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Definition
Soft emotion is a term that describes types of negative emotion that are associated with having pro-social goals and with the expression of interpersonal vulnerability. These emotions include feeling sad, hurt, concerned, and disappointed, and soft emotion plays a key role in theories regarding conflict in couples and other close interpersonal relationships.
Introduction
People often experience types of soft emotion, such as feeling sad or hurt, during interpersonal conflicts. Because soft emotion is associated with pro-social goals and expressions of vulnerability, it is presumed to be a key variable that can influence the process of conflict resolution. Soft emotion can be contrasted with hard emotion, which includes types of negative emotion involving feelings of anger, and hard emotion is associated with assertiveness and bids for power and dominance. On the one hand, both soft and hard emotions are similar in that they...
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References
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Sanford, K. (2016). Soft Emotions. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_553-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_553-1
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