People do not typically want to affiliate with angry strangers; they often
perceive strangers as antisocial if they are angry. But when would people
want to affiliate with angry strangers? We tested whether perceivers detect
potential alliances angry strangers if those strangers appear angry about
behaviors perceivers believe are wrong. In an exploratory study
(within-subjects, 80% power for dz = 0.17 and r = .17), perceivers first
judged on wrongness a series of potentially immoral scenarios (neutral and
Moral Foundations vignettes). Next, perceivers rated how much they wanted
to affiliate (liking, enjoying interacting) with 24 target persons (half
women) based only on those target persons’ emotional reactions (neutral,
sad, or angry) to the same behaviors judged previously. The more wrong
perceivers judged a behavior, the more they wanted to affiliate with target
persons who reacted sadly or angrily to that behavior and the less they
wanted to affiliate with target persons who reacted neutrally. Broadly,
these data suggest people use anger or sadness as a coalitional cue when
such emotions arise from perceived moral violations.
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Nick Michalak
academic website <https://nmmichalak.github.io/nicholas_michalak/index.html>