How we assign social status to people based on emotional responses.

[Aiken_Drum]

A very interesting abstract that talks briefly about how we categorize people in different social stratum, based on their emotional responses.
It mentions that a high status person is more likely to feel anger in a negative situation, that to feel sadness or guiltiness.
Keep reading below and leave your comments!

Sentimental Stereotypes: Emotional Expectations for High-and Low-Status Group Members

Larissa Z. Tiedens
Stanford University, ltiedens@leland.stanford.edu

Phoebe C. Ellsworth

University of Michigan

Batja Mesquita

Wake Forest University

Three vignette studies examined stereotypes of the emotions associated with high-and low-status group members. In Study 1a, participants believed that in negative situations, high-status people feel more angry than sad or guilty and that low-status people feel more sad and guilty than angry. Study 1b showed that in response to positive outcomes, high-status people are expected to feel more pride and low-status people are expected to feel more appreciation. Study 2 showed that people also infer status from emotions: Angry and proud people are thought of as high status, whereas sad, guilty, and appreciative people are considered low status. The authors argue that these emotion stereotypes are due to differences in the inferred abilities of people in high and low positions. These perceptions lead to expectations about agency appraisals and emotions related to agency appraisals. In Study 3, the authors found support for this process by manipulating perceptions of skill and finding the same differences in emotion expectations.


Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 5, 560-575 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167200267004


This is the link to the original:

http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/26/5/560

 

[Ease]

Great stuff.

Say a man drives his car along a narrow winding road at night. He is driving too fast, and crashes.

Think of how two different men would react, an alpha and a beta. Who's more likely to get angry and punch a hole in the side of his wrecked car, and who would start feeling terrible and immediately regret driving fast and being reckless.

Im sure even the alpha will admit he is an idiot for driving too fast, but the reaction to the situation is interesting.

Lets all be more angry.

 

[Young Juan]

Interesting post. I can attest to this.

Since getting out of AFC mode, I notice how I respond to losing a game of basketball very differently than I did before. When I lost a game as an AFC, I'd either not get too mad at all or get down because I THOUGHT that I had a decent chance at winning or helping my team win.

Nowadays, when I lose a game, I get frustrated, angered, disappointed, etc. because I KNOW I should've won that game! I know that I missed multiple shots that I can 100% make, committed turnovers by playing sloppy and uninspired, and/or deferred to a teammate that I KNOW shouldn't be shooting the ball rather than taking the shot myself.

I think the difference lies in failing at something you know for a fact you can succeed at vs. failing at something you subconsciously believe you had no business doing in the first place.

In the former case, I think it's more frustration that boils into anger. In the latter, I think it's guilt turning into depression for doing something you never really believed you could do in the first place, and then having those self-depreciating thoughts confirmed.

Using the basketball example, that flip side works as well. When AFC me won a game, I displaced most of the credit to my teammates and felt lucky and appreciative that WE won and we got another chance to try to win again. When I win games now, I feel proud of MY performance and then my team. The aim of the next game becomes to go in on the next team and eat em alive. I know that even if I have a bad shooting night, I got the steals, blocks, and rebounds that my team needed to win and/or shut down the guy I was guarding and essentially made it game of 5 on 4. Either way, I made my mark on the game and contributed in a way no replacement player could.