Search

In a classic theory, Durkheim (1912) predicted that because of the social sharing of emotion they generate, collective gatherings bring participants to a stage of collective effervescence in which they experience a sense of union with others and a feeling of empowerment accompanied by positive affect. This would lead them to leave the collective situation with a renewed sense of confidence in life and in social institutions. A century after Durkheim's predictions of these effects, though, they remained untested as a whole. This article reports 4 studies, 2 correlational, 1 semilongitudinal, and 1 experimental, assessing the positive effects of participation in either positively valenced (folkloric marches) or negatively valenced (protest demonstrations) collective gatherings. Results confirmed that collective gatherings consistently strengthened collective identity, identity fusion, and social integration, as well as enhancing personal and collective self-esteem and efficacy, positive affect, and positive social beliefs among participants. In line with a central tenet of the theory, emotional communion, or perceived emotional synchrony with others mediated these effects. Higher perceived emotional synchrony was associated with stronger emotional reactions, stronger social support, and higher endorsement of social beliefs and values. Participation in symbolic collective gatherings also particularly reinforced identity fusion when perceived emotional synchrony was high. The respective contributions of perceived emotional synchrony and flow, or optimal experience, were also assessed. Whereas perceived emotional synchrony emerged as strongly related to the various social outcomes, flow was observed to be related first to collective efficacy and self-esteem, and thus, to encompass mainly empowerment effects.

Dans une enquête par questionnaire, nous avons examiné la perception de l’avis du conseil de classe par 100 élèves de troisième et le partage social réalisé en cette occasion. Les résultats indiquent que l’avis du conseil de classe a eu un impact émotionnel sur les adolescents. Cet épisode d’orientation scolaire a été partagé à maintes reprises, avec des partenaires diversifiés et dans un bref délai. La mère, le/la meilleur(e) ami(e) et dans une moindre mesure le père, sont les interlocuteurs privilégiés de l’adolescent. L’intensité émotionnelle de l’épisode n’est pas associée à sa fréquence de verbalisation, quels que soient les partenaires. Un avis défavorable n’est pas plus souvent partagé qu’un avis favorable, en dépit des émotions plus intenses qu’il suscite. Les résultats sont discutés dans le cadre de la question de l’ajustement aux transitions scolaires et professionnelles au cours de l’adolescence. We report a study devised to examine middle adolescents (a) emotional arousal following an official advice given by school staff, and (b) the social sharing of this emotional event with significant others (parents, best friend...). Hundred fifteen years-old pupils filled in a self-report questionnaire. The results show that the official advice has a significant effect on the emotional intensity and the negative and positive emotions they experienced. The school orientation event was shared many times, with different targets, and in a very brief delay. Mother, best, and in a lesser extent best friend and father, were the adolescent’s favourite targets. The extent of social sharing is not related with intensity of emotion. Furthermore, in spite of its more intense emotions, a negative school staff advice is not more frequently shared than a positive one. The results are discussed in the framework of the adjustment to school and career transitions during adolescence.

ResumenDesarrollamos un marco de analisis funcionalista de las actividades colectivas de recuerdo, incluyendo el compartir social de las emociones y la participacion en ceremonias y rituales, basado en el texto clasico de Durk-heim “Las formas elementales de la vida religiosa”. Las formas colectivas de afrontamiento de las emociones son funcionales porque refuerzan la auto-estima y la afectividad positiva, ayudan a la integracion social interpersonal, sirven de soporte a la cohesion social y fortalecen las creencias sociales, mediante el aumento de las emociones compartidas y la percepcion de similaridad con otros. Este texto sintetiza una serie de estudios que confirman el modelo neo-durkheimiano: las personas que participaron mas en manifestaciones una semana despues del 11-M, informaban a las tres semanas de mayor apoyo social subjetivo, menor soledad, mas afectividad positiva y mejor auto-concepto, confirmando que los rituales refuerzan la integracion social interpersonal. Tambien se confirmo que los ...

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.

