The double-edged sword of social sharing: Social sharing predicts increased emotion differentiation when rumination is low but decreased emotion differentiation when rumination is high
Sels,Laura Erbaş,Yasemin O'Brien,Sarah T. Verhofstadt,Lesley Clark,Margaret S. Kalokerinos,Elise K.
Sels,Laura
Erbaş,Yasemin
O'Brien,Sarah T.
Verhofstadt,Lesley
Clark,Margaret S.
Kalokerinos,Elise K.
Abstract
Laypeople believe that sharing their emotional experiences with others will improve their understanding of those experiences, but no clear empirical evidence supports this belief. To address this gap, we used data from four daily life studies (N = 659; student and community samples) to explore the association between social sharing and subsequent emotion differentiation, which involves labeling emotions with a high degree of complexity. Contrary to our expectations, we found that social sharing of emotional experiences was linked to greater subsequent emotion differentiation on occasions when people ruminated less than usual about these experiences. In contrast, on occasions when people ruminated more than usual about their experiences, social sharing of these experiences was linked to lower emotion differentiation. These effects held when we controlled for levels of negative emotion. Our findings suggest that putting feelings into words through sharing may only enable emotional precision when that sharing occurs without dwelling or perseverating.
Description
Date
2024
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Research Projects
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Journal Issue
Keywords
emotion, Experience Sampling Method, emotion differentiation, emotional granularity, Social sharing, rumination, daily life
Citation
Sels, L, Erbaş, Y, O'Brien, S T, Verhofstadt, L, Clark, M S & Kalokerinos, E K 2024, 'The double-edged sword of social sharing : Social sharing predicts increased emotion differentiation when rumination is low but decreased emotion differentiation when rumination is high', Psychological Science, vol. 35, no. 10, pp. 1079-1093. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976241266513
License
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess