Positive Emotional Contagion Research Articles

Chinese young adults' perception of fertility: Emotional contagion in fertility policy discussions on Sina Weibo

We investigated the reactions and preferences of the Chinese populace, particularly young adults, toward China's three-child policy, a recent strategy aimed at addressing the nation's aging population that allows couples to have up to three children. By monitoring Sina Weibo discussions related to fertility policies, we gauged public sentiment and potential emotional contagion. We collected 711 main posts and 26,515 responses and used the sentiment analysis method to identify the emotional tendencies of each post, thus determining if emotional contagion occurred. Results showed there were 631 posts with negative emotional contagion effects and 554 posts with positive emotional contagion effects. Further textual analysis indicated that the Chinese public maintains a pessimistic outlook on the three-child policy and expresses concern about the detrimental impact of social circumstances and the difficulties women encounter concerning fertility.

Susceptibility to positive versus negative emotional contagion: First evidence on their distinction using a balanced self-report measure.

Susceptibility to emotional contagion is defined as the disposition of how susceptible someone is to catch others' emotions and it has long been studied in research on mental health, well-being, and social interaction. Given that existing self-report measures of susceptibility to emotional contagion have focused almost exclusively on negative emotions, we developed a self-report measure to assess the susceptibility to emotional contagion of both positive and negative emotions (2 scales). In two studies, we examined their factor structure, validity, and reliability using exploratory factor analysis (Study 1, N = 257), confirmatory factor analysis (Study 2, N = 247) and correlations. Our results confirmed the two-factor structure and demonstrated good internal consistencies. Regarding external validity, our scales showed diverging correlational patterns: While susceptibility to negative emotional contagion was linked to mental health problems and negative emotions, susceptibility to positive emotional contagion was linked to interpersonal functioning and prosocial tendencies. In conclusion, our scales appear to be internally/externally valid and a promising tool for future research.

Operational excellence (OpEx) through entrepreneur’s strategic business decision making and emotional contagion in the service industry

Petroleum products play a critical role in the global industry. India is the third most significant crude oil importer in the world, of which 22 % from Russia in October 2022. Emotional Contagion refers to an entrepreneur influencing the emotions and behaviours of another entrepreneur and employees in the company to achieve operational excellence. Entrepreneurs' decision-making styles vary from analytical, conceptual, directional, and behavioural to attain the corporate goal. The utilitarian theory states that entrepreneurs, as utilitarians, lead the company with a highly ethical, moral, good environment & culture and, at the same time, target for the company's profit. We have considered twenty five companies from India and the Middle East region to study Entrepreneur's strategic business decision styles and emotional Contagion. We have used a Stratified sampling technique to collect data. We have used JAMOVI for the data analysis. This paper examines entrepreneurs' strategic business decision styles and emotional Contagion toward Utilitarianism in the Oil and Gas service industry. It provides positive and negative effects for which we have recommended that the government and MSMEs must focus on providing psychological training to entrepreneurs to achieve the highest positive emotional contagion, safe and healthy organizational culture positively

Transformation leadership's emotional labor and follower's psychological capital: mediating effect of emotional contagion

PurposeThe study aims to closely look at the phenomenon of transformational leadership and the psychological capital of followers by using affective process theory (APT). It has empirically tested the mediation of the perceived emotional labor (EL) of a leader and susceptible emotional contagion (EC) of followers when studying the effect of transformational leadership on the psychological capital (PsyCap) of followers.Design/methodology/approachThe method adopted was mixed methodology. The data were collected from the 120 respondents and their perception regarding the construct as identified by previous literature was captured through a structured questionnaire. The relationships and hypotheses were tested by the structural equation modeling (SEM) model using SMART PLS. Further 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted using a qualitative approach.FindingsThe current research has empirically shown how specific aspects of transformational leadership, i.e. individual consideration perceived by followers also show high use of perceived deep acting strategy. Deep acting EL strategy is impacting positive EC and positive EC is leading to higher PsyCap of followers generating more work efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience. Mediation of positive EC between Deep acting EL and PsyCap was also observed. In qualitative studies done with the participants, major themes that emerged were transformational leadership, EL strategies, EC and PsyCap.Practical implicationsIn times of uncertainty and stress after the post-COVID scenario, employees are facing emotional burnout due to increased work pressure and workload. Transformational leadership has become very critical to manage the PsyCap of followers by using correct EL strategies. Leaders can focus on the optimism and resilience aspect of PsyCap.Originality/valueThe current research has taken affective process theory (APT) as a foundation to understand the connection between transformational leadership and the PsyCap of followers. The study has specifically picked up the fourth mechanism of affective linkage as suggested by Elfenbein (2014) called emotional recognition and seen how emotions are transferred from source (leaders) to recipient (followers). The research has contributed by empirically testing the mediation of the perceived EL of leaders and the susceptible EC of followers and how they affect the PsyCap of followers.

