Emotional influence in groups: the dynamic nexus of affect, cognition, and behavior

Current Opinion in Psychology

Volumn 17, Issue , 2017, Pages 156-161

  van Kleef, Gerben A ^a   Heerdink, Marc W ^a   Homan, Astrid C ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COGNITION; EMOTION; GROUP PROCESS; HUMAN; PSYCHOLOGICAL MODEL; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR;

COGNITION; EMOTIONS; GROUP PROCESSES; HUMANS; MODELS, PSYCHOLOGICAL; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR;

EID: 85026537550     PISSN: 2352250X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.07.017     Document Type: Review

References (76)

1. Anderson, P.A., Guerrero, L.K., The Handbook of Communication and Emotion. 1998, Academic Press, San Diego, CA.
2. Parkinson, B., Emotions are social. Br J Psychol 87 (1996), 663–683.
3. Planalp, S., Communicating Emotion: Social, Moral, and Cultural Processes. 1999, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
4. Kelly, J.R., Barsade, S.G., Mood and emotions in small groups and work teams. Organ Behav Hum Decis Process 86 (2001), 99–130 This paper presents a comprehensive model of the bottom-up and top-down processes through which emotions arise and become shared in groups.
5. Le Bon, G., The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. 1895, Ernest Benn, London.
6. McDougall, W., Outline of Psychology. 1923, Scribner, New York.
7. Bar-Tal, D., Halperin, E., de Rivera, J., Collective emotions in conflict situations: societal implications. J Soc Issues 63 (2007), 441–460.
8. Keltner, D., Gross, J.J., Functional accounts of emotions. Cogn Emot 13 (1999), 467–480.
9. Spoor, J.R., Kelly, J.R., The evolutionary significance of affect in groups: communication and group bonding. Group Processes Intergroup Relat 7 (2004), 398–412.
10. von Scheve, C., Salmela, M., Collective emotions: an introduction. von Scheve, C., Salmela, M., (eds.) Collective Emotions, 2014, Oxford University Press, Oxford, xiii–xxv.
11. Barsade, S.G., Gibson, D.E., Group emotion: a view from top and bottom. Gruenfeld, D., Mannix, E., Neale, M., (eds.) Research on Managing Groups and Teams, 1998, JAI Press, Stamford, CT, 81–102.
12. Fischer, A.H., Manstead, A.S.R., Social functions of emotion and emotion regulation. Barrett, L.F., Lewis, M., Haviland-Jones, J.M., (eds.) Handbook of Emotions, edn 4, 2017, Guilford, New York, 424–439.
13. Frijda, N.H., Mesquita, B., The social roles and functions of emotions. Kitayama, S., Markus, H.S., (eds.) Emotion and Culture: Empirical Studies of Mutual Influence, 1994, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 51–87.
14. Iyer, A., Leach, C.W., Emotion in inter-group relations. Eur Rev Soc Psychol 19 (2008), 86–125.
15. Keltner, D., Haidt, J., Social functions of emotions at four levels of analysis. Cogn Emot 13 (1999), 505–521.
16. Van Kleef, G.A., Fischer, A.H., Emotional collectives: how groups shape emotions and emotions shape groups. Cogn Emot 30 (2016), 3–19.
17. Cialdini, R.B., Borden, R.J., Thorne, A., Walker, M.R., Freeman, S., Sloan, L.R., Basking in reflected glory: three (football) field studies. J Pers Soc Psychol 34 (1976), 366–375.
18. Doosje, B., Branscombe, N.R., Spears, R., Manstead, A.S., Guilty by association: when one's group has a negative history. J Pers Soc Psychol 75 (1998), 872–886.
19. Leach, C.W., Spears, R., Branscombe, N.R., Doosje, B., Malicious pleasure: Schadenfreude at the suffering of another group. J Pers Soc Psychol 84 (2003), 932–943.
20. Mackie, D.M., Devos, T., Smith, E.R., Intergroup emotions: explaining offensive action tendencies in an intergroup context. J Pers Soc Psychol 79 (2000), 602–616.
21. Smith, E.R., Seger, C.R., Mackie, D.M., Can emotions be truly group level? Evidence regarding four conceptual criteria. J Pers Soc Psychol 93 (2007), 431–446.
22. Van Zomeren, M., Spears, R., Fischer, A.H., Leach, C.W., Put your money where your mouth is! Explaining collective action tendencies through group-based anger and group efficacy. J Pers Soc Psychol 87 (2004), 649–664.
23. Tausch, N., Becker, J.C., Spears, R., Christ, O., Saab, R., Singh, P., Siddiqui, R.N., Explaining radical group behavior: developing emotion and efficacy routes to normative and nonnormative collective action. J Pers Soc Psychol 101 (2011), 129–148.
24. Van Kleef, G.A., How emotions regulate social life: the emotions as social information (EASI) model. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 18 (2009), 184–188.
