ABSTRACT

Researchers and lay people alike have tended to focus on social benefits of expressing positive emotion and, as a result, tend to overlook potential social costs. In this paper, we consider limits to the idea that expressing positive emotion is universally beneficial and review literature demonstrating that, in some contexts, expressing positive emotion can have social costs. Building on our own and others’ work in this space, we outline three sociocontextual factors that influence the social success of positive emotion expression: To avoid potential costs, we suggest that positive emotion should generally be expressed in the right situation, by (and to) the right person, and in the right way. Where positive emotion expression may incur social costs, we propose people can effectively down-regulate positive emotion through use of expressive suppression, and review literature demonstrating that there can be social benefits to down-regulating positive emotion. This review advances theorising on the importance of considering context when seeking to understand socially successful emotion expression and regulation.

摘要

研究人员和外行人士都倾向于将精力集中在表达积极情绪上，因此往往忽略了潜在的社会成本。在本文中，我们认为表达积极情绪普遍受益的观点受到限制，并回顾了一些文献，表明在某些情况下表达积极情绪可能会产生社会成本。基于我们自己和他人在此空间中的工作，我们概述了影响积极情绪表达的社会成功的三个社会语境因素：为了避免潜在的成本，我们建议积极情绪通常应在正确的情况下通过（和）合适的人，并且以正确的方式。在积极的情感表达可能会导致社会成本的地方，我们建议人们可以通过使用表达抑制来有效地下调积极情绪，并复习文献，证明下调积极情绪可能具有社会效益。这篇综述提出了在寻求理解社交上成功的情感表达和调节时考虑情境重要性的理论。