Collective emotion and the function of expressive behaviour

It is sometimes suggested that emotions can sometimes be experienced collectively in some sense. Whether we can make interesting sense of this claim is a question that is attracting increasing attention from theorists of emotion. In this chapter, I explore a new way of approaching this question. Rather than beginning by asking whether emotions themselves can be collective, I focus, first, on particular emotional phenomena – specifically, on emotional actions and on processes of reasoning and reflection that arise in the course of an emotional response. Can these phenomena sometimes occur collectively? As I explain, this is an interesting question in its own right; moreover, approaching the issue in this way suggests a new way of understanding the claim that emotions can themselves sometimes be collective. Investigating these phenomena involves understanding the nature and function of expressive behaviour. Hence, a discussion of expressive behaviour plays a crucial role in the discussion