Interpersonal Affect Research Articles

Rewiring the organizational network: Corporate offsites and network tie formation

AbstractResearch SummarySocial networks are integral to collaborative work, but research on network change has shed little light on the mechanisms firms use to stimulate collaborative network ties among their employees. In this study, we examine the effects of corporate offsites on the evolution of social networks within an organization. We find that offsites lead to rewiring of intraorganizational networks, but with a surprising asymmetry: they stimulate everyone to initiate more collaboration ties, but only those who attend the offsite receive more ties. These results are consistent with a conceptualization of offsites as direct interventions that focus on social interactions for those who attend, but also as indirect interventions that signal the value of collaboration to everyone, even those who do not attend.Managerial SummaryCorporate offsites are events that convene people from across a firm to interact outside their regular work environment. Despite their popularity, this article offers the first data‐driven analysis of their effectiveness in promoting collaboration among employees. Offsites facilitate employees' awareness of who knows what, build trust, and foster interpersonal affect among employees. This study shows that offsites have a dual effect on the social network of an organization: they prompt everyone in the firm to initiate more collaborative ties following an offsite, but those who actually attend the offsite attract more of those collaborative tie requests. Therefore, offsites can be a useful tool to boost collaboration—with benefits accruing both to the individuals whose networks grow and to the firm in which they work.

How social roles shape interpersonal affect regulation at work

Individuals often attempt to influence the affective states of others in the workplace. Such interpersonal affect regulation (IAR) occurs across social settings that are characterized by distinct roles and relationships between actors and targets. However, it is unclear whether and how IAR processes and outcomes differ across settings as pertinent research has developed in separate organizational literatures with different research traditions that have thus far not been compared or integrated. In addition, despite the social nature of IAR, the types of relationships between the actor engaging in IAR and the target of IAR have rarely been considered in prior research. Here, we present an integrative framework to establish why and how social roles at work shape motivation, strategies, and affective outcomes of IAR across three core actor-target configurations in organizations. Specifically, we theorize how internal-vertical, internal-horizontal, and external social role configurations influence IAR. We provide integrative insights into the nature and implications of IAR in organizations and generate a comprehensive agenda for future research on IAR.

Impact of Supervisor's Interactional Justice and Interpersonal Affect on Subordinates' Performance Rating: A Signalling Perspective

AbstractThe complexity of performance evaluation and the insufficiency of objective measures to make informed performance decisions is an ongoing challenge. We suggest that extracting supportive information from social cues during supervisor–subordinate interactions can aid in navigating these complexities. The current study assesses how signals transmitted during supervisor–subordinate interactions play a crucial role in providing additional information for evaluations. We propose the ‘signalling chain’ concept based on signalling theory, which elaborates on the reciprocal exchange of signals between the sender and receiver, ultimately mitigating information asymmetry for both parties. We collected data from 253 matched supervisor–subordinate dyads to study the proposed relationships and analysed the data using structural equation modelling techniques. The findings show that the supervisor's signals of liking and relational fairness from interpersonal affect and interactional justice positively influence the subordinate's organizational commitment. The findings also suggest that subordinates reciprocate their obligation to the supervisor by being committed to the organization that counter‐signals involvement and identification to supervisors and aid in performance evaluation. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our study and offer future research directions.

Is Affective Polarization Driven by Identity, Loyalty, or Substance?

AbstractPartisan Americans like members of their own party more than members of the opposing party. Scholars often interpret this as evidence that party identity or loyalty influence interpersonal affect. First, we reassess previous studies and demonstrate that prior results are also consistent with what we would predict if people cared only about policy agreement. Next, we demonstrate the difficulty of manipulating perceptions of party identity without also manipulating beliefs about policy agreement and vice versa. Finally, we show that partisans care much more about policy agreement than they do about party loyalty when the two come into conflict. Our analyses suggest that partisan Americans care about policy agreement; we have little convincing evidence that they care about partisan identity or loyalty per se, and scholars will have to find new research designs if they want to convincingly estimate the effects of identity or loyalty independent of policy substance.

