title: Multiple emotions: a person-centered approach to the relationship between intergroup emotion and action orientation.
abstract: Although a great deal of research has investigated the relationship between emotions and action orientations, most studies to date have used variable-centered techniques to identify the best emotion predictor(s) of a particular action. Given that people frequently report multiple or blended emotions, a profitable area of research may be to adopt person-centered approaches to examine the action orientations elicited by a particular combination of emotions or "emotion profile." In two studies, across instances of intergroup inequality in Australia and Canada, we examined participants' experiences of six intergroup emotions: sympathy, anger directed at three targets, shame, and pride. In both studies, five groups of participants with similar emotion profiles were identified by cluster analysis and their action orientations were compared; clusters indicated that the majority of participants experienced multiple emotions. Each action orientation was also regressed on the six emotions. There were a number of differences in the results obtained from the person-centered and variable-centered approaches. This was most apparent for sympathy: the group of participants experiencing only sympathy showed little inclination to perform prosocial actions, yet sympathy was a significant predictor of numerous action orientations in regression analyses. These results imply that sympathy may only prompt a desire for action when experienced in combination with other emotions. We suggest that the use of person-centered and variable-centered approaches as complementary analytic strategies may enrich research into not only the affective predictors of action, but emotion research in general.
authors.affiliation: Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne.
authors.forename: Julian W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Fernando
authors.affiliation: Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne.
authors.forename: Yoshihisa
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kashima
authors.affiliation: Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne.
authors.forename: Simon M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Laham
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000786:Anger; D001315:Australia; D002170:Canada; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003256:Community Participation / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012752:Shame; D055815:Young Adult