Resume On a examine les motifs allegues du partage social et de la rumination mentale des emotions selon la valence de l’evenement. Selon quatre consignes differentes de rappel, 106 participants se sont rememores un evenement emotionnel de leur passe recent ayant implique soit la joie, la colere, la peur ou la tristesse. Ils ont ensuite repondu a une serie de questions. Les resultats ont montre que les motifs des reminiscences different selon la valence de l’evenement : les reminiscences negatives sont associees a des buts de catharsis, de comprehension, et de soutien social, tandis que les reminiscences positives se deploient dans le but de se souvenir, de susciter l’attention d’autrui, et de l’informer.

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.

Previous research has shown the relation between social sharing and emotional processing to be notoriously complex. In the present study, we unraveled this complexity by, for the first time, taking 3 key aspects of this relation into account simultaneously: the nature of the emotion, the timing of possible sharing effects, and the multicomponential character of emotions. Using the day reconstruction method, we first identified an intense anger or sadness target episode for each participant. In a second phase, participants repeatedly reported their sharing behavior and intensity of different emotion components over 5 days. Growth curve analyses revealed that sharing anger leads to several immediate and delayed beneficial effects, whereas sharing sadness leads to limited positive effects that emerge later on. This implies that all 3 aspects under study, as well as their interplay, are of critical importance in the relation between sharing and emotional processing.

Research shows that chronic illness patients encounter difficulties in the social sharing of emotions (SSE). Since most SSE studies focus on quantitative aspects, the present study, aimed, among others, to study the associations between the quality of SSE in people living with HIV/AIDS and patients' psychological and physical well-being. A total of 101 HIV/AIDS patients answered a questionnaire (Likert scale items) which assessed: shame, guilt, perceived stigma, reasons for non-disclosure of serostatus, physical health, mental health, SSE and quality of SSE. While no associations were found between quantitative aspects of SSE, physical health and mental health, the quality of SSE was negatively correlated to shame and guilt, and positively correlated to physical and mental health. Furthermore, mediation analyses showed the mediating role of the quality of SSE in the relationship between, on the one hand, shame and guilt; and on the other hand, physical and mental health. Findings suggest the importance of qualitative aspects of SSE in the emergence of positive outcomes linked to emotional expression in people living with HIV/AIDS.

Emotional events are followed by recurrent thoughts (rumination) and talking about the event (social sharing of emotion). Factors that can account for variations in these consequences were examined (emotional intensity, the Five Factor Model, and two factors of alexithymia), In two samples, participants reported the most negative emotional event of recent months and in one sample also reported the most positive one. Results indicated that emotional intensity predicted social sharing and rumination, while neuroticism was positively related to intrusive thoughts about negative events and extraversion to rumination and social sharing about positive events. Difficulty describing feelings was negatively related to social sharing for negative events and reduced fantasy to rumination for positive events. (C) 2000 Academic Press.

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.

International audience; The propensity to speak and share emotional experiences, denoted as the social sharing of emotions (SSE), has been thoroughly investigated, showing in different cultural settings that 80% to 95% of emotional experiences, negative or positive, are object of SSE. The present study's main objective was to obtain descriptive data concerning SSE in the Dominican culture. A total of 306 Dominican laypersons responded to a questionnaire which recollected autobiographical data aiming: to establish main SSE descriptive indicators (rate, recurrence and delay) and to identify social sharing targets in this cultural context. Findings corroborate previous studies concerning SSE global indicators. First, this Dominican sample is at comparable levels regarding sharing rates 92.48% of emotional episodes were socially shared. Secondly, 68.62% of participants reported having shared the emotional episode the same day it took place. Third, findings revealed that 72.55% of participants talked about the emotion-eliciting event several times. To conclude, the study's findings show that Dominican laypersons are at comparable levels as other populations when it comes to SSE indicators and that Dominicans' choice in social sharing targets, intimates, is compatible with numerous SSE studies (Rimé, 2009). r e s u m e N La propensión a hablar y compartir experiencias emocionales, denominados como el reparto social de las emociones (SSE), se ha investigado a fondo mostrando en diferentes entornos culturales que el 80% y el 95% de las expe-riencias emocionales, negativas o positivas, son objeto de la ESS. El objetivo principal de este trabajo fue obtener datos descriptivos relativos SSE en la cultura dominicana. Un total de 306 laicos dominicanos respondieron a un cuestionario autobiográficos que pretendía establecer principales indicadores descriptivos de la ESS (tasa, recurrencia y retardo) y para identificar objetivos sociales para compartir en este contexto cultural. Los hallazgos corroboran los estudios anteriores sobre indicadores globales de SSE. En primer lugar, esta muestra Dominicana se encuentra en niveles comparables con respecto a las tasas de participación en el 92,48% de los episodios emocionales fueron socialmente compartidos. En segundo lugar, 68.62% de los participantes in-doi:10.

