Multiple Emotions: A Person-Centered Approach to the Relationship Between Intergroup Emotion and Action Orientation

• Published in: Emotion (Washington, D.C.) D.C.), 2014-08, Vol.14 (4), p.722-732
• Main Authors: Fernando, Julian W., Kashima, Yoshihisa, Laham, Simon M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Affectivity. Emotion; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Anger; Australia; Biological and medical sciences; Canada; Cluster Analysis; Community Participation - psychology; Emotions; Empathy; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Group Characteristics; Group Differences; Human; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Male; Middle Aged; Personality. Affectivity; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Shame; Social interactions. Communication. Group processes; Social psychology; Young Adult
• ISSN: 1528-3542; 1931-1516
• DOI: 10.1037/a0036103

Although a great deal of research has investigated the relationship between emotions and action orientations, most studies to date have used variable-centered techniques to identify the best emotion predictor(s) of a particular action. Given that people frequently report multiple or blended emotions, a profitable area of research may be to adopt person-centered approaches to examine the action orientations elicited by a particular combination of emotions or "emotion profile." In two studies, across instances of intergroup inequality in Australia and Canada, we examined participants' experiences of six intergroup emotions: sympathy, anger directed at three targets, shame, and pride. In both studies, five groups of participants with similar emotion profiles were identified by cluster analysis and their action orientations were compared; clusters indicated that the majority of participants experienced multiple emotions. Each action orientation was also regressed on the six emotions. There were a number of differences in the results obtained from the person-centered and variable-centered approaches. This was most apparent for sympathy: the group of participants experiencing only sympathy showed little inclination to perform prosocial actions, yet sympathy was a significant predictor of numerous action orientations in regression analyses. These results imply that sympathy may only prompt a desire for action when experienced in combination with other emotions. We suggest that the use of person-centered and variable-centered approaches as complementary analytic strategies may enrich research into not only the affective predictors of action, but emotion research in general.