Motives for the Acceptance of the Social Sharing of Positive and Negative Emotions and Perceived Motives of the Narrator for Sharing the Emotional Episode

This study aimed to highlight the individual’s motives for accepting the social sharing of emotions of a person as well as the motives perceived by the individual for the other’s sharing. The 81 participants first retrieved an actual situation from their memory in which they had listened to a person who had experienced a negative or positive emotional episode and, secondly, they freely described these motives. A semantic categorization showed that the motives for accepting a person’s social sharing are mainly the desire to provide the narrator with proof of social links and support; the perceived motives for the other’s social sharing are mainly a supposed need to vent and to strengthen social links. The discussion makes suggestions for future studies in the field of emotion communication.