Big Five dimensions. Results The results show a pattern of relations between passion and personality that is consistent with previous research which highlighted the more positive/adaptive nature and consequences of harmonious passion, in comparison with obsessive passion. Conclusion These outcomes nevertheless remain weak. More research is needed to focus on the contextual factors that could play an important role in the development of passion, mainly in its harmonious form.

When individuals experience an emotion, they talk about it afterwards. A popular ‘emotional venting’ belief claims that doing so dissolves the emotional impact. This study tested a model of when and how sharing emotions is beneficial. It predicts that benefits vary according to the listener's response mode. A socio-affective (empathic) mode was expected to buffer emotional distress temporarily. A cognitive (reframing) mode was anticipated to grant emotional recovery. Participants viewed an aversive film and then talked about it with an intimate. The latter was instructed to adopt either cognitive or socio-affective response modes in a 2x2 design (cognitive/non-cognitive; socio-affective/neutral). Emotional, cognitive and social benefits were assessed immediately afterwards and again two days later following re-exposure to the film. As predicted, emotional recovery occurred exclusively when the listener stimulated the participant's cognitive work. Cognitive variables (basic assumptions) were also positively modified by these conditions. Listeners' socio-affective responses entailed enhanced social integration (i.e. greater proximity to the listener; less loneliness) and an impression of feeling better. These results demonstrated that sharing emotions can lead to multiple benefits depending upon listeners' response modes: emotional recovery, consolidation of shattered assumptions, social integration, and temporary distress reduction.

Victims (N = 200) of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and prisoners (N = 184) accused of genocidal acts reported their genocide-related emotions and outgroup perceptions before and after their participation to Truth and Reconciliation Gacaca trials. So did control groups of victims (N = 195) and prisoners (N = 176) not yet exposed to Gacaca. The data supported Durkheim's model of social rituals as cultural tools for transforming emotions, reasserting norms, and enhancing cohesion. Specifically, participation entailed the general reactivation of resignation negative emotions, the enhancement of shame among prisoners, and the decrease of shame among victims, whereas the opposite pattern occurred for antagonist emotions. Participation also enhanced social integration by reducing perceived outgroup homogeneity, decreasing ingroup self-categorization, and increasing positive stereotypes among both victim and prisoner participants. Moreover, the increase in genocide-related emotions resulting from participation was associated to positive changes outcomes, suggesting that the increase of negative emotions is an important mechanism at work in collective events of this type. Enhancement of the perception of a positive emotional climate (solidarity and trust) was limited to perpetrator participants. Together, these findings show that Durkheim's model can be extended to restorative justice trials involving both victims and perpetrators. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Writing about emotional experiences has been shown to improve physical and psychological health (Frattaroli, 2006). The current study aimed to assess whether manipulating the level of information processing during disclosure impacted on psychological variables in individuals with high posttraumatic stress. Fifty-four participants were assigned to one of three conditions: (1) writing about the specific details of a stressful experience; (2) writing about generic information associated with a stressful event such as intrusive thoughts; or (3) writing about a neutral topic. They wrote on the given topic for three consecutive days for 20 minutes each day. Results showed that specifying a stressful event resulted in less distress during subsequent writing sessions, aided participants in making sense of the event, and helped them to feel less anger when thinking about the event.

This article examines the effects of participation in transitional justice rituals, including, for example, trials and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. These mechanisms have been designed to confront massive violations of human rights in the context of post-conflict situations and dictatorships. Truth Commissions and trials have instrumental goals of distributive justice, and serve as rituals given their marked symbolic character, helping to achieve reconciliation and the reconstruction of social norms. Evidence from South Africa and Rwanda suggests that participation in trials increases negative emotions and symptoms, and, thus, may not help to heal individual suffering. Moreover, the data from Rwanda and South Africa demonstrates that rituals also increase negative emotional climate, being costly for the society. In contrast, participants in such rituals have evidenced increased empowerment in Guatemala and South Africa, despite conditions of limited justice and reparation. Moreover, the ev...

