Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EMO - FIT (Emotional Fit in Intercultural Interactions: Studying mimicry and emotional grounding as micro-processes of (intercultural) belonging.)
Reporting period: 2018-10-01 to 2020-09-30
The main aim of this Marie Curie fellowship was to develop and investigate a novel route to meaningful intergroup contact among immigrant minority and majority members, which may positively impact minorities' well-being and thriving as well as the overall cohesion in society. I proposed that emotions – and, specifically, emotional similarity or ‘fit’ between minority and majority members – may play an important role because fit stands for shared attributions of events and shared intentions to act, it reduces stress and enhances social validation and belonging.
Building upon the vast literature on cultural differences in emotional experience (see Mesquita, De Leersnyder & Boiger, 2016 for a review) as well my previous work that has shown that the fit between immigrant minority and majority emotions increases when they interact (De Leersnyder, Mesquita & Kim, 2011; Jasini, De Leersnyder, & Mesquita, 2018) and that emotional fit with cultural is linked to well-being (De Leersnyder, Kim, & Mesquita, 2015; De Leersnyder, Mesquita, Kim, Eom, & Choi, 2014), the current project aimed to get insight into i) the micro-processes through which immigrant minorities come to fit with the emotions of the majority during intercultural interactions and ii) if emotional fit during intercultural interactions actually increases the quality of these interactions.
To meet these aims, I had proposed two studies in which I follow Turkish/Moroccan Dutch minorities’ learning of typical Dutch situation-emotion patterns after being exposed to these patterns repeatedly. In Study 1, minorities are instructed to mimic vs. not mimic the emotional expressions of their majority interaction partners; in Study 2, interaction partners are encouraged to negotiate ‘common ground’ on the meaning of emotional situations. In each study, I aimed to address my two research objectives.
The project is not only timely in terms of advancing both acculturation and emotion psychology, but also in terms of its potential societal impact as it speaks to one of the main challenges that Europe has been facing over the past few years: How can we allow (the increasing numbers of) immigrant minorities to thrive while simultaneously maintaining social cohesion in our multicultural societies? The current project explores a novel route to address this challenge: By focusing on emotional similarity, which decreases stress and increases belonging and social validation. By outlining the exact micro-processes (mimicry and grounding) that instigate emotional fit in intercultural interactions, it provides concrete targets for future interventions: Optimizing the circumstances that afford mutual understanding, from which many benefits may then follow.
Building upon the vast literature on cultural differences in emotional experience (see Mesquita, De Leersnyder & Boiger, 2016 for a review) as well my previous work that has shown that the fit between immigrant minority and majority emotions increases when they interact (De Leersnyder, Mesquita & Kim, 2011; Jasini, De Leersnyder, & Mesquita, 2018) and that emotional fit with cultural is linked to well-being (De Leersnyder, Kim, & Mesquita, 2015; De Leersnyder, Mesquita, Kim, Eom, & Choi, 2014), the current project aimed to get insight into i) the micro-processes through which immigrant minorities come to fit with the emotions of the majority during intercultural interactions and ii) if emotional fit during intercultural interactions actually increases the quality of these interactions.
To meet these aims, I had proposed two studies in which I follow Turkish/Moroccan Dutch minorities’ learning of typical Dutch situation-emotion patterns after being exposed to these patterns repeatedly. In Study 1, minorities are instructed to mimic vs. not mimic the emotional expressions of their majority interaction partners; in Study 2, interaction partners are encouraged to negotiate ‘common ground’ on the meaning of emotional situations. In each study, I aimed to address my two research objectives.
The project is not only timely in terms of advancing both acculturation and emotion psychology, but also in terms of its potential societal impact as it speaks to one of the main challenges that Europe has been facing over the past few years: How can we allow (the increasing numbers of) immigrant minorities to thrive while simultaneously maintaining social cohesion in our multicultural societies? The current project explores a novel route to address this challenge: By focusing on emotional similarity, which decreases stress and increases belonging and social validation. By outlining the exact micro-processes (mimicry and grounding) that instigate emotional fit in intercultural interactions, it provides concrete targets for future interventions: Optimizing the circumstances that afford mutual understanding, from which many benefits may then follow.
The project started on October 1st 2018, but was suspended due to the birth of my first child in June 2019 and terminated earlier because of my new job as Tenure Track Research Professorship at KU Leuven from October 1st 2019 onward. Furthermore, the scientific team decided to switch around the order of Study 1 (on mimicry) and Study 2 (on grounding). Here, I report on the project within the 7 months I carried it out.
In October and November, I conducted a literature review on grounding and on emotional experience in (intercultural) interactions. In December 2018 and January 2019, I developed all necessary materials to conduct Study 2 and received expert feedback on these materials. This stage included i) content-coding of emotional situations reported in a daily diary study to obtain 7 vignettes of emotional situations (3x2 situation-types + 1 trial) that elicit maximally different emotional patterns in Dutch majorities and Turkish/Moroccan minorities; ii) selecting and programming all questionnaires; iii) writing up a detailed manual to conduct the experiment; and iv) piloting the entire protocol, including the video-set up that would allow me to code the interactions for the process of grounding.
