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The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the world's population to unprecedented health threats and changes to social life. High uncertainty about the novel disease and its social and economic consequences, together with increasingly stringent governmental measures against the spread of the virus, likely elicited strong emotional responses. We analyzed the digital traces of emotional expressions in tweets during 5 weeks after the start of outbreaks in 18 countries and six different languages. We observed an early strong upsurge of anxiety-related terms in all countries, which was related to the growth in cases and increases in the stringency of governmental measures. Anxiety expression gradually relaxed once stringent measures were in place, possibly indicating that people were reassured. Sadness terms rose and anger terms decreased with or after an increase in the stringency of measures and remained stable as long as measures were in place. Positive emotion words only decreased slightly and briefly in a few countries. Our results reveal some of the most enduring changes in emotional expression observed in long periods of social media data. Such sustained emotional expression could indicate that interactions between users led to the emergence of collective emotions. Words that frequently occurred in tweets suggest a shift in topics of conversation across all emotions, from political ones in 2019, to pandemic related issues during the outbreak, including everyday life changes, other people, and health. This kind of time-sensitive analyses of large-scale samples of emotional expression have the potential to inform risk communication. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Two quasi-experimental and longitudinal studies examined positive effects of participation in positively valence collective religious and secular activities. Collective emotional gatherings strengthen social cohesion, enhance personal and collective self-esteem, positive affect, and positive shared beliefs among participants, through processes of emotional synchrony. Furthermore, perceived emotional synchrony is associated with experiencing qualitatively different self-transcendent and enjoyment emotions. In Study 1 we compared the effects of participating in Sunday Mass and other secular Sunday activities on enhancement of transcendence beliefs and collective self-esteem and tested the mediational role of perceived emotional synchrony and self-transcendent and enjoyment emotions. In Study 2 serial mediational analyses supported a model in which perceived emotional synchrony increases self-transcendent and enjoyment emotions, which subsequently foster enhancement of positive outcomes (controlling for the baseline) of participation in ritualized folkloric event. The results are discussed from the perspective of neo-Durkheimian model of ritual, emphasizing the role of perceived emotional synchrony over self-trascendent emotions, and from a socio-cultural approach to well-being.

Past research has demonstrated that finding meaning in work is a dynamic process during interactions with colleagues and supervisors and protects against job burnout. At the same time, past studies have shown that the need to achieve meaning motivates people to share their emotions. Building on this, we hypothesized that workers who have more experience of quality social sharing of emotions about their work with relatives, colleagues, and supervisors are less at risk of job burnout. A cross-sectional survey of 611 working-aged adults in Belgium (mean age 39.25 years) supported this primary hypothesis. In addition, the hypothesis that meaning of work mediates the relationships between experience of quality social sharing of emotions and job burnout was also supported. The study provides evidence that social sharing of emotions reduces job burnout by helping to make sense of work situations and reinforcing relationships with others.

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...

For Durkheim, individuals’ survival and well-being rest on cultural resources and social belonging that must be revived periodically in collective assemblies. Durkheim’s concern was to clarify how these assemblies achieve this revitalization. An intensive examination of primitive religions led him to identify successive levels of engagement experienced by participants and to develop explanatory principles relevant to all types of collective gatherings. Durkheim’s conception is widely referred to nowadays. However, the question of its empirical status remains open. We extracted from his text his main statements and translated them into research questions. We then examined each question in relation to current theories and findings. In particular, we relied on the plethora of recent cognitive and social-psychology studies that document conditions of reduced self-other differentiation. Abundant data support that each successive moment of collective assemblies contributes to blurring this differentiation. Ample support also exists that because shared emotions are increasingly amplified in collective context, they can fuel high-intensity experiences. Moreover, recent studies of self-transcendent emotions can account for the self-transformative effects described by Durkheim at the climax of collective assemblies. In conclusion, this century-old model is remarkably supported by recent results, mostly collected in experimental settings.

