Running head: Sharing the emotional load

Sharing the Emotional Load: Recipient Affiliation Calms Down the Storyteller

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY QUARTERLY 78(4) (December 2015)

Anssi Peräkylä (1), Pentti Henttonen (1), Liisa Voutilainen (1), Mikko Kahri (1), Melisa

Stevanovic (1), Mikko Sams (2), Niklas Ravaja (3,4,5)

(1) University of Helsinki, Department of Social Research, Center of Excellence on

Intersubjectivity in Interaction

(2) Aalto-University, Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering (NBE)

(3) University of Helsinki, Department of Social Research, Social Psychology

(4) Aalto University, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT

(5) Aalto University, School of Business

Corresponding Author: Anssi Peräkylä

Center of Excellence on Intersubjectivity in Interaction, University of Helsinki, PO Box 4,

FIN-00014, Finland.

Email: anssi.perakyla@helsinki.fi

Abstract

In conversational storytelling, the recipients are expected to show affiliation with the

emotional stance displayed by the storytellers. We investigated emotional arousal-related

autonomic nervous system responses in tellers and recipients of conversational stories. The

data consist of 20 recordings of 45–60 minute dyadic conversations between female

university and polytechnic students. Conversations were videotaped and analysed by means

of conversation analysis (CA), with a special emphasis on the verbal and non-verbal displays

of affiliation in storytelling. Electrodermal activity in both participants was measured to

estimate their arousal level. The results show that the verbal and non-verbal displays of

affiliation decrease the storyteller’s but increase the recipient’s level of arousal. This means

that the monitoring of the recipient actions in storytelling, shown by earlier CA studies, has a

physiological correlate. We suggest that storytelling involves an emotional load, which the

participants share physiologically in affiliative responses.

Keywords

storytelling, affiliation, arousal, conversation analysis, psychophysiology

In recent years, conversation analysts and other researchers of social interaction have

increasingly turned their interest to emotion (see Peräkylä and Sorjonen 2012). Their work

has yielded progressively detailed descriptions of the ways in which lexical, prosodic and

facial expression of emotion is embedded in, and regulated by, the sequential structures of

social interaction. Meanwhile, in other domains of study, researchers have largely agreed that

emotions involve, alongside their expressive and action-related facets, also a physiological

component (see e.g. Scherer 2005; Bradley and Lang 2007). It is the task of this paper to

examine the inter-connections between the physiology and the interactional expression of

emotion, in a particular action-related context, i.e., conversational storytelling.

Based on earlier psychophysiological interaction research, we predict that the

interactional dynamics of the expression of emotion in storytelling have correlates in the

physiological responses in the participants. Our focus is on affiliation: behaviours through

which the story recipient “displays support and endorses the teller’s conveyed

stance” (Stivers 2008:35). Largely in line with the emotional contagion theory (Hatfield,

Cacioppo, and Rapson 1994) we assume that while sharing the teller’s stance behaviorally,

the affiliating recipient also shares the physiological arousal initially occurring in the teller.

Furthermore, on the basis of earlier research on storytelling (Selting 2010; Couper-Kuhlen

2012; Peräkylä and Ruusuvuori 2012) and on physiology of suppression of emotion in

interaction (Butler et al. 2003), we predict that increased recipient affiliation is associated

with decrease in the physiological arousal in the storyteller: affiliation calms down the

storyteller. The theoretical grounds of the hypotheses will be explicated in more detail below

(p. 6-7 (in the ms.)).

Considering arousal as a physiological strain or effort, even when the emotion is

positive, the hypothesized linkage between the increased affiliation and the physiological

responses in the context of storytelling might involve something that we call “sharing of the

emotional load”.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In dealing with affect and emotion, interactional sociology, and conversation analysis in

particular, has focused on expressions that are made public through vocal and non-vocal

means (Peräkylä and Sorjonen 2012), without considering the physiological underpinnings of

emotion. If we go to the roots of the tradition, shying away from biology seems not

necessary, however. In the text that was to become his intellectual testament, Goffman

pointed out that, among the structures and processes specific to interaction order, “[e]motion,

mood, cognition, bodily orientation, and muscular effort are intrinsically involved” (Goffman

1983:3), introducing “an inevitable psychobiological element” (ibid) to the interaction order.

The interactional sociology inspired by Goffman has thus far not taken up this

psychobiological element as a topic of study. In this paper, we wish to do that, by examining

the physiological processes associated with interactional expression of emotion. In so doing

we have drawn from two directions: conversation analysis (CA) and psychophysiological

research.

To understand the psychobiology of emotion in interaction, we need the concepts and

research results that come from psychophysiological research. Physiological processes

pertaining to emotion involve changes in cardiovascular activity (heart rate and blood flow),

in the activation of sweat glands, and in muscular activity (startle reflex, the amount of

movement, and the activation of facial muscles) (Kreibig 2010). Many of these changes are

controlled by the autonomic nervous system, which means that they are largely beyond the

volitional control of the individual. Autonomic nervous system activation associated with

emotion is called arousal. Positive or negative emotions can involve either a strong or weak

arousal component (Bradley and Lang 2007).

We use electrodermal activity (EDA) – commonly known as skin conductance – as

our primary indicator of arousal. When a person is aroused, his/her sympathetic nervous

system is activated, resulting in increased sweat gland activity and skin conductance.

(Sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems form together the autonomic nervous

system.) Electrodermal activity has been shown to be sensitive to different psychological

states and processes, and it is widely used to study attention, information processing, and

emotion. In general terms, electrodermal responses are sensitive to stimulus novelty,

intensity, and significance (Dawson, Schell, and Filion 2007:159–60). The fact that the

electrodermal activity is beyond the volitional control of the individual has motivated long-

standing efforts in the development of EDA-based technologies for the psychophysiological

lie detection (e.g. Ben-Shakhar and Elaad 2003).

We will link phenomena arising from psychophysiological research with those arising

from conversation analysis: storytelling and affiliation. The study at hand focuses on a key

aspect of arousal associated with conversational storytelling: the consequences of the story

recipients’ displays of affiliation for the degree of arousal in both parties (cf. Voutilainen et al.

2014). We conceptualized affiliation as behavioral endorsement of the co-interactant’s

conveyed emotional stance (Stivers 2008:35). We are encouraged to examine the biological

ramifications of affiliation in storytelling by the wealth of earlier research that has associated

affiliation, not only with special behavioral characteristics (Lakin and Chartrand 2003;

Gregory et al. 2009) but also, with various biological mechanisms revolving around

neuropeptides such as oxytocin and vasopressin (e.g. Kosfeld et al. 2005; Norman et al.

2013) or the stress hormone norepinephrine (Schachter 1959; Smith 2013). Given all this,

affiliation appears as a fruitful starting point for examining the psychobiological element of

social interaction.

To understand the linkages between physiology and social interaction, we also need a

mediating conceptualization between psychophysiological and conversation analytical

traditions. The dyadic systems view proposed by Beebe and Lachmann (2002) is such. The

interactional organization of emotion displays and the organization of emotion-related

physiological processes can be considered as comprising systemic linkages. The dyadic

systems view helps us to conceptualize the interplay between the overt actions (such as

storytelling and the display of affiliation) and the physiological underpinnings of those

actions. Beebe and Lachmann propose that there is an “intimate connection between self- and

interactive regulation” (Beebe and Lachmann 2002:22), as behaviors employed in self-

regulation have equally a role “in influencing, and being influenced by, the partner” (ibid).

The linkage between self- and interactive regulation is bidirectional: the means for regulating

interaction also serve as means for self-regulation. For example, by telling a story that invites

an affiliative response from my co-participants I do not only regulate what happens socially

in the interaction then and there but I also regulate what happens physiologically in my body.

The same holds true for my interaction partner who produces or fails to produce affiliative

behaviours: her actions also regulate the interaction as well as her own physiological state.

