Discrepancies between felt and communicated emotions

The purpose of the set of studies here reported was to increase our understanding of how and why people share with others their emotional experience. As our experience and some recent studies (Rim\ue9, 1994) tell us, we do share our emotional experiences, especially with close others such as one\u2019s own partner, friends, family members, or the like. But do we really communicate emotional experiences as we had them, or do we \u2018select\u2019 what to communicate to others, \u2018leaving out\u2019 some emotions we felt, \u2018putting in\u2019 some others we didn\u2019t feel, emphasizing some, attenuating others, and so forth? The hypothesis is that discrepancies between felt and verbally communicated emotions occur, and are due to motives that involve the expected inter/personal consequences of social sharing of emotions, such as social rejection or support, or receiving comfort or advice. 854 Subjects (408 men and 446 women, young and mature, adults) answered a questionnaire.that described a jealousy (kiss or a flirt) event and answered several questions about them, including an open question on emotion sharing. Content analyses of answers confirmed the hypotheses and showed that 3 factors accounted for sharing: 1. Attribution: when making prototypical attributions, people assumed that sharing is due to the desire to get advice or comfort, and to relieve feelings, more than when making self-attributions; for the latter, sincerity, the unexpectedness of the event, and one\u2019s own fears about the future of the relationship (which was also more salient for older subjects, and for the kiss) were more salient motives. 2. Antecedent, and 3. Age: extenuating the event\u2019s seriousness was a motive that mainly characterized sharing by the younger people, and about the flirt; letting the interlocutor know one\u2019s own disappointment, and feelings of having been betrayed and hurt, characterized more older subjects, and sharing the experience elicited by the kiss