talking about others: emotionality and the dissemination of social information

European Journal of Social Psychology

Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 39, 207–222 (2009)

Published online 10 April 2008 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.523

*E

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Talking about others: Emotionality and the dissemination ofsocial information

Correspondence to: Kim Peters, Washington S-mail: k.o.peters@exeter.ac.uk

opyright # 2008 John Wiley & Son

KIM PETERS1*, YOSHIHISA KASHIMA2 AND ANNA CLARK3

1Department of Psychology, The University of Exeter, Exeter, UK2Department of Psychology, The University of Melbourne, Victoria,Australia3Department of Social Psychology, VU University Amsterdam,Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Abstract

There is evidence that we may be more likely to share stories about other people to the extent that they arouse emotion. If

so, this emotional social talk may have important social consequences, providing the basis for many of our social beliefs

and mobilising people to engage or disengage with the targets of the talk. Across three studies, we tested the situated

communicability of emotional social information by examining if the ability of emotionality to increase communicability

would depend on the emotion that was aroused and the identity of the audience. Study 1 showed that participants were

more willing to share social anecdotes that aroused interest, surprise, disgust and happiness with an unspecified audience.

Study 2 provided a behavioural replication of these findings. Study 3 showed that the communicability of emotional social

talk did vary with audience identity (friend or stranger). Together, these findings suggest that emotional social events

(particularly those that arouse disgust and happiness) are likely to become part of a society’s social beliefs, with important

consequences for the structure of social relationships. Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We spend most of our daily conversations sharing social talk—talk that conveys information about social targets. These

are the stories we tell about the behaviours and traits of real or imagined individuals and groups. It seems that these stories

may be more likely to convey certain kinds of social information than others: Mesoudi, Whiten, and Dunbar (2006) found

that a story about a student’s affair with a married professor was more likely to be retained in communication chains than a

story about a student oversleeping and missing a lecture. This suggests that people may have a greater tendency to share

social talk that is scintillating and scandalous or, more generally, to share social talk that arouses emotion (e.g. Rime,

Mesquita, Philippot, & Boca, 1991).

If we are correct in our assertion that people are particularly likely to share emotional social information in

conversation—in other words that emotional social information is particularly communicable—it means that our

seemingly trivial social talk could have important social consequences. Not only is our social talk likely to form the basis

of many of our social beliefs, but the emotion that it arouses is also likely to lead people to engage or disengage with the

targets of social talk in positive and negative ways. As the nature and extent of these social consequences is likely to

depend on the kind of emotion that is aroused by the social talk and its diffusion through a society, it is worth exploring the

communicability of emotional social talk from a situated perspective, which argues that the information that people choose

to communicate will depend on the social context within which that communication occurs (Clark & Kashima, 2007;

Smith & Semin, 2004). Specifically, we will examine whether certain emotions increase the communicability of social

information with different audiences. In this paper we will outline our expectations in more detail, before testing this

socially situated account of the communicability of emotional social information in three studies.

inger Laboratories, The University of Exeter, Perry Rd, Exeter, EX4 4QG, UK.

s, Ltd.

Received 23 October 2007

Accepted 25 February 2008

208 Kim Peters et al.

The Communicability of Emotional Social Information

Social talk can be said to be everyone’s favourite pastime, occupying around 60 per cent of our daily conversations (e.g.

Dunbar, Duncan, & Marriott, 1997; Marsh & Tversky, 2004), although precise estimates vary with the particular forms of

social talk that are examined (see Foster, 2004). This means that in our daily conversations we are more likely to be

exchanging social information in the form of social anecdotes, gossip, urban legends or biographical narratives, than we

are to be forming plans, making small talk or discussing serious (non-social) matters (Goldsmith & Baxter, 1996). There is

some evidence that the social information that is conveyed in social talk may have one particular characteristic—an ability

to arouse emotion.

It is a well-established finding that emotional personal information is especially communicable. A decade of research

by Rime and his colleagues into the social sharing of emotion (Pennebaker, Zech, & Rime, 2001; Rime et al., 1991; for a

review see Rime, Philippot, Boca, & Mesquita, 1992) has shown that to the extent that everyday personal events arouse

emotions, people will share them in the form of autobiographical narratives. Importantly, there is evidence that the social

sharing of emotion generalises beyond personal information. For instance, Luminet, Bouts, Delie, Manstead and Rime

(2000) have shown that participants were significantly more likely to spontaneously talk about a short nature film with a

friend when the film aroused more intense emotions.

There is also evidence that it may generalise to social information. When Diana, the Princess of Wales, was killed in a

car accident, news of her death aroused strong emotional responses, and was a frequent topic of conversation. It is possible

that it was the intensity of people’s emotional responses to Diana’s death that enhanced the communicability of

information about her. In support of this, Christophe and Rime (1997; see also Curci & Bellelli, 2004) found that to the

extent that participants reported experiencing high levels of emotion when listening to other people’s autobiographical

narratives, they shared these stories in turn. This may have taken the form of social talk. Further, when people were asked

to recall interesting gossip that they had heard recently, the vast majority reported that this gossip aroused their emotions

(Baumeister, Zhang, & Vohs, 2004). Although this may be an artefact of asking people to recall interesting gossip, it

supports the possibility that emotional social talk may be more communicable.

In view of this past research, our first aim is to see if emotionality does enhance the communicability of social

information. We will investigate this for the type of light-hearted social information that is shared in the form of social

anecdotes, a very common kind of social talk. As we will explain below, if emotional social anecdotes are more

communicable it is likely that our favourite pastime is not a waste of time and that it may have important consequences for

the structure of social relationships.

Social Talk and Social Structure

Social talk is, by definition, socially informative. It is actually likely to be one of our most important sources of social

information because the size of human social groups means that we will only ever observe a small fraction of others’

behaviours directly (Dunbar, 1996). This means that social talk is instrumental in allowing us to keep track of the

behaviours of the individuals and groups in our social environment (Enquist & Leimar, 1993; McAndrew & Milenkovic,

2002; Orstrom, Gardner, & Walker, 1994; Wilson, Wilczynski, Wells, & Weiser, 2000), and will form the basis of many of

our social beliefs (perhaps even where we also observe the behaviours first hand; Sommerfeld, Krambeck, Semmann, &

Milinski, 2007).

