Chapter 3 - Mechanisms involved in the social effects of emotions

Summary

This chapter addresses the two processes of emotional influence that are featured in EASI theory, namely affective reactions and inferential processes. The section on affective reactions describes how the emotional expressions of one person may elicit reciprocal or complementary emotional reactions in one or more others via processes such as emotional contagion and social appraisal, and how emotional expressions shape interpersonal liking. The section on inferential processes addresses the ways in which individuals may extract relevant (social) information from the emotional expressions of others, for instance via processes of reverse appraisal and access to emotion knowledge. Downstream consequences of both processes are also discussed, and the relationship between affective reactions and inferential processes is elucidated.