Emotion experience and the Illusion of Transparency: do we always express what we feel as much as we think? Claudia Marinetti Department of Experimental Psychology University of Oxford

Outline   Theoretical framework: Illusion of Transparency (IoT; Gilovich, Savitsky, & Medvec, 1998)   Do we ever know how expressive we appear? Pervasiveness of IoT (Study 1)   Potential moderators of IoT: Influence of different attention modes on IoT (Study 2) Influence of social context on IoT (study 3) Influence of relationship closeness on IoT (studies 3 & 4)   Conclusions and relevance to communication and behaviour

Illusion of Transparency: what is it?   Spotlight effect: the tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others attend to their external appearance (Brown & Stopa, 2007; Gilovich, Savitsky, & Medvec, 2000)   Illusion of Transparency: the tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others can recognise their internal thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and intentions (Brown & Stopa, 2007; Gilovich, Medvec, & Savitsky, 1998)

Illusion of Transparency: previous demonstrations   Detectability of lies (Gilovich, Savitsky, & Medvec, 1998)   Expressions of disgust (Gilovich, Savitsky, & Medvec, 1998; Holder & Hawkins, 2007)   Negotiations (Garcia, 2002)   Bystander non intervention

Illusion of Transparency: possible explanations   Phenomenology (Gilovich, Savitsky, & Medvec, 1998)   Indexicality (Parkinson, 2007)

Illusion of Transparency: a pervasive phenomenon?   Barr & Kleck (1995): participants are surprised at their lack of expressivity when they see a video-recording of their facial behaviour.

IoT: a pervasive phenomenon? Study 1, method Quiz game study: 40 same gender pairs Roles: contestant and helper Measures: expressivity self-ratings; external judges expressivity ratings

IoT: a pervasive phenomenon? Study 1, lab setting

IoT for general expressivity IoT: a pervasive phenomenon? Study 1, results

IoT: a pervasive phenomenon? Study 1, conclusions   People do not correct their self-judgment of expressivity even when they can see their faces   Findings support the indexicality explanation of IoT

Illusion of Transparency: potential moderating factors   Attention focus (study 2): attention to emotions vs attention to the main character of an emotional situation vs attention to details of an emotional situation   Social context (study 3): shared vs non-shared competitive vs non-competitive   Relationship closeness (studies 3 & 4): friends vs strangers partners (vs strangers)

Attention focus: Awareness of Emotion Experience Lambie and Marcel (2002):   Phenomenal experience (first order consciousness)   Awareness (second order or reflexive consciousness) Awareness of our own emotions may remain implicit (e.g., awareness of the emotion object as affectively coloured, Frijda, 1986) focal attention creates awareness but not phenomenal experience

Attention focus: hypothesis Hypothesis: Influence of different attention modes on IoT. More IoT expected when people are focusing on their emotions.

Attention focus: Study 2, Method Film-viewing study: 60 participants Attention manipulation: Attention to emotions vs Attention to the main character (identification with) vs Attention to film-clip details Stimuli: film clips eliciting emotions (neutral; amusing/happy) Measures: expressivity self-ratings; external judges expressivity ratings.

Attention focus: Study 2, lab setting

Attention focus: Study 2, results (IoT) IoT for pleasantness expressed

Attention focus: Study 2, conclusions   Illusion of Transparency is not affected by attention focus   phenomenology explanation of IoT not supported.

Social Context & Relationship Closeness: Study 3, Method Participants: 40 same gender pairs Task: in turns, listening to a pre-selected bad joke told by the other participant Context Manipulations: Shared context vs Non-shared context  rater id Competitive vs non-competitive  evaluation Closeness Manipulation: Friends vs Strangers Measures: social motives and display rules ratings; ratings of unamusement expressed (self-ratings vs joke-teller ratings vs external rater ratings)

Social Context: shared vs non-shared Muttiallu & Parkinson (in preparation): Ratings of expressivity are significantly different between participants and external raters, while there is no difference between the participant and the partner involved in the same task.   Do ratings of someone else’s emotion correspond more closely to that person’s self- reported emotion when both people are performing similar tasks?

Shared vs non-shared context hypothesis Hypothesis: shared context allows participants to make better calibrated judgements of each other’s expressiveness.

Shared vs non-shared context results (IoT) IoT for unamusement

Social Context: competitive vs non-competitive Zaalberg (2004): social motives Personal gain Pro-social motivation display rules hiding/masking negative feelings   Do social motives and display rules influence IoT?

Competition vs non-competition hypotheses   pro-social motivation in a competitive situation will be lower than in a non-competitive one.   personal gain motivation in a competitive situation will be higher than in a non-competitive one   masking of unamusement in a non-competitive situation will be considered more appropriate than in a competitive one.   IoT for unamusement in a non-competitive situation will be higher than in a competitive one.

Competition vs non-competition study 3, results (social motives & display rules) Social motives: prosocial motivation does not change in function of context competitiveness Personal gain motivation is higher in a competitive (M=3.98) than in a non-competitive (M=2.85) situation Display rules: Only when interacting with friends, appropriateness of hiding/masking negative feelings is higher in a non-competitive (M=4.87) than in a competitive (M=3.5) context

Competition vs non-competition study 3, results (IoT) IoT for unamusement

Social context: conclusions   Shared vs non-shared context: IoT is smaller between people sharing the interaction context than between people not sharing it (support for the indexicality explanation of IoT)   Evaluative context: use of display rules and social motives differ depending on whether the interaction has a competitive or non-competitive nature. IoT does not depend on evaluative nature of the context

Relationship closeness: friends vs strangers, hypotheses   masking of unamusement with a stranger will be considered more appropriate than with a friend.   IoT for unamusement when interacting with a stranger will be higher than when interacting with a friend.

Friends vs strangers results (display rules) Display rules: When interacting with a stranger, hiding/masking negative feelings is considered more appropriate (M=4.92) than when interacting with a friend (M=4.28) Only when interacting with friends, appropriateness of hiding/masking negative feelings is higher in a non-competitive (M=4.87) than in a competitive (M=3.5) context

Friends vs strangers results (IoT) IoT for unamusement

Friends vs strangers conclusions   use of display rules differ depending on whether the interactants are friends or strangers   IoT does not depend on whether the interactants are friends or strangers

Relationship closeness: romantic relationships, hypotheses   IoT should be at a minimum when the interactants are in a romantic relationship

Romantic relationships study 4, method Participants: 11 pairs of parents of young children Task: having discussions on 2 worrying topics about their child(ren) Measures: expressivity ratings (self- ratings vs partner’s ratings)

Romantic relationships study 4, results (IoT)   There is no IoT effect on any of the expressivity variables measured!

Illusion of Transparency General conclusions   IoT can have a strong impact on us, so much that we might not change our self-judgements of expressivity even when we can see our facial behaviour   Attention focus and evaluative nature of the interaction don’t seem to affect IoT   Relationship closeness might be a moderator of IoT   Sharing or not a context has an impact on our ability to judge expressivity

  Miscommunication   Decision making Effectiveness of decision making might be undermined by IoT. Does this happen? Is it possible to plan an intervention? Illusion of Transparency: relevance to communication and behaviour

Acknowledgments Brian Parkinson, Gwenda Simons, Mina Yadegar, Mansur Lalljee, Ananthi Al- Ramiah, Robyn Migliorini, Simon Lutterbie, Melanie Sharp