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Anger and sadness as adaptive emotion expression strategies in response to negative competence and warmth evaluations
Author(s) -
Celik Pinar,
Storme Martin,
Myszkowski Nils
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
british journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.855
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 2044-8309
pISSN - 0144-6665
DOI - 10.1111/bjso.12149
Subject(s) - sadness , anger , psychology , interpersonal communication , social psychology , fluency , competence (human resources) , developmental psychology , mathematics education
Previous literature suggested that anger and sadness may be necessary to restore social bonds in the face of immediate relationship threat. The present research compared the social effectiveness of expressing anger and sadness in response to a negative personal evaluation. Results indicated that target anger in response to a negative competence evaluation, and target sadness in response to a negative warmth evaluation, had the most positive effects on the evaluators’ subjectively perceived persuasiveness of the targets’ communication (Study 1) and on the subjectively perceived fluency of the interaction by both interaction partners (Study 2). Results are discussed in light of the social functionality of emotion expression and the importance of interpersonal emotion congruency with evaluation content.