Social information that is particularly communicable will tend to be shared repeatedly through communication chains,

becoming a part of a society’s beliefs about individuals and groups (e.g. Kashima, 2000; Lyons & Kashima, 2003). For

instance, Schaller, Conway, and Tanchuk (2002) found that the traits that people rated as being more communicable were

more likely to persist in the stereotypes of those groups that were frequently the topic of daily conversations. Likewise,

Schaller and Conway (1999) found that when the communicability of negative social information was enhanced (by telling

participants that discussing negative individual characteristics was a good predictor of later success in life), participant

dyads formed more negative stereotypes.

The shared nature of these social beliefs means that they can have important social consequences. Because emotions

mobilise appropriate responses to personally relevant events (Frijda, 2004; Lazarus, 1991; Oatley, 1992; Roseman, Wiest,

& Swartz, 1994; Tooby & Cosmides, 1990), social beliefs that are emotional should have particularly important

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Emotional social talk 209

consequences. For instance, Peters and Kashima (2007) found that emotional social talk mobilised participants to engage

positively with targets that they admired, to engage aggressively with targets they felt anger towards, to protect themselves

from targets that they feared and to reject targets that they felt disgust towards. Therefore, if emotional social talk is

especially communicable, forming the topic of many of our conversations, it could have an impact on the structure of

social relations and society. However, because the nature and extent of these social consequences is likely to depend on the

kind of emotion that is aroused by the social talk and its diffusion through a society, it is worth examining the

communicability of specific emotions with different audiences.

The Situated Communicability of Emotional Social Information

There is some evidence that specific emotions may differ in communicability, and that this may vary with the identity of

the audience. Although the social sharing of emotion literature has found few differences in people’s tendencies to share

personal events arousing different emotions (for a review see Finkenauer & Rime, 1998; Rime, Finkenauer, Luminet,

Zech, & Philippot, 1998), Heath, Bell, and Sternberg (2001) found that urban legends (some of which contained social

information) were more communicable and more popular on the internet to the extent that they aroused disgust (in

particular) but also interest, surprise, joy and contempt. Therefore, our second aim in this research is to see if the emotions

of disgust, interest, surprise, joy and contempt are particularly effective in enhancing the communicability of social

information. If so, information that arouses these emotions may be particularly likely to characterise our social beliefs.

There is some evidence that emotions may only be more communicable with an intimate audience. For instance, the

social sharing of emotion literature has found that people have a strong preference for sharing emotional personal

information with intimates such as good friends or family members (Rime et al., 1992). Further evidence for this comes

from politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), which claims that communicating emotional messages is socially risky

(and so likely to be restricted to intimate relationships), and the finding that people are least willing to share surprising

(novel, stereotype-inconsistent) information when the audience is a stranger (Gruenfeld, Mannix, Williams, & Neale,

1996; Ruscher, Santuzzi, & Hammer, 2003). If emotional social information is only communicable with intimates, it

suggests that the dissemination of this information will be limited, along with its consequences. Therefore, our third aim is

to investigate whether emotional social anecdotes are more communicable with a good friend than with a stranger. Unlike

gossip, which is exchanged most often in an intimate, trusting, in-group situation (Ayim, 1994; Derlega & Chaikin, 1977;

Foster, 2004; Gluckman, 1963; Rosnow, 2001), social anecdotes can be exchanged between acquaintances and strangers.

Overview of Research

Three studies will examine the communicability of the emotional social information that is shared in the form of social

anecdotes from a situated perspective by investigating whether this depends on the kind of emotion that the social

information arouses and the intimacy of the interpersonal relationship within which it is shared. In Study 1, we use a

questionnaire to assess whether emotionality increases people’s willingness to pass on social anecdotes with an

unspecified audience, and whether this depends on the emotion that is aroused. In Study 2, we examine whether

emotionality increases people’s actual communication of social anecdotes with a good friend in a more realistic

communication task. In Study 3, we use a questionnaire to explore the impact of the intimacy of the audience (good friend

or stranger) on the communicability of emotional information.

STUDY 1

Method

Participants

Participants were 160 undergraduate students at the University of Melbourne who took part in exchange for course credit.

Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 39, 207–222 (2009)

DOI: 10.1002/ejsp

210 Kim Peters et al.

Questionnaire

The questionnaire stimuli were 96 social anecdotes that students of the university had supposedly shared about their own

behaviours (see Table 1 for example items). The anecdotes covered a wide range of behaviours that Australian university

students could plausibly engage in and attempted to arouse either a low, moderate or high level of one of eight emotions

that are often considered to be ‘basic’ (e.g. Ekman, 1972): interest, happiness, disgust, surprise, sadness, anger, fear and

contempt. Four anecdotes targeted each level of each emotion, resulting in 96 unique anecdotes.

Eight sets of twelve anecdotes were allocated to different versions of the questionnaire so that each contained anecdotes

arousing a range of emotions: high and low levels of four of the emotions (eight anecdotes), and moderate levels of the

remaining four emotions (four anecdotes). Aside from these constraints, the allocation of anecdotes was random. Each

anecdote was followed by an identical set of 12 questions that assessed participants’ emotional responses to the anecdotes

and their willingness to pass them on in the form of social talk. The questions and their answer scales were closely based on

those used by Heath et al. (2001). The first set of eight questions asked participants how much they experienced each of the

eight emotions in response to the anecdote on seven-point scales (1¼ very little; 7¼ very much). The second set of

questions asked participants whether they thought they would pass this anecdote on in conversation (the audience was not

specified): would they pass it on, would they pass it on as true, would they pass it on as interesting and would they pass it on

if someone else had told it to them. These communicability questions were measured on seven-point scales (1¼ strong

yes; 7¼ strong no), which were then reverse coded so that for all scales a higher score indicated more of the measured

characteristic.