Passion is defined as a strong inclination toward an activity that people love and in which they invest time and energy (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85 [2003] 756-767). Whereas various studies investigated the motives that people allege for engaging in sharing emotions, no data exist about motives for sharing passion. As passions have a strong emotional component and as emotions are virtually always socially shared (e.g. Rime, B., Finkenauer, C., Luminet, O., Zech, E., & Philippot, P. (1998). Social Sharing of Emotion: New Evidence and New Questions. In W. Stroebe and M. Hewstone (Eds.), European Review of Social Psychology (Vol. 9., pp. 145-189). Chichester: Wiley), we hypothesized that passionate people would strongly incline in sharing their passion with people around them. A first study examined the link between passion and emotion and showed that the more the activity was invested by passion, the more emotions are intense and positive. In a second study, we considered the relations between passion and social sharing and concluded that the social sharing of passion does not result solely from the emotional component of the shared passion. A third study explored alleged motives for sharing passion and revealed that the more the target is amateur, the larger the sharing is. Motives alleged by respondents for sharing their passion varied broadly as a function of target type. Exchange, learning, pleasure and affiliation motivate social sharing with other amateurs; promotion, information and proselytism are the most salient motives for sharing with the non connoisseur; ego-defence, activity justification, interest in other's opinion and proselytism dominate when addressing critic persons. (C) 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

This review demonstrates that an individualist view of emotion and regulation is untenable. First, I question the plausibility of a developmental shift away from social interdependency in emotion regulation. Second, I show that there are multiple reasons for emotional experiences in adults to elicit a process of social sharing of emotion, and I review the supporting evidence. Third, I look at effects that emotion sharing entails at the interpersonal and at the collective levels. Fourth, I examine the contribution of emotional sharing to emotion regulation together with the relevant empirical evidence. Finally, the various functions that the social sharing of emotion fulfills are reviewed and the relevance of the social sharing of emotion for emotion scientists is discussed.

The Dutch Bermond–Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ) is translated into various languages. The aim of this research was to establish the factor structure of subscales on seven cultural groups. The BVAQ consists of five subscales of eight items each: Emotionalising, Fantasising, Analysing, Identifying, and Verbalising emotions. The BVAQ was administered to a group of Dutch students (n=375), a group of English students (n=175), a group of Australian students, university employees and visitors (n=216), a group of French speaking Belgian students (n=175), a group of Italian people (n=791; a mix of various clinical groups), a group of Polish people (n=427; also a mix of various clinical groups) and a group of Russian people (n=141; general population). The hypothesised two-factor structure of an affective alexithymia dimension (Emotionalising, Fantasising) and a cognitive alexithymia dimension (Insight and Verbalising), with “Analysing emotions” loading on both factors, was clearly supported by confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). Both orthogonal and oblique principal components analyses (PCA), without restriction concerning the number of factors, provided the same two-factor solution in all groups explaining between 55% and 64% of the variance. Oblique rotation further demonstrated that the correlations between these two factors were low in all populations. The combined CFA and PCA results, therefore, indicated that a model with two independent factors has to be preferred over the model assuming two correlated factors.

Fifty survivors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and 50 prisoners accused of being responsible of genocidal acts completed four scales 45 days before and 45 days after their participation to a gacaca trial. The scales assessed (1) negative emotions presently felt with regard to the genocide, (2) perceived emotional climate, (3) negative stereotypes of the out group, and (4) perceived similarity among outgroup members. Building upon Durkheim's (1912) theory of collective rituals, we predicted that participation to the gacaca would involve a reactivation of negative emotions in both groups and would also impact negatively on perceived emotional climate. In contrast, we expected positive consequences for intergroup perception under the form of a reduction of (1) the prejudicial reactions of survivors and prisoners toward each other and (2) the perceived homogeneity of outgroup members. The collected data supported all four predictions.

