What makes groups emotional?
Open accessAbstract
When people experience emotions in a group, their emotions tend to have stronger intensity and to last longer. Why is that? This question has occupied thinkers throughout history, and with the use of digital media it is even more pressing today. Historically, attention has mainly focused on processes driven by the way emotions are shared between people via emotional interactions. Although interactions are a major driver of group emotionality, I review empirical findings that suggest that understanding group emotionality requires a broader view that integrates two additional processes: how emotions unfold within the social infrastructure in which they are shared and how these processes are affected by people’s cognition about emotions. I propose to summarize the literature using an infrastructure-cognition-interaction framework that contributes to a broader understanding of group emotionality, which should improve our ability to predict group emotionality and to change these emotions when they are undesired.
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Group emotionality should be understood as a product not only of interpersonal contagion but also of structural and contextual factors, including social infrastructure, shared cognition about emotions, and collective interaction patterns, which jointly shape both the intensity and duration of group emotions.
“Recent work argues that group emotionality should be understood as a product not only of interpersonal contagion but also of structural and contextual factors-including social infrastructure, shared cognition about emotions, and collective interaction patterns-which jointly shape both the intensity and duration of group emotions (Goldenberg, 2024).”
From The Groupfeel syndrome: a theory of a counterproductive group emotion (2026) · cites this paper as Goldenberg, 2024
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Feel Good or Do Good? A Valence–Function Framework for Understanding Emotions
Cohen‐Chen, S., Pliskin, R., & Goldenberg, A. (2020) · Current Directions in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0963721420924770 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
Self-citationGoals and Limitations of Modeling Collective Behavior in Biological Systems
Ouellette, N. T., & Gordon, D. M. (2021) · Frontiers in Physics · doi:10.3389/fphy.2021.687823 · Cited by 37 · see citing works
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Self-citationOvercorrection for Social-Categorization Information Moderates Impact Bias in Affective Forecasting
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Towards a Taxonomy of Collective Emotions
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Homophily and Acrophily as Drivers of Political SegregationPreprint
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Flagged first, then by citations
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Sorted by citations
Putting the affect into affective polarisation
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García, D., Galešić, M., & Olsson, H. (2023) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/17456916231201139 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Large language models do not have emotions
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“…understood as a product not only of interpersonal contagion but also of structural and contextual factors—including social infrastructure, shared cognition about emotions, and collective interaction patterns—which jointly shape both the intensity and duration of group emotions (Goldenberg, 2024).”
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A unifying taxonomy of dyadic emotional processes
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Concluding Emotion Regulation in Organizations: A Field in Motion
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- Authors
- Goldenberg, A.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Goldenberg, Amit
- ORCID
- Goldenberg, Amit
- Venue
- Perspectives on Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2023-07-26
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 489-502
- ISSN
- 1745-6916 (ISSN-L)
- 1745-6924
- OpenAlex
- W4385263903
- Cited by
- 14
- References
- 134
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 2
- FWCI
- 0.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- Perspectives on Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Power and Status Dynamics
- Keywords
- emotional intensity, emotion duration, emotional contagion, emotional interaction, social infrastructure, emotion cognition, emotion regulation, digital media
- MeSH terms
- Attention, Cognition, Emotions, Humans, Internet
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