Twenty participants completed each of eight versions of the questionnaire, completing the emotionality and

communicability ratings for each anecdote in turn. Therefore, 20 participants rated each of the 96 anecdotes.

Results

Scale Construction

In the current study, as well as those that follow, the unit of analysis was the anecdote, and the emotionality and

communicability ratings were averaged across the 20 participants that rated each anecdote. We used this approach because

it is only if emotions increase communicability relatively consistently across people that it could have consequences for

the content of a culture’s social beliefs. We constructed a communicability scale (a¼ .95) by averaging three out of the

four pass on measures (would they pass it on, pass it on as interesting and if someone else had told it to them), which were

Table 1. Example social anecdotes arousing the eight emotions in Study 1

Emotion Social Anecdote

Interest I have wanted to go to Harvard University for years and have worked very hard trying to get the grades.I just found out that my marks were good enough to be offered an interview.

Happiness I was able to raise enough money from sponsors on my first attempt at a marathon over the weekend that I amgoing to be able to have an Indian child brought over to Melbourne for desperately needed eye surgery.

Disgust I was in Swanston Street and did not have any money to get home, so when I was pretending to give somemoney to a blind busker I nicked $20 from his guitar case.

Surprise I bumped into an old school teacher at the pub on Friday and, as I have always thought he was really cute,I convinced him to go on a date with me next week.

Sadness I have been having trouble seeing properly for the last 6 months, and eventually went to have my eyes checkedout last week. I found out that I have a congenital eye disorder and will probably be totally blind in 5 years.

Anger We were driving down chapel street when we saw some guy carrying pizza and walking in a total daze. As wedrove past I leant a lot of window and knocked the pizza out his hand. He looked totally shockedas we sped away.

Fear I had drinks with my squash team on Saturday night after our tournament; as I was walking past ParliamentStation, these six guys came out of no-where and attacked me.

Contempt I have always rather fancied my best friend’s mother. I bumped into her out with her friends on Friday nightand, after a few drinks, one of my fantasies came true.

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Emotional social talk 211

highly related (r¼ .86–.88).1 Overall, participants were moderately willing to share the social anecdotes (M¼ 3.96,

SD¼ 0.83).

Manipulation Check

We conducted one-way (emotionality: high, medium, low, between) analysis of variance (ANOVA) to establish if the

anecdotes aroused the appropriate levels of the manipulated emotion, see Table 2 for means (Tukey HSD was used for post

hoc tests of differences). For all manipulated emotions, the high emotionality anecdotes aroused more of the appropriate

emotion than the medium emotionality anecdotes, which in turn aroused more of the appropriate emotion than the low

emotionality anecdotes, all F(2, 9)> 53.35, all Tukey HSD p< .033. Therefore, the emotion manipulation was successful.

Communicability of High, Medium and Low Emotionality Anecdotes

We conducted a 3 (emotionality: high, medium, low, between)� 8 (emotion: happy, sad, angry, disgust, interest, contempt,

surprise and fear, between) ANOVA of the anecdote communicability ratings (see Table 2 for means). As expected,

emotionality had a significant main effect on willingness to pass on the anecdotes, F(2, 72)¼ 31.62, p< .001, and

participants were significantly more willing to pass on medium or high emotionality anecdotes than the low emotionality

anecdotes, Tukey HSD p< .001. In addition, there was some suggestion that the kind of emotion that was aroused may

influence communicability as there was a significant emotion main effect, F(7, 72)¼ 3.02, p¼ .008, such that participants

were significantly more willing to pass on the surprise (M¼ 4.42, SD¼ 0.77) and contempt (M¼ 4.39, SD¼ 0.93)

anecdotes than the sadness anecdotes (M¼ 3.57, SD¼ 0.77), Tukey HSD p< .042.

Emotion Specificity in the Communicability of Social Information

While these results suggest that some emotions (like surprise) may enhance communicability more than others (like

sadness), they are limited by the fact that the anecdotes aroused multiple emotions: for instance, across the 96 anecdotes

the ratings of anger were very highly correlated with those of contempt (r¼ .82, p< .001) and disgust (r¼ .70, p< .001).

To better examine the ability of different emotions to predict communicability, we regressed the communicability ratings

on the anecdote emotionality ratings (see Table 3 for mean emotion ratings across the 96 anecdotes). We omitted the anger

ratings from the regression analysis because correlations above .70 between predictors (see the correlations above) are

problematic for reasons of multicollinearity (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1996).

Overall, the seven emotions accounted for 59 per cent of the variance in communicability, F(7, 88)¼ 20.29, p< .001.

Supporting the findings above, almost all of the standardised regression coefficients were positive (see Table 3), indicating

that generally the more an anecdote aroused emotion, the more willing participants were to pass it on. However, some

emotions enhanced communicability more than others, and participants were particularly willing to pass on anecdotes that

aroused interest, surprise, disgust and happiness.

Discussion

Emotional social information seems to be more communicable. Almost all of the emotions were positive predictors of

communicability ratings, indicating that participants were willing to exchange anecdotes to the extent that they aroused

emotions. This is consistent with previous findings for urban legends and biographical narratives (Christophe & Rime,

1997; Heath et al., 2001). It also supports the suggestion that naturalistic gossip arouses emotions because these emotions

increase their communicability (Baumeister et al., 2004).

1While emotionality does increase the communicability of information when telling an anecdote as true, the relationship is far weaker than for these moregeneral communicability measures. This again demonstrates the way in which communicability varies with the context.

Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 39, 207–222 (2009)

DOI: 10.1002/ejsp

Table 2. Means and standard deviations for Study 1 low, medium and high emotionality anecdote ratings on emotion andcommunicability scales

Anecdote emotion

Emotionality ratings M (SD) Communicability ratings M (SD)

Low Medium High Low Medium High

Interest 2.54 (0.39) 4.01 (0.86) 5.51 (0.28) 2.58 (0.52) 4.43 (0.60) 4.40 (0.51)Happiness 1.35 (0.21) 3.04 (0.22) 5.88 (0.25) 3.00 (0.53) 4.14 (0.61) 4.38 (0.52)Disgust 1.19 (0.95) 2.78 (0.25) 5.75 (0.39) 3.50 (0.34) 4.18 (0.70) 4.63 (0.15)Surprise 1.91 (0.32) 3.74 (0.31) 5.53 (0.10) 3.49 (0.38) 4.68 (0.41) 5.09 (0.08)Sadness 1.30 (0.15) 2.56 (0.17) 5.89 (0.23) 3.16 (1.06) 3.81 (0.80) 3.75 (0.24)Anger 1.18 (0.10) 2.94 (0.60) 4.99 (0.67) 3.18 (0.89) 3.89 (0.51) 4.10 (1.06)Fear 1.13 (0.15) 1.86 (0.17) 4.57 (0.54) 3.34 (0.63) 4.09 (0.31) 3.99 (0.51)Contempt 1.40 (0.20) 2.48 (0.24) 4.01 (0.17) 3.68 (1.14) 5.08 (0.44) 4.41 (0.59)Total 1.50 (0.50) 2.93 (0.70) 5.27 (0.73) 3.24 (0.73) 4.29 (0.64) 4.34 (0.62)

Note: The emotion ratings are for the manipulated emotion only. So, for instance, the interest anecdotes are accompanied by their interest ratings, thehappiness anecdotes by their happiness ratings and so on.

212 Kim Peters et al.

Taking a situated perspective reveals that some emotions enhance the communicability of social information with an

unspecified audience more than others: while interest, surprise, disgust and happiness were significant positive predictors

of communicability; fear, contempt and sadness were not. With the exception of contempt, this replicates the finding for

urban legends (Heath et al., 2001). Therefore, it seems that interest, surprise, disgust and happiness may be particularly

important for enhancing the communicability of social information, if not information more generally. By implication, the

nature of the social consequences that follow from our daily social talk is likely to be driven by these emotions.

STUDY 2

While Study 1 supported our first claim, that emotional social talk is more communicable, and our second, that this may

depend on the kind of emotion that is aroused, it has two limitations. First, as all the anecdotes were unique, content was

confounded with emotionality. This raises the possibility that participants actually had a broad preference for

communicating anecdotes about certain themes, for instance anecdotes that discussed relationships, rather than those that

discussed individuals (see Mesoudi et al., 2006), where these anecdotes happened to arouse more emotion. To address this,

in Study 2 we will create another version of each anecdote so that while it has the same theme, it arouses less emotion.

Table 3. Means and standard deviations for Study 1 anecdote emotionality ratings and standar-dised regression coefficients predicting communicability

Emotionality

M SD Communicability

Interest 3.96 0.80 0.51���

Surprise 3.71 1.04 0.20�

Disgust 2.77 1.37 0.27�

Happiness 2.95 1.35 0.27�

Fear 2.08 1.01 0.00Contempt 2.47 0.82 0.06Sadness 2.81 1.43 0.17Adjusted R2 0.59���

Note: �p< .05; ��p< .01; ���p< .001.

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Emotional social talk 213

Second, although communicability ratings are typically highly related to diffusion in a society (e.g. Schaller et al.,

2002), the Study 1 findings may not translate into communication behaviour. To address this, in Study 2 we will look

beyond perceptions of communicability and ask participants to choose anecdotes to communicate in a written message

that they believe will be read by another participant.

Additionally, we will test an assumption in our claim that if emotional social information is more communicable it

could have particularly important social consequences for the target of the talk. This claim assumes that people will tend to

respond with the same emotions to social information that is disseminating through a society and, therefore, engage in the

same target directed behaviours. To test this, in Study 2, we will see if the audiences and narrators of social talk experience

the same emotions.

Method

Participants

Participants were 40 first year Psychology students at the University of Melbourne who participated in return for course

credit.

Materials

To create the stimuli we selected the 18 Study 1 social anecdotes that aroused the highest levels of happiness (N¼ 6),

sadness (N¼ 6) and disgust (N¼ 6), all of which were positive predictors of communicability ratings.2 We then altered

them slightly in an attempt to create 18 similar versions that would arouse less happiness, sadness and disgust, as

appropriate (for examples, see Table 4). To check that the high emotionality versions of the anecdotes did arouse more of

the targeted emotion than the altered low emotionality versions, we presented 54 University of Melbourne undergraduate

students with the 36 anecdotes. The anecdotes were divided into three sets of twelve, and each participant rated one set. As

part of a larger questionnaire (described in Study 3), participants were asked to rate how much they experienced each of the

eight Study 1 emotions when reading the anecdotes on a seven-point scale (1¼ very little; 7¼ very much).

The means are given in Table 5. A 2 (emotionality: high, low, between)� 3 (emotion: happy, sad, disgust, between)

ANOVA of the target emotion ratings revealed that, as expected, the high emotionality anecdotes aroused significantly

more of the targeted emotion than the low emotionality anecdotes, F(1, 30)¼ 9.68, p¼ .004. However, this was qualified

by a marginal two-way interaction between emotionality and emotion type, F(2, 30)¼ 2.69, p¼ .084, and as can be seen in

Table 5, the high emotionality happiness anecdotes did not arouse more happiness than the low emotionality happiness

anecdotes. While the happiness manipulation was unsuccessful, F< 1, the high emotionality happy anecdotes did arouse

significantly more interest (M¼ 4.87, SD¼ 0.23) than the low emotionality happy anecdotes (M¼ 4.24, SD¼ 0.58), F(1,

10)¼ 6.03, p¼ .034.3 Given the positive relationship between Study 1 ratings of interest and communicability, we expect

that these high emotionality (more interesting) anecdotes are more likely to be communicated. Therefore, we would regard

the emotionality manipulation as successful.

The 36 anecdotes were divided into two sets of 18 so that one version (high or low emotionality) of each anecdote was

present in each set. In addition, each set had three anecdotes that aroused each level (high or low) of each emotion. Apart

from this, the anecdotes were allocated randomly. The anecdotes were printed onto separate cards, so that each set

consisted of 18 cards.

