Understanding emotional transitions: The interpersonal consequences of changing emotions in negotiations.

Abstract

Research on the interpersonal functions of emotions has focused primarily on steady-state emotion rather than on emotional transitions, the movement between emotion states. The authors examined the influence of emotional transitions on social interactions and found that emotional transitions led to consistently different outcomes than their corresponding steady-state emotions. Across 2 computer-mediated negotiations and a face-to-face negotiation, participants negotiating with partners who displayed a "becoming angry" (happy to angry) emotional transition accepted worse negotiation outcomes yet formed better relational impressions of their partners than participants negotiating with partners who displayed steady-state anger. This relationship was mediated through 2 mechanisms: attributional and emotional contagion processes. The "becoming happy" (angry to happy) emotional transition as compared with steady-state happiness was not significantly related to differences in negotiation outcomes but was significantly related to differences in relational impressions, where perceivers of the "becoming happy" emotional transition gave their partners lower relational impression ratings than perceivers of steady-state happiness.

Why and When Leaders’ Affective States Influence Employee Upward Voice

“…Affect conveys meaningful information to a social interaction partner about an individual's current feelings, social intentions, and orientation toward the relationship (Ames & Johar, 2009;Van Kleef et al, 2004). In response, the partner consciously makes judgments or takes follow-up actions based on the information inferred from the individual's emotions (Filipowicz, Barsade, & Melwani, 2011;Miron-Spektor, Efrat-Treister, Rafaeli, & Schwarz-Cohen, 2011;Van Kleef et al, 2009). Previous research has provided evidence that signaling process is distinctive from the emotional contagion process (Eberly & Fong, 2013;Van Kleef et al, 2009).…”

Person perception from changing emotional expressions: primacy, recency, or averaging effect?

“…The results of one study point to a recency effect (Hareli et al, 2016), whereas the results of the other point to an averaging effect (Filipowicz et al, 2011). Two possible reasons may account for this inconsistency.…”

“…If the averaging principle accounts for trait inferences from dynamic emotional expressions, the resultant perception should be an average of the expresser's start and end emotions. Filipowicz, Barsade, and Melwani (2011) provided some evidence supporting this notion: Compared to those who expressed either anger or happiness throughout a negotiation, individuals whose expressions changed between happiness and anger were rated as intermediate in positivity (also see Pietroni, Van Kleef, De Dreu, & Pagliaro, 2008). However, the emotional changes in these studies were depicted by displaying two still photographs, which may not be representative of genuine dynamic changes.…”

The Two-Faced Leader: Effects of Leader Emotional Inconsistency on Follower Creative Performance

“…An example of simultaneous emotional inconsistency would be expressed emotional ambivalence, defined as the simultaneous expression of positive and negative emotions (Rothman & Northcraft, 2015;Rothman, 2011). Sequential emotional inconsistency involves the consecutive movement between two or more different emotional expressions (Rothman & Melwani, 2016), for example in the case of emotional inconsistency as defined by Sinaceur and colleagues (2013) or in the case of affective transitions (Filipowicz, Barsade, & Melwani, 2011). Importantly, as inconsistent emotional expressions involve at least two distinct discrete emotions, the decision which discrete emotions are chosen to induce emotional inconsistency can predetermine the effect the expression has on observers (Sinaceur et al, 2013).…”