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This thesis has two objectives: Investigating effects of sharing one's own emotions with other people across different stressors and exploring bivalent emotions in interpersonal and intergroup contexts. Chapter One presents a general introduction to the theoretical foundation which my pursuit of the two lines of research stems from. Chapter Two presents Project 1, an online study (Study 1) that captured social sharing behaviour during a relatively early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic using prospective questionnaires. Results suggested that social sharing was associated with emotion-improving effects. Chapter Three presents Project 2, which involved two online experimental studies confirming that interpersonal encouragement of reconstrual, rather than of recounting, generally yielded more positive effects across stressors varying in time span (interpersonal conflicts vs. COVID-19 news; Study 2A) or induced specific emotion (angry vs. regretful conflicts; Study 2B). Chapter Four, switching the thesis's focus to questions relevant to bivalent emotions, presents Project 3, an online study (Study 3) which explored motives for and affective outcomes of sharing this kind of emotional experience using prospective questionnaires. Results showed that motives and outcomes associated with sharing bivalent emotions were similar to those associated with sharing negative emotions. Chapter Five presents Project 4, an online experimental investigation of bivalent emotions (Study 4) that moved beyond into the framework of social cognition. Despite the new insights into the dehumanisation literature, this study failed to provide evidence that presenting outgroups' bivalent, rather than univalent, emotions helped improve intergroup relations. Finally, Chapter Six presents a general discussion about the main findings from the above four projects, the limitations observed throughout my DPhil research, and the implications and future research directions indicated by the research reported in this thesis.

Research reported in this thesis investigates the relationship repair function of the emotion of guilt. Chapter 2 presents Studies 1 - 3 which assessed the effects of delivering an apology on experienced guilt. Study 1 aimed to extend previous findings that practical repair of material damage reduced guilt independently of whether it is carried out by the transgressor or someone else by introducing an additional manipulation of apology (relationship repair). However, participants reported having delivered an apology even when the instructions did not mention apologising. Study 2 improved the apology manipulation and showed that it reduced guilt as predicted. Study 3 used a directly involving laboratory task to induce guilt and confirmed that apology had an independent effect on guilt. The separate effect of practical repair on guilt shown in previous research was replicated across all 3 of these studies. Chapter 3 focused on investigating the effect of self-punishment on guilt reduction in a laboratory experiment (Study 4). Findings indicated that guilt was alleviated more when the victim was present when shock levels were set than when they were absent. Further, guilt was alleviated more when the transgressor, rather than the experimenter, set the intensity of the shocks. Chapter 4 reports on Studies 5 and 6 which examined the interaction between different means of guilt communication. These studies assessed both the extent to which guilt elicited the means of guilt communication, and in turn, the extent to which these means of guilt communication affected guilt. Study 5 was a laboratory experiment and it included an apology manipulation similar to that used in Study 3, in addition to the self-punishment manipulation used in Study 4. One of the aims of this study was to see whether the modified self-punishment measurement would give clearer results on the effect of victim's presence on intensity of electric shocks. The other aim was to examine if the effects of apology and communicated self-punishment on guilt would interact. Findings reported no effects of the manipulated factors on guilt. However, apology reduced the intensity of intended self-punishment as expected. In Study 6, participants had to imagine that they were participating in an adapted version of study 5. In addition to manipulations of apology and intended self-punishment, a manipulation of practical repair similar to the one used in Study 3 was added. This study investigated if the expected guilt-alleviating effects of apology and self-punishment were independent of practical repair. Findings indicated that participants increased the intensity of shocks when they knew that the shock level would be communicated to the victim. Moreover, results showed that when participants communicated their intention to punish themselves, guilt reduced if they apologised or if the victim's material damage got repaired. Overall, this thesis took steps towards extending the body of knowledge on interaction of inter- and intra-personal effects on guilt by testing new hypotheses and building on previous research.

