Apologies, forgiveness and the social perception of emotions

From a semiotic perspective, expressions of emotions can be considered as a kind of language containing the same types of units and organization as spoken language. As such, expressions of emotions can be seen as explicit and compacted representations of information analogs of speech acts communicating various things about the expresser and/ or the situation. This language consists of a set of relatively distinctive signals, that is, expressions typically recognized by observers as representing a specific emotion. Each expression is associated with specific information about the internal state of the expressers, the way they evaluated the situation and their likely future actions. The interpretation of the meaning of the emotion expression is based on perceivers' naïve theory of the characteristic antecedents and consequences of specific emotions. However, the interpretation of perceived emotions depends not only on the message contained in the emotion but also on the context in which the expression was observed. This chapter exemplifies the working of this language in the context of apologies, forgiveness and social perception more generally. Specifically, knowing which emotion drove a person's apology, observers use their naïve knowledge of emotions to decide whether the person should be forgiven or not.