The present study addresses, in a highly ecological setting, the short- and long-term psychosocial consequences of participation in a major scouting event. Using a quasi- longitudinal design comprising three measures taken over two and a half months (i.e. baseline level; within the 24 hours following the event; 10 weeks after the gathering), we show that participation in this collective gathering was followed by a series of positive effects at the psychosocial level. More precisely, we noticed an increase in the scout’s levels of social integration, and individual and social well-being after their participation in the gathering. Further, in line with a central tenet of the neo-Durkheimian model of collective processes, the results stress the key role of perceived emotional synchrony in the prediction of the outcomes. Higher perceived emotional synchrony during the gathering was associated with stronger in- group identification, identity fusion, pride, openness to experience, self-esteem, positive affects and adhesion to specific scouting values. Finally, we found that the effects of participation lasted more than a few days and were predicted by the level of perceived emotional synchrony. These findings are the first to show that positive effects of participation in a collective event last for at least ten weeks., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Emotions signal flaws in the person’s anticipation systems, or in other words, in aspects of models of how the world works. As these models are essentially shared in society, emotional challenges experienced by any individual are of relevance to the community of others. Emotions emerge at the heart of the individual experience, the only place where collective knowledge can be tested against the world. Once felt, emotions generate a cascade of psychological facts: compelling concern, cognitive work, social sharing, and propagation of the social sharing. The larger the fault detected, the more intense the emotion, the more intensive the cognitive work it generates, and the broader the social sharing of the episodic information. Through the social sharing of emotions, common knowledge is updated and enriched.

This chapter examines truth commissions’ (TCs’) impact and relationship with psychosocial outcomes. TCs are a mechanism of transitional justice created to help with the evolution from a violent political regime to a democratic, peaceful one. From a psychosocial perspective, dealing with past collective violence implies (a) the construction of a common integrative narrative of that violence; (b) overcoming the desire for revenge and negative emotions, such as anger, fear, and sadness, and changing the outgroup image by increasing intergroup trust and forgiveness as well as positive collective emotions such as hope and solidarity; (c) increasing confidence in institutions; and (d) increasing the values of tolerance and universal justice while rejecting violence (Bar-Tal & Halperin, 2011; Espinosa et al., 2017; Nadler et al., 2008)⁠. This chapter explores the effects of TCs on the emotional climate and trust in institutions, further examining the effects of participation and testimonies in TCs and their association with societal and individual outcomes in American and African nations. This chapter highlights the ambivalent effects of TCs, provoking positive societal outcomes while presenting an affective cost for the victims and the emotional climate. This chapter concludes with an evidence-based evaluation of the potentials and pitfalls of TCs.

Over the past decade, there has been an increasing interest in the relationship between participation in collective gatherings and rituals and different important psychosocial variables and processes, such as social sharing of emotions, group cohesion, identity fusion, prosocial tendencies and behaviors, and well-being (e.g.,Rime, 2009;Xygalatas et al., 2013;Khan et al., 2015;Paez et al., 2015). These studies, coming from different lines of research, have proposed diverse explanatory mechanisms to explain the positive social and psychological effects of collective gatherings. In the present article, we focus on one of these mechanisms, known as collective effervescence, emotional communion, emotional entrainment, or perceived emotional synchrony (PES). First, we briefly discuss current conceptions of the emotional states and experience during collective gatherings and what they bring to the definition of PES. We close this point by proposing an integrative definition of PES. Second, structural validity of the original PES scale is examined. Third, incremental validity of PES is examined in two longitudinal studies, particularly with respect to well-being. Finally, we propose an integrative short form of the PES Scale, which measures antecedents and behavioral effects of collective effervescence. This research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness [under Grant PSI2017-84145-P], the Basque Government [under Grant IT-1187-19], Postdoctoral Research Grant ESPDOC18/33 granted to LZ, and FONDECYT Iniciacion 11190980 granted to AW.

Emotional experiences trigger the social sharing of emotion. This disclosure of emotional facts and feelings to the social surrounding was generally considered as a simple process of emotional release. The empirical data reviewed in this article invalidates this simplistic view. They show that the social sharing of emotions is a complex process that results not only in intrapersonal effects for the source person, but also in important interpersonal and social outcomes. The intrapersonal effects of the social sharing of emotions are varied, they do not necessarily go together, and they respond to specific conditions. At the interpersonal level, both the sharing of positive and negative emotional episodes affects relationships with the audience. Finally, the research highlights broader social effects relating to social structure, social norms, group action, beliefs, collective resilience and intergroup relations., info:eu-repo/semantics/inPress

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.

