Felt and communicated emotions: Sadness and jealousy

Abstract

Potential discrepancies between felt and communicated emotions elicited by two typical antecedents of Jealousy and of Sadness that varied in terms of their seriousness were studied by means of a structured questionnaire. Italian men and women (respectively, N = 248 and N = 293) attributed felt and communicated emotions to a story protagonist X, choosing from a list of 16 emotions; the communication occurred either with X's partner or X's friend. The results obtained from various analyses of variance of Subjects' attributions confirmed the hypothesis that there are significant discrepancies between felt and communicated emotions for both antecedent types, and that they are greater for jealousy than for sadness. Effects on the direction and magnitude of discrepancies due to sex of subjects, and type of interlocutor were found mainly for sadness emotions. Antecedent seriousness instead influenced felt and communicated emotions for both jealousy and sadness. The results are interpreted as showing that verbal communication of emotion is influenced by norms and beliefs about social and personal implications of a given emotion.