Cultural Shaping And Social Construction Of Emotion: A Perspective On The Social Sharing Of Emotion

The social sharing of emotion is the process of emotional communication and interpersonal transmission as the individual undergoing some emotional stress. In this process, the individual shares his (or her) own feelings by the specific communication symbol system (including facial expressions, posture, speech, etc.) in the interpersonal context, and at the same time, he (or she) may also obtain the emotional support and interpersonal benefits. Thus, the phenomenon of social sharing of emotion is not only the direct showing of the individual'day-to-day emotional life, but also an important opportunity to construct the socially shared emotion on the symbol level. Therefore, based on this phenomina, this dissertation analyzed the cultural shaping and social construction of emotion.Empirical studies include three parts: The first part probed the features of emotion sharing, public view and gender stereotypes of this phenomenon; The second part probed the style of social sharing of emotion and relation to attachment style, emotional creativity, alexithymia, and loneliness; The last part probed the effectiveness of supporting sharing on regulating induced negative emotions and the effects on emotional convergence when continuously engaging in social sharing of emotion. The main findings were as follows:1. The occurrence of sharing of emotion was a universal phenomenon and influenced on by emotional intensity. People usually engaged in sharing at the same day as the incident occurred. Good friends, parents and same-sex roommates were the main partners of college students.2. The public view of sharing of emotion included four aspects: function, risk, nature and response. The college students thought there were three functions for sharing, including emotional improvement, cognitive coping, relationship harmony; and two risks on negative effect of transmission and receiving. The reaction and response of the partners could promote or block the process of sharing, as well as the nature of the events and sharing restrictions all influenced sharing. 3. Both women and men thought women were more than men in likeness and frequencies of engaging sharing, and numbers of partners, and duration and reoccurrence. However, people were more prefer to stereotype-consistent men and stereotype-inconsistent women than the contrast in sharing story.4. The scale of style of social sharing of emotion included two parts: one measuring the individual as a sharer, the other measuring the individual as a partner; and six factors: security, effectiveness, and initiative as sharing their emotions, and concern, response, and trust as the other sharing. This scale complied with the requirements of measurement indicators.5. There was gender difference in style of sharing. Women'scores of these three factors: security, initiative and trust were significantly higher than men'. The avoidance dimension and effective-authentic factor forecasted this style, and the sharer scale forecasted the alexithymia and the partner scale forecasted the loneliness significantly.6. The performance of double-tasks prospective memory was impaired by induced negative emotion; the score of event-based prospective memory of sharing group was higher than the rumination group significantly in highest cognitive load context; sharing emotion had more effects on the negative regulation than rumination.7. The score of emotional similarity of interaction partner was higher than the random group's significantly. The continuous emotion interaction between individuals promoted the emotional convergence and the satisfaction of their relationship.Mainly came to the following conclusions:1. Although the people seem to be forced to engage in the social sharing of emotion, which, as the form of social presence, were also influenced by public view, gender stereotypes, and other cultural factors. This shows that people are subject to the constraints of social and cultural factors when expressing their emotions, or treating others'expression. Based on these standards, they would limit or encourage themselves and the other, and evaluate the intention and appropriation of expressions.2. The mental health professionals should pay attention not only to the individual's feeling of inside, but also to the relationship context and the co-construction of emotional experience.3. The emotional social comparison is the dynamics of sharing emotion and the interpersonal emotion regulation is mechanism of this phenomena. There was more assimilation effect through sharing and comparison. In a sense, the sharing of emotion promotes people to constructing the"we"feelings, and these feelings could link people together and maintain, strengthen their relationships.The social sharing of emotion leads to individual reference his (or her) emotional response based on the symbol communicating level, and refine the emotional meaning under the framework of social comparison. Based on this, the desertion discussed the concepts of emotional social comparison, socially shared emotion, and interpersonal emotion regulation. These may help people understand the cultural shaping and social construction of emotion, and would have an important theoretical contribution to emotion psychology. In addition, this study took the view of the double identities of interaction (sharer and partner) concerning the style of sharing of emotions, it would change the internal entity perspectives on emotional health, which assumed expression or self-disclosure was the way of refresh. And this desertion suggested should promote the children'emotional capacity and emotional health on self and relationship perspectives, these would have an important value for the realization of emotional education goals of our country.