Emotional contagion

Emotional contagion is the phenomenon of having one person's emotions and related behaviors directly trigger similar emotions and behaviors in other people. Emotions can be shared across individuals in many different ways both implicitly or explicitly. For instance, conscious reasoning, analysis and imagination have all been found to contribute to the phenomenon.Kramer et al. (2014) found a 0.07%—that's not 7 percent, that's 1/15th of one percent!!—decrease in negative words in people's status updates when the number of negative posts on their Facebook news feed decreased. Do you know how many words you'd have to read or write before you've written one less negative word due to this effect? Probably thousands. Emotional contagion is the phenomenon of having one person's emotions and related behaviors directly trigger similar emotions and behaviors in other people. Emotions can be shared across individuals in many different ways both implicitly or explicitly. For instance, conscious reasoning, analysis and imagination have all been found to contribute to the phenomenon. Emotional contagion is important to personal relationships because it fosters emotional synchrony between individuals. A broader definition of the phenomenon suggested by Schoenewolf is 'a process in which a person or group influences the emotions or behavior of another person or group through the conscious or unconscious induction of emotion states and behavioral attitudes'. The behaviour has been found in humans, other primates, and dogs. One view developed by Elaine Hatfield, et al., is that this can be done through automatic mimicry and synchronization of one's expressions, vocalizations, postures and movements with those of another person. When people unconsciously mirror their companions' expressions of emotion, they come to feel reflections of those companions' emotions. The phrase 'emotional contagion' embodies the idea that humans synchronize their own emotions with the emotions expressed by those around them, whether consciously or unconsciously. In a 1993 paper, Psychologists Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo, and Richard Rapson define it as 'the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person's and, consequently, to converge emotionally' (p. 96). Hatfield, et al., theorize emotional contagion as a two-step process: Firstly, we imitate people, e.g., if someone smiles at you, you smile back. Secondly, our own emotional experiences change based on the non-verbal signals of emotion that we give off. For example, smiling makes one feel happier and frowning making one feel worse. Mimicry seems to be one foundation of emotional movement between people. Emotional contagion and empathy have an interesting relationship, in that they share similar characteristics, with the exception of the ability to differentiate between personal and pre-personal experiences, a process known as individuation. In The Art of Loving (1956), social psychologist Erich Fromm explores these differences, suggesting that autonomy is necessary for empathy, which is not found in emotional contagion. There are several factors that determine the rate and extent of emotional convergence in a group. Some of these are: membership stability, mood-regulation norms, task interdependence and social interdependence. Besides these event-structure properties, there are personal properties of the group's members, such as openness to receive and transmit feelings, demographic characteristics and dispositional affect that influence the intensity of emotional contagion. Research regarding the concept of emotional contagion has been conducted from a variety of perspectives, including organizational, social, familial, developmental, and neurological contexts. While early research suggested that conscious reasoning, analysis, and imagination accounted for the idea of emotional contagion, it has been concluded that some forms of more primitive emotional contagion are far more subtle, automatic, and universal. Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson's 1993 research into emotional contagion reported that people's conscious assessments of others' feelings were heavily influenced by what others said. People's own emotions, however, were more influenced by others' nonverbal clues as to what they were really feeling. Recognizing emotions and acknowledging their origin can be one way to avoid emotional contagion. Transference of emotions has been studied in a variety of situations and settings, with social and physiological causes being two of the largest areas of research.