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More on the Social Sharing of Emotion: In Defense of the Individual, of Culture, of Private Disclosure,
and in Rebuttal of an Old Couple of Ghosts Known as ''Cognition and Emotion''
Bernard Rim
Emotion Review 2009 1: 94
DOI: 10.1177/1754073908099132
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Author Reply

More on the Social Sharing of Emotion: In Defense of

the Individual, of Culture, of Private Disclosure, and
in Rebuttal of an Old Couple of Ghosts Known as
Cognition and Emotion

Emotion Review
Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jan. 2009) 9496
2009 SAGE Publications and
The International Society
for Research on Emotion
ISSN 1754-0739
DOI: 10.1177/1754073908099132
http://emr.sagepub.com

Bernard Rim
Department of Psychology, University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Abstract
Though the commentaries on my review welcomed its focus on the social
dimension of emotion and emotion regulation, they also revealed important misinterpretation. The social standpoint was not developed at the
expense of the individual. On the contrary, this perspective is in line with
dynamic emotions systems views. Despite variations in modalities, I argue
that emotion sharing is universal because it concerns culturally-shaped
knowledge and constructions when they are shattered by emotional events.
Predictions regarding the recovery effects of private disclosure are formulated, particularly in reference to the notions of speech styles and psychological differentiation. Finally, differentiating cognition and emotion is
becoming more and more foggy and I agree that the time has come for
new, less fuzzy, concepts.

Keywords
culture, disclosure, emotion, emotion regulation, social sharing, verbalization

Human communication is easily biased by our preconceptions,

expectations, and fears. Scientific communication is no exception. The commentaries of my review welcomed its focus on the
social dimension of emotion and emotion regulation. Yet they
also revealed a good deal of misinterpretation. Space limitations
constrain me to concentrate on the core of each commentary
and to specify some assumptions underlying my theory.

At the Expense of the Individual?

For Emily Butler and James Gross, the review favored a social
standpoint at the expense of the individual. However, if I held
that sharing serves important social functions, I equally insisted
upon its cognitive functions (e.g., cognitive articulation, clarification, dissonance reduction, meaning production, narrative
construction). If I argued that emotion research needs a social
focus, I never adopted an exclusive focus on the social level

of analysis, or a binary view of the individual versus society.

Quite the contrary, I view emotion as exemplifying the dynamic process through which individuals constantly reconfigure
their experience as a function of the elements of their psychological fieldevents or persons. In addition, emotion contributes to the process through which groups reconfigure their
shared knowledge, beliefs, and expectations. These perspectives converge toward the dynamic emotions systems view
which Butler and Gross promote. They quoted Siegel (1999) to
illustrate this view. Precisely, this authors concepts are
remarkably coherent with my review. Siegel argues that early
reciprocal communication experiences allow a childs brain to
develop a balanced capacity to regulate emotions, to feel connected to other people, to establish an autobiographic story,
and to move out into the world with a sense of vitality. He
added that the need for this type of communication and connection may not end with childhood:
As adults, we need not only to be understood and cared
about, but to have another individual simultaneously experience a state of mind similar to our own. With this shared,
collaborative experience, life can be filled with an integrating sense of connection and meaning. (Siegel, 1999, p. 22)

Individualistic Assumptions?
For Heejung Kim, despite an attempt at understanding emotion
regulation as a more socially interdependent process, my
review hinges on another Western culture individualistic
assumption: the importance granted to the use of language in
social sharing to regulate emotion. Asian respondents indeed
reported using social support less than Westerners for coping
with stress, and the difference seemed attributable to relational
concerns (e.g., a sense of interpersonal burdening) (Taylor
et al., 2004). Similarly, Asian people valued self-expression less
than Westerners (Kim & Sherman, 2007).

Corresponding author: Bernard Rim, Department of Psychology, University of Louvain, Place du Cardinal Mercier 10, Louvain-la-Nueve, B-1348, Belgium.
Email: Bernard.rime@ uclouvain.be
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Rim More on the Social Sharing of Emotion 95

As a matter of fact, both Asians and Westerners from various countries shared emotional episodes in 80% to 95% of the
cases (Rim, Yogo, & Pennebaker, 1996; Singh-Manoux &
Finkenauer, 2001). Still, across studies, Asians consistently
shared episodes less recurrently (modally, 2 to 3 times) than
Western respondents (5 to 6 times). In addition, Asians shared
with parents to a lesser degree and with peers (siblings,
cousins, close friends) to a higher degree. Thus, though they
are more restrictive and more selective in the way they share,
Asian people nevertheless do share their emotional episodes
as well.
Is this conclusion inconsistent with the finding that Asian
people value self-expression less? In Kim and Shermans (2007)
studies, self-expression was defined as an act projecting ones
own thoughts and ideas into the world, which is typically a selfdefinition concern of the Western individualist culture. However,
in the social sharing of emotion, people do not define who they
are. Quite the contrary, they communicate an experience in
which who they are precisely has collapsed. Their values,
assumptions, and meanings have been shattered. They display
only dismay and distress. Why then would they turn toward
others and share thiswhatever their culture?
Individualism is an illusion that people in the Western
world cherish. They convince themselves that their adaptational knowledge results from their own experience, a view
fitting Cartesian concepts upon which our psychological science flourished. They disregard the fact that since the beginning of time, their ancestors faced a hazardous and mysterious
world (Becker, 1973). The repeated experience of unpredictable and uncontrollable events forced them to improve
their adaptational knowledge and constructions (Berger &
Luckmann, 1967; Bruner, 1990; Moscovici, 1984). The basic
tool in this respect was social consensus (Festinger, 1954).
Every developing human being is instilled with a gigantic
mass of knowledge which resulted from this cultural past.
Every time a newcomer faces a new emotional episode, the
protective store of knowledge and constructions is challenged. This is a good reason for people to turn to others in
emotionwhatever their culture. And this can also explain
why the shared experience propagates across groups, through
secondary and tertiary social sharing.