In January, I also recruited three MBO (vocational) schools; in February, I started to collect data there. However, since I had specific requirements for the participating dyads (same gender, same age, same educational level, different class-group and one majority one minority), I first conducted a short screening questionnaire among > 350 students, from which I could then select the participants. I did so together with a team of two research assistants and two UvA master thesis students.
In March and April, we could then run the actual study among 37 intercultural dyads. The dyads interacted for about 75 minutes in total, after which each participant completed a short questionnaire on the quality of their interaction. During the interaction, the members of the dyad discussed 7 vignettes. Per vignette, dyads went through 2 phases. In phase-1, both participants individually completed the Emotional Patterns Questionnaire (“How would you feel in this situation?”). In phase-2, they jointly completed the same questionnaire for the same vignette, which required them to establish common ground and thus to engage in the process of grounding emotion knowledge/meanings. All interactions were videotaped so that they could be coded for grounding in a later stage of the research.
I also developed a coding-scheme to code for behavioral indices of grounding and prepared an analysis plan to analyze the dataset once it will be complete (i.e. once we meet the threshold of 50 dyads).
During the grant period, data-collection was thus not finished, implying that the coding, the analyses themselves and the empirical paper(s) on this work could not be delivered. Yet, during the grant period, theoretical insights directly stemming from intellectual efforts related to this project were disseminated via both academic books (3), conference presentations (2) and via workshops for practitioners (2) and other outreaching activities (4).
In October and November, I conducted a literature review on grounding and on emotional experience in (intercultural) interactions. In December 2018 and January 2019, I developed all necessary materials to conduct Study 2 and received expert feedback on these materials. This stage included i) content-coding of emotional situations reported in a daily diary study to obtain 7 vignettes of emotional situations (3x2 situation-types + 1 trial) that elicit maximally different emotional patterns in Dutch majorities and Turkish/Moroccan minorities; ii) selecting and programming all questionnaires; iii) writing up a detailed manual to conduct the experiment; and iv) piloting the entire protocol, including the video-set up that would allow me to code the interactions for the process of grounding.
In January, I also recruited three MBO (vocational) schools; in February, I started to collect data there. However, since I had specific requirements for the participating dyads (same gender, same age, same educational level, different class-group and one majority one minority), I first conducted a short screening questionnaire among > 350 students, from which I could then select the participants. I did so together with a team of two research assistants and two UvA master thesis students.
In March and April, we could then run the actual study among 37 intercultural dyads. The dyads interacted for about 75 minutes in total, after which each participant completed a short questionnaire on the quality of their interaction. During the interaction, the members of the dyad discussed 7 vignettes. Per vignette, dyads went through 2 phases. In phase-1, both participants individually completed the Emotional Patterns Questionnaire (“How would you feel in this situation?”). In phase-2, they jointly completed the same questionnaire for the same vignette, which required them to establish common ground and thus to engage in the process of grounding emotion knowledge/meanings. All interactions were videotaped so that they could be coded for grounding in a later stage of the research.
I also developed a coding-scheme to code for behavioral indices of grounding and prepared an analysis plan to analyze the dataset once it will be complete (i.e. once we meet the threshold of 50 dyads).
During the grant period, data-collection was thus not finished, implying that the coding, the analyses themselves and the empirical paper(s) on this work could not be delivered. Yet, during the grant period, theoretical insights directly stemming from intellectual efforts related to this project were disseminated via both academic books (3), conference presentations (2) and via workshops for practitioners (2) and other outreaching activities (4).
Due to the early termination of the project and the fact that not all necessary data could have been collected to perform adequate analyses on Study 2, the current impact of this project is situated at the theoretical rather than at the empirical level.
Going beyond the current state-of-the-art in the field of emotion, I integrated insights from different fields to enhance our understanding of how emotional experiences emerge and unfold in intercultural interactions (De Leersnyder & Pauw, 2021) and how majority and minority members may actively negotiate emotional meanings when talking about situations, such as in intercultural therapeutic settings (Van Acker, Boiger, De Leersnyder, & Mesquita, 2020); insights that are also central to the book I am editing for Cambridge University Press (De Leersnyder 2021).
Furthermore, and going beyond the state-of-the-art in the field of acculturation, I gave a series of guest lectures at top universities in The Netherlands and co-edited a Special Issue on the topic that is centrally developed in this project, namely “The Psychology of Cultural Fit” in Frontiers in Psychology
The wider societal impact of this project is achieved via the workshops I provided for mental health care workers on how to deal with emotions in intercultural therapy.
Going beyond the current state-of-the-art in the field of emotion, I integrated insights from different fields to enhance our understanding of how emotional experiences emerge and unfold in intercultural interactions (De Leersnyder & Pauw, 2021) and how majority and minority members may actively negotiate emotional meanings when talking about situations, such as in intercultural therapeutic settings (Van Acker, Boiger, De Leersnyder, & Mesquita, 2020); insights that are also central to the book I am editing for Cambridge University Press (De Leersnyder 2021).
Furthermore, and going beyond the state-of-the-art in the field of acculturation, I gave a series of guest lectures at top universities in The Netherlands and co-edited a Special Issue on the topic that is centrally developed in this project, namely “The Psychology of Cultural Fit” in Frontiers in Psychology
The wider societal impact of this project is achieved via the workshops I provided for mental health care workers on how to deal with emotions in intercultural therapy.