2.1. Emotion Arousal and Emotion Valence
Emotion refers to spontaneous psychological or physical reactions to external stimuli and internal mental representations (Zhang et al., 2021). Emotion is a multidimensional construct that consists of subjective, behavioral, cognitive, and internal or peripheral physiological components (Prinz, 2012). According to the Control-Value theory (CVT, Pekrun & Perry, 2013), valence and arousal are two dimensions that provide a comprehensive picture of the nature and function of emotions. Valence refers to the subject's feeling of positive and negative emotions (e.g., enjoyment as a positive and anxiety as negative), whereas arousal refers to the perceived intensity of an emotional state (e.g., anger as activating and boredom as deactivating).
Emotions are subjective and vary from person to person. Thus, even people in the same situation might have distinct types and intensities of emotions in response to the stimuli (Frijda, 2017). However, emotions can be influenced among individuals through social interactions within a collective (von Scheve & Ismer, 2013). Research demonstrated that emotions are contagious in collaborative learning environments by aligning group members' emotions at a similar valence and arousal level during the learning process (Järvenoja et al., 2018). Furthermore, emotional responses are associated with cognitive functions (Chowdhury et al., 2015). According to Sakaki et al. (2012), the different valence of emotions (i.e., positive and negative) affect cognitive processing in distinct ways, including memory encoding, attention scope, cognitive flexibility, creative problem-solving, cognitive control, knowledge retrieval, and perceptual processing. In terms of arousal of emotions, it also affects cognitive processing (Mather & Sutherland, 2011). Research indicated that emotion regulation is intertwined with the mental manifestation of regulated learning and other emotional processes during collaborative learning (Hadwin et al., 2018; Järvelä et al., 2016; Järvelä & Hadwin, 2013). Although the research on emotion valence and arousal has a solid base, emotion valence and arousal alone may not be sufficient to explain the complex interplays between emotion and group functioning in collaborative learning. An important mediator is the group members’ perceptions toward collaborative tasks, which might influence a group’s collective emotional responses to learning.
2.2. Emotion Synchrony in Collaborative Learning
Simultaneous arousal and valence experienced by group members could be studied in terms of emotion synchrony. As is evident in most collaboration studies, synchrony is widely investigated using physiological (e.g., electrodermal activities, Dindar et al., 2019; Haataja et al., 2018; Malmberg et al., 2015; electromyographic, Mønster et al., 2016) and behavioral data (e.g., facial expressions, Chikersal et al., 2017; hand movements, Wallot et al., 2016). The literature presented two primary arguments regarding synchrony and its role in teamwork. On the one hand, researchers discovered a negative correlation between physiological synchrony and cognitive and emotional factors. For example, arousal synchrony is associated with perceived challenges (Malmberg et al., 2019), and increased psychological synchrony is associated with group tension and negative affect during teamwork (Monster et al., 2015). On the other hand, some suggested that physiological synchrony was not always attached to negative situations but indicated rich interactions among group members (Chanel et al., 2012). For instance, researchers revealed positive relationships between physiological synchrony and group members' motivation (Haataja et al., 2018), group satisfaction (Chikersal et al., 2019), and concordant metacognition about content knowledge (Dindar et al., 2019). Meanwhile, facial expression synchrony is found to be positively associated with collective intelligence (Chikersal et al., 2019).
In contrast to psychological synchrony, team members can observe and influence individuals' collaborative experiences through facial synchrony. Therefore, the perception of emotion is also necessary for collaborative learning. According to the constructive view, individual emotion is constructed based on prior experiences and external stimuli (Barrett & Westlin, 2021), and group members may experience distinct emotions during collaborative learning. In this study, we use the term “emotion synchrony” to represent the similarity or consistency of group members' experienced emotions, particularly in arousal and valence synchrony.