2Although the positive effect of sadness on communicability was only a trend, p¼ .14, we selected it over the emotions of interest and surprise as theseemotions are less likely to have important implications for social relationships.3Independent t-tests reveal that interest was the only emotion to significantly differentiate between the high and low happiness anecdotes. Furthermore,sadness was the only emotion to significantly differentiate between the high and low emotionality sadness anecdotes. In contrast, both contempt(t(10)¼ 2.30, p¼ .044) and disgust significantly differentiated between the high and low emotionality disgust anecdotes. Overall, taking into account thenegative relationship between contempt and communicability in Study 1, it is reasonable to conclude that any preference for communicating the highemotionality anecdotes is due to their ability to arouse more interest, sadness or disgust.

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Table 4. Examples of Study 2 high and low emotionality versions of social anecdotes arousing happiness, sadness and disgust

Anecdoteemotion High emotionality Low emotionality

Happy I have wanted to subscribe to World Vision for ages, andfinally I am earning enough money that I can afford it.So I phoned up and sponsored a child over the weekend.I chose a little girl from Mozambique

I have wanted to subscribe to World Vision for ages, andfinally I am earning enough money that I can affordit. So I phoned up and made a small donation overthe weekend.

Sad We were trying to save money and so had been feedingour pet cat with dog food for the last month. It wasonly when we found him dead on the lawn that werealised that dog food is actually poisonous for cats.

We were trying to save money and so had been feedingout pet cat with dog food for the last month. It wasonly when he got sick and we took him to vet thatwe realised that dog food is actually poisonous for cats.

Disgust I woke up early on Sunday morning feeling extremely coldand ill and covered in vomit. I had had a huge night intown and had coma’d under a chair at FlindersStreet Station.

I woke up early on Sunday morning, feeling extremelycold. I had had a huge night in town and had fallenasleep under a chair at Flinders Street Station.

214 Kim Peters et al.

Procedure

We told the participants that the purpose of the study was to examine the effect of sending or receiving a written

communication on their performance on a communication task. We then informed all participants that they had been

allocated to the sending condition, which meant that before doing the communication task they would be asked to send a

written communication to another student in the study (who would read their message). To do this, they would read some

anecdotes that the fellow undergraduate students had written about their own behaviours, and then retell some of these in

their own words in writing to their audience who, because it was important that the communication felt as natural as

possible, they were to imagine as one of their good friends. In doing this, we specified an intimate audience that people are

particularly likely to socially share emotions with (e.g., Rime et al., 1992). We emphasised that participants did not need to

retell all the stories, but only those that they felt they would naturally tell to their friend.

Once the participants understood the requirements of the study they were presented with one of the sets of 18 anecdotes

and were asked to spend 5 minutes reading them. The set that the participants received and the order of the anecdotes

within that set were randomised. After the participants had read through the set several times they were given a 10-minute

distracter task, where they were asked to list the 10 people they communicate with most frequently, the amount of time per

week they spend talking to each person and the most common topics of conversation. We included a distracter task as this

allowed us to more closely mimic a real communication situation, where the stories people choose to tell will depend on

Table 5. Means and standard deviations of Study 2 emotionality ratings and the averageproportion of participants communicating the high and low emotionality anecdotes in writing

Anecdote emotion Emotionality Communication

HappyLow (N¼ 6) 5.38 (1.57) 0.24 (0.13)High (N¼ 6) 5.39 (1.67) 0.28 (0.12)

SadLow (N¼ 6) 4.70 (1.18) 0.19 (0.07)High (N¼ 6) 5.76 (0.32) 0.37 (0.10)

DisgustLow (N¼ 6) 3.47 (0.99) 0.27 (0.13)High (N¼ 6) 5.08 (0.71) 0.40 (0.12)

TotalLow (N¼ 18) 4.52 (1.21) 0.23 (0.11)High (N¼ 18) 5.41 (0.76) 0.35 (0.12)

Note: The emotionality ratings are for the manipulated emotion only.

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Emotional social talk 215

both conversational demands and memory. We then asked the participants to write to their audience, as though they were

talking to a good friend, telling them in their own words about the behaviours of these university students.

Results

Interrater Reliability

Two raters identified the social anecdotes that participants chose to communicate. While the first rater was one of the

authors, the second rater was a graduate student who was blind to the experimental aims and hypotheses. Having instructed

participants to communicate as naturally as possible, we did not expect that the anecdotes would be reproduced exactly.

Therefore, we judged that an anecdote had been communicated if it contained the gist of the original anecdote. The two

raters had very high levels of agreement: 98 per cent of anecdotes were identified identically. Where differences occurred,

they were resolved by discussion.

Communication of High and Low Emotionality Anecdotes

To compare the tendencies for people to communicate high and low emotionality social anecdotes, we calculated the

proportion of the participants who reproduced each of the anecdotes in writing. The average proportion of participants who

communicated the six anecdotes in each of the emotionality (high or low)� emotion (happiness, sadness or disgust)

conditions is presented in Table 5. We conducted a 2 (emotionality: high, low, between)� 3 (emotion: happy, sad, disgust,

between) ANOVA of the proportion of anecdotes communicated. As expected, there was a main effect of emotionality,

F(1, 30)¼ 9.44, p¼ .004 and, replicating the Study 1 communicability findings, participants communicated a greater

proportion of the high emotionality anecdotes (which aroused either more interest, sadness or disgust), than the low

emotionality anecdotes. No other effects were significant.

Audience Emotional Responses

To conduct a test of our assumption that people will tend to have the same emotional responses to social talk, we asked

three graduate students who were not aware of the hypotheses of this research to read through these communicated

anecdotes and rate their emotional reactions to them, using the Study 1 emotion scales. The three graduate raters were

highly reliable in their emotion ratings across the communicated anecdotes, allowing us to average their ratings for

happiness (a¼ .89), sadness (a¼ .90), anger (a¼ .90), disgust (a¼ .84), interest (a¼ .40), contempt (a¼ .85), surprise

(a¼ .73) and fear (a¼ .87).

