ON THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF EMOTIONS IN GROUPS 267 the idca that tcetroup:williams ef a2w bal-throwinggam Results nt or prdicted that ouas there is described as angry (M5.50.SD=1.31)compared with wheni Based on these considerations,in Study 2 we aimed to invest 2.15, ed).Si1)B=0.73 ns exp to th For ad been pulate the avai M-194.D704.B-075.7 56.p001 (one-tailed).Finally. n430,D ejected)than for people a happy reaction (and na nipulations affected the check for the other manipulatio d choose to remain in the on any o the manipulation checks fiaccptanceandrejection anger .001 Method ffects involving As can be seen from available:yes or no)2(majority emotion:anger or happiness) n-s dure 1 the ns.As e s adapted from the one used in Study his in n we calculated simp of the m orityCpr on after ar yo haven't et n angry available .the met some fellow students whom like.and when you were ne ma 18 the i tives condition).The ontinued as in Study 1. me four-item scal in the ves were tha but when ater hat while abandonine one's own destination ("Abide by the feeling rejected ngand group.depending on the availabilty of aer cu m The manipulation of the of the indirect effec of varable on penden with three go on vac With the logit in obit link Cronbach's a =.82).Two more items checked to which extent thewith the idea that feeling rejected can prompt people to seek belonging in a different group, Williams et al. (2000) showed that people, after having been ignored by two other participants in a virtual ball-throwing game, conformed more to the unanimously incorrect decisions of an alternative group. Yet, if there is no viable alternative to the current group, we predicted that people would feel pressured to conform to their current group, as there is no other way to restore their sense of belonging. Based on these considerations, in Study 2 we aimed to investi￾gate whether emotions expressed by a majority influence the choice between conforming to the current group and leaving the group. For this purpose, the scenario from Study 1 was modified to manipulate the availability of alternative groups in addition to the emotion expressed by the majority. We hypothesized that this choice would depend on the availability of alternatives: If alter￾natives are available, the likelihood of exiting the group should be higher for people who receive an angry reaction (and therefore feel rejected) than for people who receive a happy reaction (and there￾fore feel accepted). When no alternatives are available, people should choose to remain in the group, regardless of whether they feel rejected. A further aim was to find out whether any influence of perceived majority emotions on behavior would be mediated by felt acceptance and rejection. Method Participants. Seventy-three participants (18 men, Mage
21.04, range 18 – 44 years) were recruited for the experiment in exchange for 7 euro or partial course credits. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the conditions of a 2 (alternatives available: yes or no)  2 (majority emotion: anger or happiness) between-subjects design. Materials and procedure. Vignette. The vignette was adapted from the one used in Study 1. In this version, the introduction explained that the protagonist had just started studying in a different city, where he or she hardly knew anyone. We manipulated the availability of alternatives by then including in the story either the statement “You hardly know anyone in your new study group, and you haven’t met any fellow students that you like so much that you’d like to go on vacation with them” (no alternatives condition) or the statement “You have met some fellow students whom you like, and when you were recently discussing vacations, you had the impression that every￾one would be interested in going on vacation together” (alterna￾tives condition). The story then continued as in Study 1. Acceptance/rejection scale. We used the same four-item scale as in Study 1 (Cronbach’s
.89). Conforming versus leaving the group. Participants were asked to choose between two alternatives: (a) conforming to the group, while abandoning one’s own destination (“Abide by the majority”), or (b) attempting to find other people to go on vacation with (“Go on vacation with others”). These options were presented as two buttons on the screen, forcing a choice between these alternatives. Manipulation checks. The manipulation of the availability of alternatives was checked with three items (e.g., “Except for my friends from high school, there is nobody I could go on vacation with,” rated from 1
strongly disagree to 7
strongly agree; Cronbach’s
.82). Two more items checked to which extent the group had reacted with happiness and anger to their proposal (rated from 1
not at all to 7
very much). Results Manipulation checks. As intended, participants reported hav￾ing received a more angry reaction when the reaction had been described as angry (M
5.50, SD
1.31) compared with when it had been described as happy (M
2.15, SD
1.31),
0.73, t(71)
9.12, R2
.54, p  .001 (one-tailed). Similarly, partici￾pants indicated that the reaction had been more happy after the reaction had been described as happy (M
4.44, SD
1.17) as opposed to angry (M
1.94, SD
1.04),
0.75, t(71)
9.58, R2
.56, p  .001 (one-tailed). Finally, participants indicated that there were more alternative groups that they could go on vacation with in the alternatives condition (M
5.98, SD
0.76) than in the no alternatives condition (M
4.30, SD
1.73),
1.06, t(71)
5.30, R2
.28, p  .001 (one-tailed). None of the manipulations affected the check for the other manipulation, and no interactions were found on any of the manipulation checks. Thus, the manipulations were successful. Acceptance/rejection. As in Study 1, participants felt more rejected after the majority had expressed anger (M
4.99, SD
1.02) than after the majority had expressed happiness (M
2.85, SD
1.01),
0.73, t(71)
8.99, R2
.53, p  .001 (one-tailed). There were no main or interaction effects involving alternatives. Conforming versus leaving the group. As can be seen from Figure 2, the choice between conforming to the group or leaving the group depended on both the availability of alternatives and the emotion expressed by the majority. Using probit regression,2 the choice between conforming and leaving the group was regressed on the manipulations. As expected, the interaction was significant, B
1.76, Wald’s z
2.68, p
.004 (one-tailed). To interpret this interaction, we calculated simple slopes of the majority emo￾tion manipulation within the alternatives and no alternatives con￾ditions (Aiken, West, & Reno, 1991). As expected, if an alternative group was available, fewer participants chose conformity after an angry reaction (six out of 16, or 37.50%) than after a happy reaction (16 out of 19, or 84.21%), B
1.32, Wald’s z
2.80, p
.003 (one-tailed). When no alternative group was available, the emotions expressed by the majority did not affect the choice between conformity and leaving the group (anger: 15 out of 18, or 83.33%; happiness: 14 out of 20, or 70.00%), B
0.44, Wald’s z
0.97, p
.33. Thus, when no alternatives were available, participants generally preferred staying in the group even if that meant yielding to the majority’s position, but when alternatives were available, anger expressed by a majority increased the chance that participants would prefer to leave the group. Mediation analysis. To investigate whether feeling rejected after an angry reaction could explain the choice between conform￾ing and leaving the group, depending on the availability of alter￾natives, we conducted a moderated mediation analysis (Preacher et al., 2007). A moderated mediation analysis estimates the strength of the indirect effect of an independent variable on a dependent 2 With the logit instead of the probit link function used for these analyses, the reported p values are virtually identical (deviations in the .005–.01 range in both directions). The interpretation does not change. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. ON THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF EMOTIONS IN GROUPS 267