Group emotion is the overall emotional state of a group that affects individuals, studied in sociology and psychology. Two viewpoints examine how group emotions impact individuals and how individual emotions affect the group. Leadership theories suggest manipulating group emotions to increase effectiveness.
Group emotion is a term used to describe the overall emotional state of a group, which emerges and influences the emotional states of the individuals making up the group. This form of emotion is often studied in sociology and psychology due to its importance in group dynamics and its effect on the emotional states of individuals. It is also a topic of interest in leadership and education studies because effective management of group emotions can greatly increase a group’s effectiveness at a given task and a group’s ability to acquire new skills and knowledge.
Two primary viewpoints tend to dominate possible ways of examining the phenomenon of group emotion: the top-down view and the bottom-up view. The top-down approach emphasizes the impact that the emotional state of the group has on individual group members. Group emotions can strongly intensify and alter personal emotions, particularly in cohesive groups with goals that are important to individuals. It can also set social constraints that limit the presence, or at least the expression, of certain emotions that are not aligned with those of the group. The similarities and differences in the emotions of group members can be used to gauge the cohesiveness of the group as a whole.
The bottom-up approach focuses on how the emotions of individual group members affect the emotional state of the group as a whole. Studies based on this approach tend to examine how individual aspects of emotion, including emotional maturity, mood change, and personal values, tend to cause emergent group emotion that affects all group members. Another important aspect of this view is the emotional effects of those who have drastically different emotional behaviors than the “group average”. A truly comprehensive study of the emotions displayed by a group must include both top-down and bottom-up approaches.
Group emotion is often studied in relation to leadership. Many leadership theories are based, directly or indirectly, on the idea that leadership skills should involve the ability to manipulate group emotions to some extent. Natural leaders may be able to do this simply because of inherent aspects of their personalities, while others need to learn specific leadership techniques that allow them to manipulate the emotions of a group. Furthermore, the emotions of a group are often influenced by the emotions of the leader more than by the emotions of the other individual members.
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