The temporal evolution of social sharing of emotions and its consequences on emotional recovery: A longitudinal study

After an emotional episode individuals need to talk about their experiences in a repetitive process called social sharing of emotions. In the present study we adopted a longitudinal design over a 9-month period to achieve 2 main goals: First, we aimed to investigate the relationship between social sharing and recovery from an initial emotional experience; second, we tested a model of prediction of the perpetuation of social sharing over time. Findings confirm that social sharing is a common consequence of experiencing an emotion, regardless of participants' levels of education, which tends to diminish over time, leading to an increasing sense of recovery. The prolongation of social sharing is a maladaptive outcome of experiencing an emotion, and a poor recovery is a direct consequence of long-term self-perpetuating social sharing. The results have implications for the assessment of the role of both dispositional factors and characteristics of the eliciting event on the prolongation of social sharing of emotions. © 2012 American Psychological Association.