Psychometric Properties of Turkish Version of the Interpersonal Affect Improvement Strategies Questionnaire (IAISQ)

The aim of this study was to adapt the Interpersonal Affect Improvement Strategies Questionnaire (IAISQ) into Turkish population, as well as to examine its validity and reliability estimates. The sample consisted of 610 university students. The original factor structure of the scale was confirmed in Turkish sample by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The internal reliability coefficient was found as .75 for overall scale (.74 for Positive Engagement subscale, .63 for Acceptance subscale). Significant correlation coefficients were found between the subscales of IAISQ and Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (IERQ), confirming a good criterion related validity. Overall results suggest that Turkish form of IAISQ is a valid and reliable measure to use for research purposes in order to investigate the Turkish students’ interpersonal affect improvement strategies.

Psychometric Properties of Turkish Version of the Interpersonal Affect Improvement Strategies Questionnaire (IAISQ)

The aim of this study was to adapt the Interpersonal Affect Improvement Strategies Questionnaire (IAISQ) into Turkish population, as well as to examine its validity and reliability estimates. The sample consisted of 610 university students. The original factor structure of the scale was confirmed in Turkish sample by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The internal reliability coefficient was found as .75 for overall scale (.74 for Positive Engagement subscale, .63 for Acceptance subscale). Significant correlation coefficients were found between the subscales of IAISQ and Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (IERQ), confirming a good criterion related validity. Overall results suggest that Turkish form of IAISQ is a valid and reliable measure to use for research purposes in order to investigate the Turkish students’ interpersonal affect improvement strategies.

Toward An Affect Based View of Principal–Agent Dynamics

Following its 40th anniversary and more than three decades after its introduction to the strategic management literature, agency theory remains the predominant theory of corporate governance. In this paper, we examine affect, an underexplored dimension in principal-agent relationships. Using the CEO-board of directors relationship as a context, we develop a theoretical lens that explains how interpersonal affect underlying relationships between CEOs and directors of boards shapes behavior in ways that deviate from traditional agency theory predictions. We discuss how the incorporation of an affective perspective advances principal-agent research by revising agency theory‘s assumptions concerning human nature and behavior and suggesting new research directions. By acknowledging a central role of affect, we connect existing behavioral approaches to organizational agency and advance our understanding of socioemotional foundations of principal-agent tensions, problems, and agency costs.

Do Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures? The Effect of Crises on Performance Appraisals

ABSTRACT Performance appraisals can have a large impact on organizations and individuals during crises, but they may also be biased by shortcomings in raters’ cognitive processes. Despite the importance of performance appraisals during such periods, only scant research has examined how crises affect cognitive processes in performance ratings. We address this by extending the reflective-impulsive model to develop and test a theoretical model that shows how people assess performance during a crisis. Because crises deplete people’s cognitive resources, we hypothesize that raters will form less accurate impressions of ratees’ task abilities during crises and reduce the weight they assign to ratees’ task abilities in performance ratings. We also hypothesize that raters will positively weight ratees’ team satisfaction more heavily in performance ratings during a crisis, because raters tend to use interpersonal affect as a heuristic during a crisis and feel more positive interpersonal affect toward members who are higher on team satisfaction. Data on members of in-person and virtual teams from before and during the COVID-19 crisis largely support our hypotheses. Our findings respond to calls in the performance appraisal literature to investigate environmental factors; we do so by examining the effect of a critically important environmental factor: a crisis.

Interpersonal affect in groupwork: A comparative case study of two small groups with contrasting group dynamics outcomes

Teamwork capabilities are essential for 21st century life, with groupwork emerging as a fruitful context to develop these skills. Case studies that explore interpersonal affect dynamics in authentic higher education groupwork settings can highlight collaborative skills development needs. This comparative case-study traced the sociodynamic evolution of two groups of first-year university students to investigate the high collaborative variance outcomes of the two groups, which reported starkly contrasting group dynamics (negative and dysfunctional or positive and collaborative). Mixed-methods (video-recorded observations of five groupwork labs over one semester, and group interviews) provided interpersonal affect data as real-time visible behaviours, and the felt experiences and perceptions of participants. The study traced interpersonal affect dynamics in the natural fluctuation of not just task-focused (on-task), but also explicitly relational (off-task) interactions, which revealed their function in both task participation and group dynamics. Findings illustrate visible interpersonal affect behaviours that manifested and evolved over time as interactive patterns, and group dynamics outcomes. Fine-grained analysis of interactions unveiled interpersonal affect as a collective, evolving process, and the mechanism through which one group started and stayed highly positive and collaborative over the semester. The other group showed a tendency towards splitting to undertake tasks early, leading to low group-level interpersonal attentiveness, and over time, subgroups emerged through interactions both off-task and on-task. The study made visible the pervasive nature of interpersonal affect as enacted through seemingly inconsequential everyday behaviours that supported the relational and task-based needs of groupwork, and those behaviours which impeded collaboration.