Thus, in an encounter, “we are always monitoring and regulating our inner state at the same

time as we are tracking our partner’s words and actions” (p. 26). Physiological arousal is one

key aspect of what Beebe and Lachmann consider as the “inner state” of interactants; and on

a general level, we predict that the regulation of arousal in the context of storytelling is

associated with how stories are received. However, for a more detailed prediction about the

association between arousal and affiliation, we need to study the earlier empirical research on

both.

Earlier Psychophysiological Interaction Research

In one of the earliest psychophysiological studies on interaction DiMascio, Boyd, and

Greenblatt (1957) examined psychotherapy sessions and found that when the patient more

frequently ‘shows tension’, heart rate of both the patient and the therapist tends to be higher.

Contributing recently to this line of research (see Cacioppo, Berntson, and Andersen 1991),

Marci et al. (2007) showed a positive correlation between measures of therapist empathy and

affiliative behaviour and patient-therapist synchrony in electrodermal activity. In their well-

known work, Levenson and Gottman (1983) showed that synchrony in physiological arousal

between marital couples was higher when the participants were discussing their marital

problems, and lower when the discussion concerned more neutral topics. Regarding

physiological synchrony, a longstanding interpretation reviewed by Hatfield, Cacioppo, and

Rapson (1994) is that physiological synchrony simply accompanies periods of intense social

interaction, regardless of the topic. Recently, increased physiological synchrony has also been

found to be present in interactions involving strong competition (Spapé et al. 2013).

In a study that is highly relevant for the research at hand, Butler et al (2003)

investigated the physiological consequences of suppressing emotional expression. After

viewing an emotionally arousing film, subjects were discussing the film in dyads. In such

dyads where one member was instructed to suppress her emotional expressions – literally, she

was asked to behave as if she would not be feeling any emotions at all – the blood pressure in

both participants increased. Furthermore, this cardiovascular response was stronger in the

non-suppressing participant. Suppression of emotional expression and the consequent lack of

affiliation thus had strong physiological consequences.

Emotion and Affiliation in Storytelling

By using CA tools in the analysis of storytelling, we will seek to achieve a more nuanced

account of interactional events than has been possible in the prior psychophysiological

research. Earlier CA research has shown storytelling to be an interactional activity that is

dense in emotion (see e.g. Selting 2010; Couper-Kuhlen 2012). The storyteller reports events

from a particular affect-related perspective, conveying an emotional stance to what is being

told. The events reported are sad, funny, surprising, delightful, devastating, or the like. As

Stivers (2008:38) pointed out, the teller can convey his or her stance through various means,

including story preface, marked lexical and syntactic choice and prosody.

In receiving a story, the recipient is expected to affiliate with the teller’s stance.

Should the recipient not affiliate, his or her actions are understood as nonaffiliative or even

disaffiliative: something that would have been relevant is missing. The hearer can endorse the

teller’s stance through various means, including claims of understanding (Couper-Kuhlen

2012:122), assessments that are congruent with the teller’s stance (Couper-Kuhlen 2012:123),

claims of sharing the teller’s experience (Heritage 2011). Likewise, the hearers can produce

what Goffman (1978) called response cries non-lexicalized interjections such as ouch! or

wheee! which the participants may see as direct emissions of the speaker’s affective state

(Heritage 2011; Couper-Kuhlen 2012:132–33).

The means for displaying affiliation vary according to the phases of storytelling.

Arguably, the climax of the story is the site for an expectation of the most intensive display of

affiliation (Selting 2010; Kupetz 2014). Stivers (2008) shows that in mid telling, nods are

sufficient to convey that the recipient endorses the teller’s stance, whereas at the end of the

telling (after the story climax), nods alone are not sufficient (as evidenced by the storytellers’

efforts to pursue a more pronounced response in face of the recipient merely nodding).

Importantly, the teller monitors the recipient’s responses and adjusts his/her further

actions accordingly. Bavelas, Coates, and Johnson (2000) showed that, in an experimental

condition where the story recipient was not attending to the meaning of the story and,

consequently, not producing responses linked to that narrative meaning, the storyteller’s

actions were affected: the stories were told “less well overall and particularly poorly at what

should have been the dramatic conclusion” (Bavelas et al. 2000:950). In a similar vein,

naturalistic studies show that a lack of (fully) affiliative responses at the climax of a story

regularly leads the storyteller to pursue such responses, by repeating, highlighting, or

modifying the stance-conveying elements of his or her story verbally (Selting 2010; Couper-

Kuhlen 2012) or through facial expressions (Peräkylä and Ruusuvuori 2012).

We can now explicate the theoretical basis of our hypotheses that we spelled out at the

beginning of the paper (see p. 1-2 (in manuscript)). In examining the physiological correlates

of affiliation in storytelling, we are guided by the dyadic systems view of Beebe and

Lachmann (2002). They point out that, in an encounter, “each person is affected by his own

behavior (…) and by the partner’s behavior” (p. 26). We are asking what the effects of the

story recipient’s affiliative behavior on herself and on the storyteller might be.

We predict that these effects are different on the two participants. With regard to the

recipient, the situation appears relatively straightforward. As affiliative behaviors display that

the story recipient shares the storyteller’s emotion, we predict that these behaviors will be

associated with increased arousal in the recipient. In line with the classical argument of

Hatfield at al. (1994), we think that a behavioral emotion display, mirroring the co-present

interactant’s initial display, also involves a physiological component. The behavioral display

of affiliation would bring about a corresponding physiological response in the affiliating

participant, in this case, increased physiological arousal.

When it comes to the storytellers, the prediction is more complex. On one hand, one

could expect that the recipient affiliation would invoke increased arousal also in the

storyteller. As the storyteller displays her emotional stance towards the events in the story,

and the story recipient ratifies that stance, moments of mutual “heightened emotive

involvement” (Selting 2010) could instigate stronger physiological arousal also in the

storyteller. In Collins’ (2005) terms, the emotional entrainment embodied in affiliative

behaviors could produce high collective effervescence, which could then show in the higher

arousal of the storyteller. Our prediction, however, is different.

As pointed out above, earlier interactional research on storytelling has shown that a

lack of affiliation activates the storyteller behaviorally so that he or she starts to pursue

affiliation through verbal or visual means (Selting 2010; Couper-Kuhlen 2012; Peräkylä and

Ruusuvuori 2012). We consider that the tendency towards behavioral activation in response

to a lack of affiliation will be associated with increased physiological arousal. This

expectation also arises from the findings of Butler et al. (2003) discussed above: they showed

that when a subject faces an emotionally uninvolved co-interactant, when emotional display

would be expected, physiological arousal may ensue. We predict that with affiliating

recipients, this increase in activation will not take place. This is also in line with everyday

experience: we can feel relaxed when our interaction partner shows that she understands, also

emotionally, what we try to convey. We therefore predict that less affiliation by the story

recipient will be associated with higher arousal in the storyteller. The recipient’s affiliation, in

contrast, will be expected to calm down the storyteller. Thereby, we come to our hypotheses:

1. Increased recipient affiliation is associated with decreased physiological arousal in

the story teller.

2. Increased recipient affiliation is associated with increased physiological arousal in

the recipient.

DATA AND METHODS

Participants and Procedure

Our data consist of 20 recordings of 45–60 minute dyadic conversations in a quasi-natural

setting. The participants were female university and polytechnic students from Greater

Helsinki area who were recruited to this study and did not know each other beforehand. The

mean age of the participants was 23.5 years, ranging from 18 to 46 years. Only single sex

dyads, with no prior acquaintance, were included in order to make the data more uniform.

The participants were instructed to talk about happy events and losses in their life in a

freely chosen way. They were informed that the study considers connections between

interactional events and psychophysiological responses, and they were given the topical

instruction beforehand. The conversations took place in the interaction laboratory of Aalto

University Department of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science (now

Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering). Language of the conversations

was Finnish. The participants sat in armchairs facing each other perpendicularly. The

conversations were videotaped with three cameras (one facing each participant, and the third

giving an overall view), and psychophysiological activity was recorded from both

participants during the conversations. Before the participants started their conversation, a 5-

minute baseline was recorded during which they were instructed to sit silent and relax.