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.

People often socially share their emotions to regulate them. Two-mode theory of social sharing states that cognitive sharing will contribute to emotional recovery, whereas socio-affective sharing will only temporarily alleviate emotional distress. Previous studies supporting this theory, measured emotional recovery in terms of residual emotional intensity. Until now, another important time-dynamic aspect of emotions, emotion duration, has been largely ignored. In two experience sampling studies we addressed this gap. In Study 1, participants reported on the duration of anger, fear, and sadness episodes; additionally time-varying information on the occurrence and mode of sharing was collected. This study revealed that sharing led to a shortening in emotion duration, in particular when it was socio-affective in nature. In Study 2 we investigated whether this result could be interpreted in terms of our measure of duration primarily reflecting emotional relief rather than recovery. In this study, the same method as in Study 1 was used; additionally, residual emotional intensity was measured three days after emotion onset. Study 2 largely replicated the findings from Study 1. Furthermore, duration appeared to be empirically distinct from residual intensity. Finally, no relation between sharing and residual intensity was found, even when considering the sharing mode.

This chapter intends to examine existing relationships between positive emotional states, self-transcendence, spirituality, and religion. It will be divided into three parts. The fi rst two parts will document proper conditions to dissolve rigid boundaries between the self and the outer world, and thus to favor the emergence of self-transcendence. The fi rst part will focus on the effect of positive emotional states at an intra-and an inter-individual level. The second part will examine positive emotions at a collective level through the study of rituals. In particular, we will scrutinize human practices such as movement synchronization and music often observed in social and religious rituals and known to spread positive emotions and enhance feelings of rapport. In the third part, we will examine the role of positive emotions in religion/spirituality, as it is a manner in which people, throughout history and across many societies, have been expressing their aspirations toward self-transcendence. In this regard, a rationale for taking into account the properties of specifi c positive emotions will be proposed and a family of positive emotions called self-transcendent will be at the center of our attention. Research concerning both directions of causality, i.e., positive emotions as consequences and as possible antecedents of religion and spirituality, will be presented.

Contents: J.W. PennebakerIntroduction. Part I:The Life of Collective Memories. J.W. Pennebaker, B.L. Banasik, On the Creation and Maintenance of Collective Memories: History as Social Psychology. M.A. Conway, The Inventory of Experience: Memory and Identity. H. Schuman, R.F. Belli, K. Bischoping, The Generational Basis of Historical Knowledge. J. Igartua, D. Paez, Art and Remembering Traumatic Collective Events: The Case of the Spanish Civil War. N.H. Frijda, Commemorating. Part II:Social and Emotional Processes of Collective Memories. B. Rime, V. Christophe, How Individual Emotional Episodes Feed Collective Memory. D. Paez, N. Basabe, J.L. Gonzalez, Social Processes and Collective Memory: A Cross-Cultural Approach to Remembering Political Events. G.D. Gaskell, D.B. Wright, Group Differences in Memory for a Political Event. C. Finkenauer, L. Gisle, O. Luminet, When Individual Memories Are Socially Shaped: Flashbulb Memories of Sociopolitical Events. G. Bellelli, M.A.C. Amatulli, Nostalgia, Immigration, and Collective Memory. Part III:The Construction, Distortion, and Forgetting of Collective Experiences. E. Lira, Remembering: Passing Back Through the Heart. L. Iniguez, J. Valencia, F. Vazquez, The Construction of Remembering and Forgetfulness: Memories and Histories of the Spanish Civil War. J. Marques, D. Paez, A.F. Serra, Social Sharing, Emotional Climate, and the Transgenerational Transmission of Memories: The Portuguese Colonial War. R.F. Baumeister, S. Hastings, Distortions of Collective Memory: How Groups Flatter and Deceive Themselves.

