Emotional Content of Social Representations and Interpersonal Communication

Social representations (SRs) emerge from interactions among members of a group. These interactions enable individuals to share beliefs, build consensus, and maintain shared understandings. While interpersonal communication may initially be driven by the unfamiliarity of SR objects, it can also be motivated by the need for group members to cognitively process these objects when they are perceived as threatening or problematic. Thus, emotions elicited by an object in the social environment may prompt interpersonal communication. Two studies were conducted to test this hypothesis using online questionnaires. The first study (N = 294) revealed a correlation between the emotional tone of individuals' content regarding the SR of AIDS and the number of people with whom they discussed the topic. The second study, focusing on the SR of war (N = 246), confirmed these results. It also showed that social sharing related to "war" as an SR object is mediated by epistemic motivation. These findings are interpreted from a dual perspective: SR theory and the social sharing of emotions paradigm. They suggest that when a SR object evokes emotions, those emotions, in turn, drive the motivation to engage in social sharing.