Abstract
Emotional contagion – an underpinning valenced feature of empathy – is made up of simpler, potentially dissociable social processes which can include socially-mediated arousal and behavioural/physiological contagion. Previous studies of emotional contagion have often conflated these processes rather than examining their independent contribution to empathic response. We measured socially-mediated arousal and contagion in 9-week old domestic chicks (n = 19 broods), who were unrelated but raised together from hatching. Pairs of observer chicks were exposed to two conditions in a counterbalanced order: air puff to conspecifics (AP) (during which an air puff was applied to three conspecifics at 30 s intervals) and control with noise of air puff (C) (during which the air puff was directed away from the apparatus at 30 s intervals). Behaviour and surface eye temperature of subjects and observers were measured throughout a 10-min pre-treatment and 10-min treatment period. Subjects and observers responded to AP with increased freezing, and reduced preening and ground pecking. Subjects and observers also showed reduced surface eye temperature - indicative of stress-induced hyperthermia. Subject-Observer behaviour was highly correlated within broods during both C and AP conditions, but with higher overall synchrony during AP. We demonstrate the co-occurrence of socially-mediated behavioural and physiological arousal and contagion; component features of emotional contagion.
Highlights
Emotional contagion[1] has been portrayed as a simple or automatic affective process[2,3,4,5] that may underpin a full capacity for empathy[6]
We suggest that the difficulty of measuring emotional contagion is compounded by the frequent conflation of the simpler social processes that contribute to emotional contagion, meaning that researchers interested in emotional contagion may be studying diverse phenomena
Behavioural contagion is not necessarily associated with a valenced emotional component and can be measured using markers such as increased behavioural synchrony in a range of situations, including those that are seemingly positive, neutral; and negative for the conspecific
Summary
Emotional contagion[1] has been portrayed as a simple or automatic affective process[2,3,4,5] that may (together with other more complex processes) underpin a full capacity for empathy[6]. Physiological components of socially-mediated arousal are less studied, but include increased heart rate during aggressive encounters (geese20) along with stress-induced hyperthermia in birds when watching mildly distressed offspring (chickens[19,21]) These arousal processes are not necessarily accompanied by a valenced emotional response, they can incorporate relatively complex www.nature.com/scientificreports/. Behavioural contagion is not necessarily associated with a valenced emotional component and can be measured using markers such as increased behavioural synchrony in a range of situations, including those that are seemingly positive (play in keas[23]; rapid mimicry of facial expression in response to play in dogs24), neutral (contagious yawning in monkeys[25] and chimps26); and negative (contagion of agonistic vocalisations in marmosets[27]; socially-induced flight reactions in pigeons[28]; vigilance in sheep29) for the conspecific. Behavioural contagion can occur in the absence of SMA; contagious yawning in dogs, for example, is not associated with altered heart rate[36]
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