Coding the Interactions

From the video recordings, we coded all narratives and the recipients’ response in terms of

affiliation. Our coding scheme was based on CA understanding of storytelling and affiliation

and it was collaboratively built in data-sessions (workshops) that the CA-trained authors

participated in. The coding progressed in two stages: in the first, we singled out the narratives

and coded for their key properties, and in the second, we coded for the reception of the

narratives. Furthermore, we measured the speaking times of the participants during the

narratives.

The first stage of the coding included the following: (1) the point of the beginning and

the end of each narrative; (2) the point of the beginning and the end of three story phases:

build-up, climax and evaluation (Evaluation was optional, as every story did not have a

separate evaluation phase); (3) the story valence: happy, sad, or ambivalent

Coding of the story phases involved finding the boundaries of the climax. The

beginning of the climax was at the beginning of the utterance in which the storyteller conveys

the affectively loaded point of the story. In a number of cases – for example extract 2 to be

shown below – the storyteller prolonged the climax phase by delivering several affectively

loaded utterances hearably conveying the ‘point’, and we included all of them in the climax.

The end of the climax was at the end of the turn where the recipient receives the tellers (last)

utterance that conveyed the point; in case on no uptake, the utterances where the storyteller

pursues the point (without moving towards what the coder has taken as the evaluation phase)

and the recipients’ responses to them were also included in the climax. In coding of the

valence ‘happy’ included a variety of positive stances, including for example funny.

Likewise, ‘sad’ included a variety of negative stances. Ambivalent stories involved clear

emotional stances but, in them, positive and negative were mixed (see Voutilainen et al.

2014).

The fact that the stories, as ‘end products’ of conversation, are interactionally

generated, amounts to ambiguity in phase boundaries: for example, in extract 2 below, an

argument could be made for coding as “evaluation” a part of the phase that is now coded as

“climax”. To test the reliability of our coding, seven out of 20 discussions were randomly

selected and coded for narratives twice. Stories were converted into one second segments, to

which values were assigned according to the speaker, story valence and story phase.

Weighted kappa coefficient (Cohen 1968) was calculated for each double-coded story-telling.

Mean kappa value was .55 (.50–.67, SD=.05), which, according to Landis and Koch (1977),

indicates moderate agreement. Kappa value is influenced by prevalence effect in the data,

making large kappa scores hard to attain (Sim and Wright 2005). The prevalence effect

(calculated as the ratio of most prevalent code (neutral) to all code instances) was .85.

Correcting the kappa values for prevalence increased mean kappa score to .67.

The second stage of the coding focused on the reception of the stories. For each story,

we coded 10 recipient actions. These were meant to cover the “repertoire” of actions that the

story recipient (in Finnish language and in Euro-American culture) has at her disposal for

behaviourally showing that she is attending to, understanding, and/or affiliating with the

story.

The coding scheme for story reception is presented in Table 1. Ten items were

organized into three fields of expression (minimal responses, full verbal responses and non-

verbal responses).¹ Story reception was coded separately for each phase of the story. The fact

that the stories (and their phases) were of different length, posed a challenge for the validity

of the coding: the longer stories would probably contain more response items, even when the

recipient would not in fact be any more affiliative or active than the recipient of a shorter

story. To minimize the effect of the variation of the length, we only coded whether or not a

given item (such as “epistemic news-marker” or “sequentially adequate, affiliative change in

face”) occurred at all during a given phase of a given story. In other words, two or more

occurrences of the same item during a story phase (i.e., two or more “epistemic news

markers” during the “build-up” of a particular story) did not change the coding from what it

was at the first occurrence of the item. Thereby, we hoped to minimize the bias arising from

the differentiation in the length of the stories.

A total of 35 percent of the responses were double coded. Kappa coefficient was

calculated separately for all responses in all phases. Mean of kappa values was .61 (SD=.15, .

38–.71; for kappa coefficients of individual response items, see Table 2 below). Prevalence-

adjusted kappa value was .79.

Responsiveness as a Measure of Affiliation

To illustrate the differences in the degree to which story recipients may display affiliation

with the storytellers, we will present two examples with different amounts of recipient

responsiveness.² Extract 1 below is an example of a story with a passive recipient. The

transcript of the interaction, with English translation, is shown on the left, while the phases of

the story and the recipient action codes are shown on the right. In this instance, the recipient

response involved only a nod during the buildup, and a continuer during the buildup.

Extract 1. Passive story reception

1 A: well I mean (0.4) I’ve too (.) tskhh (0.4)

2 well (.) a friend of mine (.) went to exchange to Italy

3 at some point and found there a man and stayed there

NODS 4 .hhh (.) and so at the beginning we kept

5 in touch a lot but then tha:t ↑ has somehow stopped

6 and then that man of hers is a bit annoying .hhh (.)

Buildup  -­‐ Nod

7 or >somehow that< always when they’re in Finland (.).hh(.)

8 if she’s with that (.) man of hers so she can’t

9 leave that man behind for a second and that man

10 is terribly somehow (.) .mhhh (.) attention-seeking

11 (.) and (.) then (.) m- so (.) like >somehow<

12 he just has to be part of the conversation all the time

13 and somehow that .hhh (.) -----------------------------------------------------------------

14 then I’m a bit so that

15 like y:::a::::rrrhh .hhh= 16 B: =yeah.=

17 A: =but then .hh (0.4) so (.) well (.) I don’t know and

18 then it’s somehow (.) >so that< (.) every now and then

19 I try to email her a bit but then she doesn’t (.) 20 m- reply that friend of mine somehow she’s not so good

21 at keeping contact so -----------------------------------------------------------------

22 then it’s a bit somehow

23 (.) .mhhh a pity (.)

In extract 2 below, the recipient is much more active. This story consists of buildup

and climax only; at the place where the evaluation could be (line 51), the recipient proceeds

to her own story (i.e., “second story”; see Sacks 1992:764–72) about her recent visit to the

same tourist resort. During both phases of the story, the recipient produces several responses.

Alongside standard CA notation, we have used facial symbols to indicate recipient’s smile

and surprised facial expressions.

Extract 2. Active story reception

Evaluation  -­‐-­‐  

Climax  -­‐ Continuer

1 A: I (.) I’ve >or you know mostly because I was:< on I

2 A: came on Tuesday evening I came from Ylläs where I’d been

3 for six days? or [you know (.)

4 B: [(↑◦wow◦)

5 A: well first of all this is (.) I’m like our<

6 A: >I don’t k < we have like these guilds?

NODS 7 B: ↑yeah I know.

8 A: like.

NODS 9 B: ↑yeah.

10 A: so we have krhm the paper engineers’ g- guild to which

11 I belong so I’m there like (0.3) our n: in the

12 co:uncil so that our, .hh

13 B: ↑a:h.

14 A: I have a kind of position?=like this,

NODS 15 B: ↑yeah? yeah.

16 A: in our (0.3) hh >we (had) all these<

17 B: (yeah.)

18 A: position >I’m sort of like< the minister of foreign

19 affairs? =but I’m like this person in charge of

20 international relations as we say.= and I sort of

NODS 21 take care of all our exchange students?

22 (.)

23 A: .hhh so and I was then with them there at Ylläsh. 24 B: ↑uuuh,

25 A: there were some chemists and electr[ic engineers too.

26 B: [was it a large group,

27 A: we were fifteen.

Buildup  -­‐ Continuer  -­‐ Epistemic  news-­‐  

marker  -­‐ Neutral  verbal  

response  -­‐ Nod  -­‐ Af:iliative  change  

in  face  

28 (.)

