Gelotophobia, emotion-related skills and responses to the affective states of others

Abstract

Gelotophobia (the fear of being laughed at) has recently been introduced as an individual difference variable that is not only relevant in clinical practice but also as part of a normal variant of personality. Observations of several emotion-related concomitants of gelotophobia suggested that gelotophobic individuals may be inapt or insecure with regard to the habitual use of certain emotion-related skills. We evaluated relationships of gelotophobia to measures of trait emotional intelligence and also examined participants’ responses to the affective states of another person in an experimental setting (exposure to emotionally contagious films displaying intense cheerfulness, sadness, anxiety, anger, or neutral mood). Individuals with high gelotophobia scores indicated that they feel relatively weak at regulating their emotions, and the attempts they typically make to manage their emotions are considered inefficient by experts. Accordingly, they showed a high degree of emotional contagion of negative moods. They also reported to have a strong tendency to control the expression of their emotions. Both self-report, typical-performance and experimental data only revealed differences in the use of intrapersonal emotion-related skills, but provided no evidence that gelotophobia may be related to deficits in interpersonal skills.