Two central dimensions in psychotherapeutic work are a therapist’s empathy with clients and challenging their judgments. We investigated how they influence psychophysiological responses in the participants. Data were from psychodynamic therapy sessions, 24 sessions from 5 dyads, from which 694 therapist’s interventions were coded. Heart rate and electrodermal activity (EDA) of the participants were used to index emotional arousal. Facial muscle activity (electromyography) was used to index positive and negative emotional facial expressions. Electrophysiological data were analyzed in two time frames: (a) during the therapists’ interventions and (b) across the whole psychotherapy session. Both empathy and challenge had an effect on psychophysiological responses in the participants. Therapists’ empathy decreased clients’ and increased their own EDA across the session. Therapists’ challenge increased their own EDA in response to the interventions, but not across the sessions. Clients, on the other hand, did not respond to challenges during interventions, but challenges tended to increase EDA across a session. Furthermore, there was an interaction effect between empathy and challenge. Heart rate decreased and positive facial expressions increased in sessions where empathy and challenge were coupled, i.e., the amount of both empathy and challenge was either high or low. This suggests that these two variables work together. The results highlight the therapeutic functions and interrelation of empathy and challenge, and in line with the dyadic system theory by Beebe and Lachmann (2002), the systemic linkage between interactional expression and individual regulation of emotion.

The paper investigates the interactional work required in order to launch a complaint about non-present third parties in discussions between employees and their manager. The study shows how the complaint recipient (the manager) creates opportunities for the complainer (the employee) to complain and how the recipient and complainer collaboratively facilitate entry into complaining by means of building joint epistemic access and affective stance towards the complainable. Focusing on the institutional context of performance appraisal interviews, the study further indicates that the legitimation of complaining is collaboratively treated as a managerial task. We utilize English translations of Finnish and Danish data.

Earlier research has shown that conversational storytelling is a regular locus for displays of affective stance. A stance display by the teller invites a mirroring response from the recipient, and these reciprocal displays are finely organized and timed. The article adds a new aspect to the research on affective stance and affiliation by examining the linkages between interactional stance displays and physiological responses in the participants. We show that the valence, and especially ambivalence, of the stance displayed by the storyteller is associated with an increase in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity in the recipient. The participants were 40 students who were discussing their life events in dyads. Heart rate, electrodermal activity (skin conductance), and facial muscle activity (EMG) of the participants were measured. The conversations were videotaped, and the storytelling instances were coded by means of a quantitative application of conversation analysis. The stories were coded into three classes: happy, sad, and ambivalent (twofold) stories on the basis of the affective stance that was displayed by the teller. In comparison to a happy and sad stance, ambivalence increased significantly the recipient's heart rate and electrodermal activity. Our interpretation is that the increased ANS activity reflects the more complex cognitive and interactional task faced by the recipients in affiliating with an ambivalent stance.

In conversational storytelling, the recipients are expected to show affiliation with the emotional stance displayed by the storytellers. We investigated emotional arousal-related autonomic nervous system responses in tellers and recipients of conversational stories. The data consist of 20 recordings of 45- to 60-minute dyadic conversations between female university and polytechnic students. Conversations were videotaped and analyzed by means of conversation analysis (CA), with a special emphasis on the verbal and nonverbal displays of affiliation in storytelling. Electrodermal activity in both participants was measured to estimate their arousal level. The results show that the verbal and nonverbal displays of affiliation decrease the storyteller’s but increase the recipient’s level of arousal. This means that the monitoring of the recipient actions in storytelling, shown by earlier CA studies, has a physiological correlate. We suggest that storytelling involves an emotional load, which the participants share physiologically in affiliative responses.

We investigated how technologically mediating two different components of emotion—communicative expression and physiological state—to group members affects physiological linkage and self-reported feelings in a small group during video viewing. In different conditions the availability of second screen text chat (communicative expression) and visualization of group level physiological heart rates and their dyadic linkage (physiology) was varied. Within this four person group two participants formed a physically co-located dyad and the other two were individually situated in two separate rooms. We found that text chat always increased heart rate synchrony but HR visualization only with non-co-located dyads. We also found that physiological linkage was strongly connected to self-reported social presence. The results encourage further exploration of the possibilities of sharing group member's physiological components of emotion by technological means to enhance mediated communication and strengthen social presence.