Entropy and Fractal Techniques for Monitoring Fish Behaviour and Welfare in Aquacultural Precision Fish Farming-A Review.

In a non-linear system, such as a biological system, the change of the output (e.g., behaviour) is not proportional to the change of the input (e.g., exposure to stressors). In addition, biological systems also change over time, i.e., they are dynamic. Non-linear dynamical analyses of biological systems have revealed hidden structures and patterns of behaviour that are not discernible by classical methods. Entropy analyses can quantify their degree of predictability and the directionality of individual interactions, while fractal dimension (FD) analyses can expose patterns of behaviour within apparently random ones. The incorporation of these techniques into the architecture of precision fish farming (PFF) and intelligent aquaculture (IA) is becoming increasingly necessary to understand and predict the evolution of the status of farmed fish. This review summarizes recent works on the application of entropy and FD techniques to selected individual and collective fish behaviours influenced by the number of fish, tagging, pain, preying/feed search, fear/anxiety (and its modulation) and positive emotional contagion (the social contagion of positive emotions). Furthermore, it presents an investigation of collective and individual interactions in shoals, an exposure of the dynamics of inter-individual relationships and hierarchies, and the identification of individuals in groups. While most of the works have been carried out using model species, we believe that they have clear applications in PFF. The review ends by describing some of the major challenges in the field, two of which are, unsurprisingly, the acquisition of high-quality, reliable raw data and the construction of large, reliable databases of non-linear behavioural data for different species and farming conditions.

A Multilevel Study of Change-Oriented Leadership and Commitment: The Moderating Effect of Group Emotional Contagion.

The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of change-oriented leadership on employee change commitment, and the underlying cross-level mediating and moderating effects. Multilevel analysis of data from 583 respondents in 55 major manufacturing firms in China from 2021, reveals that change-oriented leadership explains the significant variance in change commitment. Based on Emotions as Social Information Theory and Social Exchange Theory, this study investigates the relationship between change-oriented leadership and change commitment fully mediated by emotion regulation. This study also confirms that positive group emotional contagion has moderating effects on the relationship between change-oriented leadership and emotion regulation. In addition, negative group emotional contagion has moderating effects on the relationship between emotion regulation and change commitment. Furthermore, the moderated mediation of negative group emotional contagion is identified. This study makes a unique contribution through its multilevel approach to examining the relationship between leadership, emotion, and commitment during organizational change.

Differences in emotional contagion, interpersonal relationships and social rewards in males and females: examining the links with primary and secondary psychopathic traits

AbstractIndividuals with psychopathic traits display low empathy and as a result they have difficulties maintaining meaningful relationships. Emotional contagion, the ability to automatically mimic others’ emotional states (facial expressions, movements), is a precursor of empathy that contributes to relationship quality and is impaired in individuals with psychopathic traits. The current study examines sex differences in primary and secondary psychopathic traits in a sample of 389 participants (Mage = 33.61; 241 females) and the association of these personality traits with romantic and peer relationships, susceptibility to negative (sadness, fear, anger) and positive (happiness, love) emotional contagion and social motivation factors. Hierarchical multiple regressions run separately in male and female participants, revealed different factors contribute to the maintenance of primary and secondary psychopathic traits. Findings infer different difficulties in social functioning (forming and maintaining relationships), regulating emotions, empathizing via emotional contagion, and motivating factors to engage socially, relate to primary and secondary traits, as well as differences in men and women. This research reflects the importance of investigating psychopathic traits heterogeneously in males and females, to better inform prevention efforts focused on hindering the development and maintenance of these personality traits.

Do Informational and Emotional Elements Differ between Online Psychological and Physiological Disease Communities in China? A Comparative Study of Depression and Diabetes.