Next, we assessed the relationship between the Study 1 participants’ emotional responses to the original versions of

these anecdotes and the graduates’ ratings to the communicated versions. We found significant positive correlations

between the two emotion ratings for happiness (r¼ .86, p< .001), sadness (r¼ .93, p< .001), anger (r¼ .73, p< .001),

disgust (r¼ .82, p< .001), interest (r¼ .38, p¼ .023), contempt (r¼ .76, p< .001), surprise (r¼ .80, p< .001) and fear

(r¼ .84, p< .001).

Discussion

Participants shared more of the high emotionality anecdotes in writing. This finding replicates the findings of Study 1, and

demonstrates that people not only perceive more emotional social information as more communicable, but are actually

more likely to communicate it to an audience. Therefore, this study shows that social information is more likely to become

part of a society’s beliefs about individuals and groups the more intensely it arouses emotion. This study also provides

further evidence for the utility of communicability ratings as indicators of real communication behaviour (Clark &

Kashima, 2007; Heath et al., 2001; Schaller et al., 2002). Importantly, the fact that participants were more likely to share

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216 Kim Peters et al.

the high emotionality versions of the anecdotes, even though both versions dealt with the same theme, accounts for the

alternative explanation that participants actually preferred communicating social information on a certain theme (where

this was confounded with emotionality).

Finally, the strong relationship between the emotional responses of Study 1 participants to the original versions of the

anecdotes and the graduate audiences to the communicated versions of the anecdotes indicate that emotional information

is not only likely to become part of a society’s beliefs, but is also likely to arouse the same emotions towards the target of

the talk, mobilising people to engage in the same target directed actions. It is interesting to observe that the reliability of the

ratings for interest and the correlation between interest ratings at the two time points were substantially lower than for the

other emotions. So, while interest may increase the communicability of social information, the emotion itself is not likely

to disseminate across people, and by itself is not enough to lead a piece of social information to become shared in a society.

STUDY 3

The extent to which social talk will have widespread social consequences depends on the extent to which social

information diffuses through society and becomes socially shared. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the situated nature

of the communicability of emotional information by examining the specific emotions people choose to share with more or

less intimate audiences. While the audience of the communication was not specified in Study 1, it is likely that participants

had one of their most frequent audiences in mind, such as a friend or family member. Given that we specified that

participants think of their audience as a good friend in Study 2, it is possible that our results may be restricted to the

exchange of social talk between intimates. If this is indeed the case, the dissemination of this social information (and the

extent of its consequences) will be limited to networks of intimates.

In this study we explored the impact of audience identity on participant’s willingness to communicate emotional social

information. To examine the impact of audience as a potential influence on the communication of emotional social talk, we

manipulated audience identity at three levels: friend, stranger and (as in Study 1) unspecified. We then measured the

communicability of more or less emotional versions of the same anecdote with these different audiences.

Method

Participants

Participants were 144 undergraduate Psychology students from the University of Melbourne who participated in this study

as a partial fulfilment of their course requirements. Of these, 54 completed the first questionnaire (manipulating happiness,

sadness and disgust) and 90 the second (manipulating happiness, surprise and fear).

Materials

We used two different stimulus sets for the two questionnaires. The first stimulus set consisted of the 36 high and low

emotionality happy, sad and disgust anecdotes that we described in Study 2. We created a second stimulus set to reattempt

the failed happiness manipulation (discussed in Study 2) and to include a broader array of emotions. In particular, we

selected the 24 Study 1 anecdotes that received the highest happiness (N¼ 12),4 surprise (N¼ 6) and fear (N¼ 6) ratings.

Replicating our procedure for the first stimulus set (see Study 2), we altered these high emotionality anecdotes slightly to

create 24 new versions of the anecdotes that should arouse less of the manipulated emotion (happiness, surprise or fear).

For both stimulus sets the anecdotes were divided into smaller sets (3 sets of 12 for stimulus set 1, 6 sets of 8 for

stimulus set 2) so that high and low emotionality versions were in different sets and so that there were roughly equal

numbers of high and low emotionality anecdotes for each emotion kind in each set. Apart from this, the allocation of the

4We included more anecdotes to increase the chance of an effective manipulation.

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Emotional social talk 217

anecdotes was random. Each set of anecdotes appeared in different versions of the questionnaire. Participants were asked

to read each anecdote and indicate how much the anecdote made them feel each of the eight emotions (1¼ very little,

7¼ very much) and how willing they were to pass it on (1¼ strong no, 7¼ strong yes). These questions were identical to

those used in Study 1 and, as in Study 1, we constructed a scale of communicability with an unspecified audience (a¼ .96).

Participants also responded to two additional social sharing questions: would they pass the anecdote on to a good friend,

and would they pass it on to a stranger. These were assessed on identical seven-point scales (1¼ strong no, 7¼ strong yes)

Results

The final data set consisted of 72 high and low emotionality anecdotes spread across five emotion kinds: happiness

(N¼ 24),5 sadness (N¼ 12), disgust (N¼ 12), fear (N¼ 12) and surprise (N¼ 12). It was then necessary to take the

differences between the two stimulus sets into consideration: each of the 36 set 1 anecdotes was rated by 18 participants

(each of whom rated 12) and each of the 48 set 2 anecdotes was rated by 15 participants (each of whom rated 8). To control

for this a stimulus set dummy variable was included as a predictor in all regression analyses. As this dummy variable had

no significant effects on communicability in any of our analyses, we will not refer to it further.

Manipulation Check

The mean emotionality ratings for the high and low emotionality anecdotes in each of the five emotion kinds can be seen in

Table 6. A 2 (emotionality: high, low; between)� 5 (emotion: happy, surprise, fear, sad, disgust; between) ANOVA

performed on the emotionality ratings for the targeted emotions revealed the expected main effect of emotionality, F(1,

62)¼ 58.36, p< .001, such that the high emotionality versions of the anecdotes aroused more of the targeted emotion. This

effect was not qualified by an interaction with emotion kind, indicating that the emotionality manipulation was successful.

