Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-t5pn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T17:35:13.978Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 7 - Learning from others’ emotions

from Part III - On the mechanics of affective social learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2019

By
Agneta Fischer
Edited by
Daniel Dukes  and
Fabrice Clément
Daniel Dukes
Affiliation:
Université de Fribourg, Switzerland
Fabrice Clément
Affiliation:
Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Get access

Summary

This chapter provides a theoretical discussion of the boundaries of affective social learning (ASL), focusing on the conditions under which ASL takes place and the processes underlying ASL. In other words, the question is not so much what, but rather how we learn from others’ emotions. I propose three conditions that form a minimal requirement for others’ emotional reactions to have an initial impact on an individual: (1) the source (displaying the emotion and from whom the target learns) needs to show some emotional expression; (2) the target pays attention to the source, and is aware of the source’s focus of attention and the relevance of the emotion expression for him or her; (3) the source needs to put some trust in the source’s judgement or evaluation of the world. I next discuss the conditions under which we are most motivated to learn from others – when we are in an uncertain or ambiguous situation, for example, but also when the target experiences or expresses emotions, which can then be regulated by the source. This form of ASL may form the basis of emotional psychopathology in families, where children’s emotions are often met with depressed, anxious or indifferent reactions by their parents, through which children unintentionally learn inappropriate emotional responses. Different types of learning are then discussed that may be involved in ASL, ranging from fear conditioning to cognitive learning.

