Emotional Contagion and Social Judgment

Abstract

This study examined the influence of another's emotional expressions and individual differences in responsivenes s to afferent feedback on attention, evaluations, and memory. In a mixed design, participants (N = 71) rated pictures following exposure to a "sender" in a neutral mood and then in either a happy or sad mood. Attention, ratings, and recall evidenced a bias characteristic of the sender's mood: Participants spent more time viewing happy and sad pictures following exposure to the happy and sad sender, respectively; ratings by participants exposed to the happy and sad sender were more positive and negative, respectively, and this effect was greater for those more cue-responsive; participants recalled more pictures congruent with the sender's mood and those more cue-responsive exposed to the sad sender exhibited impaired memory characteristic of the effect of sadness on memory. Findings suggest that exposure to even mild emotional expressions can influence cognition and behavior and this effect is greater for those more responsive to cues generated by afferent feedback. It has long been observed that people tend to "catch" the emotions of others and to feel what those around them are feeling (Darwin, 1872/1965; Jung, 1968; Reik, 1948). We may be swept away by a child's laughter, cringe while watching a painfully shy person speak in public, or feel sad after spending time with a depressed person. Although elements of empathy, such as conscious reasoning, imagination, and perspective-taking, aid in understanding how another person is feeling, Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson (1992,1994) have proposed that people may "catch" the emotions of others as a result of afferent feedback generated by elementary motor mimicry of others' expressive behavior (Bavelas, Black, Lemery, & Mullett, 1987)