Communicability of High and Low Emotionality Social Anecdotes

We conducted a 2 (emotionality: high, low; between)� 5 (emotion: happy, surprise, fear, sad, disgust; between)� 3 (audience:

unspecified, friend, stranger; within) repeated measures ANOVA (with Greenhouse-Geisser adjustment) of communicability

ratings (see Table 6 for means). As expected (and in line with Study 1), there was a significant main effect of emotionality,F(1,

62)¼ 22.94, p< .001, such that participants were significantly more willing to pass on the high emotionality versions of the

anecdotes (M¼ 3.95, SD¼ 1.28) than the low emotionality versions (M¼ 3.14, SD¼ 1.12). This preference varied with

the identity of the audience, however,F(1.7, 105.3)¼ 10.01, p< .001, so that participants had significantly less of a preference

for communicating the high emotionality anecdotes with a stranger than with either an unspecified audience, F(1, 62)¼17.53, p< .001, or a good friend, F(1, 62)¼ 9.93, p¼ .003 (these last two audiences did not differ, F< 1).

There was also a main effect of audience identity on communicability, F(1.7, 105.3)¼ 668.17, p< .001. In particular,

and in line with expectations, participants were significantly more willing to communicate social anecdotes to a good

friend (M¼ 4.59, SD¼ 0.91) than with an unspecified audience (M¼ 3.75, SD¼ 0.95), F(1, 62)¼ 242.68, p< .001, with

whom they were significantly more willing to communicate than with a stranger (M¼ 2.28, SD¼ 0.60), F(1, 62)¼ 586.96,

p< .001. The only other effect to emerge was a significant emotion kind main effect, F(4, 62)¼ 2.52, p¼ .05, such that

participants were significantly more willing to communicate disgusting anecdotes (M¼ 4.02, SD¼ 1.25) than happy

anecdotes (M¼ 3.34, SD¼ 1.30), p¼ .023.

Situated Effects on the Communicability of Emotional Social Information

These results suggest that emotional social information is more communicable with certain audiences, and that certain

emotions are more communicable than others. To further explore these possibilities and to check for replication of the

5We excluded the 12 stimulus set 1 happiness anecdotes that were not correctly manipulated.

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Table 6. Means and standard deviations of emotionality and communicability ratings for Study 3 high and low emotionality anecdotes

Anecdote emotion Emotionality

Communicability

Unspecified Friend Stranger

HappyLow (N¼ 12) 3.34 (0.89) 2.75 (0.57) 3.66 (0.90) 1.73 (0.30)High (N¼ 12) 4.96 (0.39) 4.25 (0.92) 5.02 (0.77) 2.63 (0.66)

SurpriseLow (N¼ 6) 2.63 (1.20) 3.18 (0.90) 3.79 (0.84) 2.10 (0.49)High (N¼ 6) 4.33 (0.72) 4.51 (0.78) 5.12 (0.63) 2.41 (0.84)

FearLow (N¼ 6) 2.37 (0.84) 3.28 (0.77) 3.94 (0.84) 2.11 (0.51)High (N¼ 6) 3.93 (0.96) 3.99 (0.89) 4.98 (0.81) 2.37 (0.70)

SadLow (N¼ 6) 4.70 (1.18) 3.50 (0.57) 4.76 (0.22) 2.16 (0.39)High (N¼ 6) 5.76 (0.32) 3.92 (0.67) 4.85 (0.58) 2.35 (0.43)

DisgustLow (N¼ 6) 3.47 (0.99) 4.04 (0.78) 4.87 (0.51) 2.44 (0.53)High (N¼ 6) 5.08 (0.71) 4.63 (0.77) 5.41 (0.60) 2.71 (0.47)

TotalLow (N¼ 36) 3.31 (1.12) 3.25 (0.80) 4.11 (0.87) 2.04 (0.48)High (N¼ 36) 4.84 (0.90) 4.26 (0.83) 5.07 (0.68) 2.52 (0.62)

Note: The emotionality ratings are for the manipulated emotion only.

218 Kim Peters et al.

Study 1 and Study 2 findings, we regressed the communicability ratings on the emotionality ratings for each anecdote. As

in Study 1, we omitted the anger ratings from our regression analyses as they were very highly correlated with those for

contempt (r¼ .84, p< .001) and disgust (r¼ .73, p< .001). The standardised regression coefficients are displayed in

Table 7.

The regression equation for an unspecified audience provides a close replication of the Study 1 findings, showing that

the seven emotions were able to account for 65 per cent of the variance in communicability, F(8, 63)¼ 17.30, p< .001.

Almost all of the standardised regression coefficients were positive, and participants were significantly more willing to

communicate those anecdotes arousing interest, surprise, disgust and (marginally) happiness. Very similar results were

found for the second regression equation, which looked at the ability of the emotions to predict communicability for a good

friend audience, supporting the suggestion that even when the audience was unspecified participants had an intimate

audience in mind. Here, the emotions accounted for 63 per cent of the variance, F(8, 63)¼ 16.32, p< .001, and

participants were significantly more willing to communicate those anecdotes arousing interest, surprise, disgust, happiness

and (marginally) sadness. The results differed somewhat for the third equation, as the emotions accounted for less than

40 per cent of the variance in participants’ willingness to communicate with a stranger, F(8, 63)¼ 6.62, p< .001.

Table 7. Means and standard deviations for Study 3 anecdote ratings on emotion and communicability scales and regressionstandardised beta values predicting communicability

Communicability

Emotionality M SD Unspecified Friend Stranger

Interest 3.98 0.83 0.48��� 0.48��� 0.45��

Surprise 3.46 1.19 0.35�� 0.33� 0.00Disgust 2.45 1.30 0.35�� 0.25� 0.49��

Happiness 2.92 1.38 0.22y 0.28� 0.44��

Fear 2.12 1.17 0.10 0.07 0.26y

Contempt 2.14 0.70 �0.19y �0.23� �0.18Sadness 2.89 1.56 0.03 0.25y �0.02Adjusted R2 0.65��� 0.63��� 0.39���

Note: yp< .1; �p< .05; ��p< .01; ���p< .001.

