UC Santa Barbara

This study examines how partner perceptions, more specifically, expectation of partner's emotion influence guilt-related emotional responses in interpersonal contexts. Using interactive transgression tasks across two studies (N=121 and N=185), we demonstrate that individuals' emotional responses closely track their expectations of partners' emotions, with this pattern persisting across American and Chinese samples. Inter-subject representational similarity analysis revealed associations between general social trait judgments style and context-specific emotion expectations. Cultural differences emerged in avoidance behaviors, with American participants showing increased avoidance when anticipating partner anger, while Chinese participants maintained low avoidance regardless of expected anger. These findings highlight the interpersonal nature of self-conscious emotions and the importance of studying emotions within authentic social contexts.