Vigil's socio-relational framework broadly unifies research on emotion, proposing that emotional expression serves the function of communicating reciprocity potential along the dimensions of capacity and trustworthiness. We briefly consider how two disparate areas are tied into emotional expression and can be fruitfully viewed under the socio-relational framework.
Although not traditionally considered as a primary emotion or emotional display, per se, humor nevertheless has been associated with emotional intelligence (e.g., Yip & Martin Reference Yip and Martin2006) and relationship formation and regulation (e.g., Shiota et al. Reference Shiota, Campos, Keltner, Hertenstein, Philippot and Feldman2004). Recently, Li et al. (Reference Li, Griskevicius, Durante, Jonason, Pasisz and Aumer2009) found experimental evidence that people initiate humor to indicate interest in romantic relationships with desirable others to whom they are attracted. Indeed, when people initiate humor as opposed to non-humorous conversation, their audience is more likely to perceive that the initiators are interested in a potential relationship, and the audience laughs and responds more positively if they reciprocate the positive evaluation and interest. In such social interactions, humor may be a process through which high self-capacity and high self-trustworthiness emotions are communicated and confirmation emotions are elicited.
When individuals assess themselves and each other to be high in both capacity and trustworthiness, reciprocity potential is particularly strong; hence, the individuals may be especially motivated to form relationships with each other. However, an important aspect of Vigil's model is that it highlights that people also need to communicate intra- and extra-appraisals where capacity and trustworthiness are not high. In this regard, specific types of humor may serve as effective mediums through which specific emotions are conveyed and feedback emotions are solicited. For instance, self-deprecating humor may be initiated to convey a state of high trustworthiness but low self-capacity, whereas aggressive put-down humor may convey high capacity but low trustworthiness. Similarly, perverse or sarcastic humor may suggest low self-capacity and low self-trustworthiness. In each case, to the extent that an audience agrees with the implied self-appraisal, they should react positively to the humor to indicate their agreement.
Humor may be an especially useful communication platform because it allows individuals to incrementally indicate their interest toward potential and existing relationships (Li et al., Reference Li, Griskevicius, Durante, Jonason, Pasisz and Aumer2009). Similarly, humor may allow for less committed self- and other-appraisals of reciprocity potential. For example, when situations are new and somewhat ambiguous, one's own capacity and trustworthiness, as well as those of others, may not be clear. By using humor, individuals may be able to indicate the general direction of their appraisals and seek verification before committing to stronger appraisals. Thus, under the socio-relational framework, individuals who are adept at using and recognizing humor may be emotionally intelligent in that they are more effective at communicating and eliciting the appropriate emotional signals to form and regulate social interactions to their advantage.
There are, of course, plenty of situations where there is nothing to laugh about, including when relationships are in conflict. While traditionally considered to be in the domain of judgment and decision-making, social dilemmas may be intimately connected to dynamics of emotion. For instance, research on communication in social dilemmas has found that nonverbal communication between participants, including touch, oblique eye gaze, sight of the other, and just the sound of one's voice, can increase cooperation in social dilemmas (Balliet, in press; Kurzban Reference Kurzban2001). However, no research has explicitly addressed how emotions may underlie the coordination of behaviors in social dilemmas. By looking to the socio-relational framework, it becomes clearer that emotions may be an integral part of communication in social dilemmas.
To illustrate, the framework predicts that individuals will respond to signals of high capacity and low trustworthiness with terror, fear, and/or aversion. Consistent with this, recent research on social dilemmas has found that people are less likely to contribute to a public good and more inclined to exit the social dilemma when an individual with a relatively higher endowment, and therefore, capacity to contribute to a public good, expresses anger (Wubben et al. Reference Wubben, De Cremer and Van Dijk2008). Furthermore, people report lower expectations of contributions from an angry group member, compared to a guilty group member, thereby supporting the idea that angry individuals are perceived as less trustworthy in social dilemmas. These findings, which represent one of the few published studies on communicated emotions in social dilemmas, appear to fit well in a socio-relational framework and demonstrate that emotional expression can directly impact the outcomes of social dilemmas.
The socio-relational model can also generate hypotheses to guide social dilemma research on the role of emotional expression. For example, although individuals often possess cooperative intentions, certain circumstances (termed negative noise) may block individuals from acting on these intentions (e.g., a computer fails, thereby preventing one of the coauthors of this article from finishing his part of the collaboration). The individual still self-perceives trustworthiness, but would display sadness, grief, or shame in response to his or her own defection if the negative noise reduces his or her self-perceived state of capacity. In fact, negative noise in dilemmas tends to result in lower cooperation, unless an individual is given an opportunity to communicate (and presumably express appropriate emotions), in which case subsequent cooperation prevails (Tazelaar et al. Reference Tazelaar, Van Lange and Ouwerkerk2004). The socio-relational framework predicts that by expressing sadness or grief, a defector can mitigate the defection's negative effect on the defector's trustworthiness as perceived by the partner. Consequently, if the defector's partner perceives greater trust, this could result in feelings and displays of sympathy toward the defector, which in turn are related to forgiveness and the ability to sustain a cooperative relationship. Therefore, the socio-relational model can be applied to predict how emotional expression coordinates cooperation between partners in social dilemmas.
We have briefly identified two disparate research domains that may both be intimately connected to emotion displays, and therefore, could benefit from an organized study of emotion expression and the communication of capacity and trustworthiness. Although we did not consider sex differences in this commentary, sex differences tend to be ubiquitous in these and other areas, and their consideration can only increase the utility of the socio-relational framework.
