Comment #2: Emotions Group

Wonderful presentation! I was intrigued by your experiment the moment you decided to do it. I was curious to see whether or not, and to what degree you can truly induce emotion (such as sadness) in participants. It's so fascinating finding out that when the experimental group watched Sophie's Choice, they actually felt a lot more sad than the control group. I thought that the participants would try to repress their emotions since they're participating in an experiment and don't want to seem affected by it. But I'm not surprised at the actual result. However I still think that the induced emotion, however real it might be, is still not strong enough than emotions that people feel in their everyday lives, that is, how they feel when something happens around them. I think that, in order for someone to truly be saddened, they have to either experience something that they can relate to, or something like a sad movie (in which they have to sit through the whole thing and not just watch part of it). Only then will their emotions be strong. Therefore, one possible reason for your result (i.e. dyads couldn't detect their counterpart's emotions accurately) might be that the induced emotions weren't strong enough for others to detect.

Also, someone mentioned that friends might be better at detecting each other's emotions. I think
this is very true. If you know someone, you'll know how they act when they're sad--the subtle facial muscle movements, or the look in their eyes. But if you don't know someone, then you might not be able to pick up these subtle elements that indicate the emotional state that your partner is in.