Parkinson, B. (2008)
Emotions in direct and remote social interaction: Getting through the spaces between us
Computers in Human Behavior, 24, 1510-1529
Mostly a theoretical paper whose overall intention p1512 ‘to clarify the ways in which emotion interlock with other psychological and social processes in ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ distributed social arrangements’.
Authors’ s view of emotion –p1512 ‘ emotions are episodic modes of evaluative engagement with the social and practical world rather than simply responses to events’ As defined it differs from an attitude in the way that it lacks the durability of the latter.
(Parkinson, 2005) p1518 ‘emotion expressions achieve their communicative meaning in the dynamic context of their use and have no one to one correspondence to underlying emotional states’ and supports this by the following argument p1518 ‘ For example, faces thought to be direct expressions of one emotion may be interpreted as indications of another when presented in other contexts (Carroll & Russell, 1996) – KRO need to follow this up and question it
Phrases
P1510 ‘calibrating their presentation with other people’s responses’
P1511in online environments ‘ context-based interpretations may become miscalibrated and ineffective’
P1511 ‘ information loss opens up the opportunity for selective emphasis or concealment’
Theoretical background – Emotion as relational alignment
Relation-alignment perspective (Parkinson, Fischer & Manstead (2005)– p1511 ‘which formulates emotions as modes of engagement with the social (and practical) world’ and has the underlying assumption ‘ many of our emotions are intrinsically attuned to the actual, anticipated, or imagined reactions of others’ rather than as an essentially private experience. Parkinson argues that the emotional experience gains meaning because of with interactions with others. P1515 ‘ emotions serve to influence others……. By inducing moment-by-moment adjustments in relational stances’ ‘ emotion exerts an effect because interactants know how the emotional episode is meant to unfold’
Uses anger as an example emotion ‘ the course of anger episodes depends on the dynamic availability of different kinds of interpersonal feedback’ but context is relevant ‘ real time anger episodes encourage direct non verbal adjustment whereas remote context rely on ‘shared and negotiable emotion scripts’
Sees development of emotion from the unconscious response to a triggers in childhood (prereflective) to one orientated to an emotional script as determined by society/culture (articulated). In this way p1513 ‘ the implicit ( prereflective) and explicit (articulated) modes of anger often interpenetrate during adult interaction, but the balance between them varies’
Emotion reciprocation as part of relational alignment
P1514 ‘the other person’s interlocking role in the relational process also needs to be considered’ the other will adopt a relational position. p1514 -1515 it may be that ‘interactants approach the emotion’s object from different angles and end up in discrepant emotional stances however there are also many circumstances in which interpersonal emotions converge to arrive at a shared mode of engagement’ e.g. social referencing between carer and child
P1515
‘one of the advantages of prereflective non verbal communication is that it is not always susceptible to the turn taking conventions of verbal dialogue. Two or more people’s emotions may influence each other continually over time, rather than there being a back-and-forth exchange of emotional information’ – ‘ mediated communication may disallow this mode of operation’
Effect of mode of contact – channel constraints
Note: table on p1517 as an orientating framework
P1516 considers ‘ the emotional implications of signals and actions that are misinterpreted because differences in perspectives are not adequately factored in’
Influential factors include,
- medium (modality availability, sequentiality, temporal resolution) note effects of uncertainty of reception, absence of immediate feedback
- relational (calibration of contexts, relationship)
- task
context and illusions of transparency
Gilovich et al (1998) argue p1519 ‘ that people suffer from an illusion of transparency leading them to believe that there emotions are more detectable than they really are’ ‘ the illusion operates most strongly when there is increasing remoteness between the interactants’ therefore ‘ a general sense may develop that others are not appropriately acknowledging and responding to one’s own emotional state’ i.e. miscommunication or miscalibration due to the limitation on prereflective adjustment
Uses anger while driving to illustrate the points made in this paragraph
‘ the apparent intensification of anger presentations that take place when interactions take place between drivers arise partly because a remote medium of calibration and communication is treated as transparent and directly analogous to the kinds of face to face interactions that occur when people are in close proximity to each other’
Timing
Parkinson & Lea work on effects of timing lags.
P1522 ‘ Chartrand & Bargh (1999) ‘demonstrated that mirroring another person’s movement results in smoother interaction and liking for the other person. Furthermore precisely matching the timing of the other can contribute to the development of shared effect’ Bernieri & Law (1991) ‘have suggested that people engaged in face-to-face interaction may establish rapport by implicitly synchronising their gestures and expression with one another’
Channel constraints and compensating or even exploiting them for them
Constraints:
- Reduction in social cues ( Rutter, 1987)
- Perceptions of interpersonal contact (social presence) Short et al, 1976 leads to flaming - Keisler et al, 84, Sroull & Keisler, 1986) p1523 ‘ it has been suggested that the omission of nonverbal cues that might otherwise disambiguate senders’ intentions may lead to misinterpretations and extreme reactions.’
Compensations: disadvantage is not an inevitable consequence of reduced channels because what has gone missing for senders has also gone missing for receivers and p1524 ‘so might be exploited as an advantage’
‘ reworking articulated representations of how emotion is communicated in different communicative contexts helps to alleviate negative effects’
Parkinson suggests emoticons (‘an explicit signal to substitute for prereflective emotion’’ to disambiguate and therefore avoid miscalibration and therefore behaviours like flaming. KRO- but that assumes that it has the same influence which of course stems from his approach to emotion.
illusion of transparency Satvitsky & Gilovich (2003) suggest raising awareness of this illusion in online contexts p1523 ‘ allowed them to appreciate the possibilities for concealing their anxieties from others’
also p1523 research from a social identity perspective suggests that a relative lack of social cues can also lead to more than less normative behaviour when the salience of personal identity is low (personally anonymous communication) but the salience of social identity ( group membership) is high ( Lea & Spears, 1991)’
Strategic presentation of emotion
P1525 ‘ is it real (KRO – hasn’t really addressed what he means by real in this article )or simulated emotion that is being presented by the strategist?’ “One answer is that its dynamic attunement to other people’s responses may make it more real over time. An idea supported by evidence from emotional labour research
Strategic presentation and emotional labour
Hochschild (1983) and effects on air craft crew ‘ If I pretend I’m feeling really up, sometimes I actually cheer up and feel friendly’ Instructing air hostesses to pretend that they are in their own living room p1525 ‘ in terms of relation alignment approach, this kind of emotion work means deliberately applying an articulated emotion-relevant script to a situation that would normally have other emotional implications’ Without ‘real’ context and social cues it may be easier to reformulate our relations with others (imaginative projection) and may explain how it is possible to be a debt collector or military person.