Schadenfreude is a German word, which describes the pleasure that people take in someone else's misfortune. The aim of the present research was to investigate the social functions of intergroup schadenfreude. Chapter 2 presents Studies 1-3, focusing on the social functions of experiencing intergroup schadenfreude in the context of football tournaments, using both concurrent and retrospective methods. Study 1 did not find any relation between change in perceived relative status and intergroup schadenfreude, possibly because of the sample's low domain interest and identification. However, schadenfreude was positively associated with change in status in Study 2 and with change in performance evaluation in Study 3 as expected. Also, across all three studies, intergroup schadenfreude was associated with consequences corresponding to its social distancing (e.g., distance from or dislike of the outgroup and intention to humiliate its members) and social affiliation functions (e.g., intention to celebrate with ingroup members). Importantly, schadenfreude mediated the effects of change in status (Study 2) and performance evaluation (Study 3) on these consequences. Chapter 3 presents Studies 4 and 5, which investigated whether social status is specifically associated with intergroup schadenfreude, and examined whether this social concern helps to differentiate intergroup schadenfreude from victorious joy (i.e., happiness about a third-party's victory). I developed a new experimental paradigm to manipulate participants' concern for status to elicit feelings of intergroup schadenfreude. I also manipulated participants' concern for external rewards associated with the third-party's victory to prompt victorious joy. However, in both studies, the concern for external rewards was the main influence on both intergroup schadenfreude and victorious joy, although a multivariate interaction between the two motives affected these emotions in Study 4. Hence, these studies suggest that status may be only one of the many motives underlying intergroup schadenfreude. Chapter 4 presents Study 6, which was a vignette-based study investigating the social affiliation functions of sharing intergroup schadenfreude as a function of ingroup identification. Participants read tweets from an ingroup member expressing either intergroup schadenfreude or victorious joy. Identification was also manipulated. However, results showed that recipients of intergroup schadenfreude messages formed more negative impressions of the tweeter and intended to distance themselves from him/her more than recipients of victorious joy messages. Chapter 5 provides an overview of the findings, contributions, and limitations of these six studies and discusses directions for future research. Overall, this thesis went beyond the current focus on the antecedents of schadenfreude and took steps towards the development of a social-functional account of intergroup schadenfreude.

This thesis investigates individual and interpersonal predictions of future affect and explores their relation to implicit theories of emotion, prediction recall, debiasing, and focalism. Studies 1, 2, and 3 assessed affect predictions to upcoming reasoning tests and academic results, and Studies 4, 5, and 6 concerned predictions for self-identified events. The first study investigated the influence of implicit theories of emotion (ITE; Tamir, John, Srivastava, & Gross, 2007) on impact bias and prediction recall manipulating ITE between participant pairs who predicted and reported their affective reactions to feedback on a test of reasoning skills. Neither impact bias nor recalled predictions were affected by the manipulation. Recalled affect predictions differed from original affect predictions, but were not influenced by experienced affect. Study 2 further investigated the effects of target event timing on impact bias and affect prediction recall. The results showed no differences between individual and interpersonal impact biases across conditions. Again, recalled predictions differed from original predictions, and were not influenced by experienced affect. Study 3 investigated the influence of prior information about impact bias on interpersonal affective forecasting involving real-world exam results. The results demonstrated no differences in predictions due to information, however, significantly less unhappiness was predicted for participants’ friends compared to self-predictions. Study 4 examined the effect of different de-biasing information on affective predictions. The results demonstrated no differences in affective predictions by condition and found that participants’ ITE were not associated to affect predictions. Study 5 examined individual and interpersonal affect predictions using a between-subjects design in place of the within-subjects design. The results demonstrated no differences between the affect predictions made for self and for friends, and ITE were not associated with predictions. Study 6 examined the impact bias in interpersonal affective forecasting and the role of focalism. The results demonstrated distinctions between individual and interpersonal affecting forecasting with individual impact bias for positive reactions for negative events and individual and interpersonal reverse impact bias for calm emotional reactions to positive events. Immune neglect was found not to be associated with predictions. Overall, the studies found evidence for similar individual and interpersonal predictions which are resistant to influence.