The study of private emotional experiences reveals that an emotion is typically-followed by social sharing. Additionally, the target's responses stimulate the sharing person's emotional expression. The reciprocal stimulation of interactants favors empathy and emotional communion. Consequences are two-fold: (1) the sharing process reactivates emotional arousal in both agent and target, and (2) it strengthens social bonds. Sharing targets also share what they heard with others, who then experience a similar need. Social sharing also develops when an emotional event strikes collectively. In this case, however the propagation consequences are geared up in a spectacular manner both because there are as many sharing sources as there are members in the community and because every sharing reactivates felt emotions among interactants, thus reloading the propagation flow. It is argued that such chain reactions contribute to construct an emotional climate in I concerned community. It is predicted that emotion sharing would impact (1) on the emotional climate in general; (2) on group cohesion and solidarity, with positive consequences for emotional climate; and (3) on collective memory, with potential consequences for emotional climate in the long run. Each of these predictions is detailed and illustrated with available empirical evidence.

People generally share their emotions with others and believe that they will recover from their emotions after having talked about them. The aims of the present studies were to examine whether (1) talking about a specific emotional episode really facilitates emotional recovery ('recovery' effect) and (2) talking about emotions leads to perceived benefits ('perceived benefits'). Consistently in the two studies, a decrease of emotional impact was found over time for participants in all conditions. Contrary to expectations, participants assigned to talk about their emotions did not demonstrate beneficial recovery effects at 3 or 7 days or 2 months compared with participants assigned to a factual description of the event (experiment 1), to the expression of another emotional event (experiment 2), to a trivial control condition (experiments 1 and 2) or to a non-talking condition (experiment 2). However, in the two experiments, participants assigned to talk about negative emotional experiences reported more subjective benefits from the session than control participants. The role of personal beliefs about the effects of social sharing of emotion is discussed. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The personality construct of alexithymia is thought to reflect a deficit in the cognitive processing and regulation of emotional states. To explore the relations between alexithymia and emotional responding, 50 older adults (28 men, 22 women) were studied across different contexts: (1) initial exposure to an emotion-evoking movie; (2) second exposure to that stimulus; (3) reports of rumination and social sharing; and (4) describing their emotional response (verbal re-evocation). Facets of the alexithymia construct were associated at the initial exposure with lower emotional responses at the cognitive-experiential level, but with higher emotional responses at the physiological level as measured by heart rate. At the second exposure, the results were replicated for physiological responses. Certain facets of alexithymia were associated also with lower reports of rumination and social sharing involving emotional aspects, and with a lower proportion of emotional words related to the emotional stimulus during the verbal re-evocation.

Original survey data from Chile are used (N = 1267) to study the determinants of attitudes toward transitional rituals (1991 National Truth and Reconciliation Commission). A logistic regression analysis based on this data was carried out to evaluate the work of truth commissions as the dependent variable (in terms of “approval” and “disapproval”). Results reveal that predictors of favorable attitudes toward truth commissions include emotions such as sadness and hope, TRCs’ contribution to truth and to the construction of an inclusive history (and to a lesser extent to justice), high social sharing, perception of a positive social climate, high institutional trust, and positive perception of official apologies. People supporting TRCs also agree with complementary reparation, suggesting that a positive attitude towards TRCs is negative related to denial the traumatic past.

A research synthesis was conducted with four studies which correlated national mean self-ratings of affect balance (positive minus negative affect) and subjective well-being with the nations' cultural characteristics (individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and power-distance national scores on Hofstede's dimensions), socioeconomic development (Human Development Index), and climate (absolute latitude). A meta-analysis of these collective level cross-cultural studies shows that individualism correlates positively with affect balance and subjective well-being, controlling for socioeconomic development, cultural femininity, power-distance, uncertainty avoidance, and climate. Similar results were found for individual-level data. The meaning of collective-level or national means of individual self-reports of affect balance is discussed.

