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The Social Influence of Emotions on Sustainability

A topical collection in Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This collection belongs to the section "Psychology of Sustainability and Sustainable Development".

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Editor


E-Mail Website
Collection Editor
Human Services Department, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
Interests: Interpersonal aspects of emotion

Topical Collection Information

Dear Colleagues,

Emotions carry significant social influence and impact (e.g., van Kleef, Homan and Cheshin, 2012; van Kleef, van Doorn, Heerdink and Koning, 2011). In this Collection, we would like to focus on how emotional displays impact issues related to sustainability. The goal is to harness the social impact of emotions on sustainability issues in the broadest sense, relating to environmental, economic and social aspects. We see sustainability as the actions and abilities that help society flourish, endure and enhance wellbeing for all, while coexisting without causing harm to nature or exploiting resources (whether physical or mental) (e.g., Eizenberg and Jabareen, 2017; Florea, Cheung, and Herndon 2013; Gaur, 2020; Magee, Scerri, and James, 2012). We would like to receive work that helps to promote the sustainability of individuals, groups, relationships, teams, professions, organizations, societies, and the environment. We echo the call from Chapman  et al. (2017) to offer new ways to assess the communication of emotions regarding climate change, but also to rethink on how sustainability elements can be adapted to emotional aspects of work-teams and organizations. The contents of this Collection should be built on previous work concerning the social components of emotions and sustainability—for example, the work of van Zomeren and colleagues that dealt with hope and collective action regarding environmental change (e.g van Zomeren et al., 2019), or the work of Kates and DeSento (2020) which showed that feelings of gratitude can act as sustainability catalysts, as they protect against the exploitation of resources in a depleted-resources dilemma. Another example is the work on emotional labor, which has demonstrated how deep acting and surface acting exploit personal resources differently and have an impact on sustainable customer/client relationships (e.g., Feinberg, Ford, and Flynn, 2020; Grandey, Rupp, and Brice, 2015; Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Oerlemans, and Koszucka, 2018). Thus, we hope to promote work that supports sustainability by using the social powers of emotion. We encourage researchers to submit empirical and theoretical work.

Dr. Arik Cheshin
Collection Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the collection website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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Keywords

  • social emotions
  • sustainability
  • resources
  • group emotion
  • emotional culture

Published Papers (2 papers)

2022

29 pages, 642 KiB  
Article
A New Measure of the Rogerian Schema of the Good Listener
by Avraham N. Kluger, Limor Borut, Michal Lehmann, Tal Nir, Ella Azoulay, Ofri Einy and Galit Gordoni
Sustainability 2022, 14(19), 12893; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912893 - 9 Oct 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3163
Abstract
Sustainable social relationships can be produced by good listening. Good listening may be exhibited by people who endorse Carl Rogers’s schema of good listening; a set of beliefs about what constitutes high-quality listening. To measure it, in Study One, we constructed 46 items. [...] Read more.
Sustainable social relationships can be produced by good listening. Good listening may be exhibited by people who endorse Carl Rogers’s schema of good listening; a set of beliefs about what constitutes high-quality listening. To measure it, in Study One, we constructed 46 items. In Study Two, we administered them to 476 participants and discovered three factors: belief that listening can help the speaker, trusting the ability of the speaker to benefit from listening, and endorsing behaviors constituting good listening. These results suggested a reduced 27-item scale. In Study Three, we translated the items to Hebrew and probed some difficulties found in the last factor. In Study Four, we administered this scale in Hebrew to a sample of 50 romantic couples, replicated the factorial structure found in Study Two, and showed that it predicts the partner’s listening experience. In Study Five, we administered this scale to 190 romantic couples, replicated Study Four, and obtained evidence for test–retest reliability and construct validity. In Study Six, we obtained, from the same couples of Study Five, eight months after measuring their listening schema, measures of relationship sustainability—commitment, trust, and resilience. We found that the listening schema of one romantic partner predicts the relationship sustainability reported by the other romantic partner and showed incremental validity over the listener’s self-reported listening. This work contributes to understanding the essence of good listening, its measurement, and its implications for sustainable relationships. Full article
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Figure 1

20 pages, 354 KiB  
Article
More than Merely Positive: The Immediate Affective and Motivational Consequences of Gratitude
by Lisa C. Walsh, Christina N. Armenta, Guy Itzchakov, Megan M. Fritz and Sonja Lyubomirsky
Sustainability 2022, 14(14), 8679; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14148679 - 15 Jul 2022
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4140
Abstract
Although gratitude is typically conceptualized as a positive emotion, it may also induce socially oriented negative feelings, such as indebtedness and guilt. Given its mixed emotional experience, we argue that gratitude motivates people to improve themselves in important life domains. Two single-timepoint studies [...] Read more.
Although gratitude is typically conceptualized as a positive emotion, it may also induce socially oriented negative feelings, such as indebtedness and guilt. Given its mixed emotional experience, we argue that gratitude motivates people to improve themselves in important life domains. Two single-timepoint studies tested the immediate emotional and motivational effects of expressing gratitude. We recruited employees (n = 224) from French companies in Study 1 and students (n = 1026) from U.S. high schools in Study 2. Participants in both studies were randomly assigned to either write gratitude letters to benefactors or outline their weekly activities (control condition). Expressing gratitude led to mixed emotional experiences (e.g., greater elevation and indebtedness) for employees and students as compared with the control group. Students also felt more motivated and capable of improving themselves, as well as conveyed stronger intentions to muster effort towards self-improvement endeavors. Full article
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