Immediacy Bias in Social-Emotional Comparisons

In seven studies of naturally occurring, "real-world" emotional events, people demonstrated an immediacy bias in social-emotional comparisons, perceiving their own current or recent emotional reactions as more intense compared with others' emotional reactions to the same events. The events examined include crossing a scary bridge (Study la), a national tragedy (Study 1b), terrorist attacks (Studies 2a and 3b), a natural disaster (Study 2b), and a presidential election (Study 3b). These perceived differences between one's own and others' emotions declined over time, as relatively immediate and recent emotions subsided, a pattern that people were not intuitively aware of (Study 2c). This immediacy bias in social-emotional comparisons emerged for both explicit comparisons (Studies 1a, 1b, and 3b), and for absolute judgments of emotional intensity (Studies 2a, 2b, and 3a). Finally, the immediacy bias in social-emotional comparisons was reduced when people were reminded that emotional display norms might lead others' appearances to understate emotional intensity (Studies 3a and 3b). Implications of these findings for social-emotional phenomena are discussed.