Emotions in direct and remote social interaction: Getting through the spaces between us

If emotions are oriented to other people’s actions and reactions, then their expression will be affected by available modes of access to interpersonal feedback. This theoretical review paper applies such a relation-alignment perspective to emotions experienced in co-present and remote interpersonal interactions. The role of actual, anticipated, and imagined responses of others in emotion maintenance and adjustment is highlighted. In particular, it is argued that different modes of interpersonal contact afford different styles of emotion presentation, and encourage distinctive varieties of emotional creativity. Thus, although emotion may take different forms in social arrangements distributed through a virtual world, this need not result in more limited forms of interpersonal contact.