The Impact of Partner Expressions on Felt Emotion in the Iterated Prisoners Dilemma: An Event-level Analysis
Abstract
Social games like the prisoners dilemma are often used to develop models of the role of emotion in social decision-making. Here we examine an understudied aspect of emotion in such games: how an individuals feelings are shaped by their partners expressions. Prior research has tended to focus on other aspects of emotion. Research on felt-emotion has focused on how an individuals feelings shape how they treat their partner, or whether these feelings are authentically expressed. Research on expressed-emotion has focused on how an individuals decisions are shaped by their partners expressions, without regard for whether these expressions actually evoke feelings. Here, we use computer-generated characters to examine how an individuals moment-to-moment feelings are shaped by (1) how they are treated by their partner and (2) what their partner expresses during this treatment. Surprisingly, we find that partner expressions are far more important than actions in determining self-reported feelings. In other words, our partner can behave in a selfish and exploitive way, but if they show a collaborative pattern of expressions, we will feel greater pleasure collaborating with them. These results also emphasize the importance of context in determining how someone will feel in response to an expression (i.e., knowing a partner is happy is insufficient; we must know what they are happy-at). We discuss the implications of this work for cognitive-system design, emotion theory, and methodological practice in affective computing.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2022
- Accession Number
- AD1183487
Entities
People
- Celso M de Melo
- Gale Lucas
- Jonathan Gratch
- Kazunori Terada
- Maria Angelika-nikita
Organizations
- University of Southern California