Process Of Emotional Contagion Research Articles

Emotional contagion in a collective ritual.

Collective gatherings are often associated with the alignment of psychophysiological states between members of a crowd. While the process of emotional contagion has been studied extensively in dyads as well as at the population level, our understanding of its operation and dynamics as they unfold in real time in real-world group contexts remains limited. Employing a naturalistic design, we investigated emotional contagion in a public religious ritual by examining the relationship between interpersonal distance and autonomic arousal. We found that proximity in space was associated with heightened affective synchrony between participants in the context of the emotionally laden ritual (a Hindu procession) compared with an unstructured walk along the same route performed by the same group. Our findings contribute to the understanding of collective emotions and their underlying psychophysiological mechanisms, emphasizing the role of cultural practices in shaping collective emotional experiences.

Does leader humor style matter employee knowledge sharing? From the lens of emotional contagion process

PurposeThis study aims to explore the enabling and suppressing effects of leader affiliative and aggressive humor on employee knowledge sharing form the lens of emotional contagion process, which provides theoretical reference for the applications of different leader humor style, thereby enhancing employee knowledge sharing.Design/methodology/approachThis study collected three waves of data and surveyed 379 employees in China. Regression analysis, bootstrapping and latent moderation structural equation were adopted to test the hypotheses.FindingsLeader affiliative humor has a positive impact on employee knowledge sharing, whereas leader aggressive humor has a negative impact on employee knowledge sharing. Positive emotion plays a mediating role between leader affiliative humor and employee knowledge sharing, and negative emotion plays a mediating role between leader aggressive humor and employee knowledge sharing. Moreover, supervisor–subordinate Guanxi moderates the relationship between leader affiliative humor and positive emotion, and between leader aggressive humor and negative emotion, respectively.Originality/valueThis study not only adds to the knowledge sharing literature calling for the exploration of antecedents and mechanism of employee knowledge sharing, but also contributes to our comprehensive understanding of the suppressing and enabling effects of leader humor style on employee knowledge sharing. Besides, this study also unpacks the dual-path mechanism and boundary condition between leader humor style and employee knowledge sharing and augments the theoretical explanations of emotional contagion theory between leader humor style and employee knowledge sharing.

A crowd simulation model based on emotional cognition and contagion for emergency evacuation

Emotion is a crucial factor which influences evacuation effects. However, the studies and quantitative analysis of evacuation emotions, including the emotion generated by external factors and internal personality or cognition levels, emotional contagion evolution, and the regulation mechanism of pedestrians to negative emotion, are still rare. In this paper, an evacuation model based on emotional cognition and contagion (EMECC) is presented. Firstly, individual’s emotion is generated and quantified based on Lazarus’s cognitive theory. Secondly, the emotional contagion between individuals is simulated by SIS (Susceptible Infected Susceptible) infectious disease model. Combining with cellular automata model, an emotion-driven moving rule is proposed to guide pedestrians move towards the directions with more positive individuals so that positive emotions can be spread effectively. Various experiments on model parameters, obstacles, and emotional contagion process are implemented to verify the effectiveness of the EMECC model. The simulation and experimental results show that emotional regulation mechanism can improve pedestrian’s decision-making ability and contagion of positive emotion can accelerate evacuation process. The EMECC model can simulate emotional changes dynamically and guide pedestrians efficiently and reasonably in emergency evacuation.

Are my wife's recovery activities related to my subsequent recovery activities at work?

We proposed a model where a male employee's wife's engagement in recovery activities results in the husband's own enactment of recovery activities while in the workplace, via emotional contagion, based on the COR theory and broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. We expected wives may experience positive emotions after engaging in social interactions, which has a contagion effect on husbands' positive emotions. Further, husbands were expected to leverage their positive emotions to engage in future recovery activities (better lunch nap and meal quality while at work). Lastly, we examined whether power imbalance in the married couple has a moderating effect on emotional contagion processes. To test our model, we used an experience-sampling method in which 110 dyads completed daily diary questionnaires for 8 consecutive days (N = 768, after removing 112 invalid observations). As expected, wives' social interactions are linked to husbands' positive emotions via wives' positive emotions. Further, husbands' positive emotions predict the quality of two workplace recovery activities (lunch naps and meals). Finally, power imbalance moderates the association between wives' (donors) emotions and husbands' (recipients) emotions such that the crossover of emotions is stronger when wives (donors) have relatively more power than when they have less.

Catching a smile from individuals and crowds: Evidence for distinct emotional contagion processes.