Private Disclosure Versus Social Sharing?

Regarding Kent Harbers commentary, first of all, I did not have
in mind private disclosure studies when adopting the Lone
Ranger metaphor. Next, our studies involving disclosing upsetting events at Time 1 and then at Time 2 (e.g., Zech & Rim,
2005) did not involve written disclosureonly face-to-face,
dyadic, oral social sharing. So, on our side, we did not test the
private disclosure model and clearly, I was not in a position to
formulate conclusions about it.
I do not want to dispute the question of whether private disclosure entails emotional recovery effects, or not. This is an
empirical question and I argued that until now, studies did not
direct their empirical documentation in that particular direction

(for a thorough review, see Frattaroli, 2006)although they

could. Personally, I see multiple reasons for private disclosure
to bring emotional recovery effects. Writing offers innumerable
opportunities to reframe ones experience (see Pennebaker &
Chung, 2007)a major tool for emotional recovery.
Instructions that manipulate style or content for participants
writing about a specific episode can reveal effective strategies.
We recently had promising results in that direction (Vrielynck,
Philippot, & Rim, 2008).
More fundamentally, participants position regarding speech
styles matters in this context. Writing conveys the person from
an undercoded, poorly differentiated interior language, to
verbal expression at its highest level of differentiation and articulation (Rim, 1983; Vygotsky, 1962; Werner & Kaplan, 1967),
especially when it is about undisclosed experiences. Writing
thus entails enhanced psychological distancing and consequently, writing should affect recovery.
I share Harbers view that private writing is not writing to no
one, but I wonder whether private writers really write to themselves. Dont they address symbolic targets, as in letters? For
the theory of speech styles, this might make a considerable
difference. In theory, the psychological distance between a
speaker and an addressee affects the speech style (for a review,
see Rim, 1983). Thus, differentiation and articulation are
expected to be the lowest when the addressee is the self,
increasingly higher with intimates, with strangers, and with
authority figures respectively, and highest with a large anonymous audience. It follows that compared to people who would
write in a self-to-self condition, those in a self-to-other condition should manifest a more articulated and differentiated
expression and thus a superior distancing and psychological
recovery. But this is only one of the many empirical avenues
opened in this domain.

A Couple of Ghosts Badly in Need

of Exorcism
Jim Averill rightly noted the frequent apparition of the cognition and emotion couple in the review. He regretted that though
the review pleaded in favor of a more balanced relationship in
this couple, the two-mode model was left unquestioned. At the
molar level, I have no problem with that. To illustrate, empathetic sharing partners are easily discriminated from those
adopting reframing stances, and we can predict the consequences of their respective attitudes. But when it comes to emotion and cognition as underlying processes, the fog definitely
overruns the stage. As early as this couple started its career,
Averill (1974) stressed in a classic paper that similar cognitive
processes entered into both intelligent, problem-solving behavior and emotion. Along a similar line, whereas embodiment is
viewed as a landmark of emotion, I argued that cognitions are
embodied as well (Rim, 1983)a view now popular (for a
review, see Niedenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber,
& Ric, 2005). Yet, the couple kept developing a very successful
life on scientific stages. The special issue of Cognition and
Emotion mentioned by Averill (Eder, Hommel, & De Houwer,

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96

Emotion Review Vol. 1 No. 1

2007a) might mark a turning point in their career. Stimulated by

the widespread use of cognitive research paradigms in the study
of affect and emotion, this issue addressed where and on what
basis should theorists draw the line between cognition and emotion (Eder, Hommel, & De Houwer, 2007b, p. 1137). Experts
considerations led to the conclusion that the fog is denser than
ever. In particular, I was impressed by the consideration that
the dissimilarity between some affective mechanisms may be
greater than between some affective and some cognitive
processes (Eder et al., 2007a, p. 1145). So, in spite of their profound attachment to the old couple, emotion scientists should
now move to a less foggy set.

Conclusion
The authors of the commentary articles offered me an important
opportunity to clarify or specify some basic assumptions or perspectives surrounding the theory and research I presented in
my review.

References
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