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This chapter examines the responses that occur in societies when their members are collectively impacted by a major emotional event such as an accident, disaster, or terrorist attack. First, we explore the four main collective responses that have been documented, namely (1) seeking information and, in particular, consulting the media; (2) sharing emotions socially—everyone talks and listens to what has happened; (3) gatherings in different forms where a significant part of the population come together; and (4) spontaneous manifestations of generosity and openness to others. We then analyse the reasons why such events develop by highlighting their deleterious impact on shared belief systems and social consensus. The next section documents the collective dynamics and synchronization process that contribute to the implementation of these responses in the population. Finally, we demonstrate that all individuals in the community contribute to this dynamic, even if they do not take part in collective gatherings.

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.

After collective traumas such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks, members of concerned communities experience intense emotions and talk profusely about them. Although these exchanges resemble simple emotional venting, Durkheim’s theory of collective effervescence postulates that these collective emotions lead to higher levels of solidarity in the affected community. We present the first large-scale test of this theory through the analysis of digital traces of 62,114 Twitter users after the Paris terrorist attacks of November 2015. We found a collective negative emotional response followed by a marked long-term increase in the use of lexical indicators related to solidarity. Expressions of social processes, prosocial behavior, and positive affect were higher in the months after the attacks for the individuals who participated to a higher degree in the collective emotion. Our findings support the conclusion that collective emotions after a disaster are associated with higher solidarity, revealing the social resilience of a community.

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.

Previous studies demonstrated that people socially share both their positive and negative emotional experiences. This article reports two studies aimed to clarify and assess the motives underlying this human propensity to share emotions. A large number of motives were collected from 182 participants (Study 1). A content analysis resulted in 8 categories of motives; 72 representative items were retained to create a Social Sharing Motives Scale (SSMS). The final structure of the SSMS, tested with 719 respondents, includes 39 items organized into 7 factors, namely “clarification and meaning,” “rehearsing,” “venting,” “arousing empathy/attention,” “informing and/or warning,” “assistance/support and comfort/consolation,” and “advice and solutions” (Study 2). This scale will usefully contribute to the investigation of the role played by interpersonal processes in emotional regulation.

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.

ResumenSe analizan las emociones, clima emocional, actitud ante el pasado, confianza institucional y valoracion de los procesos de justicia transicional en una muestra de personas afectadas y no afectadas por la violencia politica en Chile (N = 1278). Las victimas directas informan de mas emociones negativas vinculadas al pasado y la actividad de las comisiones, perciben un clima emocional menos positivo, menor seguridad, confianza y esperanza colectiva, mas desconfianza institucional, aunque mayor orgullo ante el pasado y mayores niveles de proposito vital. Las personas de derecha informan de menos culpa y verguenza, mas confianza institucional y valoracion mas critica de las comisiones. Quienes valoran positivamente el trabajo de las comisiones de verdad creen que permitieron conocer la verdad, impulsar procesos de justicia, generaron una historia integradora, ayudan a prevenir hechos de violencia colectiva en el futuro, creen mas en el perdon de las victimas a los perpetradores, perciben un clima emoci...

Emotion very generally elicits a process of social sharing of emotional experience. Field studies and experimental research indeed showed that after an emotional episode, there is a systematic increase in the degree to which people talk about their experience. As listeners are emotionally affected by what they heard, they thereafter share it with members of their own network, who in turn manifest the same inclination. In this manner, a serial reproduction of the sharing process develops with a collective propagation of what initially affected only a single member of the community. When members of a community are collectively exposed to a same emotion-eliciting event or news, most of them then talk about the event with people around abundantly. In doing so, involved people mutually exacerbate their emotions and favor states of emotional communion. The widespread use of on-line interaction media feeds such processes ever more. In this chapter, we will examine the social and individual consequences of such conditions as well as the variables accounting for their initiation and termination. We will also examine the emotional and social consequences of collective celebrations in which collective events such as loss, victory, defeat, success, failure, catastrophe, accident, common threat, are commemorated in large crowds or are broadcasted at a national or even planetary level. Finally, we will conclude by sketching the promising of perspectives offered by a study of the social sharing of emotions in cyberspace.