Three experimental studies are reported in which we tested the prediction that negative emotion elicits the social sharing of the emotional experience. In two experiments, participants arrived at the laboratory with a friend and then viewed one of three film excerpts (nonemotional, moderate emotion, or intense emotion) alone. Afterwards, the participants who saw the film had an opportunity to interact with the friend and their conversation was recorded. In both experiments participants who had seen the intense emotion excerpt engaged in significantly more social sharing than did participants in the other two conditions. A third experiment extended the investigation to social sharing in everyday life and replicated the previous results. Nonemotional explanations of the effects observed were also ruled out. Results are discussed in the context of the relation between emotional intensity and amount of social sharing.

Though the commentaries on my review welcomed its focus on the social dimension of emotion and emotion regulation, they also revealed important misinterpretation. The social standpoint was not developed at the expense of the individual. On the contrary, this perspective is in line with dynamic emotions systems views. Despite variations in modalities, I argue that emotion sharing is universal because it concerns culturally-shaped knowledge and constructions when they are shattered by emotional events. Predictions regarding the recovery effects of private disclosure are formulated, particularly in reference to the notions of speech styles and psychological differentiation. Finally, differentiating cognition and emotion is becoming more and more foggy and I agree that the time has come for new, less fuzzy, concepts.

Alexithymia refers to the difficulties an individual has in experiencing-and expressing feelings. The 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ) with two parallel versions of 20 items have been constructed 20 measure it. The present study compared the psychometric properties of these two self-report questionnaires in English (N = 290) and French (N = 322) language versions. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the fit between the hypothesized factors and the data. Results revealed a better fit to the data for the second version of the BVAQ (BVAQ-20B) for both language versions as compared to the TAS-20, the whole BVAQ, or the first version of the BVAQ (BVAQ-20A). Additionally, the factor comparison of both language versions indicated that only the factorial structure of the BVAQ-20B was replicable across languages. Concurrent validity of the questionnaires is discussed. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Two studies investigated differences between emotional events that are socially shared and those that are kept secret. It was hypothesized that emotional intensity, type of emotion, appraisal, and display differentiate between the two types of events. Also, it was predicted that keeping an emotional memory secret would affect both the amount and the content of related mental rumination. Contrary to the prediction, overall intensity failed to differentiate shared and nonshared events, but qualitative aspects did. Consistent with the hypotheses, nonshared events showed greater shame and guilt, increased appraisal of personal responsibility, and more dissimulation of emotional display. Shared and nonshared memories did not differ in frequency of mental rumination, but nonshared events involved greater search for meaning and efforts to understand what happened. The implications of these results for future research on emotional secrecy and social sharing of emotion are discussed.

Rime et af. (1992) showed that most emotional experiences are shared with others shortly after they occurred. They proposed that social sharing represents an integral part of emotional experiences. The present chapter examines the generalizability of the phenomenon across various research procedures that overcome the limits of previous studies. Existing findings are extended to chil- dren and older populations, and individual and cultural differences are consid- ered. Furthermore, the role of the intensity of the emotion and its relation with extent of social sharing is investigated. The chapter then addresses the contribu- tion of social sharing to emotional recovery. Given that findings were generally not consistent with the view that sharing alleviates the memory of the shared emotional experience, the chapter discusses alternative potential effects and functions of social sharing.

In line with evidence showing that emotion involves a social sharing process in which the subject communicates about emotional experience, this article examines the impact of being exposed to such communications. First, it was predicted that being exposed to the social sharing of an emotion is emotion-inducing. Second, it was reasoned that if this holds true, then the listener should later engage in socially sharing with other persons the emotional narrative heard. Thus, a process of ‘secondary social sharing’ was predicted. In two independent studies subjects recalled a situation in which someone had shared an emotional experience with them. They then rated emotions felt while exposed to the narrative, responses adopted toward the sharing person, and extent of secondary social sharing. The predictions were supported. Exposure to a social sharing situation was confirmed as itself emotion-inducing. Secondary social sharing was recorded in 66 per cent of the cases in Study 1 and in 78 per cent in Study 2. Both studies also showed that exposure to the sharing of highly intense emotional episodes elicited more repetitive secondary social sharing and a superior number of target persons than exposure to episodes of low or of moderate emotional intensity. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

