Working through emotions: Sadness predicts social engagement and physiologic linkage for men and disengagement for women in dyadic interactions

Abstract

We investigated whether sadness leaves an "emotional residue" by inducing sadness in one individual and testing its transfer to an unaware new acquaintance. Participants (N = 230; 115 dyads) completed cooperative tasks in same-gender dyads. Before meeting, participants recalled a personal event. In half the dyads, one participant (sad actor) recalled a sad event, while their partner (sad-paired partner) recalled a neutral event. In control dyads, both participants recalled neutral events. We examined self-reported emotions, affective language, behavior, and measures of sympathetic arousal to capture physiologic linkage-the degree to which one partner's physiology at one moment, predicted their partner's physiology the next moment. Men in the sad actor condition exhibited greater engagement (smiled more, gestured more) and their partners showed stronger physiologic linkage than men in the control condition. Conversely, women in the sad actor condition were less expressive than women in the control condition (smiled less), and their partners showed weaker physiologic linkage to them compared to dyads in the control condition. These findings have important implications for how men and women regulate negative affect and respond to others' affective cues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).