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Emotional social talk 219

However, as with the other audiences, participants were significantly more willing to communicate anecdotes arousing

certain emotions, in particular interest, disgust, happiness and fear (marginally).

Discussion

This study provides further evidence that emotional social talk is more communicable, but also clearly demonstrates that

the communicability of emotional social information is situated. First, participants were significantly more willing to

communicate the high emotionality versions of anecdotes, even though both versions dealt with the same theme. Second,

while most emotions positively predicted participant’s willingness to communicate the anecdotes, some emotions were

more communicable than others. Across the three audiences, social information that aroused interest, disgust and

happiness was most communicable. As these three emotions also increased the communicability of urban legends (Heath

et al., 2001), they may increase the communicability of information generally.

Third, as we expected, emotional social information is less communicable with strangers than it is with friends,

although the communicability of emotional social information is not entirely constrained. The strongest distinction

between the intimate and stranger audience was for surprise and sadness, which were positive predictors for friends and not

for strangers. The finding for surprise is consistent with previous findings in the stereotype communication literature

(Ruscher et al., 2003).

Finally, people were more willing to exchange social anecdotes with a good friend than with a stranger. This is in line

with the observation that gossip occurs mainly between intimates, such as good friends, and only rarely between strangers

or acquaintances (Almirol, 1981; Blumberg, 1972; Christophe & Rime, 1997; Rime, Corsini, & Herbette, 2002). In spite

of the strong preference for communicating anecdotes with good friends, however, people were still somewhat willing to

communicate anecdotes with strangers, suggesting that our daily social talk can influence the social beliefs that those

beyond our intimate social networks have about other individuals and groups. In other words, this social information

(particularly to the extent that it arouses interest, happiness and disgust) can disseminate throughout a society.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

These studies show that emotionality is an important characteristic in determining whether people communicate social

information in their everyday social talk. Participants were consistently most willing to communicate, and most likely to

actually communicate, social anecdotes that aroused emotions. This is in line with the social sharing of emotion findings of

Rime and his colleagues (e.g. Christophe & Rime, 1997; Curci & Bellelli, 2004; Rime et al., 1992), and extends them by

demonstrating that (at least in the case of social anecdotes) the communicability of emotional social information is situated

as some emotions are better able to increase communicability than others, and that this varies with the identity of the

audience.

Three emotions appeared to increase the communicability of social information selectively: while surprise and sadness

only increased the communicability of social information with friends, fear only increased the communicability of social

information with strangers. This may indicate that social talk that arouses surprise and sadness are more risky topics of

conversation that can only be discussed in the context of an intimate relationship. In the case of surprise it also corresponds

with findings that one of the reasons that people share stereotypical (expected) information is that they feel it is able to

create social bonds (Clark & Kashima, 2007). Although the finding for fear needs to be replicated, it suggests that people

regard fear arousing social information as an effective way of establishing common ground with a stranger.

Another three emotions appeared to increase the communicability of social information generally: interest, disgust and

happiness increased the communicability of social information with unspecified audiences, friends and strangers. It may

be that it is the ability to simultaneously arouse these three emotions that accounts for the prevalence of exciting and

scandalous social information in our daily gossip and the tabloid press. Smith (1993, 1999) suggests that disgust may

indicate a violation of in-group norms, and it is possible that people choose to share disgust because it effectively

strengthens in-group boundaries and distances people or groups that violate their group’s norms.

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220 Kim Peters et al.

The final emotion, contempt, either had no impact on the communicability of social information (Study 1) or decreased

it (Study 3). This contrasts with the previous finding by Heath et al. (2001) that contempt increased the communicability of

urban legends. This raises the possibility that different emotions may increase the communicability of different kinds of

information (e.g. urban legends vs. social anecdotes).

The finding that emotions enhance the communicability of social information suggests that our daily social talk is likely

to have important social consequences. To the extent that social information arouses emotion, it is likely to be repeatedly

communicated and so become a part of a society’s social beliefs. This is particularly the case for information that arouses

happiness and disgust, but less so for interest, because there is little consistency in what people find interesting. Social

information that arouses sadness, surprise and fear are also likely to influence people’s social beliefs, although where

sadness and surprise may characterise social beliefs in intimate networks, fear may be more likely to characterise social

beliefs in networks of acquaintances. Importantly, this emotional social information is likely to mobilise people to behave

in the same way towards the target of the social talk.

The ability of social information to arouse emotions consistently across speakers and their audiences (with the

exception of interest) may also have consequences for group emotion and group cohesion. The group emotion literature

has largely (often implicitly) focused on the direct exposure to emotional events, and emotional contagion processes in this

context, as an antecedent to group emotion (e.g. Barsade & Gibson, 1998; Bartel & Saavedra, 2000). While direct

exposure to emotional social events is without doubt an important cause of group emotion, our research suggests that talk

that exposes people indirectly to emotional events through symbolic representation may lead to the dissemination of

emotions between people.

On the basis of Parkinson, Fischer, and Manstead’s (2005) claim that people are more likely to categorise themselves as

belonging to the same group when they happen to experience the same emotions, we suggest that social talk may, when

they disseminate emotions between group members, increase cohesion within groups, and when they disseminate

emotions between strangers, actually create new group boundaries. This suggestion receives strong support from research

demonstrating that narrators and audiences who are aware that they experience the same emotion in response to social talk

feel more socially bonded (Peters & Kashima, 2007).

In conclusion, the social fabric of a society is likely to be shaped by the more emotionally arousing social experiences of

its members, particularly experiences that arouse happiness and disgust, as it is these types of experiences that will persist

in the social talk that disseminates through networks of friends and acquaintances, with the potential to shape a society’s

social knowledge and beliefs, to mobilise their target directed actions, and to redraw group boundaries so that they follow

the contours of emotional responses to a social target.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge the insightful feedback provided by Chip Heath, Tony Manstead and Anthony Lyons on earlier

versions of this paper.

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Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 39, 207–222 (2009)

DOI: 10.1002/ejsp