It is proposed that emotion has long-lasting cognitive and social consequences as it is observed for traumatic events. Indeed, emotion, like trauma, is characterized by a sudden disruption of the normal course of events, challenging people's belief systems about themselves and the world and calling for extensive cognitive and social processing. We propose that mental rumination and social sharing constitute fundamental aspects of this processing. In this chapter, we present the results of an integrated programme of research investigating the nature and functions of mental ruminations and social sharing that follow emotional events. A number of questions are addressed, such as whether people do share their emotions, to what extent, with whom, and for which types of emotion. Culture, sex and age differences are also considered. A functional model of rumination and social sharing in emotion is proposed and tested. Finally, five theoretical arguments relate the empirical findings of our research programme to ...

We argue that emotion cannot only be conceived of as a short-lived and intrapersonal phenomenon. Rather, based on five theoretical arguments, we propose that the social sharing of an emotional experience forms an integral part of the emotional processes. A series of six studies investigated different aspects of this hypothesis. Study 1 showed that an overwhelming majority of people reported sharing their emotional experiences and that the memories of these experiences tended to come back spontaneously to their consciousness. No difference was found among emotions. Using a different procedure, Studies 2 and 3 replicated these findings in two different populations. In addition, these studies provided indications that women share their experiences with a wider array of individuals than do men. The first three studies did not find any differences among emotions, but they did not include shame. It could be argued that people are less inclined to socially share shame experiences which are typically eli...

Three experiments were designed to assess whether the perception of interpersonal emotions induced by animated geometric figures, such as those used by Heider and Simmel (1944) and Michotte (1950), vary consensually among observers according to the specific kinetic stimuli presented. Using Michotte's original disk method, the first experiment showed eight kinetic structures to 60 subjects who were asked to describe their perceptions on rating scales. The perceptions were shown to vary according to the dynamic features of the stimulus, and a high degree of interobserver consensus was generally recorded. In the second experiment, subjects were shown human silhouettes animated according to the same kinetic structures as those of experiment 1. The profiles of their answers were generally similar to those recorded for animated geometric figures, but the consensus tended to be weaker. The third experiment compared the rating scale descriptions of five kinetic structures made by European, American, and African subjects tested in their own countries. The perceptions of European and American subjects were very close to each other for the larger part of the material. The data of the Africans differed from the Americans in one way and from the Europeans in another way.

The study intended to test a number of implications of the alleged communicative functions of nonverbal behaviours. Four sets of specific hypotheses were defined under the general expectation of important effects of the suppression of visible behaviours from a channel of communication. Pairs of subjects were requested to interact either face-to-face or through a wooden screen depriving them of reciprocal visibility. Dependent variables comprised nonverbal behaviours, indices of paralinguistic, syntactic, grammatical and content aspects of the speech, and ratings of the partner and of the interpersonal situation. In spite of the number and variety of measurements, differences in line with the predictions were extremely rare. It is concluded that, better than the communicative ones, other functions such as assistance to the speech encoding processes, probably account for the abundance of nonverbal behaviours among speaking subjects.

On each session of the experiment, each of five subjects was assigned to act as either gaze-sender (GS), gaze-receiver (GR), direct-sight observer (DSO), TV observer (TVO) or one-way mirror observer (OWO). The GS had to look into the GR's eyes each time he received prerecorded signal through earphones. The GR and the three observers recorded GS's eye-gaze behaviour. Two conditions of distance between GR and GS were included. Results showed that (1) the GR, DSO and TVO presented an equivalent accuracy in their EC recordings as compared with the programmed signals, while the OWO's accuracy appeared significantly lesser; (2) as a concealed observer, OWO was also less efficient than TVO since the agreement of the former with GR's records was significantly lower than that of the DSO, which was not the case for the latter; (3) with increment of distance, OWOs recorded longer EC periods, a tendency which was not found significant among the other observers.