The link between cognitive and affective empathy and interpersonal emotion regulation direction and strategies.

Interpersonal emotion regulation (ER) refers to the different processes aimed at changing the emotional states of others. Some authors have speculated about the pivotal role of empathy for interpersonal ER to happen. However, the very limited empirical evidence suggests that only cognitive empathy as opposed to affective empathy may be a necessary antecedent. As previous research only considered interpersonal affect improvement and showed mixed evidence for the regulation strategies, we aimed to address this gap in the current research. To that aim, 374 adults (M = 30.3 years, 249 female) reported their tendency to engage in cognitive (perspective-taking) and affective empathy (empathic concern and personal distress) as well as their tendency to improve and worsen others' mood, and to use different regulation strategies (situation modification, attention deployment, cognitive change, and modulation of the emotional response) to change others' feelings. Results of the regression analyses showed that while affect improvement was not significantly predicted by any of the empathy variables, affect worsening was positively predicted by personal distress. Concerning the regulation strategies, while cognitive change and situation modification were positively predicted by personal distress, attention deployment was positively predicted by perspective-taking. Overall, the obtained results highlight the need to further investigate the link between empathy and ER and to carefully consider the methods selected for that purpose.

Moral decision making in adolescents: The effects of peer attachment, interpersonal affect, and gender.

Sacrificial moral dilemmas are a useful tool for understanding how individuals reconcile concerns for aggregate welfare with the emotional aversion to deliberately, personally harming others. Yet little is known about how adolescents respond to such dilemmas, even though adolescence is a crucial period for moral development. The present study sought to investigate how adolescents respond to such dilemmas, with a focus on gender differences, age differences, and the role of two individual differences factors: peer attachment and dampened interpersonal affect. For this cross-sectional study, 103 adolescents (mean age = 14.5, SD = 0.81, range = 12-16; 54% girls; 41% Black, 24% White, 15% multiracial, 9% Hispanic/Latin, 3% Other, 2% Asian/Pacific Islander, 1% Native American, 5% no response) were recruited from the local community (Brooklyn, NY, USA). Adolescents responded to a series of sacrificial moral dilemmas. Then, participants and their caregivers completed questionnaires to assess adolescents' callous-unemotional traits (e.g., lack of empathy) and the quality of their peer relationships. On average, participants endorsed committing personal harm for the greater good in 53% of their responses. Girls endorsed personal utilitarian sacrifice more than boys. Peer attachment, but not dampened interpersonal affect, was associated with increased endorsement of personal utilitarian sacrifice. Age and responses to dilemmas were not associated. Our results suggest that peer relationships are an important part of adolescent moral decision-making, for girls in particular. Our results also indicate that adolescents' utilitarian responses to conventional sacrificial moral dilemmas do not reflect a decreased aversion to interpersonal harm.

Coronashaming: interpersonal affect worsening in contexts of COVID-19 rule violations

ABSTRACT Experiencing empathy for others has been linked to worsening others’ feelings against their wishes. These paternalistic empathic goals have been theorised to happen at the dyad level when an agent aims to worsen a target’s emotional state. They may also operate at a broader level when agents are third-party observers of COVID-19 lockdown rule violations. In these instances, agents can impact transgressors’ affect engaging in Coronashaming. In three studies, we measured British people’s (N total = 767) vulnerability (Study 1), age (Studies 2 and 3), and empathy towards COVID-19 victims and presented them with different scenarios depicting a breach of lockdown rules to assess the emotions participants wanted to inflict in transgressor, the strategies used, and whether they wanted stricter rules to be enforced. Results confirmed shame as the emotion preferred to induce in violators, with this preference linked to higher use of engagement strategies (i.e. to make transgressors understand what they did wrong). Finally, empathy was positively linked to higher affect worsening and wanting stricter rules to be enforced. This suggests that empathy towards potential victims of COVID-19 rules violations can motivate people to worsen the feelings of transgressors.

