Amplification in the Evaluation of Emotional Expressions Over Time

Social interactions are dynamic, and unfold over time. To make sense of social interactions, people must aggregate sequential information into summary, global evaluations. But how do people do this? To address this question, we conducted 9 studies (N= 1,583), using a diverse set of stimuli. Our focus was a central aspect of social interaction, namely the evaluation of others’ emotional responses. Results suggest that when aggregating sequences of images and videos expressing varying degrees of emotions, perceivers overestimate the sequence’s average emotional intensity. This tendency for overestimation, which we term the sequential amplification effect, is driven by stronger memory of more emotional expressions. A computational model further supports this account, and shows that amplification cannot be driven merely by nonlinear perception. The current paper demonstrates amplification in social cognition of sequential information, which is especially important given the prevalence of such information in many social interactions.