The role of emotion transition for the perception of social dominance and affiliation

ABSTRACT

Individuals who show anger are rated as higher in dominance and lower in affiliation, whereas those who express sadness are rated lower in dominance and higher in affiliation. Little is known about situations where people show both expressions in sequence as happens when a first emotional reaction is followed by a second, different one. This question was examined in two studies. Overall, we found that the last emotion shown had a strong impact on perceived behavioural intentions. However, the information about the previously shown emotion was also integrated. The specific mode of integration was dependent on the salience of the change and naive theories about the type of person who changes their emotion in the face of changing events.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion transition
• anger
• sadness
• social dominance
• affiliation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹2710, 3180, 3500, 6212, 6313, 9180, 9560, 9810.

²As an additional measure of authenticity, participants were asked to rate the degree to which the emotional reaction seemed controlled. A significant three-way interaction between end emotion, transition, and rating condition emerged, such that to varying degrees across conditions, participants in the dominance rating condition rated all expressions as higher in control than participants in the affiliation rating condition, suggesting a priming effect of rating condition.