NODS

29 B: ↑yeah.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

30 A: so that was [(.) like <ridiculously great time>

31 B: [( ) nice.

32 A: and then £I’m still somehow hhe in those worlds

33 I haven’t £landed yet back to earth£. 34 B: [did you visit that (.) hovi. ((restaurant)) 35 A: [or back to reality.

                                36 A: you mean pohjanhovi.

37 B: yeah.=

38 A: =yeah we did,

39 A: nhe he

40 B: is there another it’s the [Pohjanhovi hall and

41 A: [yeah.

42 B: then there’s [that [Pohjanhovi

43 A: [yeah [there are [two of them 44 B: [yeah.

45 A: and so we visited that old one so.

46 B: yeah.

47 A: and we went snowmobile driving and?

48 A: mh I mean (.) snowboarding of course on two days and.

49 A: [this sort of thing so

50 B: [↑well oh my, 51 B: wo:w

52 A: my how it was fun.

Climax  -­‐ Continuer  

-­‐ Epistemic  news-­‐marker  

-­‐ Response  cry  -­‐ Neutral  verbal  

response  -­‐ Af:iliating  verbal  

response  -­‐ Af:iliative  change  

in  face  -­‐ Epistemic  change  

in  face

----------------------------------------------------------------------- End of story

53 B: I just vi[sited like (.) Ylläs too,

54 A: [mh he

55 A: yeah.

We considered the story reception in Extract 2 as more affiliative than the story

reception in Extract 1. We assumed that the story-teller monitors this affiliation or lack of it in

a ‘holistic’ way, attending to the overall stance display rather than each separate recipient

action. To measure the overall affiliation, we constructed a composite variable in which the

10 recipient actions are combined. We wanted our composite variable to be sensitive to (1)

the capacity of different recipient actions to convey affiliation, (2) the difference between

phases of storytelling in terms of relevancy of affiliation displays.

As for the capacity of different recipient actions to convey affiliation, we gave a

weight to each recipient activity; the weight reflected our understanding, based on prior CA

research summarized above, of the centrality of each recipient action in the display of

affiliation. The weights allocated to different responses are shown in Table 1 below.

Table 1 About Here

Based on the single item weights shown in Table 1, an overall score for the display of

affiliation in each phase buildup, climax, and evaluation of a given story was calculated by

summing up the weights of all recipient actions that occurred in a given phase of a story. As

for the difference between phases of storytelling in terms of relevancy of affiliation displays,

we presumed that climax of the story is the environment where the display of affiliation is

particularly relevant. If the recipient does not affiliate at the climax, the story has failed.

Therefore, we emphasized the climax weight through multiplying by two the score initially

given to the climax. Furthermore, there was one particular recipient action nod that,

according to the existing literature, may have different “semantics” at different phases of the

stories. Therefore, we also adjusted the affiliative weight of nods so that in buildup they score

3, and in climax and evaluation 1.³

Physiological Measures

During the conversations, psychophysiological activity was measured from both participants

using two Varioport-B mobile physiological data collection systems (Becker Meditec,

Karlsruhe, Germany). The measured signals included electrodermal activity (EDA),

electrocardiography (ECG), facial electromyography (EMG), and movement of the torso. In

the present paper, we used only data on electrodermal activity and movement of the torso. As

our hypothesis concerns the arousal dimension of emotion, and not valence, facial EMG, an

indicator of emotional valence, is here irrelevant. In a preliminary exploration, we did not

find an association between heart rate and affiliation. However, heart rate is influenced by

both the sympathetic (activates during arousal) and parasympathetic (not related to arousal)

branches of the autonomous nervous system, making it sensitive to changes in a multitude of

different mental and bodily processes, which are quite impossible to control during natural

conversation. For example, an increase in heart rate can arise from an increase in sympathetic

activity, a decrease in parasympathetic activity, or a combination of both (Berntson et al.

2007). This makes heart rate an ambiguous index of physiological arousal. EDA, influenced

only by the sympathetic system, is less ambiguous. Therefore we chose to use only EDA as

an indicator of arousal.

Electodermal activity was sampled at 32 Hz with a constant voltage of 0.5 V though

wet Ag/AgCl electrodes placed on the middle phalanges of the index and middle fingers of

the non-dominant hand. The signal was smoothed with an adaptive Gaussian filter, separated

into tonic and phasic components, and downsampled to a 4-Hz series using the Ledalab

toolbox (Benedek and Kaernbach 2010). Means of phasic electrodermal activity were used in

the statistical analysis. Movement was calculated from a 3D accelometer signal sampled at

128 Hz with the sensor fixed in the central torso. Acceleration in the X, Y, and Z axes was

high-pass filtered at 0.1 Hz, rectified, and averaged into an RMS value.

Rating the Emotional Intensity and Recipient Empathy in the Stories

As an additional measure, all stories were rated regarding the intensity of emotion in the

teller, and the empathy showed by the story recipient. Four raters coming from the same

social group (students in higher education) as the research participants rated stories from a

computer screen in a randomized order. All stories were rated by two raters; each rater rated

50 percent of the stories. The rating was based on the subjective impression regarding the

strength of the feeling that the story conveys; the strength was assessed on a 5-point Likert

scale ranging from 1 (lowest intensity) to 5 (highest intensity). Interclass correlation for

ratings was .81. For rating the empathy in the story recipient, three independent raters (also

students in higher education) each rated all stories from a computer screen. Using a 9-point

Likert scale ranging from 1 (lowest empathy) to 9 (highest empathy), they assessed the

degree to which the recipient of each story shared and empathized with the storyteller’s

emotion. Interclass correlation for ratings was .70.

Self-Reported Experience

After discussions, subjects reported their subjective feelings about them rating the following

statements on a 5-point scale (1 = totally disagree, 5 = totally agree): “The discussion felt

frustrating” and “I believe that my discussion partner was friendly/empathetic to me”.

Statistical Data Analysis

Mean phasic electrodermal activity during stories was analyzed with the Linear Mixed

Models (LMM) procedure in SPSS (version 20.0.1). This method allows estimation of fixed

and random effects on the variation of the dependent variable. Unlike the standard analysis of

variance, the LMM procedure utilises a restricted maximum likelihood estimation, which

allows the number of instances (in this case stories) coming from different research subjects

to be different. Role (teller/recipient), affiliative response score, speaking time, and Role ×

Affiliative Response and Role × Speaking Time interactions (i.e., whether the effects are

different in the teller and recipient) were specified as fixed effects in the model. Intercept was

specified as a random effect, using participant nested within dyad as subject, thus allowing

individual participant effects to vary. To take into account that the dyad members and

different stories from the same person are not independent, repeated measures covariance

structure was estimated with participant nested within dyad specified as the subject variable

and story number specified as the repeated variable. First order autoregressive model (AR1)

was used as the covariance structure for the residuals. Movement and phasic electrodermal

activity during a local baseline (30-second segment before the onset of a story) were included

as covariates. Speech time of a participant during a story was calculated as a percentage of

the total story’s time and adjusted using Fisher’s z transformation. Square roots of phasic

electrodermal activity (story and baseline), movement, and the weighted affiliative response

score were used in the analysis to ensure normality of the distributions.

RESULTS

Stories and Their Reception

Our data of 20 video-recorded discussions yielded in total 317 stories, with the average

length of 59.17 sec. Out of these, 95 were coded as happy, 89 as sad, and 89 as ambivalent. In

addition, the valence of 44 stories was coded as ‘other’. The latter were usually about non-

personal topics and did not make relevant affiliation in ways similar to happy, sad or

ambivalent stories. Therefore, they are not included in the present analysis.

Regarding the story recipients’ responses, we first examined the distribution of the 10

responsive actions in the stories, and across the different phases of the stories. The first

observation is that continuers are the most frequent response (92% of stories), followed by

nods (88%), affiliative changes in face (75%) and affective minimal responses (65%). The

two least frequent responses are affective gestures (10%) and response cries (13%).

Presuming that the main work of continuers is to regulate turn taking rather than affect, it

seems plausible that the affective work that our story recipients do is most often

accomplished by means of nods, face and affective minimal responses.

