Emotional Aperture

Emotional aperture has been defined as the ability or skill to perceive features of group emotions. Examples of features of group emotions include the level of variability of emotions among members (i.e., affective diversity), the proportion of positive or negative emotions, and the modal (i.e., most common) emotion present in a group. The term “emotional aperture” was first defined by the social psychologist, Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks and organizational theorist, Quy Huy.

Analogous to adjusting a camera’s aperture setting to increase depth of field, emotional aperture involves adjusting one’s depth of field to bring into focus not solely the emotions of one person but also others scattered across a visual landscape. The difference between perceiving individual-level emotions versus group-level emotions is builds upon the distinction between analytic versus holistic perception.

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Famous quotes containing the words emotional and/or aperture:

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    Animals used to provide a lowlife way to kill and get away with it, as they do still, but, more intriguingly, for some people they are an aperture through which wounds drain. The scapegoat of olden times, driven off for the bystanders’ sins, has become a tender thing, a running injury. There, running away ... is me: hurt it and you are hurting me.
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