Research examining how crowd emotions impact observers usually requires participants to engage in an atypical mental process whereby (static) arrays of individuals are cognitively integrated to represent a crowd. The present work sought to extend our understanding of how crowd emotions may spread to individuals by assessing self-reported emotions, attention and muscle movement in response to emotions of dynamic, virtually modeled crowd stimuli. Self-reported emotions and attention from thirty-six participants were assessed when foreground and background crowd characters exhibited homogeneous (Study 1) or heterogeneous (Study 2) positive, neutral, or negative emotions. Results suggested that affective responses in observers are shaped by crowd emotions even in the absence of direct attention. Thirty-four participants supplied self-report and facial electromyography responses to the same homogeneous (Study 3) or heterogeneous (Study 4) crowd stimuli. Results indicated that positive crowd emotions appeared to exert greater attentional pull and objective responses, while negative crowd emotions also elicited affective responses. Study 5 (n = 67) introduced a control condition (stimuli containing an individual person) to examine if responses are unique to crowds and found that emotional contagion from crowds was more intense than from individuals. These studies present methodological advances in the study of crowd emotional contagion and have implications for our broader understanding of how people process, attend, and affectively respond to crowds. Advancing theory by suggesting that emotional contagion from crowds is distinct from that elicited by individuals, findings may have applications for refining crowd management approaches. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Catching a Smile From Individuals and Crowds: Evidence for Distinct Emotional Contagion Processes

Supplemental Material for Catching a Smile From Individuals and Crowds: Evidence for Distinct Emotional Contagion Processes

Functional graph contrastive learning of hyperscanning EEG reveals emotional contagion evoked by stereotype-based stressors

IntroductionThis study delves into the intricacies of emotional contagion and its impact on performance within dyadic interactions. Specifically, it focuses on the context of stereotype-based stress (SBS) during collaborative problem-solving tasks among female pairs. Through an exploration of emotional contagion, this study seeks to unveil its underlying mechanisms and effects.MethodsLeveraging EEG-based hyperscanning technology, we introduced an innovative approach known as the functional graph contrastive learning (fGCL), which extracts subject-invariant representations of neural activity patterns from feedback trials. These representations are further subjected to analysis using the dynamic graph classification (DGC) model, aimed at dissecting the process of emotional contagion along three independent temporal stages.ResultsThe results underscore the substantial role of emotional contagion in shaping the trajectories of participants' performance during collaborative tasks in the presence of SBS conditions.DiscussionOverall, our research contributes invaluable insights into the neural underpinnings of emotional contagion, thereby enriching our comprehension of the complexities underlying social interactions and emotional dynamics.

Research on Emotional Infection of Passengers during the SRtP of a Cruise Ship by Combining an SIR Model and Machine Learning

The Safe Return to Port issue regarding cruise ships has been extensively researched, covering aspects such as performance, operations, and electrical systems. However, an often overlooked aspect is the potential eruption of negative emotions among passengers during SRtP. This study aims to investigate the prediction of collective emotions to facilitate timely safety planning and enhance the safety of the Safe Return to Port process. To achieve this objective, an improved susceptible-infectious-recovered model with bidirectional infection is proposed to describe the emotional contagion process during the Safe Return to Port process. This model classifies the population into five emotional (extremely anxious–anxious–normal–calm–very calm) states and introduces two sources of infection. Moreover, it allows for emotions to transition both positively and negatively, making it a more realistic representation of scenarios resembling long-term refuge scenarios. In this study, questionnaire data, collected and statistically analyzed, serve as the primary dataset. A machine learning technique (the weighted random forest algorithm) is integrated with the model to make predictions. The accuracy, precision, recall, and the F-measure of prediction results demonstrate good performance. Additionally, through simulation, this study illustrates the fluctuating nature of emotional changes during the Safe Return to Port process of the cruise ship and analyzes the effects of varying parameters. The findings suggest that the improved susceptible-infectious-recovered model proposed in this paper can provide valuable insights for cruise ship emergency planning and positively contribute to maintaining passenger emotional stability during the Safe Return to Port process.