As earlier CA research would predict, some of the responses seem to have their “home

bases” in distinct story phases, while others are more evenly distributed (Table 2). Thus, non-

affective verbal responses occur most often in buildup; affective minimal responses occur

much more frequently in climax and evaluation than in buildup; response cries occur most

frequently in climaxes, and affective verbal responses as well as affective gestures occur

particularly often in evaluations. Nods as response type are most evenly distributed across the

story phases.

Table 2 About Here

Assessing the Validity of the Weighted Response Score

To test the validity and predictive power of our composite variable (weighted response

score), we compared the ratings of empathy in story recipients with the results yielded by the

weighted response score that was meant to measure recipient affiliation. We would consider

our composite variable as a valid measure of affiliation only if it would correlate positively

with naïve raters’ perception of recipient empathy. The Pearson correlation of the weighted

response score with recipient empathy ratings (mean of three raters) over all stories was

calculated. The weighted response score had high predictive power (Correlation = .53, R²=.

28).

In assessing the validity of the response score, a further critical question concerns the

theory-based weightings of the items in the response score (see Table 1 above). These

weightings may appear as arbitrary, and therefore, we wanted to know whether the naïve

raters’ perception of recipients’ empathy would correlate more with the weighted or an

unweighted score (i.e. a score where all recipient actions shown in table 1 would receive

equal affiliative weight). Comparing our weighted score to an unweighted score using the

formula for comparing correlations measured on the same subjects (Steiger 1980), we found

that the Pearson correlation coefficient of the unweighted score with the mean of the recipient

empathy ratings (Correlation = .49, R²=.23) was lower than that of the weighted score

(Z=2.15, p<.05). In other words, the predictive power, regarding naïve raters’ perception of

empathy, was higher for the weighted than for the non-weighted score. Furthermore, we

speculated that only some of the recipient actions, shown in table 1, might produce the naïve

raters’ perception of recipient empathy. A candidate for such subclass of recipient actions

would involve only openly affective responses (affective minimal response, response cry,

affiliative change in face, affiliative verbal response, affiliative gesture). To find this out, we

calculated the Pearson correlation coefficient of an unweighted score based on these openly

affective responses only, with the mean of the recipient empathy ratings, and found that it

was lower (Correlation = .44, R²=.20) than the weighted score (Z=3.581, p<.001).

In conclusion, our weighted response score seems to be a valid measure for measuring

story recipient affiliation. We can now move on to consider our precise research question:

how is the recipient affiliation related to physiological arousal in the participants?

Recipient Affiliation and Physiological Arousal

Using our composite variable as an index of recipient affiliation during story-telling, we can

now test our hypotheses according to which increased recipient affiliation involves (1)

decreased physiological arousal in the story teller but (2) increased arousal in the recipient.

We used the weighted response score as a continuous independent variable, explaining the

variation in electrodermal activity.

We illustrate the results by considering the stories that were told in the discussion of

two example dyads. The story shown above in Extract 1 belongs to Dyad 1 and the story that

was shown in Extract 2 belongs to Dyad 2. In Figures 2 and 3 below, we have plotted the skin

conductance levels of the tellers and the recipients of each story in these dyads. By indicating

the values associated to the particular stories in Extracts 1 and 2 above, Figures 2 and 3 also

illustrate the linkage between the spoken data and quantitative research results. Table 3 (see

below) shows the regression slope values for both participants in both roles (as teller and as

recipient) in these two dyads.

Figure 1 About Here

Figure 2 About Here

Table 3 About Here

Figures 1 and 2, and the corresponding Table 3, show that in both dyads the tellers’

slopes are negative and the recipients’ slopes are positive. This means that when a story

evoked a higher affiliative response score (i.e., the recipient is more affiliative), electrodermal

activity in the storyteller tended to be lower and in the story recipient higher.

In assessing the possible linkages between affiliation and arousal over all stories in

our data, we wanted to control the possibility that the changes in the arousal could result from

the mere activity of speaking. Speaking as a physical activity is likely to increase the

speaker’s physiological activation, independently of affiliation. As affective and non-affective

verbal responses are included in the composite variable indexing affiliation, and given that

they are present in 49 and 34 percent of stories respectively, it would in principle be possible

that any difference in the arousal between high- and low-affiliation cases would be a result of

the different distribution of speaking time in these cases. To control for the effects of

speaking, we included the individual speaking times during a story (measured by a

stopwatch) as a covariate in the analysis.

The results of the statistical analysis over all stories in our data are presented in Table

4. The main effect of role was statistically significant (for teller, M = .36 µS, SE = .02; for

recipient, M = .34 µS, SE = .03) However, this main effect was qualified by a significant

interaction between role and the weighted affiliative response score indicating a negative

relationship between the affiliative response score and phasic electrodermal activity in the

teller, but a positive relationship in the recipient (for Teller × Affiliative Response Score,

estimate = –.04, t(447.96) = -2.26, p = .025; recipient = reference category). That is, as the

affiliative responsiveness during storytelling increased, the teller’s phasic electrodermal

activity diminished, whereas the recipient’s increased. Both phasic electrodermal activity

during local baseline and physical movement were also significant. Other effects were not

significant.

Table 4 About Here

We also wanted to know whether the emotional intensity of the story would have an

effect on the relation between affiliation shown by the recipient, and the degree of arousal in

both participants. Our coding scheme for stories focused on the valence and the phases of the

stories, and not on their emotional intensity. Therefore, in an additional analysis, we used the

mean of the two naïve raters’ scores regarding emotional intensity as covariate, and found

that it was not significant, and did not change the main results. In other words, the direction

and significance of the relation between affiliative response score and phasic electrodermal

activity remain as reported above, regardless the emotional intensity of the story.

Furthermore, we wanted to know whether the valence of the stories would alter the effect that

the affiliation has on arousal. Therefore, we tested the statistical model by including Story

valence and Story valence × Affiliative response interaction as predictors. Both effects were

insignificant, while the original effect significance levels remained unaltered.

Recipient’s Overall Affiliativeness and Teller’s Subjective Experience

We also examined the relationship of the display of affiliation with self-reported subjective

experience of the participants. Using the actor-partner interdependence model of Kenny,

Kashy, and Cook (2002), we estimated the actor and partner effects of affiliative

responsiveness on the two self-report items. For each individual participant, the median value

of her weighted affiliative response scores was used as an index of her overall affiliativeness.

We observed that those participants whose partners showed more affiliation were less likely

to report that the discussion felt frustrating (β = –.78, SE =.37, t(25.49) = –2.14, p < .05) and

more likely to report that the partner was friendly/empathetic to them (β =.61, SE =.24,

t(30.1) = 2.48, p < .05). Likewise, those whose partners showed less affiliation, were more

likely to report that the discussion felt frustrating and less likely to report that the partner was

friendly/empathetic to them.

DISCUSSION

A neglected aspect of Goffman’s (1983) conceptualization of social interaction served as the

theoretical point of departure for the study at hand: we set out to explore what he called the

inevitable psychobiological element in social interaction. Focusing on storytelling and

especially on responses to stories, Beebe and Lachmann’s (2002) dyadic systems view

offered more precise conceptual tools. We examined how particular inteactional moves –

displays of affiliation – affect the inner state – physiological arousal – in the persons who

produce these actions and in the persons who monitor them. We found a pattern in this. Thus,

on a general level, our findings conform to the dyadic systems view of interaction proposed

by Beebe and Lachman. More specifically, the results explicate a specific configuration of the

interdependence of the self- and interactional regulation of emotion in the specific activity

context of storytelling.

The changes in the participants’ levels of arousal follow the pattern we suggested in

our “sharing of the emotional load” hypotheses: increased affiliation decreases the

storyteller’s arousal (hypothesis 1), and increases the story recipient’s arousal (hypothesis 2).