25. Van Kleef, G.A., The Interpersonal Dynamics of Emotion: Toward an Integrative Theory of Emotions as Social Information. 2016, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
26. Van Kleef, G.A., De Dreu, C.K.W., Manstead, A.S.R., An interpersonal approach to emotion in social decision making: the emotions as social information model. Adv Exp Soc Psychol 42 (2010), 45–96.
27. Van Kleef, G.A., Van Doorn, E.A., Heerdink, M.W., Koning, L.F., Emotion is for influence. Eur Rev Soc Psychol 22 (2011), 114–163 Drawing on the Emotions as Social Information (EASI) framework, this article offers a theoretical analysis of the ways in which emotional expressions enable people to exert social influence on others by triggering affective reactions and/or inferential processes in them.
28. Van Kleef, G.A., Homan, A.C., Cheshin, A., Emotional influence at work: take it EASI. Organ Psychol Rev 2 (2012), 311–339.
29. Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J.T., Rapson, R.L., Emotional Contagion. 1994, Cambridge University Press, New York.
30. Walter, F., Bruch, H., The positive group affect spiral: a dynamic model of the emergence of positive affective similarity in work groups. J Organ Behav 29 (2008), 239–261.
31. Collins, A.L., Lawrence, S.A., Troth, A.C., Jordan, P.J., Group affective tone: a review and future research directions. J Organ Behav 34 (2013), S43–S62.
32. George, J.M., Personality, affect, and behavior in groups. J Appl Psychol 75 (1990), 107–116.
33. Sy, T., Côté, S., Saavedra, R., The contagious leader: Impact of the leader's mood on the mood of group members, group affective tone, and group processes. J Appl Psychol 90 (2005), 295–305 The authors demonstrate experimentally that a leader's induced mood influences the affective tone of the group. The group's affective tone, in turn, influences group processes, in such a way that positive mood improves the group's coordination, whereas negative mood increases group effort.
34. Totterdell, P., Kellett, S., Teuchmann, K., Briner, B., Evidence of mood linkage in work groups. J Pers Soc Psychol 74 (1998), 1504–1515.
35. Totterdell, P., Catching moods and hitting runs: mood linkage and subjective performance in professional sport teams. J Appl Psychol 85 (2000), 848–859 This article presents real-world evidence for affective convergence within sports teams. By tracking player moods of both teams during a cricket match, the authors demonstrated that players are more influenced by their own team's affective state than by the other team's affective state.
36. Van der Schalk, J., Fischer, A., Doosje, B., Wigboldus, D., Hawk, S., Rotteveel, M., Hess, U., Convergent and divergent responses to emotional displays of ingroup and outgroup. Emotion 11 (2011), 286–298.
37. Weisbuch, M., Ambady, N., Affective divergence: automatic responses to others’ emotions depend on group membership. J Pers Soc Psychol 95 (2008), 1063–1079.
38. Bartel, C.A., Saavedra, R., The collective construction of work group moods. Adm Sci Q 45 (2000), 197–231.
39. Barsade, S.G., The ripple effect: emotional contagion and its influence on group behavior. Adm Sci Q 47 (2002), 644–675 In this paper, the author demonstrates experimentally that group members’ emotional displays spread to other group members, independent of emotional valence or energy level. Positive emotional contagion in turn influenced individual and group-level outcomes, such as cooperation, conflict, and performance.
40. Anderson, C., Keltner, D., John, O.P., Emotional convergence between people over time. J Pers Soc Psychol 84 (2003), 1054–1068.
41. Keltner, D., Van Kleef, G.A., Chen, S., Kraus, M.W., A reciprocal influence model of social power: emerging principles and lines of inquiry. Adv Exp Soc Psychol 40 (2008), 151–192.
42. Van Kleef, G.A., Homan, A.C., Beersma, B., Van Knippenberg, D., Van Knippenberg, B., Damen, F., Searing sentiment or cold calculation? The effects of leader emotional displays on team performance depend on follower epistemic motivation. Acad Manag J 52 (2009), 562–580 This study examined how leaders’ expressions of anger versus happiness influence team functioning, showing that teams consisting of members with low information processing motivation performed better when the leader expressed happiness, whereas teams of members with high information processing motivation performed better when the leader expressed anger. In line with EASI theory, inferential processes (i.e. inferences about performance quality) mediated behavioral responses to the leader's emotional expressions among followers with high information processing motivation, whereas affective reactions (i.e. positive versus negative emotions and liking of the leader) mediated responses to the leader's emotions among followers with low information processing motivation.
