A Journey to Icebreaking:Emotion Sharing in Superficial Friendship
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Huang, Hsiao-Ping
Abstract
Most researches on friendship usually followed the “Social Penetration Theory” that considers the interacting dyad progressively disclose their selves each other in daily interaction and gradually develop intimacy. Huang’s theory (1999/2006) suggests paying attention to superficial harmonious side of friendship. Friends under superficial harmony may conceal their disagreements and not really like each other, even they call the other as “a friend”. They also won’t be willing to get close to each other voluntarily. According to self-disclosure theory, the superficial friendship seems to stay in this state forever. But is it really true? This thesis including 3 studies tries to exam whether the automatic process of “social sharing of emotion” (Rime, 1991) may result in a change or a breakthrough under superficial harmony friendship.
In Study 1, questionnaires were completed by 383 Taiwanese college students. The results of data analysis showed that the social sharing of emotion really happened in both superficial and genuine harmony friendships in Chinese society and different type of harmony had the same sharing pattern. All kinds of emotion were shared and then affect the friendship quality after sharing. Study 2 aimed at the emotion sharing in superficial harmony that showing lower frequency in study 1 and used in-depth interview as method for qualitative study. The finding proposed that emotion sharing in superficial friendship could diminish the superficial part in relationship, brought the superficial friendship “back to the origin”. Besides, that process involved “feeling of secret sharing”. In order to further exam the findings in previous two studies, experimental method were used in study 3. The experimental stories included manipulated four emotions, such as sadness, joy, guilt, affection, and one control condition of non emotion sharing. The results indicated that friendship quality was affected by emotion sharing and the change was moderated by previous harmony type. Furthermore, in superficial friendship, the effect of negative emotion sharing on friendship quality was mediated by “feeling of secret sharing”, but positive emotion sharing was not the same.
In conclusion, when encountering emotional arousal, someone may share one’s emotion with a superficial friend by accident, even one may not intend to improve the relationship during the time of sharing. That is, this sharing will let the receiver suppose that the relationship has became better, and then creates a kind of “secret- sharing feeling ” between them which make their negative relation back to the origin, and makes their friendship follow the ideal process like penetration theory suggests, and finally progresses from superficial harmony to genuine harmony.
Subjects
social sharing of emotion
superficial harmony
friendship
Type
thesis
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