Abstract
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.
Keywords
A lower social integration is a major risk factor for both morbidity and mortality (e.g., Berkman, Glass, Brissette, & Seeman, 2000; House, Landis, & Umberson, 1988; Seeman, 2000). To illustrate, recent meta-analyses abundantly documented the link between lower social integration and mortality. Across 148 studies, weaker social relationships corresponded to 50% increased likelihood of mortality (Holt-Lunstad, Smith, & Layton, 2010). Across 95 studies, the risk of early death for never-married persons was 24% higher compared to married ones (Roelfs, Shor, Kalish, & Yogev, 2011). Across 70 studies, social isolation, loneliness, and living alone corresponded respectively to a 29%, 26%, and 32% increased likelihood of mortality (Holt-Lunstad, Smith, Baker, Harris, & Stephenson, 2015). Specific social variables such as social support or social contacts are generally viewed as explaining such associations between health-related outcomes and global social integration. However, according to meta-analytic studies again, the risk of death is only 11% higher for people with a lower social support (Shor, Roelfs, & Yogev, 2013; 50 studies) and 13% higher for those with lower social contacts (Shor & Roelfs, 2015; 91 studies). Compared to the previous figures ranging from 24% to 50%, the lower levels of the latter ones suggest these classically invoked variables to lack the needed explanatory power to clarify the issue. This means that the efforts invested by Sbarra and Coan (2018) for a better elucidation of the connection between social relationships and health are welcome. Among the four components they proposed to guide the research aimed at understanding the role of emotion in this connection, I view the fourth one, “transactional dimensions,” as offering particularly rich promises in this regard. To illustrate, I will sketch hereafter the example of individual, interpersonal, and collective effects entailed by the process of social sharing of emotion. My example rests on the fact that a bidirectional flow of transactions develops continuously between these three levels (Figure 1).
The bidirectional flow of transactions between individual experiences, interpersonal relations, and collective processes.
Interpersonal Integration of Individual Emotional Episodes
When an experience is out of synchrony with the person’s expectations, it is tinged with emotion. Emotion then stimulates interpersonal contacts and the person shares the emotion with close ones (e.g., Berger, 2011; Rimé, 2009). Such exchanges centered upon emotional episodes enhance social integration in various ways. First, they offer partners opportunities to extend their common ground and thus to confirm their sense of “we-ness” (Kashima, Klein, & Clark, 2007). Second, the psychosocial dynamic proper to both emotion sharing (Rimé, 2009) and self-disclosure (Reis & Patrick, 1996) ends up strengthening partners’ social bonds (Collins & Miller, 1994). Third, as emotion sharing develops within stable and strong social relationships (Peters, Kashima, & Clark, 2009; Rimé, Philippot, Boca, & Mesquita, 1992), narrators overestimate their partner’s support and they feel strengthened both in their perspective and in their sense of solidarity even in case of disrupted conversation flow (Koudenburg, Gordijn, & Postmes, 2014; Koudenburg, Postmes, & Gordijn, 2017).
Collective Effects of Interpersonal Sharing of Emotion
The potential impact of emotion sharing on social integration does not end with interactions between the actor and addressees. Emotions are elicited in the listeners who then in turn share what they heard with others they are close to (Christophe & Rimé, 1997; Curci & Bellelli, 2004; Harber & Cohen, 2005). This dissemination of emotional information (Harber, Podolski, & Dyer, 2014; Rimé, 2009) also entails consequences for social integration. Parkinson, Fischer, and Manstead (2005) showed that when addressees experience similar emotions in response to emotional stories, their feeling of cohesion increases. Peters and Kashima (2007) observed that telling emotion stories creates a coalition between the narrator and the audience. In addition, the repeatedly communicated emotional information enriches the common sense and social beliefs shared by the collective, thus enhancing members’ social integration but also providing them with a shared knowledge enabling them to cope more effectively with future emotional situations (Kashima et al., 2007; Peters et al., 2009).
Individual Impact of Collective Sharing of Emotions
Social life is recurrently punctuated by collective emotional gatherings to which large groups of people converge: for example, civil ceremonies; commemorations; sociopolitical demonstrations; collective feasts; and sport, musical, folkloric, or religious events. Participation in such collective emotional events enhances social identity (Neville & Reicher, 2011), ethnic identification (Gasparre, Bosco, & Bellelli, 2010), identity fusion with others (Swann, Jetten, Gómez, Whitehouse, & Bastian, 2012), social cohesion (Kanyangara, Rimé, Philippot, & Yzerbyt, 2007; Rimé, Kanyangara, Yzerbyt, & Paez, 2011; Weiss & Richards, 1997), perceived social support (Páez, Basabe, Ubillos, & González-Castro, 2007), solidarity (Hawdon & Ryan, 2011), and positive emotions and affect (Fischer et al., 2014). From empirical studies of collective gatherings, Páez, Rimé, Basabe, Wlodarczyk, and Zumeta (2015) concluded that their positive effects result from the intensification of socially shared emotions which strengthens social integration therefore reinforcing shared social beliefs. These findings thus strongly supported Durkheim’s (1912) classic model of the cognitive and social effects resulting from situations eliciting collective effervescence and a reciprocal stimulation of emotions.
Impact of Social Constraints on the Social Sharing of Emotion
Yet, not all emotions are socially shared. Thus, victims of accidents or aggressions, persons with severe or chronic illness, bereaved, disabled, and others with an adverse social status carry painful emotions in need of sharing. But their condition reminds healthy people of the precariousness of human life (Wortman & Lehman, 1985), a fact the latter eagerly want to ignore (e.g., Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2003). People with adverse destinies thus often face social constraints exerted on them by those who want to protect themselves from distressing emotion sharing (e.g., Cantisano, Rimé, & Muñoz-Sastre, 2012; Herbette & Rimé, 2004; Lepore & Revenson, 2007) and are thus progressively dismissed from social communication. An increasingly large part of unshared experiences develop in their subjective life, feeding up social distancing, loneliness, and loss of meaning. Though less often considered in this context, effects of this kind also explain the association linking social relationship and health.
Conclusions
The social sharing of emotions illustrates the continuous transactions linking individual experiences, interpersonal relationships, and the collective level (Figure 1). Potential consequences for social integration develop at every stage of these transactions. For socialized individuals, what is at stake in the extent of their social integration is their capacity to assimilate their raw experiences. The lesser this capacity, the higher their internal stress and thus the higher their health risks. Collective processes, also named “culture,” provide, develop, and continually adapt concepts and meanings enabling assimilation. Participation of individuals in collective emotions results in setting up and consolidating in them beliefs and worldviews helpful for experience assimilation. Proximal interpersonal relationships assist individuals in assimilation work by providing them with a distant and culturally documented look at their raw experience. Thus, the more individuals are socially integrated, the higher is their capacity to assimilate raw experiences, and hence to reduce the sources of internal stress engendered by inconsistencies in their phenomenal world.