Disease-specific online health communities provide a convenient and common platform for patients to share experiences, change information, provide and receive social support. This study aimed to compare differences between online psychological and physiological disease communities in topics, sentiment, participation, and emotional contagion patterns using multiple methods as well as to discuss how to satisfy the users’ different informational and emotional needs. We chose the online depression and diabetes communities on the Baidu Tieba platform as the data source. Topic modeling and theme coding were employed to analyze discussion preferences for various topic categories. Sentiment analysis was used to identify the sentiment polarity of each post and comment. The social network was used to represent the users’ interaction and emotional flows to discover the differences in participation and emotional contagion patterns between psychological and physiological disease communities. The results revealed that people affected by depression focused more on their symptoms and social relationships, while people affected by diabetes were more likely to discuss treatment and self-management behavior. In the depression community, there were obvious interveners spreading positive emotions and more core users in the negative emotional contagion network. In the diabetes community, emotional contagion was less prevalent and core users in positive and negative emotional contagion networks were basically the same. The study reveals insights into the differences between online psychological and physiological disease communities, providing a greater understanding of the users’ informational and emotional needs expressed online. These results are helpful for society to provide actual medical assistance and deploy health interventions based on disease types.

Testing the contagious nature of allopreening: bystander ravens are affected by conspecifics’ affiliative interactions

Emotional contagion refers to the mechanism of aligning with conspecifics' emotional states and is thought to be highly beneficial in social group living. While emotional contagion is well studied in humans, most studies in nonhuman animals fail to clearly distinguish between behavioural and emotional contagion. Furthermore, evidence for positive emotional contagion in nonhuman animals is almost entirely restricted to the context of play. In the present study, we aimed at adding observational evidence of contagion in a positive context, while separating aspects of behavioural and emotional contagion. In a group of nonbreeder common ravens, Corvus corax, we investigated whether witnessing conspecifics in positive social interaction, namely allopreening, would influence a bystander's behavioural and, possibly, emotional state. We recorded behavioural expressions of bystanders in postpreening observation phases and compared them to those in matched-control observation phases. We found effects of witnessing others' allopreening on the bystanders' subsequent affiliative interactions but not on their self-directed behaviours (e.g. autopreening) or agonistic interactions. Specifically, bystanders were more likely to engage in allopreening themselves in the postpreening observation phase than in the matched-control observation phase, which could be explained via behavioural and emotional contagion; however, bystanders also showed elevated levels of nonpreening affiliative interactions and spent more time close to conspecifics after observing others allopreening, which hints towards a more general effect on the bystanders' emotional states. Whether these nonpreening affiliative interactions are indeed an indication of emotional contagion needs to be tested in further studies that measure, and manipulate, emotional states.

Emotional Contagion in the Online Depression Community.

Negative emotions are prevalent in the online depression community (ODC), which potentially puts members at risk, according to the theory of emotional contagion. However, emotional contagion in the ODC has not been confirmed. The generalized estimating equation (GEE) was used to verify the extent of emotional contagion using data from 1548 sample users in China’s popular ODC. During interaction, the emotional themes were analyzed according to language use. The diurnal patterns of the interaction behaviors were also analyzed. We identified the susceptible groups and analyzed their characteristics. The results confirmed the occurrence of emotional contagion in ODC, that is, the extent to which the user’s emotion was affected by the received emotion. Our study also found that when positive emotional contagion occurred, the replies contained more hopefulness, and when negative emotional contagion occurred, the replies contained more hopelessness and fear. Second, positive emotions were easier to spread, and people with higher activity in ODC were more susceptible. In addition, nighttime was an active period for user interaction. The results can help community managers and support groups take measures to promote the spread of positive emotions and reduce the spread of negative emotions.

Serotonin Receptor (HTR2A) Gene Polymorphism Modulates Social Sharing of Happiness in Both American and Japanese Adults

AbstractA single nucleotide polymorphism in the serotonin 2A receptor gene (HTR2Ars6311 guanine [G] vs. adenine [A]) appears associated with positive emotional contagion (social sharing of happiness) in Japanese people. However, it remains unknown whether theHTR2Apolymorphism also impacts the social sharing of happiness in Western cultures. The present study thus compared 207 Japanese university students and 200 American adults (including non‐students). Social sharing of happiness was examined using a vignette‐based questionnaire. Participants were asked to imagine that they were experiencing an emotionally neutral event. At the same time, they were asked to imagine that a friend was experiencing a positive valence event (presence condition), whereas in the other condition such information was not presented (absence condition). Results showed that the G allele carriers felt happier in the presence than in the absence of the friend compared with participants with the AA genotype. Although we did not specifically consider comparability between the two samples, the findings suggest that the effect ofHTR2Apolymorphisms on social sharing of happiness observed in Japanese populations may be applicable to American populations.