Participation in social movements and collective action depends upon people's capacity to perceive their societal context. We examined this question in the context of Arab Spring revolutions. In a classic theory of revolution highlighting the role of collective emotions, Brinton (1938) claimed that revolutions, far from chaos, proceed in an orderly sequence involving four stages: euphoria, degradation, terror, and restoration. The emotional climate as perceived by ordinary Tunisian citizens (2699 women and 3816 men) was measured during the four years of the Tunisian revolution. A quadratic pattern of perceived emotional climate measures over time provided strong support to Brinton's model. In addition, three different analyses suggested the presence of four distinct stages in the evolution of perceived emotional climate. Third, the socio-political developments in Tunisia during the four stages proved entirely consistent with both Brintons' theoretical model and the perceived emotional climate indicators. Finally, social identification proved closely related to the temporal evolution of positive emotional climate scores. In sum, data from this study not only lend support to the views put forth in an heretofore untested classic theory of revolution but they also demonstrate that psychosocial measurements can validly monitor a major process of socio-political transformation.

National audience; Les préoccupations concernant le bien-être au travail des enseignants sont l’objet d’un intérêt croissant. En France, 14% des personnels de l’éducation présentent tous les symptômes d’un épuisement professionnel (ou burnout) et 25% sont en état de tension au travail (étude « carrefour santé social » réalisée par la MGEN en 2013). Le stress professionnel, l’anxiété, la dépression, le burnout sont autant de signaux de souffrance habituellement évalués dans les études actuelles sur la population enseignante. Face à ce que l’on pourrait appeler plus généralement « la détresse émotionnelle » des enseignants, de nombreux travaux s’intéressent aux stratégies développées en réponse aux situations difficiles du métier. Il s’agit des modes de coping classiques définis par Folkman et Lazarus dans leur modèle du stress (stratégie orientée sur le problème ou sur l’émotion). Le stress serait davantage présent chez les enseignants ayant recours au coping émotionnel alors qu’une stratégie centrée sur le problème aurait tendance à prédire un haut niveau d’accomplissement personnel. Le « soutien social » apparaît parfois comme une troisième stratégie générale dans certaines recherches. Elle revêt notamment un intérêt dans les études spécifiques au contexte professionnel de l’enseignement. Le modèle de conservation des ressources (COR) du burnout de Hobfoll distingue deux types de soutien : le « soutien émotionnel » comme manifestation de confiance et d’empathie de la part des autres permettant de renforcer les capacités de régulation émotionnelle intra-individuelle, et le « soutien instrumental » comme assistance technique, informations pertinentes ou conseils, réflexion au sujet des difficultés surgissant dans le contexte professionnel. Ces deux types de soutien peuvent émaner des collègues de travail comme de la sphère personnelle (mari, enfants, parents, etc.). Dans tous les cas, leur présence est associée à des niveaux bas d’épuisement professionnel.Il faut cependant distinguer le « soutien social perçu » qui est une évaluation des ressources sociales dont on croit pouvoir disposer en cas de besoin, de la « recherche de soutien social » qui correspond davantage au comportement actif de recherche de sympathie ou d’aide de la part d’autrui. Au-delà des définitions et des modèles sous-jacents, il nous semble que la différence entre la « recherche de soutien social » et le « soutien social perçu » tient aux outils développés pour les évaluer. Il existe de nombreuses échelles pour évaluer le soutien social perçu. Le coping « recherche de soutien social » est quant à lui peu évalué et donc peu présent dans la plupart des études sur les coping. Une étude française s’est attachée à adapter l’échelle de coping de Dewe spécifique aux enseignants (Laugaa et al., 2008). Les résultats montrent que dans sa version française, cette échelle peine à évaluer le coping « recherche de soutien social ». Les auteurs concluent que l’instrument évalue les deux modes de coping classiques de façon satisfaisante mais que le troisième type de coping évalué correspond au « besoin de communiquer » plus qu’à une réelle recherche d’aide ou de soutien. Il nous semble par conséquent qu’évaluer plus en détails aux moyens de différentes échelles (plutôt qu’une seule) le phénomène de recherche de soutien social dans une population d’enseignants relève d’un intérêt certain. Le concept de « partage social des émotions » de Rimé (2007) renvoie aux comportements sociaux de régulation émotionnelle auquel le sujet peut faire appel en fonction des situations émotionnelles qu’il rencontre. La « recherche de soutien social » semble donc proche de ce procédé de régulation émotionnelle interpersonnelle (Zaki et Williams, 2013). En fait, on ne peut dissocier les modes de régulation intra et inter-individuel des émotions, ils sont complémentaires et indissociables. S’intéresser aux modes de coping internes (réévaluation cognitive, recherche de distracteur, distanciation...) sans prendre en compte ceux impliquant autrui (recherche de soutien, partage social) reviendrait à n’avoir qu’une vision partielle des moyens de régulation émotionnelle dont les individus disposent que ce soit dans un contexte professionnel ou non. Une étude complémentaire sur les coping classiques (processus de régulation endogène) et le partage social (procédé de régulation exogène) permettrait d’obtenir des données inédites et de modéliser les moyens de gestion émotionnelle mis en œuvre par les enseignants dans leur pratique. Des implications de ce type d’étude aux niveaux préventif et formatif seront à envisager.