Our results suggest that the monitoring of the recipient’s affiliative response reverberates in

the storyteller’s body: she responds to the recipient’s (lack of) affiliation through changes in

her physiological arousal. Also the story recipient’s degree of arousal is linked to the strength

of the affiliation that she offers to the storyteller. The significance of the interactional display

of affiliation is also reflected in the participants’ self-reported subjective experience in ways

that are in line with the main result: increased affiliation in the co-participant is associated

with a decrease in self-reported frustration and an increase in perceived partner’s friendliness

towards the subject.

It was the storytellers’ (and not the story recipients’) part in this picture that was

hardest to predict. In the storyteller, the direction of the influence of affiliation is as we

predicted on the basis of behavioral CA research on response pursuits in storytelling and

Butler’s et al. (2003) psychophysiological work on social consequences of withholding

emotional response: it is the lack of affiliation that actives storyteller, while affiliation calms

him/her down. The alternative view, according to which increased arousal would be a

physiological correlate to the ‘buzz’ experienced in interactions with high entrainment (cf.

Collins 2005), did not get support from our data. However, given the intuitive appeal of the

interaction ritual theory, our results invite further work on the asymmetries in emotional

engagement, and the physiological and experiential consequences of these asymmetries. In

discussing power relations in interaction, Collins (2005) indeed alludes to the possibility of

something that comes close to our finding: he suggests that in some interactional

circumstances -- when a participant cannot quite coordinate the responses of the other – she

can respond with anger, which involves “a temporary increase in the output of [emotional

energy]” (p. 119). Even though our focus on arousal does not make distinction between

specific emotions (such as anger, sadness or joy), the dynamics that Collins describes may

share something with the interactional asymmetry we have described, where a storyteller

does not receive affiliation from the recipient and reacts with arousal.

In our study design, the overt interactional display of affiliation was the independent

variable, and the degree of arousal was the dependent variable. We should emphasize,

however, that our theoretical understanding is systemic rather than linear. We understand that

dyadic interaction in storytelling involves interplay between participants who monitor each

other’s action, so that the overt expressions of one party serve as the context for the

expressions of the other party, and simultaneously, that these overt expressions regulate the

physiological state of the co-participant and the actor herself. Furthermore, the physiological

state of a participant serves as context for her own moment-by-moment expressive

behaviours, as these behaviours involve also efforts to regulate this physiological state. An

overall empirical description of these dyadic and cross-modal (from expression to

physiology, or vice versa) relations of contextualization and regulation is beyond the scope of

this study; and it may indeed be beyond the reach of the scientific methods that we have at

hand.

The methodological novelty of this study arises from the fact that we combined two

very different traditions, CA and the psychophysiological research tradition. While the results

reported here and in other recent work (Voutilainen et al. 2014) bear witness to the gains of

such combination, it is evident that we have also lost some of the assets of these two

traditions. When it comes to CA, our coding and counting approach entails that we obviously

could not accommodate the fine and variable organization of each individual story in our

database. For example, we did not examine separately each transition relevance place (each

sequentially provided opportunity for response), nor did we make distinction between

different designs of affiliative full verbal responses. Our coding needed to be simple, robust,

and reliable enough across coders (cf. Stivers 2015).

From the perspective of the psychophysiological research tradition, the validity of our

findings needs to be viewed in the context of the type of data used in our research. Our data

were obtained in a semi-naturalistic, non-experimental setting. This made it necessary to use

a complex statistical model to estimate the effects of interest. Standard measures of effect

size and test power were not available. It was obvious, however, that, although statistically

significant, the associations found in the present study were not very strong. Furthermore, the

dyadic effects inherent in the data are assessed only by allowing measures from both

participants of a dyad to correlate. In reality, these effects might be dynamically unfolding in

time and possibly nonlinear in nature. However, to our knowledge, the use of statistical

models accommodating these structures would be infeasible in this context. The results we

got should be tested in further studies employing strictly experimental designs.

Even though the biological anchoring of emotion has been well acknowledged in

important branches of sociology of emotions (see especially Turner 2000; Turner and Stets

2005:261 et seq.), interactional sociology and social psychology, especially CA, has thus far

failed to investigate the interconnections between interactional practices and their biological

underpinnings. In CA, focus has been exclusively in what is publicly displayed – verbally,

vocally, gesturally or facially – and the “inner processes” – be they physiological, neural or

even subjective-experiential -- have been methodologically bracketed. This methodology has

indeed yielded impressive, cumulative descriptions on the social organization of emotion

displays (Peräkylä and Sorjonen 2012). On the other hand, our increased knowledge on the

organization of emotional expression in interaction has remained disconnected from the

knowledge regarding the biological processes pertaining to emotion, produced in other fields

of study. On the most general level, this paper has thus been an effort to build a bridge over

this theoretical and methodological gap. In our mind, the fact that we were able to specify a

connection between the organization of public display of emotion and the autonomic nervous

system responses in the participants shows that this effort has been worthwhile and should be

continued.

Supplemental Material

Additional supporting information may be found at [the publisher website].

Appendix A

Data extracts with Finnish original transcription and morphemic glosses

Extract 1: passive story reception 1 A: no siis (0.4) on mulki tota (.) .mthh (0.4) PRT PRT is me-too PRT well I mean (0.4) I’ve too (.) tskhh (0.4) 2 no (.) mun yks kaveri (.) lähti vaihtoon italiaan PRT my one friend left to-exchange to-italy well (.) a friend of mine (.) went to exchange to Italy

3 jossain vaihees ja löys sielt miehen ja jäi sinne somewhere at-stage and found there man and stayed there at some point and found there a man and stayed there

NODS 4 .hhh (.) ja siis jotenki niinku aluks me pidettiin and PRT somehow PRT at-beginning we kept .hhh (.) and so at the beginning we kept

5 tosi paljon yhteyttä mut sit se ↑on jotenki jääny really much contact but then it is somehow left in touch a lot but then tha:t ↑ has somehow stopped 6 ja sit se sen mies on pikkasen är:syttävä .hhh (.) and then it her man is little annoying and then that man of hers is a bit annoying .hhh (.) 7 tai >jotenki et< aina ku ne suomessa (.) .hhh (.) or somehow that always when they in-finland or >somehow that< always when they’re in Finland (.).hh(.) 8 jos se on sen (.) miehen kanssa niin se ei voi if it is that man with PRT it not able if she’s with that (.) man of hers so she can’t 9 jättää sitä miestä sekunniks minnekkään ja se mies leave that man for-a-second anywhere and it man leave that man behind for a second and that man 10 on kauhee jotenki (.) .mhhh (.) huomion kipee is terribly somehow attention sick is terribly somehow (.) .mhhh (.) attention-seeking

                   Buildup  – Nod

11 (.) ja (.) sit (.) m- tota (.) sillee >jotenki et< and then PRT PRT somehow PRT (.) and (.) then (.) m- so (.) like >somehow< 12 sen on pakko olla koko ajan osallisena keskustelussa it’s is must be whole time taking-part conversation he just has to be part of the conversation all the time 13 ja jotenki et .hhh (.) and somehow PRT and somehow that .hhh (.) -----------------------------------------------------------------

14 sit mä oon vähän sillee then I am little PRT then I’m a bit so that 15 et y:::a::::rrrhh .hhh= that

like y:::a::::rrrhh .hhh= 16 B: =nii.= PRT =yeah.= 17 A: =mut tota .hh (0.4) nii (.) no (.) emmä tiiä ja but PRT PRT PRT I-don’t know and =but then .hh (0.4) so (.) well (.) I don’t know and 18 sit se on jotenki (.) >sillee et< (.) aina välillä PRT it is somehow PRT that always sometimes then it’s somehow (.) >so that< (.) every now and then 19 mä yritän jotain meilailla sille mut ei se sit (.) I try something email to-that but not it then I try to email her a bit but then she doesn’t (.) 20 m- vastaa se mun kaveri jotenki se on vähän huono reply it my friend somehow it is little bad m- reply that friend of mine somehow she’s not so good 21 pitää yhteyttä ni keeping contact PRT at keeping contact so ----------------------------------------------------------------- 22 sit se on kans vähän sillee

PRT it is also a-little somehow then it’s a bit somehow 23 (.) .mhhh harmi (.) pity (.) .mhhh a pity (.)