The impact of biographical information about a composer on emotional responses to their music

This study investigated whether reading biographical information about the composer Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745) before listening to his music would influence listeners’ self-reported emotional responses. The study involved 179 participants who completed an online listening exercise in which they read either a negative or a neutral biography of Zelenka, or no biography, before listening to two short excerpts of his music. After listening to each excerpt, participants completed a 27-item questionnaire concerning their emotional responses and were then asked to describe in their own words how the music made them feel. Two-factor analyses identified five factors underlying the emotional responses of participants for each musical excerpt. Generalised Linear Mixed Model analyses indicate that the biography condition affected participants’ emotional responses with regard to memories, associations, and mental images. Positive emotional contagion was also a significant predictor variable for several of the emotional factors that were identified. A thematic analysis of participants’ free-text responses supported both the BRECVEMAC model and persona theory as interpretative frameworks, albeit with caveats. Additionally, a chi-square test of contingencies revealed that participants who read the negative biography of Zelenka were more likely to make use of negative language to describe their emotional responses to the music, and that participants who read no biography were more likely to use neutral language. The findings suggest that contextual biographical information about composers (e.g., in programme notes) can have an impact on the emotional experiences of listeners.

Interrelations between Attachment Styles, Emotional Contagion and Loneliness

The main purpose of this study was to examine the roles of parental attachment styles and emotional contagion in predicting the level of loneliness. Based on the theoretical and empirical premises, we have decided to investigate whether emotional contagion can be associated with loneliness, when the attachment styles are controlled for, and whether emotional contagion can function as a mediator in the relationship between attachment avoidance and loneliness. The Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale, the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale, and the Emotional Contagion Scale were applied to the research. In our results, attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance were demonstrated to be positive predictors, while positive emotional contagion was shown to be a negative predictor of loneliness. Moreover, our data revealed that catching the positive (but not negative) emotions of others was a mediator in the relationship between attachment avoidance and loneliness.

Social discourse and reopening after COVID-19

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has not been quenched yet, many countries lifted nationwide lockdowns to restart their economies, with citizens discussing the facets of reopening over social media. Investigating these online messages can open a window into people’s minds, unveiling their overall perceptions, their fears and hopes about the reopening. This window is opened and explored here for Italy, the first European country to adopt and release lockdown, by extracting key ideas and emotions over time from 400k Italian tweets about #fase2 — the reopening. Cognitive networks highlighted dynamical patterns of positive emotional contagion and inequality denounce invisible to sentiment analysis, in addition to a behavioural tendency for users to retweet either joyous or fearful content. While trust, sadness and anger fluctuated around quarantine-related concepts over time, Italians perceived politics and the government with a polarised emotional perception, strongly dominated by trust but occasionally featuring also anger and fear.

Strategies to Utilize the Positive Emotional Contagion Optimally in Crowd Evacuation

In a crisis situation, negative emotions often spread among the crowd, and they have adverse impacts on human decisions, resulting in stampedes and crushes. Safety officers are often dispatched to scenes of emergencies because their positive emotions can calm the crowd down and avoid serious accidents. However, how to utilize the positive emotional contagion to maximize the “calm-down” effect remains a challenging problem in crowd evacuation. In this paper, we present an approach for optimizing positive emotional contagion in crowd evacuation. First, a computational model of positive emotional contagion is proposed to describe how safety officers calm a crowd down. To capture important influential factors for positive emotional contagion, such as the trust relationships among the individuals involved in a crisis situation and the variations of emotional contagion speed, we construct a trust-based emotional contagion network (Trust-ECN) and a heterogeneous emotional contagion speed computation model (HECS-CM). Based on these models, the emotional contagion process can be analyzed in a parametric way, and the infection probability for each individual in a given time window can be computed analytically with a continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC). Second, a maximization problem of emotional contagion is formulated. Since this optimization problem is NP-hard, an artificial bee colony optimized emotional contagion (ABCEC) algorithm is used to solve for the optimal positions of safety officers. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on both synthetic and real-world data at different scales. Finally, we implement a crowd simulation system to visualize the results of our theoretical analysis in a graphical manner. The proposed method can provide guidance for emergency response management.

