EMOTIONAL INFLUENCE
Summary of the book
The Interpersonal Dynamics of Emotion:
Towards an Integrative Theory of Emotions as Social Information
Van Kleef (2016)
CH1: Emotion – An interpersonal perspective
If emotions were only functional on the individual level (e.g. inducing alterations in blood distributions
throughout the body during fight/flight responses), then why would they be expressed in our faces, voices,
bodily postures? -> Interpersonal functions.
Debate in the literature whether emotional expressions reflect internal feelings/states or deliberate
communications.
Emotions and their suggested interpersonal functions and signaled messages
Love & compassion Psychological attachment and commitment to
a relationship.
Embarrassment & shame Appease dominant individuals and signal
submissiveness.
Pride Protects the social status of accomplished
individuals.
Anger Motivates punishment of individuals who
violate norms of reciprocity and cooperation.
Its expressions help identify and rectify social
problems.
Guilt Motivates reparation after wrongdoing and
signals interpersonal concern.
Consensus in the literature with regard to the following key elements of emotion:
- Emotions arise as a result of an individual’s conscious or unconscious evaluation or appraisal of
some event as positively or negatively relevant to a particular concern or goal.
- Emotions involve specific patterns of phenomenological experience, physiological reactions, and
expressions.
- Emotions tend to be accompanied by a sense of action readiness, preparing the body and mind for
behavioral responses aimed at dealing with the circumstances that caused the emotion.
States that are related to emotion:
Affect: an umbrella term to denote both discrete emotions and diffuse mood sates and valenced
evaluations of objects or people. Subjective feeling state that ranges from diffuse moods to specific
and acute emotions. Also used to refer to relatively stable individual dispositions (traits). Emotions
and moods are seen as subtypes of affect, differentiated by the degree to which they are directed
towards a specific stimulus.
Mood: more diffuse and undifferentiated feeling states that are not connected to a particular
antecedent event or object. Less direct & intense, more enduring & pervasive.
Emotions according to Van Kleef: valenced responses to relevant events that are accompanied by
specific patterns of experience, physiological changes, expressions, and/or behavioral tendencies,
and that are associated with an identifiable cause or object. Directed, differentiated, short-lived.
CH2: Emotions as social information theory
Emotional expressions provide information that allows observers to estimate the social intentions of the
expresser and to adjust their own behavior accordingly. People deliberately target their emotional
expressions at others.
Continuity in the encoding and decoding of emotional expressions across human cultures point to the
possibility that emotional expressions have evolved because they fulfill critical social-communicative
functions. Absence of social-communicative functions (in clinical cases for instance) have severe
consequences for the quality of social interactions.
CH3: Mechanisms involved in the social effects of emotions
EASI theory integrates previous research and posits that emotional expressions bring about social effects
by triggering affective reactions and/or inferential processes in observers.
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Summary of the book
The Interpersonal Dynamics of Emotion:
Towards an Integrative Theory of Emotions as Social Information
Van Kleef (2016)
CH1: Emotion – An interpersonal perspective
If emotions were only functional on the individual level (e.g. inducing alterations in blood distributions
throughout the body during fight/flight responses), then why would they be expressed in our faces, voices,
bodily postures? -> Interpersonal functions.
Debate in the literature whether emotional expressions reflect internal feelings/states or deliberate
communications.
Emotions and their suggested interpersonal functions and signaled messages
Love & compassion Psychological attachment and commitment to
a relationship.
Embarrassment & shame Appease dominant individuals and signal
submissiveness.
Pride Protects the social status of accomplished
individuals.
Anger Motivates punishment of individuals who
violate norms of reciprocity and cooperation.
Its expressions help identify and rectify social
problems.
Guilt Motivates reparation after wrongdoing and
signals interpersonal concern.
Consensus in the literature with regard to the following key elements of emotion:
- Emotions arise as a result of an individual’s conscious or unconscious evaluation or appraisal of
some event as positively or negatively relevant to a particular concern or goal.
- Emotions involve specific patterns of phenomenological experience, physiological reactions, and
expressions.
- Emotions tend to be accompanied by a sense of action readiness, preparing the body and mind for
behavioral responses aimed at dealing with the circumstances that caused the emotion.
States that are related to emotion:
Affect: an umbrella term to denote both discrete emotions and diffuse mood sates and valenced
evaluations of objects or people. Subjective feeling state that ranges from diffuse moods to specific
and acute emotions. Also used to refer to relatively stable individual dispositions (traits). Emotions
and moods are seen as subtypes of affect, differentiated by the degree to which they are directed
towards a specific stimulus.
Mood: more diffuse and undifferentiated feeling states that are not connected to a particular
antecedent event or object. Less direct & intense, more enduring & pervasive.
Emotions according to Van Kleef: valenced responses to relevant events that are accompanied by
specific patterns of experience, physiological changes, expressions, and/or behavioral tendencies,
and that are associated with an identifiable cause or object. Directed, differentiated, short-lived.
CH2: Emotions as social information theory
Emotional expressions provide information that allows observers to estimate the social intentions of the
expresser and to adjust their own behavior accordingly. People deliberately target their emotional
expressions at others.
Continuity in the encoding and decoding of emotional expressions across human cultures point to the
possibility that emotional expressions have evolved because they fulfill critical social-communicative
functions. Absence of social-communicative functions (in clinical cases for instance) have severe
consequences for the quality of social interactions.
CH3: Mechanisms involved in the social effects of emotions
EASI theory integrates previous research and posits that emotional expressions bring about social effects
by triggering affective reactions and/or inferential processes in observers.
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