Keywords

Affective social learninguncertaintyobservational learningclassical conditioningsocial conditioningaffective social learning in the family
Type
Chapter
Information
Foundations of Affective Social Learning
Conceptualizing the Social Transmission of Value
 , pp. 165 - 184
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aktar, E., Majdandžić, M., de Vente, W., & Bögels, S. M. (2013). The interplay between expressed parental anxiety and infant behavioural inhibition predicts infant avoidance in a social referencing paradigm. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(2), 144–156.Google Scholar
Aktar, E., Majdandžic̈, M., de Vente, W., & Bögels, S. M. (2014). Parental social anxiety disorder prospectively predicts toddlers’ fear/avoidance in a social referencing paradigm. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 55(1), 77–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baeyens, F., Crombez, G., van den Bergh, O., & Eelen, P. (1988). Once in contact always in contact: Evaluative conditioning is resistant to extinction. Advances in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 10(4), 179–199.Google Scholar
Bandura, A. (1969). Principles of behavior modification. Oxford, UK: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.Google Scholar
Bandura, A. (1971). Social Learning Theory. New York, NY: General Learning Press.Google Scholar
Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63(3), 575–582.Google Scholar
Bandura, A., Ross, D., (1963). Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66(1), 3.Google Scholar
Beardslee, W. R., Gladstone, T. R., & O’Connor, E. E. (2011). Transmission and prevention of mood disorders among children of affectively ill parents: A review. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 50(11), 1098–1109.Google Scholar
Bertenthal, B. I., & Campos, J. J. (1984). A reexamination of fear and its determinants on the visual cliff. Psychophysiology, 21(4), 413–417.Google Scholar
Brody, L. R. (2000). The socialization of gender differences in emotional expression: Display rules, infant temperament, and differentiation. In Fischer, A. H. (Eds.), Gender and emotion: Social psychological perspectives (pp. 3–24). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brody, L. R., & Hall, J. A. (2010). Gender, emotion, and socialization. In Chrisler, J. C. & McCreary, D. R. (Eds.), Handbook of gender research in psychology (pp. 429–459). New York, NY: Springer.Google Scholar
Bruder, M., Fischer, A., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2014). Social appraisal as a cause of collective emotions. In von Scheve, C. & Salmela, M. (Eds.), Collective emotions (pp. 141–155). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Clément, F., & Dukes, D. (2017). Social appraisal and social referencing: Two components of affective social learning. Emotion Review, 9(3), 253–261.Google Scholar
Darley, J. M., & Latane, B. (1970). Norms and normative behavior: Field studies of social interdependence. In Macaulay, J. & Berkowitz, L. (Eds.), Altruism and helping behavior (pp. 83–102). New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
de Houwer, J., Thomas, S., & Baeyens, F. (2001). Associative learning of likes and dislikes: A review of 25 years of research on human evaluative conditioning. Psychological Bulletin, 127(6), 853–869.Google Scholar
Denham, S. A., & Grout, L. (1993). Socialization of emotion: Pathway to preschoolers’ emotional and social competence. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 17(3), 205–227.Google Scholar
Dunn, J., Brown, J., & Beardsall, L. (1991). Family talk about feeling states and children’s later understanding of others’ emotions. Developmental Psychology, 27(3), 448–455.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., & Spinrad, T. L. (1998). Parental socialization of emotion. Psychological Inquiry, 9(4), 241–273.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., & Fabes, R. A. (1992). Emotion, regulation, and the development of social competence. In Clark, M. S. (Ed.), Emotion and social behavior: Review of personality and social psychology (pp. 119–150). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., (1994). Mothers’ reactions to children’s negative emotions: Relations to children’s temperament and anger behavior. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly (1982–), 40(1), 138–156.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., & Valiente, C. (2004). Elaborations on a theme: Beyond main effects in relations of parenting to children’s coping and regulation. Parenting: Science and Practice, 4(4), 319–323.Google Scholar
Evers, C., Fischer, A. H., Rodriguez Mosquera, P. M., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2005). Anger and social appraisal: A ‘spicy’ sex difference? Emotion, 5(3), 258–266.Google Scholar
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flack, W. (2006). Peripheral feedback effects of facial expressions, bodily postures, and vocal expressions on emotional feelings. Cognition & Emotion, 20(2), 177–195.Google Scholar
Fischer, A. H. (1993). Sex differences in emotionality: Fact or stereotype? Feminism & Psychology, 3(3), 303–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, P., Krueger, J. I., Greitemeyer, T., Vogrincic, C., Kastenmüller, A., Frey, D., … Kainbacher, M. (2011). The bystander-effect: A meta-analytic review on bystander intervention in dangerous and non-dangerous emergencies. Psychological Bulletin, 137(4), 517–537.Google Scholar
Gerull, F. C., & Rapee, R. M. (2002). Mother knows best: Effects of maternal modelling on the acquisition of fear and avoidance behaviour in toddlers. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40(3), 279–287.Google Scholar
Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 348–362.Google Scholar
Gross, J. J., Richards, J. M., & John, O. P. (2006). Emotion regulation in everyday life. Regulation, 129, 1–34.Google Scholar
Hareli, S., & Hess, U. (2012). The social signal value of emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 26(3), 385–389.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harris, B. (1979). Whatever happened to little Albert? American Psychologist, 34(2), 151–160.Google Scholar
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J., & Rapson, R. (1994). Emotional contagion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2(3), 96–99.Google Scholar
Hess, U., & Blairy, S. (2001). Facial mimicry and emotional contagion to dynamic emotional facial expressions and their influence on decoding accuracy. International Journal of Psychophysiology: Official Journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology, 40(2), 129–141.Google Scholar
Hess, U., & Fischer, A. (2013). Emotional mimicry as social regulation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 17(2), 142–157.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hess, U., (2014). Emotional mimicry: Why and when we mimic emotions. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 8, 45–57.Google Scholar