Following an emotional experience, individuals are confronted with the persistence of ruminative thoughts that disturb the undertaking of other activities. In the present study, we experimentally tested the idea that experiencing a negative emotion triggers a ruminative process that drains working memory (WM) resources normally devoted to other tasks. Undergraduate participants of high versus low WM capacity were administered the operation-word memory span test (OSPAN) as a measure of availability of WM resources preceding and following the presentation of negative emotional versus neutral material. Rumination was assessed immediately after the second OSPAN session and at a 24-hr delay. Results showed that both the individual'sWMcapacity and the emotional valence of the material influencedWM performance and the persistence of ruminative thoughts. Following the experimental induction, rumination mediated the relationship between the negative emotional state and the concomitant WM performance. Based on these results, we argue that ruminative processes deplete WM resources, making them less available for concurrent tasks; in addition, rumination tends to persist over time. These findings have implications for the theoretical modeling of the long-term effects of emotions in both daily life and clinical contexts. © 2013 American Psychological Association.

A correlational study (N = 243 students and workers) compared beliefs, values, emotions, and group processes between participants and non-participants in the 15-M movement. Participants share more postmaterialist values and beliefs about identity, injustice and collective efficacy than non-participants. They report, in comparison with non participants, more anger and collective shame, and higher hope that the social movement succeeds. Shame and hope mediate between beliefs of injustice and collective efficacy, respectively, and participation in the movement. Emotional communion and collective identification were higher in 15-M demonstrations than in more routine group activities. Communion was associated with beliefs and values related to 15-M movement and social support. Participants mistrust institutions more and perceive an emotional climate of more anger. Greater emotional communion and collective identification reinforces social support and an emotional climate of anger specifically in 15-M participants. Social sharing reinforces emotions and values. Results are discussed in a neo-Durkheimian model convergent with the social identity approach.

Oxytocin (OT) is a neuropeptide that is attracting growing attention from researchers interested in human emotional and social behavior. There is indeed increasing evidence that OT has a calming effect and that it facilitates pair-bonding and social interactions. Some of OT's effects are thought to be direct, but it has been suggested that OT also may have indirect effects, mediated by changes in behavior. One potentially relevant behavioral change is an increased propensity for "emotional sharing" as this behavior, like OT, is known to have both calming and bonding effects. In this study, 60 healthy young adult men were randomly assigned to receive either intranasal placebo (PL; n = 30) or oxytocin (OT; n = 30). Participants were then instructed to retrieve a painful memory. Subsequently, OT and placebo participants' willingness to disclose to another person event-related facts (factual sharing) vs. event-related emotions (emotional sharing) was evaluated. Whereas the two groups were equally willing to disclose event-related facts, oxytocin was found to specifically increase the willingness to share event-related emotions. This study provides the first evidence that OT increases people's willingness to share their emotions. Importantly, OT did not make people more talkative (word counts were comparable across the two groups) but instead increased the willingness to share the specific component that is responsible for the calming and bonding effects of social sharing: emotions. Findings suggest that OT may shape the form of social sharing so as to maximize its benefits. This might help explain the calming and bonding effects of OT.

This chapter aims to examine how far collective rituals instigated at a socio-political level are able to modify the social attitudes that prevail in populations following conflict, violations of human rights, or massacres. This examination relies on two studies conducted in the framework of the Truth and Reconciliation procedure that was developed in the post-genocide era in Rwanda, under the name of "Gacaca" (pronounced gatchatcha). First, we briefly recall what a Truth and Reconciliation procedure represents, and describe the situation facing Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. Next, we discuss the expected effects of Truth and Reconciliation procedures and examine a theoretical model we have adopted in this regard. Finally, we consider the findings from studies designed to test this model.

