Emotional contagion of anger is automatic: An evolutionary explanation

Emotional contagion – the transfer of emotions between people – is thought to occur automatically. We test the prediction, based on evolutionary psychology, that negative, threat‐related emotions transfer more automatically than positive emotions. We introduce a new paradigm for investigating emotio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:British journal of social psychology 2016-03, Vol.55 (1), p.182-191
Main Authors: Kelly, Janice R., Iannone, Nicole E., McCarty, Megan K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Anger
Anger - physiology
Biological Evolution
Cognition
Cognitive load
Contagion
Contagion theory
emotion valence
emotional contagion
Emotions
Emotions - physiology
Evolution
Evolutionary psychology
Facial Expression
Facial expressions
Female
Happiness
Humans
Male
Positive emotions
Psychology
Social psychology
Threats
Young Adult
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Summary:Emotional contagion – the transfer of emotions between people – is thought to occur automatically. We test the prediction, based on evolutionary psychology, that negative, threat‐related emotions transfer more automatically than positive emotions. We introduce a new paradigm for investigating emotional contagion where participants are exposed to videos of faces that morph from neutral to angry or happy expressions. Participants watched these videos under high or low cognitive load. Participants reported more happiness in the happy condition than the anger condition and more anger in the anger condition than the happy condition, supporting our new paradigm. Participants in the happy condition were significantly happier under low compared with high load. Participants were equally angry in high and low load conditions.
ISSN:0144-6665
2044-8309
DOI:10.1111/bjso.12134