43. Cheshin, A., Rafaeli, A., Bos, N., Anger and happiness in virtual teams: emotional influences of text and behavior on others’ affect in the absence of non-verbal cues. Organ Behav Hum Decis Process 116 (2011), 2–16 In a group-level experiment, the authors find that group emotional contagion also occurs non-verbally, by means of textual cues only. Moreover, they show that different behaviors of a team member shape different perceptions of the actor's emotions, such that flexible behaviors are associated with happiness, and resolute behaviors with anger.
44. Salminen, M., Ravaja, N., Kallinen, K., Saari, T., Mediated cues of group emotion during knowledge-work tasks: effects on subjective and physiological responses. Interact Comput 25 (2013), 60–73.
45. Dezecache, G., Conty, L., Chadwick, M., Philip, L., Soussignan, R., Sperber, D., Grèzes, J., Evidence for unintentional emotional contagion beyond dyads. PLoS ONE, 8, 2013, e67371.
46. Ilies, R., Wagner, D.T., Morgeson, F.P., Explaining affective linkages in teams: individual differences in susceptibility to contagion and individualism–collectivism. J Appl Psychol 92 (2007), 1140–1148.
47. Tanghe, J., Wisse, B., Van der Flier, H., The formation of group affect and team effectiveness: the moderating role of identification. Br J Manag 21 (2010), 340–358.
48. de Melo, C.M., Carnevale, P.J., Read, S.J., Gratch, J., Reading people's minds from emotion expressions in interdependent decision making. J Pers Soc Psychol 106 (2014), 73–88.
49. Hareli, S., Hess, U., What emotional reactions can tell us about the nature of others: an appraisal perspective on person perception. Cogn Emot 24 (2010), 128–140.
50. Manstead, A.S.R., Fischer, A.H., Social appraisal: the social world as object of and influence on appraisal processes. Scherer, K.R., Schorr, A., Johnstone, T., (eds.) Appraisal Processes in Emotion: Theory, Research, Application, 2001, Oxford University Press, New York, 221–232.
51. Van Kleef, G.A., The emerging view of emotion as social information. Soc Pers Psychol Compass 4 (2010), 331–343.
52. Van Doorn, E.A., Heerdink, M.W., Van Kleef, G.A., Emotion and the construal of social situations: inferences of cooperation versus competition from expressions of anger, happiness, and disappointment. Cogn Emot 26 (2012), 442–461 This article demonstrates the role of inferential processes in dyads and groups by showing that emotional expressions influence observers’ construal of a situation. Across three studies, the authors find that angry expressions consistently shift the perception of a situation from cooperative to more competitive, whereas happy expressions have the opposite effect.
53. Heerdink, M.W., Van Kleef, G.A., Homan, A.C., Fischer, A.H., Emotional expressions as cues of rejection and acceptance: evidence from the affect misattribution paradigm. J Exp Soc Psychol 56 (2015), 60–68.
54. Heerdink, M.W., Van Kleef, G.A., Homan, A.C., Fischer, A.H., On the social influence of emotions in groups: interpersonal effects of anger and happiness on conformity versus deviance. J Pers Soc Psychol 105 (2013), 262–284 This article explores the role of inferential processes in shaping within-group interactions. The authors demonstrate that angry and happy reactions to deviant behavior elicit inferences of rejection and acceptance in the deviant, respectively, which drive the deviant's subsequent conformity.
55. Heerdink, M.W., Van Kleef, G.A., Homan, A.C., Fischer, A.H., Emotional reactions to deviance in groups: the relation between number of angry reactions, felt rejection, and conformity. Front Psychol 6:830 (2015), 1–12.
56. Magee, J.C., Tiedens, L.Z., Emotional ties that bind: the roles of valence and consistency of group emotion in inferences of cohesiveness and common fate. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 32 (2006), 1703–1715 In three experiments, the authors show that group-based emotions influence outsiders’ perceptions of groups. More positive and consistent group-level emotions were associated with greater perceptions of cohesion and common-fate, respectively, than more negative and inconsistent displays of emotions.