Factbait: Emotionality of Fact-Checking Tweets and Users’ Engagement during the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Given the importance of fact-checking in reducing the spread of false information on social media, prior research has examined effective fact-checking strategies. The current study addresses this question by conducting a computational analysis of actual fact-checking tweets of three representative fact-checking organizations in the United States (Factcheck.org, PolitiFact, Snopes), replies, and retweets (N = 166,526) on Twitter made from September 29 to November 3, 2020, when the 2020 U.S. presidential election and the COVID-19 crisis co-occurred. The results show that fact-checking tweets with a greater degree of anxiety and anger generally receive more replies, but those exhibiting sadness are retweeted less. Additionally, fact-checking tweets with heightened levels of anxiety, anger, sadness, or negativity, in general, tend to elicit replies featuring a degree of anxiety, anger, sadness, or negativity, respectively. Our findings suggest that emotions can be utilized as drivers of engagement in fact-checking tweets, meaning that the emotional impetus can potentially serve as an important strategy to make fact-checking efforts more impactful in uncertain situations. However, fact-checking organizations should be aware that emotional appeals in fact-checking posts catalyze correspondingly emotional responses from their audiences, which reflects the emotional contagion process.

Is Service with a Smile Enough to Satisfy Customers? Sincere and Insincere Smiles via Video and Vignette

The current service trend does not merely involve face-to-face interactions, including smiling (high-contact-service) by service employees, but also using methods such as texting (low-contact service). Sincere and insincere smile studies have used a method involving dynamic (videos) and static stimuli (photographs). However, research into the different types of smiles is still limited to methods using a vignette. This study aims to examine the effect of the type of smile on customer satisfaction using a vignette and video. A total of 139 people participated in 2 (smile: sincere versus insincere) x 2 (media: vignette versus video) groups. The study found that there is an influence from the type of smile on customer satisfaction. A sincere smile using video produces greater customer satisfaction than using a vignette does, because the emotional contagion process through video is more real than it is through a vignette. The interesting finding from this study is that there is a gap in the insincere smile condition between using video and a vignette. The dissatisfaction of customers is greater when served with an insincere smile by text (vignette), compared with a face-to-face interaction by video. Video could only capture the muscle movement on a person’s cheeks (zygomaticus major), but it could not see the muscle wrinkles formed around the eyes (orbicularis oculi), compared to a vignette. This study implies that although the standard operational procedure (SOP) for service demands friendliness, a customer can feel whether a server’s smile is genuine or fake. The customer’s dissatisfaction toward an insincere smile will be higher with a low-contact service using text than a high-contact service with video.

Examining the role of social media and mobile social networking applications in socio-political contestations in Nigeria

Social media platforms continue to flourish as practices encompassing them become deeply embedded in many cultures. As more people embrace social media platforms, their affordances and opportunities are leading to improved communication, and helping hold authorities to account. To further scrutinize the importance of these platforms, this study interrogates the role of digital media in socio-political contestations in Nigeria by examining the media used to mobilize, coordinate, and document the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria. Analyses of survey data collected in 2020 during the protests in Lagos and Port Harcourt, Nigeria (N = 391) show that demonstrators who were 30 years and older and used WhatsApp and Facebook to learn about the protests as well as coordinate their participation in the protests are more likely to report participating on the first day of the protests than protesters who are younger than 30 and used other media platforms. Findings further illustrate that digital enthusiasm facilitated by hedonic-experiential and epicurean communication on WhatsApp and Facebook eventuated a process of emotional contagion through connective repertoires that created propitious emotional conditions for mass collective protest actions. Finally, the article discusses how the use of WhatsApp and Facebook gave protesters strategic communicative power during the protests.

Temporal dynamics of justice climate and team innovation.

Team innovation-exploration and exploitation of useful and novel ideas by a team has been a topic of great importance for organizations in today's dynamic, complex, and competitive environment. Grounded in the social contagion theory of justice, we theorize a justice-to-innovation processual model based on within-team justice climate occurrences that change over time. We posit that collective and shared justice perceptions of team members construct dynamically based on justice-related work events. Within teams, state justice climate level and strength (represented by the Mean and the low-SD scores of individual team members in the moment or an episode) are important precursors of team innovation. The proposed theoretical model explicates an emotional contagion process arguing that positive and negative team affect states mediate the relationship between state justice climate and team innovation. Positive/negative team affect states result in collective actions and team interactions that foster/hinder team innovation. The present article significantly contributes to the development of the dynamical models of justice and innovation for teams where most research is confined to static models of justice climate.