IoT-Based Positive Emotional Contagion for Crowd Evacuation

In emergency evacuations, crowds often become congested and stampeded because of extreme panic, resulting in injuries and fatalities. Safety officers can spread positive emotions and reduce crowd panic by issuing information or appeasement, which is an effective way to ensure evacuation safety. However, how to deploy safety officers appropriately and maximize positive emotional contagion to cover the largest number of chaotic individuals is still a challenging problem. To solve this problem, we propose an IoT-based positive emotional contagion (IoT-PEC) method for crowd evacuation. First, we employ IoT technologies to capture the attributes of crowd movement, such as position and velocity. Based on these attributes, the crowd chaos can be quantified by calculating the macroscopic and microscopic entropies. Second, we propose an entropy-based anisotropic emotional contagion model (E-AECM) to achieve the nonuniform positive emotional contagion considering the influence of chaos on the propagation rate. Third, we formulate the problem of safety officer placement as an optimization problem to maximize the positive emotional contagion on the chaos individuals. Finally, we implement a simulation system for crowd evacuation to visualize the results of positive emotion contagion. The proposed method can provide guidance for emergency response management.

The Influence of Social Networks on Team Performance: Moderating Effect of Emotional Contagion

With the development of the Internet, the use of social networks has become more and more important in team management. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of social networks use on team performance and the moderating role of emotional contagion plays in this relationship. 80 college students from 20 innovation and entrepreneurship teams completed questionnaires on team social networks use scale and team performance scale, and then performed team tasks. Three video clips were used as emotionally induced materials. Results showed that the use of social networks can positively predict team performance, and that positive emotional contagion also has the predictive effect. Critically, emotional contagion acts as a moderator in the relationship between the use of social networks and team performance. Specifically, under the condition of positive emotional contagion, the high-level use of social networks can positively predict better team performance; under the condition of negative emotional contagion, there is no significant difference in team performance at different uses of social network service levels. These findings suggest that managers should pay more attention to the dissemination of positive emotional information in social networks to improve team performance.

Is teacher happiness contagious? A study of the link between perceptions of language teacher happiness and student attitudes

ABSTRACT There remains a dearth of research on the effects of student perception of teacher happiness and the ramifications of those perceptions on student feelings and attitudes. Using an online questionnaire, data were collected from 129 adult students of ESL/EFL across the world who were enrolled in formal English classes of intermediate to advanced level proficiency. Participants were asked about their perception of various aspects of their teachers’ happiness, and about their own attitudes and motivation to learn English. Statistical analyses revealed that student perception of teacher happiness was significantly (and positively) linked with students’ Overall attitude and motivation, as well as students’ Attitude towards the teacher. This is interpreted as an illustration of the process of positive emotional contagion between teachers and students. Pedagogical implications of the results are discussed.

Service innovation and mental health: The multilevel moderating role of group emotional contagion

From the perspective of social information processing theory, we investigated the multilevel mediating effect of surface acting in the relationship between service innovation and frontline employees’ mental health, then further tested the multilevel moderating roles of positive and negative group emotional contagion. We used the experience sampling method to conduct a survey with 572 employees of 71 hospitality and catering companies in China. Hierarchical linear modeling results showed that service innovation negatively affected participants’ mental health via surface acting. Further, positive group emotional contagion positively moderated the relationship between surface acting and mental health. Thus, positive group emotional contagion alleviated the negative influence of surface acting on mental health. The moderating role of negative group emotional contagion was, however, nonsignificant. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed and recommendations for future research are made.

Are Those Who Tend to Mimic Facial Expressions Especially Vulnerable to Emotional Contagion?

The aim of the present study was to test the classic but under-researched hypothesis that individual differences in automatic emotional mimicry are positively related to individual differences in emotional contagion. To tap automatic mimicry and automatic emotional contagion, participants were exposed to affective stimuli with either a positive or negative valence (faces with a happy expression, n = 73; faces with a sad expression, n = 73) while their attention was directed toward nonaffective features of the stimuli. Emotional mimicry was measured with EMG (Corrugator, Zygomaticus). On average, in the sad emotional expression condition, participants’ mood worsened, but the happy emotional expression condition did not evoke a general positive emotional contagion effect (across participants). Multigroup multilevel latent difference models revealed that in the sad emotional expression condition, individual differences in Corrugator activity were related to a larger increase in unpleasant mood, and in the happy emotional expression condition, individual differences in Zygomaticus activity were related to a larger decrease in unpleasant mood. That is, results of this study provided support for the mimicry-contagion link.