57. Homan, A.C., Van Kleef, G.A., Sanchez-Burks, J., Team members’ emotional displays as indicators of team functioning. Cogn Emot 30 (2016), 134–149 In two experiments, the authors show that observers infer levels of team functioning from the emotional displays of team members, such that expressions of sadness elicit more pessimistic inferences of group functioning than expressions of happiness. Moreover, they find that the displayed emotions become more informative for observers to the degree that the group's situation is more ambiguous and when the emotional displays can be more clearly linked to the group's collective experience.
58. Rothman, N.B., Magee, J.C., Affective expressions in groups and inferences about members’ relational well-being: the effects of socially engaging and disengaging emotions. Cogn Emot 30 (2016), 150–166.
59. Van Kleef, G.A., Wanders, F., Stamkou, E., Homan, A.C., The social dynamics of breaking the rules: antecedents and consequences of norm-violating behavior. Curr Opin Psychol 6 (2015), 25–31.
60. Hareli, S., Moran-Amir, O., David, S., Hess, U., Emotions as signals of normative conduct. Cogn Emot 27 (2013), 1395–1404 In this paper, different emotional responses to norm transgressions within a group are compared. The authors conclude that anger is a more effective signal of non-normative behavior than sadness or neutral emotions, because people infer from the anger that the displayed behavior is norm-incompatible.
61. Hareli, S., Kafetsios, K., Hess, U., A cross-cultural study on emotion expression and the learning of social norms. Front Psychol 6:1501 (2015), 1–12.
62. Mason, C.M., Griffin, M.A., Group absenteeism and positive affective tone: a longitudinal study. J Organ Behav 24 (2003), 667–687.
63. Dineen, B.R., Noe, R.A., Shaw, J.D., Duffy, M.K., Wiethoff, C., Level and dispersion of satisfaction in teams: using foci and social context to explain the satisfaction–absenteeism relationship. Acad Manag J 50 (2007), 623–643.
64. Grawitch, M.J., Munz, D.C., Elliott, E.K., Mathis, A., Promoting creativity in temporary problem-solving groups: the effects of positive mood and autonomy in problem definition on idea-generating performance. Group Dyn: Theory Res Pract 7 (2003), 200–213.
65. Grawitch, M.J., Munz, D.C., Kramer, T.J., Effects of member mood states on creative performance in temporary workgroups. Group Dyn: Theory Res Pract 7 (2003), 41–54.
66. Jordan, P.J., Lawrence, S.A., Troth, A.C., The impact of negative mood on team performance. J Manag Organ 12 (2006), 131–145.
67. Forgas, J.P., George, J.M., Affective influences on judgments and behavior in organizations: an information processing perspective. Organ Behav Hum Decis Process 86 (2001), 3–34.
68. Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Happy and mindless, but sad and smart? The impact of affective states on analytic reasoning. Forgas, J.P., (eds.) Emotion and Social Judgment, 1991, Pergamon, Oxford, 55–71.
69. Klep, A., Wisse, B., Van der Flier, H., Interactive affective sharing versus non-interactive affective sharing in work groups: comparative effects of group affect on work group performance and dynamics. Eur J Soc Psychol 41 (2011), 312–323.
70. Visser, V.A., Van Knippenberg, D., Van Kleef, G.A., Wisse, B., How leader displays of happiness and sadness influence follower performance: emotional contagion and creative versus analytical performance. Leadersh Q 24 (2013), 172–188.
71. Kooij-de Bode, H.J., Van Knippenberg, D., Van Ginkel, W.P., Good effects of bad feelings: negative affectivity and group decision-making. Br J Manag 21 (2010), 375–392.
72. Fredrickson, B.L., The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. Am Psychol 56 (2001), 218–226.
73. Bramesfeld, K.D., Gasper, K., Happily putting the pieces together: a test of two explanations for the effects of mood on group-level information processing. Br J Soc Psychol 47 (2008), 285–309.
74. Van Kleef, G.A., Homan, A.C., Beersma, B., Van Knippenberg, D., On angry leaders and agreeable followers: how leaders’ emotions and followers’ personalities shape motivation and team performance. Psychol Sci 21 (2010), 1827–1834.
75. Barsade, S.G., Ward, A.J., Turner, J.D.F., Sonnenfeld, J.A., To your heart's content: a model of affective diversity in top management teams. Adm Sci Q 45 (2000), 802–836.
76. Sanchez-Burks, J., Huy, Q.N., Emotional aperture and strategic change: the accurate recognition of collective emotions. Organ Sci 20 (2009), 22–34.