The Nature of Affective Polarization: Disentangling Policy Disagreement from Partisan Identity

AbstractDemocrats and Republicans clearly dislike one another. Yet, scholars debate whether policy disagreement or partisan identity, per se, drives interparty animus. Past studies suggest the relationship between partisanship and interpersonal affect is spurious, driven by inferred policy preferences. We argue, instead, that policy preferences signal partisan identity when the parties' stances on an issue are well‐known. Using a nationally representative survey and four preregistered experiments, we disentangle the effects of policy disagreement and partisan identity on interpersonal affect. Our findings suggest that partisan identity is the principal mechanism of affective polarization, and that policy preferences factor into affective polarization largely by signaling partisan identity. However, our results also affirm that policy disagreement in itself drives interpersonal affect. This provides evidence that partisanship reflects an emotional attachment to a political party, not merely a running tally of rational considerations.

Social psychological accounts of peer emotion transfer in EFL classrooms: A doubly latent multilevel analysis

Based on theories of emotion contagion and social appraisal in interpersonal affect transfer and the control-value theory of achievement emotions, the present study examined associations between students’ perceptions of peer emotions and their own self-perceived emotions in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms. Data were collected from 103 seventh to ninth grade classrooms ( n = 3,643) using self-report questionnaires. Doubly latent multilevel structural equation modeling showed that perceived peer enjoyment, anxiety and boredom, and students’ corresponding emotions for language learning, were positively related and that the effects of perceived peer enjoyment, anxiety and boredom on corresponding student emotions were mediated by control and value appraisals at the individual level. At the class level, however, the mediation effects were only significant for control appraisal as a mediator of effects on anxiety and value appraisal as a mediator of effects on boredom. Effects were robust across grade level, gender and previous language achievement. The discussion centers on the practical implications of peer emotion interactions for promoting foreign language development in classroom instruction.

Intrapersonal and interpersonal vocal affect dynamics during psychotherapy.

The present study implements an automatic method of assessing arousal in vocal data as well as dynamic system models to explore intrapersonal and interpersonal affect dynamics within psychotherapy and to determine whether these dynamics are associated with treatment outcomes. The data of 21,133 mean vocal arousal observations were extracted from 279 therapy sessions in a sample of 30 clients treated by 24 therapists. Before and after each session, clients self-reported their well-being level, using the Outcome Rating Scale. Both clients' and therapists' vocal arousal showed intrapersonal dampening. Specifically, although both therapists and clients departed from their baseline, their vocal arousal levels were "pulled" back to these baselines. In addition, both clients and therapists exhibited interpersonal dampening. Specifically, both the clients' and the therapists' levels of arousal were "pulled" toward the other party's arousal level, and clients were "pulled" by their therapists' vocal arousal toward their own baseline. These dynamics exhibited a linear change over the course of treatment: whereas interpersonal dampening decreased over time, there was an increase in intrapersonal dampening over time. In addition, higher levels of interpersonal dampening were associated with better session outcomes. These findings demonstrate the advantages of using automatic vocal measures to capture nuanced intrapersonal and interpersonal affect dynamics in psychotherapy and demonstrate how these dynamics are associated with treatment gains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Observational Research in Face-to-Face Small Groupwork: Capturing Affect as Socio-Dynamic Interpersonal Phenomena

Interpersonal affect in face-to-face small groupwork, though pervasive in university and work environments, is rarely examined as the fine-grained sequential interactions in which it manifests. This review synthesized 21 recent studies in tertiary collaborative learning and organizational research that have used observation methods to investigate affect in face-to-face small groupwork. The analysis focused on examining the extent to which observational studies captured affect as social (interactive) and dynamic (temporally unfolding). Findings showed that observational methods elicit information about affect dynamics in groupwork that is unique and complementary to other methods. Key affect constructs, behavioral operationalizations, and analytical tools used to capture affect are discussed.

How Do You Feel About Interactions with Coworkers? The Role of Positive Relational Affect

This paper examines the role of affect in dyadic interactions between coworkers. Because task performance is becoming more team-driven, organizations are taking an increasing interest in the relationships among socially embedded team members. Emerging literature indicates that effect in relationships among coworkers has a critical role in organizational life; interpersonal affect is thus of central importance in the workplace. Drawing from the affect theory of social exchange and conservation of resources theory, we argue that when individuals experience positive affect in their interaction with a partner, they are more likely to request help from that partner. Additionally, experiencing positive affect during interaction with dyadic partners increases individuals’ resources and facilitates work engagement. We used experience sampling strategy to examine the workplace interactions and work engagement of 173 individuals (634 dyadic relations) for a period of 5 days, and analyzed the cross-classified multilevel model using round-robin design. The results supported the study’s hypotheses. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

