For this paper, I chose the topic of conformity and nonconformity and the collective emotional experience in social groups. Emotions play a key role in group dynamics impacting relations between members and the group. Group-based emotions have to do with a response to events that relate to the group as a whole. An individual’s perception of the collective emotional experience, that is, what the majority feels, plays a large role in individual decision-making regarding conformity and nonconformity.
To explore this topic, I chose two articles from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: The first article, “How Group-Based Emotions Are Shaped By Collective Emotions: Evidence for Emotional Transfer and Emotional Burden” was written by Goldenberg, Saguy, and Halperin and was published in the October 2014 edition, and the second article “On The Social Influence of Emotions in Groups: Interpersonal Effects of Anger and Happiness on Conformity Versus Deviance” written by Heerdink, Van Kleef, Homan, and Fischer was published in the August 2013 edition. In this paper, I will summarize each article, and compare and contrast the studies, as well as discuss the similarities and differences of the beliefs and approaches of the authors.
The general area in the field for the first article, “How Group-Based Emotions Are Shaped By Collective Emotions: Evidence for Emotional Transfer and Emotional Burden,” is individual emotions in a group setting, group-based emotions, and emotional nonconformity. The authors ran five different studies across two different intergroup contexts to measure emotional nonconformity within groups in intergroup settings and whether an individual’s perception of collective emotion would have an effect on the level of group-based emotion.
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Studies one through four looked at Israeli-Palestinian relations in Israel. In studies one and two they tested two emotions: group-based anger and group-based guilt. The results indicated that group-based anger was negatively correlated with political stance. These two studies also showed that the individual’s perception of collective emotion does have an effect on the level of group-based emotion.
The third study showed that individual levels of group-based guilt decreased when collective emotion was recognized as appropriate by the individual. However, when collective emotion was perceived as not appropriate, individual levels of group-based guilt were higher indicating the impact of conformity pressures on the individual. In study four they examined the interactive effect of study three by manipulating the perceived guilt and the level of appropriateness of the guilt in order to differentiate between conformity and nonconformity. Results suggested that levels of group-based guilt can be determined by perception and appropriateness.
Study five was run to test the soundness of findings in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian context by investigating black-white relations in the United States. Findings showed that control group participants behaved much like participants in the low perceived collective guilt condition, which suggests that participants who received information about collective group emotion and participants that did not, react congruently.
They concluded that “the motivation to experience group-based emotions depends not only on the response to a specific situation but also on the individual’s goals, which stem from her or his relationship with her or his group” (Goldenberg et al. 593)
The second article “On The Social Influence of Emotions in Groups: Interpersonal Effects of Anger and Happiness on Conformity Versus Deviance” also had five studies and the general area of study was again conformity, emotions, and group and interpersonal processes. The goal of the study was to examine whether group members emotional expression would be shaped by conformity or deviance within the group. They hypothesized that “angry and happy responses to a group member’s deviating opinion are interpreted as signals of imminent rejection versus acceptance.” (Heerdink et al. 262).
In study one they aimed to show a correlation between the emotions of the majority within a group and the feelings of acceptance and rejection by a deviant member by measuring how the member felt after their deviant emotional expression. Findings supported the assumption that happiness and anger are signs of a member’s inclusionary status within the group.
For study two, the authors manipulated the scenario from study one to explore whether emotions expressed by the majority would influence their choice to conform or if they would choose to leave the group. Results showed that participants felt more rejected when the majority showed anger and less rejected when they showed happiness. It also showed that they were more likely to leave the group if an alternative group was available.
In the third and fourth studies they looked deeper to see if deviant members could be pressured to conform through feelings of acceptance or rejection. Results showed there is more pressure to conform if the majority expressed anger because the individual felt rejected by the group. Extending the study further, they placed participants into groups to evaluate paintings on a sliding scale and then provided the individuals with feedback from the majority. The authors concluded that “peripheral and not prototypical members conformed more after an angry response….this finding is more consistent with our motivational perspective, because peripheral members could show good membership by conforming, whereas prototypical members are safely bound within the group and have less to gain by conforming” (Heerdink et al, 279).
Article one “How group-based emotions are shaped by collective emotions” actually mentions my second article “On the social influence of emotions in groups” in it’s acknowledgement section, saying that the authors examined how an individual’s emotion might be influenced by the collective’s behavior. They also state that the Herdink et al studies showed that a negative response from the group, toward the individual with the deviant emotion leads to the individual feeling rejected, and can influence their participation in cooperative group tasks. The first article seems to be building on this belief with their studies.
Next, I would like to explore the shared beliefs and approaches of the two articles. I found that both articles authors had some shared beliefs and shared approaches. They both had to begin with the belief that there is such a thing as collective or group emotions. They also both believed that an individual’s understanding of conformity and deviance is likely to be shaped by their perception of collective emotions, and by the comparison of their own emotions to those of the group as a whole. Both used anger in their studies as a tool to manipulate emotions, as well as using general manipulation to encourage specific emotions such as guilt, anger, happiness and rejection. The two studies used mixed gender populations, with similar age groups. Another similarity I found between them was that they both used empirical and quantitative methodology in their studies.
Now let’s examine the unshared beliefs and approaches of both articles. One difference in unshared beliefs was that the authors of study two Heerdink et al, believed that people were reluctant to overtly admit their conformity to a group, while Goldenberg et al were more interested in emotional nonconformity. Otherwise the authors seemed to have similar beliefs. In regards to unshared approaches, the first article by Goldenberg et al, presented written and video materials that were manipulated to cause the participants to feel guilt, in order to evaluate the impact of the emotion upon the group and the individual. Goldenberg et al also used a second inter-group setting to confirm the results of their first studies which Heerdink et al did not.
The studies by Heerdink et al used explicit feedback from group emotion in order to test how the subject would react, as well as testing how the perception of deviance impacted feelings of rejection or acceptance in the individual. Another emotion they used that Goldenberg et al did not, was happiness. They used it as a reaction to deviance in order to study the effects it had on the deviant individual, while also examining the impact of availability of an alternative group and how that might affect the individual’s choice to stay in the group or leave.
In the process of examining these two articles I learned quite a bit about group-based emotions. One of the biggest things I learned was that collective emotional experiences can be based largely upon perception. More specifically, not only how an individual within the group perceives a situation, but also how the majority perceives the situation. Depending on the individuals social standing within the group, the individual can choose to deviate or can conform. The other big thing I learned is that a deviant individual when receiving anger from the majority would most likely choose to leave if there was an alternative group available, but would be more likely to stay in the group if there was not, and how that also depended upon their standing in the group. An individual’s perception of the collective emotional experience definitely plays a large role in individual decision-making regarding conformity and nonconformity.
References
- Group Emotions: Cutting the Gordian Knots Concerning Terms, Levels of Analysis, and Processes
- Social Conformity: A Multilevel Investigation into the Causes and Consequences of Employee Socialization
- Conformity in the Asch Task as a Consequence of Chromatic Induction
- Emotional Processes, Interaction Process, and Personality Development
