Social Comparison, Affiliation, and Emotional Contagion under Threat

Abstract

In this chapter we will be concerned primarily with the extent to which social comparison processes influence a person’s face-to-face affiliative behaviors and emotional reactions when faced with a novel, threatening situation. To provide some theoretical and historical background to these issues, we will begin by selectively reviewing some of the classic work relevant to affiliation choices made in the face of acute threat (see Cottrell & Epley, 1977; Wheeler, 1974, for more extensive reviews). In doing so, we will focus on several of the central concepts presented by Schachter (1959) in his seminal book that extended social comparison theory to the domain of affiliation and emotion. Of particular interest will be what we believe were erroneous conclusions regarding the part that desires for emotional comparison and cognitive clarity play in affiliation preferences under threat. Drawing heavily on our own work, we then will consider in some detail recent studies that have gone beyond traditional fear and affiliate- choice paradigms to examine the extent to which social comparison principles account for how people actually affiliate with each other in acute, threat situations. Finally, we will present a conceptual model of emotional contagion that considers, as an integral part, Schachter (1959) notion that social comparison processes also should influence the likelihood that people will “catch” the emotions of others.