Learning about threat from friends and strangers is equally effective: An fMRI study on observational fear conditioning

Humans often benefit from social cues when learning about the world. For instance, learning about threats from others can save the individual from dangerous first-hand experiences. Familiarity is believed to increase the effectiveness of social learning, but it is not clear whether it plays a role in learning about threats. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we undertook a naturalistic approach and investigated whether there was a difference between observational fear learning from friends and strangers. Participants (observers) witnessed either their friends or strangers (demonstrators) receiving aversive (shock) stimuli paired with colored squares (observational learning stage). Subsequently, participants watched the same squares, but without receiving any shocks (direct-expression stage). We observed a similar pattern of brain activity in both groups of observers. Regions related to threat responses (amygdala, anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex) and social perception (fusiform gyrus, posterior superior temporal sulcus) were activated during the observational phase, possibly reflecting the emotional contagion process. The anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex were also activated during the subsequent stage, indicating the expression of learned threat. Because there were no differences between participants observing friends and strangers, we argue that social threat learning is independent of the level of familiarity with the demonstrator.

The analysis of dynamic emotional contagion in online brand community.

Online brand communities (OBCs) could benefit firms in many usages, ranging from collecting consumers’ suggestions or advice to interacting with community members directly and transparently. Creating a positive emotional atmosphere is essential for such communities’ healthy development as its boosts the continuous involvement of each member. However, the dynamic cross-influences and evolution of emotions in OBCs have not been fully explored, which was the research gap this paper tried to fill. Based on emotional contagion theory, this study identifies three sources of textual sentiment through machine learning methods in OBCs: member’s posts, other members’ feedback, and the focal firm’s official feedback. This study further tested the dynamic emotional contagion process among these sources on valence (mean) and volatility (dispersion), namely how they affected each other. Data was collected from the MIUI forum, a large forum launched by Xiaomi corporate on August 1, 2011, which contained 17,622 posts and 99,426 feedback. Results showed that: (1) in the emotional contagion process, there existed differences in the influence of emotional valence and volatility from different sources; (2) all emotional interactions were temporary and mostly lasted no more than three days; (3) the most significant contributor of each sources’ emotion was itself, which could be explained by lagged effect; (4) the valence of focal firm’s emotion (focal firm’s official feedback) was the second contributor of the valence of member’s emotion (member’s posts) and other members’ emotion (other members’ feedback). Three sources of emotion in OBCs and emotional valence/volatility should be considered when firms try to guide the emotional changes in such communities. Furthermore, firms could proactively influence members’ emotions by carefully designing the feedback to members’ posts. Besides, since all interactions are temporary, firms need to engage in online communities frequently, like consistently offering feedback.

Emotional Contagion in Physical-Cyber Integrated Networks: The Phase Transition Perspective.

Understanding the emotional contagion process in the crowd will help to take measures in advance to avoid the large-scale spread of negative emotions in emergencies and reduce the loss of lives and properties. Studying the phase transition phenomenon is fundamental to analyzing and evaluating the crowd emotional contagion. However, it is a challenging issue since most people participate in both the physical and cyber networks at the same time. In this article, we focus on the emotional contagion in physical-cyber integrated networks from the phase transition perspective. To achieve this, we first construct a physical-cyber integrated network model to describe the interactions between physical and cyber networks. Second, we build an emotional contagion model to capture the characteristics of emotional contagion in the physical and cyber integrated networks accurately. Finally, we study the phase transition phenomenon of emotional contagion and identify the critical threshold by mapping the emotional contagion to the joint site/bond percolation model. Numerical simulations and experiments further support and enrich our conclusions. The proposed method is expected to provide guidance for controlling emotional contagion in emergencies.

Panic Spreading Model with Different Emotions under Emergency

Emotion plays an important role in decision making. In an emergency, panic can spread among crowds through person-to-person communications and can cause harmful effects on society. The aim of this paper is to propose a new theoretical model in the context of epidemiology to describe the spread of panic under an emergency. First, according to divisions in personality in the context of psychology, groups are divided into a level-headed group and an impatient group. Second, individuals in the two groups have unique personalities. Thus, the level-headed group only infects within the group, while the impatient group considers emotional infection within the group and cross infection between the groups. Then, a nonlinear infection rate is used to describe the probability of infection after an infected person contacts a susceptible person, which is more in line with the real situation. After that, the level-headed group–impatient group nonlinear SIRS panic spreading model is developed. Stable analysis of the model is obtained using the Lyapunov function method to study the stability of the panic-free equilibrium and panic-permanence equilibrium. Finally, simulations are carried out to dynamically describe the spread process of group emotional contagion.

