Emotional Contagion: A Brief Overview and Future Directions (original) (raw)
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Making sense of emotional contagion
Humana.Mente, 2019
Emotional contagion is a phenomenon that has attracted much interest in recent times. However, the main approach on offer, the mimicry theory, fails to properly account for its many facets. In particular, we focus on two shortcomings: the elicitation of emotional contagion is not context-independent, and there can be cases of emotional contagion without motor mimicry. We contend that a general theory of emotion elicitation (such as Scherer’s Component Process Model of Emotion) is better suited to account for these features, because of its multi-level appraisal component. From this standpoint, emotional contagion is viewed as a particular kind of emotional response that involves the same components and processes of emotional responses in general.
Recently, scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, using a variety of scientific techniques, have begun to study the influence of attention, facial mimicry, and social context on emotional contagion. In this paper we will review the classic evidence documenting the role of attention, facial mimicry, and feedback in sparking primitive emotional contagion. Then we will discuss the new evidence which scholars have amassed to help us better understand the role of facial mimicry in fostering contagion and the ability to “read” others’ thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Finally, we will briefly speculate as to where future research might be headed.
EMOTIONAL CONTAGION 1 Emotional Contagion and its Relationship to Enduring Affect
2013
Emotional contagion has been defined as “the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person’s and, consequently, to converge emotionally” (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994, p. 5). This study explores the influence of personality on emotional contagion. Specifically, we propose that people’s susceptibility to emotional contagion will be affected by their stable disposition towards happiness/sadness. Two competing theoretical traditions will be compared to investigate just how stable mood affects contagion.
Mood contagion": The automatic transfer of mood between persons
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000
The current studies aimed to find out whether a nonintentional form of mood contagion exists and which mechanisms can account for it. In these experiments participants who expected to be tested for text comprehension listened to an affectively neutral speech that was spoken in a slightly sad or happy voice. The authors found that (a) the emotional expression induced a congruent mood state in the listeners, (b) inferential accounts to emotional sharing were not easily reconciled with the findings, (c) different affective experiences emerged from intentional and nonintentional forms of emotional sharing, and (d) findings suggest that a perception-behavior link (T. L. Chartrand & J. A. Bargh, 1999) can account for these findings, because participants who were required to repeat the philosophical speech spontaneously imitated the target person's vocal expression of emotion.
Emotional Contagion: Rethinking Empirical Expression
Filosofisk Supplement, 2018
How are we to conceive of emotional expression, such as the other’s smile? In this paper, I articulate and dispel the myth that, hidden behind the expressive face of an other, there lies an objective antecedent, such as a mental state. The dogma of empiricism has permeated our understanding of emotions and affective displays, leading to the development of theories that objectivize the source of expression: expressive emotions become emotional states. Both Gilbert Ryle and phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty have similar things to say about this tendency and why it is a problem. My paper begins with a discussion of Ryle and his chapter on moods and emotions in The Concept of Mind. There is an important distinction between agitations and inclinations, two different things that the word ‘emotion’ is intended to designate. Both inclinations and agitations are motivated according to Ryle, but motives are not the same as causes and there is a tendency to confuse the two when discussing emotion. By clarifying these concepts, Ryle illustrates why it is a mistake to suppose that emotions are, “To external witnesses, necessarily occult” (Ryle1949:90). In the second half of the paper, I introduce Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts on intercorporeality and virtual intentionality as discussed in The Phenomenology of Perception (1945). I will argue that because the face of an other is first and foremost visible, it is already sensible, allowing us to “inhabit [their] spectacle” (Merleau-Ponty 1945:291). To phrase this point differently, emotions are contagious, and the expression of an other’s face can be thought of as a possible habitat. We already partake in the other’s emotion at the very moment it is expressed.
Emotional contagion: its scope and limits
Trends in cognitive sciences, 2015
The contagion model of emotional propagation has almost become a dogma in cognitive science. We turn here to the evolutionary approach to communicative interactions to probe the limits of the contagion model.