Computer Vision Analysis of Reduced Interpersonal Affect Coordination in Youth With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Atypical social-emotional reciprocity is a core feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but can be difficult to operationalize. One measurable manifestation of reciprocity may be interpersonal coordination, the tendency to align the form and timing of one's behaviors (including facial affect) with others. Interpersonal affect coordination facilitates sharing and understanding of emotional cues, and there is evidence that it is reduced in ASD. However, most research has not measured this process in true social contexts, due in part to a lack of tools for measuring dynamic facial expressions over the course of an interaction. Automated facial analysis via computer vision provides an efficient, granular, objective method for measuring naturally occurring facial affect and coordination. Youth with ASD and matched typically developing youth participated in cooperative conversations with their mothers and unfamiliar adults. Time-synchronized videos were analyzed with an open-source computer vision toolkit for automated facial analysis, for the presence and intensity of facial movements associated with positive affect. Both youth and adult conversation partners exhibited less positive affect during conversations when the youth partner had ASD. Youth with ASD also engaged in less affect coordination over the course of conversations. When considered dimensionally across youth with and without ASD, affect coordination significantly predicted scores on rating scales of autism-related social atypicality, adaptive social skills, and empathy. Findings suggest that affect coordination is an important interpersonal process with implications for broader social-emotional functioning. This preliminary study introduces a promising novel method for quantifying moment-to-moment facial expression and emotional reciprocity during natural interactions. LAY SUMMARY: This study introduces a novel, automated method for measuring social-emotional reciprocity during natural conversations, which may improve assessment of this core autism diagnostic behavior. We used computerized methods to measure facial affect and the degree of affect coordination between conversation partners. Youth with autism displayed reduced affect coordination, and reduced affect coordination predicted lower scores on measures of broader social-emotional skills.

You Name It: Interpersonal Affect Labeling Diminishes Distress in Romantic Couples

Although it is increasingly acknowledged that social interactions may provide support at times of adversity, whether or how such interactions can buffer distress remains unclear. The objective of the present study was to examine whether naming the emotions of our partner in aversive situations can effectively reduce distress and whether the regulator’s empathy contributes to its effectiveness. We utilized a novel performance-based interpersonal affect labeling (IAL) paradigm. Seventy-four romantic couples were randomly divided into targets and regulators. The targets watched aversive pictures with low and high intensity and rated their level of distress after: (1) simply viewing the picture (control trials) (2) choosing a label that describes their emotional reaction (self-labeling trials), (3) viewing a label chosen for them by the regulator, their partner (IAL trials). It was found that IAL significantly reduced distress compared to self-labeling. Moreover, the effectiveness of IAL increased as a function of the regulator’s level of empathy. The results highlight the importance of empathy in social support and suggest that as simple an action as naming our partner’s emotions may be effective in reducing their distress. Moreover, it emphasizes the potential contribution of nonprofessional help in emotion regulation.

Prenatal and Perinatal EMDR Therapy: Early Family Intervention

This article discusses the integration of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy with a family therapy treatment, which was designed for treating mothers and their babies from conception through the first year of life. The Calming Womb Family Therapy Model (CWFTM) is a multidisciplinary, Integrative, early intervention approach. Its foundations originate from Murray Bowen's family model of understanding the individual in the context of their families as emotional interactive systems; Selma Fraiberg's psychodynamic work and psychoeducational interventions with mothers and infants to resolve maternal trauma and transference reactions to their babies followed by educational guidance in infant development through the first year of their lives; and EMDR therapy. EMDR therapy can improve internal resources for expectant mothers; monitor their levels of psychological distress; and enable them to access and process traumatic memories, other adverse life experiences, recent stressors, and pre-perinatal concerns and bring them to adaptive resolution. EMDR therapy can also help pregnant mothers develop imaginal templates of future events that incorporate in utero developmental prenatal education and deepen their bonds with their babies. The pre-perinatal psychotherapist's knowledge of infant development and capacity for interpersonal warmth, affect tolerance, somatic resourcing, reflective stance, and relational attunement can provide a fertile ground for the expectant mother and womb baby relationship and enriching life together. The ultimate goal is to conceive and rear healthy children.