Studies have shown that chronic illness patients encounter difficulties in the social sharing of emotions. Do HIV/AIDS patients present distinguishing traits in the inhibition of illness and non-illness-related emotions? The differences in the social sharing of emotion between 35 HIV/AIDS, 35 diabetic and 34 cancer outpatients were studied. A questionnaire assessed illness-related emotions, social sharing of emotion and emotional inhibition. The HIV/AIDS group significantly presented superior scoring in shame, guilt and non-sharing of illness-related emotions, lower frequencies of social sharing of emotion and less sharing partners. These findings could lead to future research examining the emotional expression of guilt and shame in HIV/AIDS.

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.

After an emotional episode individuals need to talk about their experiences in a repetitive process called social sharing of emotions. In the present study we adopted a longitudinal design over a 9-month period to achieve 2 main goals: First, we aimed to investigate the relationship between social sharing and recovery from an initial emotional experience; second, we tested a model of prediction of the perpetuation of social sharing over time. Findings confirm that social sharing is a common consequence of experiencing an emotion, regardless of participants' levels of education, which tends to diminish over time, leading to an increasing sense of recovery. The prolongation of social sharing is a maladaptive outcome of experiencing an emotion, and a poor recovery is a direct consequence of long-term self-perpetuating social sharing. The results have implications for the assessment of the role of both dispositional factors and characteristics of the eliciting event on the prolongation of social sharing of emotions. © 2012 American Psychological Association.

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...

A questionnaire measuring social sharing of emotion, coping, intensity of emotions and rumination related to March 11th (2004) terrorist attacks in Madrid, emotional climate, social integration, and post-traumatic growth was completed by 644 students and their relatives (38%) in 5 Spanish regions and 8 universities 1 week, 3 weeks, and 8 weeks after the terrorist act. Results supported a two-sided model of the effects of social sharing of emotion derived from Durkheim's classic model of the social functional effects of collective remembering. Higher levels of sharing initially predicted (1) higher event-related emotional arousal and mental rumination and (2) superior social integration and well-being assessed in later weeks. Structural equation. modeling showed that higher levels of initial sharing and coping by search for social support predicted directly or indirectly (1) higher social integration (2) higher perceived post-traumatic growth, and (3) higher perceived contentment, hope, solidarity, and confidence in the emotional climate. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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.