The present study investigated two predictions derived from inhibition theory. It was hypothesized that emotional secrecy has a negative impact on (1) physical and (2) subjective well-being. Also, the study examined whether the relation holds when controlling for negative affectivity (NA), a variable that can be assumed to mediate the relation between emotional secrecy and physical and subjective well-being. Consistent with the hypothesis, emotional secrecy negatively affected physical health. This finding was not explained by NA, which contributed independently to physical health. Contrary to the prediction, emotional secrecy affected life satisfaction but indirectly through the mediating influence of physical health. The implications of these results for future research on emotional secrecy and physical and subjective well-being are discussed.

When individuals face an emotional experience, they very generally talk about it later with people around them in an interpersonal process which has been called “the social sharing of emotion.” When groups, communities, or societies face an important collective emotional episode, they also quite generally later develop emotional expression in collective situations, such as commemorations, celebrations, religious ceremonies, and other social rituals. In both cases, a very common answer to the question of the motives underlying this need to socially share emotional experiences advocates cathartic effects of the verbal expression of emotion. Thus, lay persons as well as professionals often consider that once an emotion is shared, it vanishes. It is thought that the resulting feeling of relief would motivate people to socially share future emotional experiences. This chapter describes the studies which assessed the prediction that the mere expression of an emotion brings emotional recovery. The cathartic hypothesis was supported neither for person to person emotional sharing situations, nor for collective emotional expression. However, participants in social sharing situations reported important social benefits. We thus investigated the source of these benefits as well as the conditions under which sharing an emotion would bring actual recovery.

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 ...

La présente recherche examine dans quelle mesure les élèves de troisième venant de recevoir un avis d’orientation scolaire (favorable ou défavorable) partagent différemment cet épisode émotionnel scolaire avec leur entourage proche (mère, père et meilleur ami principalement), selon la qualité des relations qu’ils ont avec chacun de ces trois partenaires. Les résultats d’une enquête par questionnaire auprès de 100 adolescents montrent qu’un attachement confiant au meilleur ami, et dans une moindre mesure à la mère et au père, est associé positivement au partage social lorsque l’avis du conseil de classe est défavorable. Lorsqu’il est favorable, l’épisode émotionnel est partagé plus rapidement avec le père et la mère, ainsi que plus fréquemment avec la mère, par les adolescents qui ont avec ces partenaires un attachement anxieux. Les résultats permettent de mieux comprendre le rôle spécifique des personnes significatives à l’adolescence dans l’ajustement aux situations d’orientation scolaire. The current study has been devised to examine the extent to which 14-year-old students who received positive or negative advice from school staff regarding their academic orientation shared this emotional event with their immediate circle (mother, father, and best friend, principally) as a function of their attachment to them. The responses provided by a hundred students to a self-report questionnaire suggest that a secure attachment to one’s best friend enhances the sharing of the emotional event when the advice received is negative. Overall, the same pattern was observed for attachment to mother and father, but to a lesser extent. When the advice is positive, the faster it is shared with mother and father, particularly in cases where the adolescent’s attachment to them is anxious, and more frequently with the mother. The results help to better understand the specific role significant others play in adjustment to the academic orientation process.

Le mot emotion est sur toutes les levres et dans tous les medias. Le spectacle de l’emotion suscite un interet insatiable. Celui qui vit une emotion s’empresse d’en parler. Son entourage l’ecoute avec avidite et repete ensuite a d’autres ce recit d’emotion. Les episodes emotionnels singuliers se propagent ainsi dans les groupes. Pourquoi cette fascination de l’emotion ? Qu’est-ce qu’une emotion? Qu’est-ce qui la declenche ? Quelles fonctions remplit-elle ? Pourquoi partageons-nous nos emotions ? Est-ce que parler d’une emotion soulage ? Quand l’emotion devient-elle traumatique ? Qu’est-ce qu’un trauma ? Quelles en sont les consequences ? Peut-on s’en premunir par l’expression ? Ce livre examine ces questions a partir d’une documentation scientifique abondante. Il distingue ce que l’expression apporte et n’apporte pas. Il vise a comprendre pourquoi l’experience de l’emotion stimule de maniere spectaculaire le contact social et la communication sociale.