The Relationship Between Olfactory Function and Emotional Contagion

IntroductionResearch has provided evidence for the transfer of single emotions including anger, anxiety and happiness through olfactory chemosignals, yet no work has examined the role of odour function in the aggregation of more complex emotional states or in the emotional contagion process. The aim of the present study was to ascertain whether an individual’s tendency to experience emotional aggregation was affected by objective measures of their olfactory function and subjective self-assessments of the importance of their own olfactory system.MethodsIn this study (N = 70), participant pairs were first assessed individually for olfactory threshold and odour identification, then completed the Importance of Olfaction Questionnaire. Each pair subsequently took part in two collaborative tasks. Individual emotion measures were taken before, during and after the completion of the two tasks.ResultsMultilevel structural equation modelling revealed that individuals’ within-dyad positive emotional agreement scores were associated with both their ‘importance of olfaction’ scores and their olfactory function. A significant association was also found between olfactory performance and the Importance of Olfaction scores.ConclusionsThese results provide evidence that the subjective importance an individual assigns to their sense of smell can predict their susceptibility to experience emotional aggregation during active, collaborative tasks.ImplicationsThe findings suggest that individuals’ tendency and capability to detect and respond to emotional chemosignals, a process required for olfactory-facilitated emotional contagion, may be affected by individual differences in olfactory function and subjective attitudes toward olfaction.

Recurrent emotional contagion for the crowd evacuation of a cyber-physical society

In recent years, emotional contagion has drawn great attention in the field of public security since it often leads to stampedes and crushes during large-scale emergencies. To date, there have been many studies on emotional contagion in both cyberspace and physical space, bringing a strong impetus to the simulation of crowd evacuation in emergencies. However, due to the heterogeneity of crowds in cyberspace and physical space, emotional contagion is rarely comprehensively considered in the cyber-physical society (CPS). In addition, the characteristics of emotional recurrence prone to appear in large-scale evacuation have not yet been fully elucidated. Therefore, the existing models cannot accurately describe the real situation of emotional contagion since there is a wide deviation between it and the reality. To solve this problem, we propose a recurrent emotional contagion (REC) method for crowd evacuation of the CPS. First, we construct a CPS-oriented REC model by considering the influence of emotional recurrence on the emotional contagion process. Second, we build the degree-based Mean-Field Equations to describe the dynamic evolution of the number of individuals while considering the heterogeneity of crowds. Furthermore, we use the Finite Difference Method to derive the numerical solution. Third, we construct recurrent small-world networks, which constitute a special case of CPS-REC, to verify the effectiveness of our model. Finally, we implement a crowd simulation system based on the CPS-REC model to visualize the results of our theoretical analysis. The experimental results show that our method can more realistically simulate the emotional contagion process.

Group emotional contagion and simulation in large-scale flight delays based on the two-layer network model

This paper aims to construct a feasible two-layer network model for the emotional contagion of passenger groups in the case of large-scale flight delays. This improved emotional contagion model can study the emotional contagion mechanism and process of delayed passengers between online and offline social contact networks. Besides, it also introduces multiple attributes such as passenger personality, social relationships, offline and online social characters. Afterward, how the different scenes influence the delayed passengers’ emotional contagion is analyzed through simulation experiments. The simulation results show that the introduction of social network accelerates emotional evolution and contagion. Moreover, the significant impact of the online network layer on passengers will lead to faster and more obvious emotional infection. Our results further suggest that passengers’ emotional evolution is intensified when their heterogeneity is considered and when they enter a scene with negative emotions. This paper reveals the emotional evolution law of passengers from the two-layer network perspective, and then put forward reasonable inspirations and suggestions to the management department, which has practical significance for the early-warning of mass incidents.

Personalized Crowd Emotional Contagion Coupling the Virtual and Physical Cyberspace

Crowd emotional contagion is affected by physical cyberspace and virtual cyberspace at the same time. In addition, the individual personality also plays an important role in crowd emotional contagion. However, few existing works have investigated the two factors jointly. To solve this problem, we propose a personalized virtual and physical cyberspace-based emotional contagion model (PVP-ECM) to simulate the process of crowd emotional contagion. First, we construct an individual emotion model and propose the personalized emotional contagion rules to consider the influences of the individual personality on crowd emotional contagion coupling the virtual and physical cyberspaces. Second, we use mean field theory to derive an evolution process and obtain mean field equations for the PVP-ECM. Then, we solve the PVP-ECM numerically using the finite difference method. Third, we construct a personalized BA scale-free network for the PVP-ECM simulation to further verify the stability of the model. Finally, we perform the PVP-ECM simulation and implement a simulation system to visualize the results of our theoretical analysis. The experimental results show that our approach can simulate the process of crowd emotional contagion more realistically. The proposed method can provide guidance for coping with the personalized crowd emotional contagion of public emergencies.