THE ROLE OF EMOTIONS IN THE LEARNING OF STANDARDS

Abstract

Persons are watching a game with rules and standards of performance with which they are not familiar. A good source of information for understanding these rules and standards of performance can be the emotional response of the rest of the spectators around, who are also watching the game. Indeed, the emotions of the audience watching a certain event can be a source of socio-behavioral information for the observer. This argument is consistent with studies showing that an observer who watches the emotions expressed by another person can derive meaningful information about the person expressing the emotion and about the circumstances in which the emotion was expressed. Still, different emotions vary as far as the amount and complexity of the information they contain, in other words, their degree of informativeness. One consequence of this difference is the extent and manner in which the observer uses the context of the emotional expression in order to understand the situation. The present study examines this argument by focusing on the process of deriving information about standards based on the emotional response of the audience at a given event. In this context, I examined the difference between the emotions of awe and of happiness that differ, among others, by the level of their informativeness. Distinguishing between emotions based on their level of informativeness has not yet been studied, nor has the possibility of learning about standards by observing emotions. In a series of experiments conducted for the purpose of this study, I examined the ability to learn about the standard by observing emotions of happiness, awe, and neutrality as a function of the identity of the person expressing the emotion. This work is based on the assumption that the information contained in the emotion can serve as an indication of the extent to which a particular iv behavior meets a given standard. Nevertheless, because an emotion of awe is a response to compliance with a standard or to deviation from it, an observer of this emotion is not required to consider the context in order to understand the meaning of the message. This is not the case with respect to happiness and neutrality; expressions that in order to understand the message carried by them to how the observed situation stands in relation to the standards requires reference to the identity of the spectator, attesting to his motives. Therefore, it is possible to consider awe as an emotion that has a higher degree of informativeness than do happiness and neutrality. Nevertheless, decoding emotions with a high degree of informativeness, such as awe, may also require reference to context. The question whether context affects the decoding of emotion depends, among others, on the type of judgment required. For example, when the required judgment refers not only to understanding the message inherent in the emotion but also to its validity, the context in which the emotion is expressed plays an important role, irrespective of the level of informativeness of the emotion. The present study examined these ideas in a series of three experiments in which the participant was exposed to performance in an unfamiliar sport and to the emotional response of a spectator to this performance. The spectator expressed an emotion of awe, neutrality, or happiness in response to behavior. The first experiment was based on vignettes. Together with information about the emotion being expressed, as a contextual factor, the identity of the spectator was also manipulated. Possible identities were (a) a fan of the contestant, (b) a fan of the opponent, or (c) a fan whose sympathy is not known. The second experiment repeated the first one using a set of pictures. The purpose of these two experiments was to show that in order to judge the performance of the player in the game based on the emotion expressed by a fan, happiness and neutrality require reference to context information in the form of the identity of the v fan, but not so in the case of awe. The objective of the third experiment was to show that when the required judgment concerns the validity of the information contained in the emotion, awe, similarly to happiness and neutrality, requires reference to the identity of the fan. In this context, clues about the validity of the information contained in the emotion were manipulated by showing the reactions of two fans simultaneously (one fan of the contestant, the other of the opponent), under conditions in which the emotions match or do not match from the point of view of the message inherent in them. Largely, the results of the experiments confirmed the research hypotheses. Specifically, the first two experiments have shown that judgments concerning the quality of the player's performance, when the fans expressed awe, were independent of the identity of the fans, so that in this case the quality of the perceived performance was high. Regarding expressions of happiness and neutrality, the identity of the fan played a significant role in understanding the quality of the performance. Among others, whereas happiness on the part of a fan of the player led to the understanding that the quality of the observed performance was high, happiness on the part of a fan of the opponent was perceived as indicating a performance of a lesser quality. The third experiment showed that when there is contextual information that may have implications for the validity of the data contained in the emotion, the observer no longer ignores the identity of the fan even when the latter expresses awe but weighs it when decoding the emotion. For example, when both spectators expressed awe, it indicated that the perception of the performance of the contestant was exceptional, and better than in the case in which only the fan of the contestant expressed awe but the opponent's fan expressed happiness. This is because an expression of happiness on the part of the opponent's fan indicates a result that matches one's goals, that is, poor performance by the contestant. Therefore, emotional messages with contradictory meanings vi weakened the message contained in the awe expressed by the contestant’s fan. Overall, the present study contributes to the understanding of the social perception of emotions by addressing, for the first time, the role of informativeness contained in emotions in social perception of emotions. The study does so by taking into account the extent and manner of involvement in the process of the context in which the emotion was expressed.