2.3. Emotion Regulation and Emotion Synchrony
Emotion regulation (ER) is the process of modifying emotional responses to achieve a goal (Gross, 2015; Harley et al., 2019). Emotions can be regulated in different stages (Gross, 2015). During the activity, students can re-evaluate the situation to influence their emotional response (i.e., cognitive change, Gross, 2015). Reappraisal is the most common strategy of cognitive change, which implies reframing the situation to align it with one’s goals (Gross, 2015; Harley et al., 2019). When it comes to emotions, students can modulate their cognitive responses to get a desired emotional experience (Gross, 2015). If the emotion is perceived as threatening the goal, students might attempt to block the emotional reaction, which is known as suppression (Gross, 2015). The strategies of reappraisal and suppression have antagonist effects on learning (Gross, 2015; Harley et al., 2019). Reappraisal is effective in downregulating negative emotions and is associated with better retention (Gross, 2015). Suppression tends to block positive emotions but does not reduce negative ones (Gross, 2015; Harley, 2019). Further, reappraisal is positively linked to short-term and long-term health outcomes, positive affect, and cognitive outcomes, whereas suppression results in harmful consequences for overall well-being (John & Gross, 2004).
In social situations, suppression is correlated with higher physiological arousal and less connection to peers (Butler et al., 2003). According to Harley et al. (2019), effective ER in collaborative contexts needs integrative efforts to regulate one’s and the group’s emotions simultaneously. The link between emotional synchrony and ER is deemed a significant interaction to understand collaborative learning; however, research in the area is still in its infancy (Lobczowski, 2020). In this study, we aim to add new empirical evidence to understand the relationships between ER and emotion synchrony in higher education contexts.
2.4. Emotion Regulation and Perceived Challenges in Collaborative Learning
Challenges occur in various forms (Järvenoja et al., 2019), depending on contexts, task complexity, and task importance (Bradley et al., 2015). For example, challenges could be triggered by members’ discrepancies in the priority of the task (Van den Bossche et al., 2006), working styles (Järvenoja et al., 2013), and cultural backgrounds (Volet & Ang, 1998). According to Järvenoja et al. (2013), group members could face collaboration challenges when there are misunderstandings about group members’ thinking or cognitive conflicts. Further, Järvenoja (2019) and her colleagues identified different challenges and their roles in triggering different group-level regulation strategies in collaborative learning. Individual emotion regulation skills (Bradley et al., 2013) and group-level emotion regulation (Bakhtiar et al., 2018; Lobczowski, 2020) are pivotal to supporting a positive collaborative learning climate.
If addressed appropriately, challenges could be beneficial for learning (Bradley et al., 2015; Khosa & Volet, 2014). The impacts of conflicts depend on their nature and how we tackle them, as that “as we cannot avoid it, we should, I think, use it to work for us” (Graham, 2003, p. 67). A previous framework on organizational teamwork addressed two types of team conflicts (task conflict and relationship conflict), where task conflict could be beneficial and relationship conflict is detrimental (Jehn, 1997). It is more complicated to describe the effects of task conflicts on a team’s function compared with the influence of relationship conflicts. Meta-analysis of empirical studies has found positive relationships between task conflicts and team performance (De Wit et al., 2012; O’Neill et al., 2013). Specially, the relationship of task conflicts with team performance and relationship conflicts are moderated by task complexity (O’Neill et al., 2013), trust (Choi & Cho, 2019), and team members’ emotion regulation strategies (Bradley et al., 2012; Jiang et al., 2013). According to Jiang and his colleagues (2013), individuals skilled in emotion regulation took advantage of task conflict to perform effectively and limited the negative impact of relationship conflict.
2.5. The Current Study
While the relationship between students’ perceived challenges and performance has been well studied, there is limited research on how students’ emotion regulation strategies affect their perceived challenge and, ultimately their emotion synchrony with peers in collaborative learning. In this study, we addressed this research gap by exploring the relationships among emotion regulation strategies, students’ perceived challenges, and emotion synchrony in a natural classroom setting. Specifically, we addressed the following three research questions: (1) Do emotion regulation strategies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) affect students’ perceived challenges in collaborative learning? (2) How do emotion regulation strategies affect students’ emotion synchrony, i.e., valence synchrony and arousal synchrony? and (3) Does students’ perceived challenge play a mediating role in the relationship between emotion regulation and emotion synchrony?