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This Help document is about exploring effects
of moods and emotions, with the form that appears when
you select Feeling effects in the Forms menu.

 

Use this form to investigate how interactants' moods and emotions influence observers' behavior expectations and re-identifications of interactants. The form allows you to specify two parts of an actor-behavior-object event and to solve for the third element under the assumption that the actor and the object person have specified emotional states.

Basics

The set of radio buttons at the top of the screen determines what kind of analysis is done when you click the Compute solution button.

bullet Behavior. Interact computes the ideal behavior for the given actor and object, when they are experiencing the emotions you specify. The EPA profile for the ideal behavior appears in the small box below "Behavior". The yellow box fills with behaviors closest to the solution profile.
bullet Actor. Interact computes the ideal identity for an actor who engages in the given behavior on the given object, with the actor in the mood specified under "Actor mood" and the object person experiencing the emotion specified under "Object person emotions". The EPA profile for the actor's optimal identity appears in the small box below "Actor identity". The yellow box fills with identities closest to the optimal EPA profile.
bullet Object. Interact computes the ideal identity for an object person who receives the given behavior from the given actor, with the object person sustaining the specified mood, while the actor starts with the given emotion. The EPA profile for the object person's optimal identity appears in the small box below "Object identity". The yellow box fills with identities closest to the optimal EPA profile.

A pair of radio buttons relating to sex is situated below the set of radio buttons relating to type of analysis. Checking male or female selects data and equations for analyses. For example, if you select female, then female EPA profiles will be retrieved when you select an emotion or identity, and female impression-formation equations will be used in computations.

A button labeled Compute solution is situated at the middle of the form. Click this button when you have event elements specified as you want them, and are ready to see Interact's solution.

Specifying Identities, Emotions, Behaviors

Lists on the form let you select the actor's identity and emotion/mood, the object person's identity and emotion/mood, and the behavior.

Clicking an item in a list selects the item and shows the item's EPA profile in the number box below the list. Selecting an emotion or an identity also produces the EPA profile for the combination of the interactant's emotion and the identity. The combination EPA is printed in the number box labeled Transient at the bottom of the column.

You may enter EPA profiles in the number boxes―three numbers separated by spaces. The profile that you enter will be used in analyses, as if it were associated with a selected item in the list. EPA profiles copied from elsewhere may be pasted into a number box: click in the box, delete existing characters, and press the appropriate key combination for pasting  (e.g., CTRL-V in Microsoft Windows).

Entering a profile in the number box labeled Transient causes a new profile to appear in the emotion numbers box. This is the EPA of an emotion that would combine with the given identity to yield the EPA profile entered in the Transient box. That computed emotion becomes the "selected" emotion for the analysis.

Solution Lists

Gating

When you click the Compute solution button, the yellow box fills with a list of identities or behaviors that match the ideal EPA profile shown below the yellow box.

Entries are institutionally gated as follows.

bullet When solving for an actor identity, the identities listed in the solution have the same institutional connections as the identity that is specified for the object person. If the object person's identity is specified by a numerical profile, the list of actor identities is ungated.
bullet When solving for the identity of an object person, the identities listed in the solution have the same institutional connections as the identity that is specified for the actor. If the actor's identity is specified by a numerical profile, the list of object-person  identities is ungated.
bullet When solving for a behavior, the listed behaviors in the solution are linked to institutions that are associated with the actor identity and/or the object-person identity. If either identity is specified by a numerical profile, then behaviors are ungated.

Identity solutions contain both female and male identities. Behavior solutions contain both overt and surmised behaviors.

Distances

The number at the beginning of an entry is the distance between that entry's EPA profile and the ideal EPA profile. Theoretically, entries with relatively small distances are likely to be utilized by an observer in the situation, and entries with relatively large distances are unlikely to be utilized.

All institutionally appropriate entries appear in the solution lists, so the entries at the bottom of a solution list may have very large distances. Entries at the bottom of a solution list are unlikely to be utilized, theoretically.

The mathematical model for the reidentification with specified emotions has known instabilities that can produce EPA profiles beyond the empirical range of actual identities. 

bullet Thus sometimes entries at the top of a solution list have large distances.
bullet Even when their distances are large, the topmost entries still are more likely to be utilized than the entries at the bottom of the list, unless the distances of entries at the top are very large (say, greater than 20 or 30).
bullet Large distances seem to be less frequent when using characteristic emotions in analyses (see next section) rather than guessed emotions. For example, if you are solving for an actor's identity and you have no information about the object person's emotion at the start of the event, use the characteristic emotion for the object person's identity.

Characteristic Emotions

A characteristic emotion is the emotion that an individual feels when events are perfectly confirming the individual's identity. This emotion is characteristic of the identity.

Once you have selected an identity, you can have Interact compute the EPA profile for the identity's characteristic emotion by clicking the Characteristic emotion button directly below the selected identity. The computed EPA profile for the characteristic emotion appears below the emotions list. The emotion list is scrolled automatically so that the emotion term with an EPA profile closest to the computed profile appears as the topmost visible entry in the box showing emotions. (Caution: the closest emotion may not be able to reach the top if it is one of the final entries in the emotion list.)

Clicking the Characteristic emotion button also enters the identity EPA profile into the number box labeled Transient. That is because the characteristic emotion arises when an individual's transient feeling matches the sentiment associated with the individual's identity.




URL: www.indiana.edu/~socpsy/ACT/Interact/Emotions.html
© 1997, 2000, 2011
David Heise