ABSTRACT
The experience and expression of emotion is an essentially individual phenomenon (see chap. 6); however it is tightly bound within a social context. For example, the effects of emotion often become much more pointed when people are in groups. Interactions with others are a primary source of emotions; our relations with others serve to provoke, to help transfer, and to constrain emotions. These kinds of effects are reflected in the intragroup and intergroup situations that are the subject of the chapters in this section. Indeed, De Dreu, West, Fischer, and MacCurtain (2001) argued that group processes play a special role in developing emotion at this level of analysis. They described group interactions as a process of emotional incubation, where group members come to their group with a set of feelings and emotional expectations that are tested and then developed or diminished, depending on other group members' reactions. The resulting group-level emotional tenor then infuses the whole group, creating what De Rivera (1992, p. 197) referred to as group “emotional climate” (see also Barsade, 2002; Kelly & Barsade, 2001).
