Affiliation stress : effects on the relationship between implicit motives and emotion recognition ability

• Main Author: Gan, Priscilla Ning Hui
• Other Authors: Joyce Pang Shu Min
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Psychology::Affection and emotion
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/105863; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/47883
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The ability to read emotional expressions, and interpret them accurately, is vital both to our personal as well as our social success. While there is evidence for implicit motives orienting attention to emotion cues in the face, no research is known to have investigated the relative contribution of implicit motives to performance measures of emotion recognition ability. Given that emotion recognition and implicit motives share similar tenets pertaining to functioning outside of one’s consciousness, it is plausible that implicit motives, as drivers of needs, would inform one’s selective attention to specific emotion cues in others thereby enhancing one’s overall emotion recognition accuracy. Being socially excluded has immediate consequences for individuals which further warrants the need for people to pay attention to cues that indicate potential rejection. Through a correlational study and two experimental paradigms, the current research set out to investigate and provide preliminary experimental evidence that affiliation stress engendered from social rejection would potentiate the link between implicit motives and emotion recognition. Accordingly, I hypothesised that a three-way interaction between dominant implicit motives, affiliation stress and emotion recognition ability, with an expectation that social rejection would accentuate the emotion recognition ability of an affiliation motivated individual. However, no statistically significant interaction effects were found. The significant key finding was a main effect between affiliation stress and emotion recognition ability in faces. Specifically, accuracy in identifying emotions in faces is attenuated by social rejection. The implications of these findings were considered in view of the “deconstructed state” theory of social rejection. Recommendations were made to further investigation into the link between implicit motives, social rejection and emotion recognition for its potential to delineate and defuse destructive behaviours of socially rejected individuals.