Evaluation  -­‐-­‐  

                   Climax  – Continuer

Extract 2: active story reception

1 A: mä (.) mul on >tai siis lähinnä sen takia et mä olin:< I I-have or PRT nearest because-of that I was I (.) I’ve >or you know mostly because I was:< on I

2 A: mä tulin: tiistai iltana Yllä:kseltä mis mä olin I came tuesday evening from-place where I was came on Tuesday evening I came from Ylläs where I’d been

3 kuus päivää? tai [siis (.) six days or PRT for six days? or [you know (.)

4 B: [(↑◦uuu◦)

5 A: no ensinnäkin tää on (.) mä oon meiän niinku< PRT first-ly this is I am our PRT well first of all this is (.) I’m like our<

6 A: >mäent < meil on siis nää killat? I-don’t we have PRT these guilds >I don’t k < we have like these guilds?

NODS 7 B: ↑joo tiiän. PRT I-know ↑yeah I know.

8 A: niinku. PRT like.

NODS 9 B: ↑joo. PRT ↑yeah.

10 A: ni meil on kröh paperi insinööriki- kilta mihin PRT we is paper engineering guild to-which so we have krhm the paper engineers’ g- guild to which

11 mä kuulun ni mä oon siel niinku (0.3) meiän nn siel I belong PRT I am there PRT our there I belong so I’m there like (0.3) our n: in the

12 raa:dissa elikkä niinku meiän, .hh in-council PRT PRT our co:uncil so that our, .hh

13 B: ↑aa.

14 A: mul on niinku virka?=siis tämmönen, I is PRT position PRT this-kind-of I have a kind of position?=like this,

                   Buildup  – Continuer  – Epistemic  news-­‐  – marker  – Neutral  verbal  response  

– Nod  – Af:iliative  change  in  face  

NODS 15 B: ↑joo? joo. PRT PRT ↑yeah? yeah.

16 A: meiän siäl (0.3) hh >meil (oli) kaikkii näit< our there we-have had all-of these in our (0.3) hh >we (had) all these<

17 B: (joo.) PRT (yeah.)

18 A: virka >mä oon tavallaan niinku< ulko- position I am in-a-manner PRT foreign position >I’m sort of like< the minister of foreign

19 ministeri?= mut mä oon niinku tämmönen minister but I am PRT this-kind-of affairs? =but I’m like this person in charge of 20 ulkovastaava on meil se termi.=ja m:ä pidän niinku

out-responsible is our it term and I hold PRT international relations as we say.= and I sort of

NODS 21 huolta kaikist meiän vaihto opiskelijoista?

care all-of our exchange students take care of all our exchange students?

22 (.)

23 A: .hhh ja sit mä olin niitten kaa siel Ylläkselläh. and then I was them with there place-at .hhh so and I was then with them there at Ylläsh.

24 B: ↑uuuh,

25 A: oli siel kemialaisiiki ja oli sikki[läisiiki vähän. were there chemists-also and were eeg-members-too some there were some chemists and electr[ic engineers too. 26 B: [oliks iso porukka, was big group [was it a large group,

27 A: meit oli viistoista. us was fifteen we were fifteen. 28 (.)

NODS

29 B: ↑joo. PRT ↑yeah. ---------------------------------------------------------------------

30 A: ni siel oli [(.) ihan <sairaan kivaa> PRT there was PRT sick fun so that was [(.) like <ridiculously great time>

31 B: [( ) kiva. nice [( ) nice.

32 A: ja sit mä oon vieläki jotenki hhe ihan niis maailmois and then I am still somehow totally those in-worlds

and then £I’m still somehow hhe in those worlds

33 et mä en oo viel £las↑keutunu maan pinnalle£. PRT I not am yet landed earth ground I haven’t £landed yet back to earth£.

34 B: [kävitsä siel (.) Hovissa. visit-you there name [did you visit that (.) hovi. ((restaurant)) 35 A: [tai palautunu todellisuuteen. or returned to-reality [or back to reality.

                              36 A: ai pohjanhovissa. PRT name you mean pohjanhovi.

37 B: joo.= PRT yeah.=

38 A: =joo käytiin, PRT visit-we-did =yeah we did, 39 A: nhe he

40 B: onks siel to:inenki se on se [Pohjanhovi halli ja is there another it is it name hall and is there another it’s the [Pohjanhovi hall and

41 A: [joo. PRT [yeah. 42 B: sit on [se [Pohjanhovi then is that name then there’s [that [Pohjanhovi

43 A: [joo [niit on [kaks PRT them-of is two [yeah [there are [two of them 44 B: [joo. PRT [yeah.

45 A: ni kyl me käytiin siel vanhas nii. PRT yes we visited there old PRT

                   Climax  – Continuer  – Epistemic  news-­‐  marker  

– Response  cry  – Neutral  verbal  response  

– Af:iliating  verbal  response  

– Af:iliative  change  in  face  

– Epistemic  change  in  face

and so we visited that old one so.

46 B: joo. PRT yeah.

47 A: ja käytiin moottorikelkkailemassa ja? and visited driving-snowmobile and and we went snowmobile driving and?

48 A: mh tuota (.) lautailemassa tietty kahten päivän ja. PRT boarding of course on-two days and mh I mean (.) snowboarding of course on two days and.

49 A: [tällast näin ni this-like PRT PRT [this sort of thing so

50 B: [↑no noni, PRT PRT [↑well oh my,

51 B: wa:u

52 A: voi että siellä oli kivaa. oh that there was fun my how it was fun.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- End of story

53 B: mäki kä[vin just niinku (.) Ylläksellä, I-too visited recently PRT name I just vi[sited like (.) Ylläs too,

54 A: [mh he

55 A: joo. PRT yeah.

Appendix B

A detailed description of the codes for story reception

The coding scheme for story reception is presented in Table 1. Ten items were organized into

three fields of expression (minimal responses, full verbal responses and non-verbal

responses).

Minimal responses involve brief vocalizations. (1) Continuers are minimal vocal responses

that indicate that the story recipient is listening and expects the storyteller to continue. (2)

Epistemic news-markers treat a just-preceding item in the storyteller’s talk as newsworthy.

Often they involve a specific particle, or such ahaa, which could be translated “I see”. An

emphatic prosodic contour with a specific rise-fall pitch movement can render also other

vocalizations recognizable as epistemic news-markers. (3) Affective minimal responses

convey emotional stance towards he events that are being told. They are distinguishable

primarily by their empathetic prosodic design: they are produced in the lower part of the

speaker’s voice range and involve a decrease in pitch and a reduction in loudness towards the

end of the response token. (4) Response cries are conventional forceful expressions of

surprise, disbelief or revulsion such as oho / “oh”, eikä / “oh no” or huh / “wow”.

Full verbal responses include clausal or sentential utterances. (5) Verbal responses neutral

regarding the teller’s stance include mostly requests for information, and other non-

emotional utterances that convey attentiveness to and appreciation of the story, without

reciprocating the teller’s emotion. This class also includes verbal responses that do involve

affect but such that it is peripheral to the teller’s stance: not targeting the point that the

storyteller seems to be conveying. (6) Verbal responses affiliating with the teller’s stance

were affective and targeted the teller’s point and stance.

Among the non-verbal responses, (7) nods involved a vertical head movement down and

then back up. In coding facial expression, we focussed exclusively on changes in face that

were overtly responsive to the storyteller’s actions. (8) Sequentially adequate affiliative

changes in face were mostly smiles. (9) Sequentially adequate epistemic changes in face

involved movements of brows, eyes and mouth that conveyed surprise or astonishment. (10)

Sequentially adequate affiliative gestures were movements of body parts that seemed to

display the recipient’s affiliation with what the teller was telling. A head shake was the most

common of them.

Appendix C

An account on how we calculated the affiliation scores for Extracts 1 and 2

The affiliation score in buildup of Extract 1 is three (it comes from the nod shown in the

right column of the transcript), the score of affiliation in climax of Extract 1 is one (coming

from the continuer shown in the right column), and the score in evaluation is zero (as there is

no coded recipient action during the evaluation). Likewise, the scores for affiliation in

Extract 2 are the following: buildup =11 (coming from continuer, epistemic news marker,

nonaffective verbal response, nod and affiliative change in face) and climax = 21 (including

all responses present in the buildup except nod and adding response cry, affective verbal

response and epistemic change in face).

An overall score for affiliation was calculated for each story by adding up scores of each

story phase; the score initially given to climax was multiplied by two. Furthermore, because

some stories (such as Extract 2 above) did not have an evaluative phase at all, we divided the

sum of affiliation scores by 4 in stories with evaluation, and by 3 in stories without

evaluation. Thus, the overall score of affiliation for Extract 1 is 1.25 [(3 + 2x1 + 0)/4] and the

overall score for affiliation in Extract 2 is 17,7 [(11 + 2x21)/3].

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Maari Kivioja for participation in the data collection, and Riitta Hari,

John Heritage, Douglas W. Maynard, Federico Rossano, and the members of the Finnish

Centre of Excellence on Intersubjectivity in Interaction for their helpful comments in the data

sessions and seminars of the project.

Funding

The research was funded by Academy of Finland (project 1132303) and the Finnish Centre of

Excellence in the Research on Intersubjectivity in Interaction.

Notes

¹ The more detailed content of the codes is explicated in online Supplemental Material,

Appendix B.

² See online Supplemental Material, Appendix A for more comprehensive versions of the

transcripts (including Finnish original transcript and morphemic glosses).

³ The calculation of the affiliation scores in Extracts 1 and 2 is explained in the online

Supplemental Material, Appendix C.

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Bios

Anssi Peräkylä is a professor of sociology in the Department of Social Research at the

University of Helsinki. His research topics include emotion in social interaction and

psychotherapy interaction. Working at the intersection between conversation analysis,

psychophysiology and psychoanalysis, his latest publications include Emotion in Interaction

(co-edited with Marja-Leena Sorjonen; Oxford University Press 2013) and From narcissism

to face work (AJS 2015).

Pentti Henttonen, research assistant and doctoral student at Center of Excellence in

Intersubjectivity in Interaction, University of Helsinki.  

Liisa Voutilainen is a postdoctoral researcher in the Finnish Centre of Excellence in the

Research on Intersubjectivity in Interaction, University of Helsinki. Her current research

topic is social interaction and psychophysiological emotion in psychotherapy. She has

previously published studies on psychotherapist’s empathy, therapeutic change, and

psychophysiology of ambivalent emotions in storytelling in e.g. Research on Language and

Social Interaction, Psychotherapy Research and Journal of Pragmatics.

Mikko Kahri, doctoral student in the Department of Social Research at the University of

Helsinki. While working on a doctoral dissertation on infant-caretaker interaction, he has

also worked with Professor Peräkylä's team on psychophysiology during conversational

interaction.

Melisa Stevanovic, post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Social Research at the

University of Helsinki. In her previous publications, she has considered how power and

authority are played out and oriented to in the moment-by-moment unfolding of social

interaction. In her current Academy of Finland funded project “Interpersonal coupling in

human social interaction”, she studies dyadic interactions where one participant has the

Asperger’s syndrome participants, while combining conversation analysis with quantitative

methods and experimental research designs.

Mikko Sams is a professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering

(NBE) of Aalto University. Currently, he is studying neurocognitive mechanisms of social

cognition and emotions.

Niklas Ravaja is a professor of social psychology at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and

is heading the Social Interaction and Emotion (SIE) research group at the Helsinki Institute

for Information Technology HIIT. He has also worked as a director of research at the School

of Business, Aalto University, Finland. His research interests include emotional processes and

mediated social interaction. His work has been published in journals, such as Health

Psychology, Journal of Knowledge Management, Media Psychology, and Journal of

Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics.

Tables

Table 1. Weights of recipient activities in the display of affiliation ___________________________________________________ RECIPIENT ACTION AFFILIATIVE WEIGHT Minimal responses

1. Continuers 1 2. Epistemic news-markers 2 3. Affective minimal responses 3 4. Response cries 5

Full verbal responses 5. Verbal responses neutral regarding the teller’s stance 3 6. Verbal responses affiliating with teller’s stance 5

Non-verbal responses 7. Nod 1-3 8. Sequentially adequate affiliative change in face 3 9. Sequentially adequate epistemic change in face 2 10. Sequentially adequate affiliative gesture, e.g headshake 2

_____________________________________________________

Table 2. Prevalence and coding reliability of individual response types

Response category Item Prevelance (n/ratio) Cohen's

Kappa

Buildup ClimaxEvaluati

on Full story

(265) (265) (210) (265)

Minimal response Continuer 196/0.74 196/0.74 122/0.57 243/0.92 0.71

Epistemic news-marker 49/0.18 26/0.10 21/0.10 72/0.27 0.60

Affective minimal response 60/0.23 116/0.44 88/0.42 172/0.65 0.38

Response cry 13/0.05 23/0.09 2/0.01 34/0.13 0.54

Verbal response

Neutral verbal response 24/0.09 14/0.05 68/0.32 90/0.34 0.56

Affiliating verbal response 13/0.05 42/0.16 103/0.49 130/0.49 0.66

Nonverbal response Nod 180/0.68 183/0.69 136/0.65 232/0.88 0.67

Affiliative change in face 103/0.39 152/0.57 81/0.39 197/0.75 0.67

Epistemic change in face 26/0.10 17/0.06 8/0.04 43/0.16 0.52

Affective gesture 5/0.02 7/0.03 17/0.08 26/0.10 0.48

Table 3. Unstandardized regression coefficients for Dyad 1 (Figure 1) and Dyad 2 (Figure 2) ______________________________________________ _DYAD 1_____________________ b Teller Person A -0.06 Person B -0.11 Recipient Person A 0.07 Person B 0.01 _____________________________ DYAD 2______________________ b Teller Person A -0.11 Person B -0.07 Recipient Person A 0.01 Person B 0.09 _____________________________________________

Table 4. Model predictors of skin conductance level during a story (Type III tests of fixed effects) _______________________________________________________________ Variable Estimate SE F df p Role 0.12a 0.05 6.49 1,448.41 .011 Affiliative response score 0.02 0.01 0.47 1,470.76 ns. Role × Affiliative -0.04a 0.02 5.09 1,447.96 .025 response score Physical movement 2.02 0.32 39.66 1,486.01 <.001 Local baseline 0.18 0.03 31.62 1,472.85 <.001 Speaking time 0.00 0.06 0.05 1,452.63 ns. Role × speaking -0.02a 0.07 0.10 1,462.81 ns. time ________________________________________________________________ ns. = non significant.

aRole = teller

Figures

    Teller           Recipient  

�  

Figure 1. The relationship of affiliative response score for the stories of Dyad 1 with electrodermal activity in the tellers (left panel) and recipients (right panel). Black circles = person A as a teller; white circles = person B as a teller; black squares = person A as a recipient; white squares = person B as recipient. Solid regression lines = person A as a teller and as a recipient; dashed regression line = person B as a teller and as a recipient. Circles and squares in triangle = story shown in Extract 1.

Teller Recipient

�  

Figure 2. The relationship of affiliative response score for the stories of Dyad 2 with electrodermal activity in the tellers (left panel) and recipients (right panel). Black circles = person A as a teller; white circles = person B as a teller; black squares = person A as a recipient; white squares = person B as a recipient. Solid regression lines = person A as a teller and as a recipient; dashed regression lines = person B as a teller and as a recipient. Circles and squares in a triangle = story shown in Extract 2.