Functions of social sharing of emotion

Abstract

The article is devoted to the social sharing of emotions – a phenomenon studied by foreign researchers of the 90s of the XX century, and only recently aroused the interest of Russian scientists, the systematization of the accumulated material on the social sharing of emotions. The social sharing of emotions can be defined as the expression of emotions in a socially accepted way – in a socially shared language. Having considered foreign studies devoted to this phenomenon, we have built a model of social sharing of emotions, which included the figures of interlocutors, mechanism, causes, functions, types, orientation, forms. The social sharing of emotions is carried out between two or more persons in written, oral, verbal, nonverbal, auditory, visual, theatrical form, the form of internal speech, performs socio-affective and cognitive functions, has a socio-affective or cognitive orientation, is divided into primary, secondary, tertiary. The sharing of emotions occurs not only because of the emotions themselves, but also in connection with thoughts, mental images, the desire to reduce cognitive dissonance, to cognitive integration. The mechanism of social sharing of emotions is as follows: emotions that have arisen in connection with an event retain their intensity and continue to influence a person, encouraging him to share feelings; sharing emotions with others reduces the painfulness of emotional experience.