International audience; Introduction: Studies on emotional expression and its impact upon health have mainly focused on quantitative aspects of interactions rather than on their quality.Objective: The present study aimed to examine the interpersonal quality of interactions in the social sharing of emotions (SSE) in people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), and its impact on patients’ physical and psychological well-being.Method: One hundred and one PLWHA answered a questionnaire (Likert scale items) which assessed the following: shame, guilt, perceived stigma, perceived physical health, perceived mental health, SSE and the interpersonal quality of SSE (IQSSE). The main hypotheses were compiled into a theoretical model which was tested by a series of structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses.Results: The final solution resulted into a well-fit model which showed that: shame predicted IQSSE, perceived stigma mediated the relationship between IQSSE and guilt, and perceived mental health mediated the relationship between IQSSE and perceived physical health.Conclusion: These results corroborate previous findings which demonstrate that IQSSE is independent from quantitative aspects of SSE and that the way the SSE takes place is crucial to the benefits it induces.; Introduction: Les études qui s’intéressent à l’expression émotionnelle et son impact sur la santé ciblent davantage des aspects quantitatifs des interactions et non pas des aspects qualitatifs de celles-ci.Objectif: La présente étude a eu comme objectif d’examiner la perception de la qualité interpersonnelle des interactions lors du partage social des émotions (PSE) chez les personnes atteintes du VIH/sida, et son impact au niveau du bien-être physique et psychologique chez ces patients.Méthode: Cent un patients atteints du VIH/sida ont répondu à un questionnaire (items Likert) évaluant les variables suivantes : honte, culpabilité, stigmatisation perçue, santé physique perçue, santé mentale perçue, PSE et la perception de la qualité interpersonnelle du PSE. Les hypothèses principales ont été regroupées dans un modèle théorique qui a été testé par une série d’analyses des modélisations en équations structurales.Résultats: Au final, la solution qui a résulté dans un modèle bien ajusté a montré que : la honte est un prédicteur de la perception de la qualité interpersonnelle du PSE, la perception de la stigmatisation est une médiatrice de la relation entre la perception de la qualité interpersonnelle du PSE et la culpabilité, et la santé mentale perçue a été une variable médiatrice entre la perception de la qualité interpersonnelle du PSE et la santé physique perçue.Conclusion: Ces résultats corroborent des études précédentes qui ont mis en avant que la perception de la qualité interpersonnelle du PSE est indépendante des aspects quantitatifs de celui-ci et la façon dont le PSE a lieu est cruciale pour les bénéfices dont celui-ci est porteur.

Current life emotional experiences have been demonstrated to elicit a process called social sharing of emotion, consisting of repetitive talking about these experiences in conversations with relevant others. Like many diurnal experiences, dreams are generally loaded with emotional elements, and empirical evidence has suggested that individuals share their dreams with others mainly belonging to the circle of intimates. The present study examined whether the intensity of the emotion experienced in a dream predicts the extent to which this dream is socially shared. The prediction was tested independently for positively valenced and negatively valenced dreams, on two samples of respondents, i.e., Belgians and Italians. Other potential predictors of sharing were considered, including a number of cognitive appraisals and cognitive consequences of emotion. Results confirmed that emotion intensity is the main predictor of social sharing for both negative and positive dreams. In addition, the analysis of dream con...

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.

This study examined perceptions of institutional apologies related to past political violence and socio-emotional climate among victims and non-victims in Argentina (n = 518), Chile (n = 1,278), and Paraguay (n = 1,172) based on quasi-representative samples. The perceptions of apology as sincere and efficient in improving intergroup relations were associated with a positive socio-emotional climate across the three nations. Victims evaluated apologies more positively and perceived a more positive socio-emotional climate compared to non-victims in Paraguay and Argentina, whereas the opposite was true in Chile where the government opposed the victims’ leftist political orientation. The evaluations of apologies also mediated the effects of exposure to violence on the perception of socio-emotional climate, but these effects were moderated by the context. Together, these findings suggest that apologies reinforce positive sociopolitical climate, and that, personal experience of victimization is an important factor determining these effects. Fil: Bobowik, Magdalena. Universidad del País Vasco; España Fil: Páez, Darío. Universidad del País Vasco; España Fil: Arnoso, Maitane. Universidad del País Vasco; España Fil: Cárdenas, Manuel. Universidad de Valparaiso; Chile Fil: Rimé, Bernard. University of Louvain; Bélgica Fil: Zubieta, Elena Mercedes. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina Fil: Muratori, Marcela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina