Positive Emotions Boost Enthusiastic Responsiveness to Capitalization Attempts. Dissecting Self-Report, Physiology, and Behavior

When individuals communicate enthusiasm for good events in their partners' lives, they contribute to a high-quality relationship; a phenomenon termed interpersonal capitalization. However, little is known when individuals are more ready to react enthusiastically to the partner's success. To address this gap, we examined whether positive and negative emotions boost or inhibit enthusiastic responses to partner's capitalization attempts (RCA). Participants (N = 224 individuals) responded to their partner's success. Before each capitalization attempt (operationalized as responses following the news that their partner won money in a game), we used video clips to elicit positive (primarily amusement) or negative (primarily anger) or neutral emotions in the responder. We recorded emotional valence, smiling intensity, verbal RCA, and physiological reactivity. We found indirect (but not direct) effects such that eliciting positive emotions boosted and negative emotions inhibited enthusiastic RCA (smiling intensity and enthusiastic verbal RCA). These effects were relatively small and mediated by emotional valence and smiling intensity but not physiological reactivity. The results offer novel evidence that positive emotions fuel the capitalization process.