Hofmann, W., de Houwer, J., Perugini, M., Baeyens, F., & Crombez, G. (2010). Evaluative conditioning in humans: a meta-analysis. Psychological bulletin, 136(3), 390.Google Scholar
Jones, S., Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., & MacKinnon, D. P. (2002). Parents’ reactions to elementary school children’s negative emotions: Relations to social and emotional functioning at school. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 48(2), 133–159.Google Scholar
Klinnert, M., Campos, J. J., Sorce, J. F., Emde, R. N., & Svejda, M. (1983). Emotions as behavior regulators: Social referencing in infancy. In Plutchik, R. & Kellerman, H. (Eds.), Emotion: Theory, research, and experience (pp. 57–86). London, UK: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Klinnert, M. D., Emde, R. N., Butterfield, P., & Campos, J. J. (1986). Social Referencing: The infant’s use of emotional signals from a friendly adult with mother present. Developmental Psychology, 22(4), 427–432.Google Scholar
Kret, M. E., Fischer, A. H., & de Dreu, C. K. W. (2015). Pupil mimicry correlates with trust in in-group partners with dilating pupils. Psychological Science, 26(9), 1401–1410.Google Scholar
Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help? Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Mann, L., Feddes, A. R., Doosje, B., & Fischer, A. H. (2016). Withdraw or affiliate? The role of humiliation during initiation rituals. Cognition and Emotion, 30(1), 80–100.Google Scholar
Manstead, A. S. R., & Fischer, A. H. (2001). Social appraisal: The social world as object of and influence on appraisal processes. In Scherer, K. R., Schorr, A., & Johnstone, T. (Eds.), Appraisal processes in emotion: Theory, methods, research (pp. 221–232). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Manstead, A. S. R., (2017). Social referencing and social appraisal: Commentary on the Clément and Dukes (2016) and Walle et al. (2016) articles. Emotion Review, 9(3), 262–263.Google Scholar
Morris, A. S., Silk, J. S., Steinberg, L., Myers, S. S., & Robinson, L. R. (2007). The role of the family context in the development of emotion regulation. Social Development, 16, 261–288.Google Scholar
Mumenthaler, C., & Sander, D. (2012). Social appraisal influences recognition of emotions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(6), 1118–1135.Google Scholar
Murray, L., de Rosnay, M., Pearson, J., Bergeron, C., Schofield, E., Royal-Lawson, M., & Cooper, P. J. (2008). Intergenerational transmission of social anxiety: The role of social referencing processes in infancy. Child Development, 79, 1049–1064.Google Scholar
Nicol-Harper, R., Harvey, A. G., & Stein, A. (2007). Interactions between mothers and infants: Impact of maternal anxiety. Infant Behavior and Development, 30(1), 161–167.Google Scholar
Öhman, A., Fredrikson, M., Hugdahl, K., & Rimmo, P. A. (1976). The premise of equipotentiality in human classical conditioning: Conditioned electrodermal responses to potentially phobic stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 105(4), 313–337.Google Scholar
Olsson, A., Ebert, J. P., Banaji, M. R., & Phelps, E. A. (2005). Psychology: The role of social groups in the persistence of learned fear. Psychological Science, 15(12), 822–828.Google Scholar
Olsson, A., Nearing, K. I., & Phelps, E. A. (2007). Learning fears by observing others: The neural systems of social fear transmission. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2(1), 3–11.Google Scholar
Olsson, A., & Phelps, E. A. (2004). Learned fear of ‘unseen’ faces after pavlovian, observational, and instructed fear. Psychological Science, 15(12), 822–828.Google Scholar
Parkinson, B. (1997). Untangling the appraisal-emotion connection. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1(1), 62–79.Google Scholar
Parkinson, B. (2011). Interpersonal emotion transfer: Contagion and social appraisal. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5(7), 428–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parkinson, B., Phiri, N., & Simons, G. (2012). Bursting with anxiety: Adult social referencing in an interpersonal Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). Emotion, 12(4), 817–826.Google Scholar
Parkinson, B., & Simons, G. (2012). Worry spreads: Interpersonal transfer of problem-related anxiety. Cognition & Emotion, 26(3), 462–479.Google Scholar
Rimé, B. (2007). The social sharing of emotion as an interface between individual and collective processes in the construction of emotional climates. Journal of Social Issues, 63(2), 307–322.Google Scholar
Rohan, M. J. (2000). A rose by any name? The values construct. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4(3), 255–277.Google Scholar
Schachter, S. (1959). The psychology of affiliation: Experimental studies of the sources of gregariousness. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Shields, S. A. (2013). Gender and emotion. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 37(4), 423–435.Google Scholar
Suls, J., & Wheeler, L. (2012). Social comparison theory. In van Lange, P. A. M., Kruglanski, A. W. & Higgings, E. T. (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology: Volume 1 (pp. 460–483). London, UK: Sage.Google Scholar
van Harreveld, F., Nohlen, H. U., & Schneider, I. K. (2015). The ABC of ambivalence: Affective, behavioral, and cognitive consequences of attitudinal conflict. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 52, 285–324.Google Scholar
van Kleef, G. A. (2009). How emotions regulate social life: The emotions as social information (EASI) model. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 184–188.Google Scholar
Vaughan, K. B., & Lanzetta, J. T. (1980). Vicarious instigation and conditioning of facial expressive and autonomic responses to a model’s expressive display of pain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38(6), 909–923.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watson, J. B., & Morgan, J. J. B. (1917). Emotional reactions and psychological experimentation. American Journal of Psychology, 28(2), 163–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3(1), 1.Google Scholar
Weinberg, M. K., & Tronick, E. Z. (1998). The impact of maternal psychiatric illness on infant development. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 59(2), 53061.Google Scholar
Witherington, D. C., Campos, J. J., Anderson, D. I., Lejeune, L., & Seah, E. (2005). Avoidance of heights on the visual cliff in newly walking infants. Infancy, 7(3), 285–298.Google Scholar
Zech, E., & Rimé, B. (2005). Is talking about an emotional experience helpful? Effects on emotional recovery and perceived benefits. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 12(4), 270–287.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×