Conceptualizing and Measuring Group Emotion

The concept of group emotions is relative to that of individual emotions. According to studies, even if a given event’s occurrence has nothing to do with an individual, the individual still manifests an emotional reaction (e.g., Cialdini in J Pers Soc Psychol 34:366–375, 1976). At the core of group relative deprivation theory, anger and hate are considered as the conceptualization of group emotions in the early stage of its formation (Smith and Kessler in The social life of emotions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004).