Dynamics of Emotional Contagion

"Lab Coats," photograph by Pi

Source: Flickr/Used with permission

The coronavirus has upended our daily lives, causing anxiety, denial for some, and spreading fear that at times approaches panic. Yet it’s important to understand the psychology of emotional contagion in order to gain perspective on the reality of this viral threat.

The phrase "emotional contagion" refers to how humans synchronize emotions, whether consciously or unconsciously, and converge in a shared feeling state. Psychologists borrow the term “contagion” from biology and the language of infectious diseases.

In a paper from the 1990s, psychologists Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo, and Richard Rapson conceptualize emotional contagion as a two-step process. The first step is defined by mimicry or imitation (e.g. if someone smiles at you authentically, you smile back). Secondly, when the non-verbal sign of emotion is received (the smile directed at you) and then replicated by the mimic—momentarily changes in one’s felt emotions also occur. In other words, when a person unconsciously mirrors a companion’s expression of emotion, he or she is infused with a similar feeling, which leads to emotional convergence.

The synchrony of feeling among people is an innate human capacity present at birth. This dynamic has been studied in relation to the easy susceptibility of emotions between a primary caregiver and infant.

Attachment research examines this first interpersonal relationship, observing patterns of caregiving and infant response that typically focus on emotional communication during moments of distress for the infant and the corresponding capacities of the caregiver to calm and soothe. Empathy is fostered through a secure attachment, that is when a child feels protected and understood by the caregiver. By contrast, in disorganized patterns of attachment, the parent is unable to function in a protective role or to identify with a child’s subjective needs. Affective communication is mismatched or out of sync. There is a lack of emotional convergence and the disorganized response of the child duplicates the unintegrated communication of the mother. In these intimate communications, facial expressions are of special importance. Other nonverbal interactions play a significant part too, including voice qualities, posture, and bodily movement.

Emotional contagion (the catching of affect) is mediated through the physiological realm as well as through our behaviors. Specifically, it involves the ANS (automatic nervous system), the part of the nervous system that regulates involuntary bodily functions such as breathing, heartbeat, and digestive processes. The discovery of mirror neurons helps us understand how emotional contagion works.

According to psychoanalyst Thomas Arizmendi, “What we have learned is that by observing another's actions or even hearing them (audiovisual mirror neurons), the same area of the brain becomes activated that would if we were performing that action ourselves. In other words, the same neurons fire when we perform that action or merely observe it.” Current research is studying precisely what it is that goes on in the brain allowing us to catch and feel an emotion from the observation of it in another.

The transmission of emotion involves a central part of the brain called the “insula,” located deep in the cerebral cortex and at the center of the mirror system. The insula transforms sensory stimulation into visceral reactions. Arizmendi describes how physiological synchrony involving the ANS causes people to automatically synchronize with the affective and somatic states of others, especially in regard to what he calls intense “negative feeling states” such as fear or panic. The relationship between emotional and physiological synchrony is complex. In certain instances, the former catalyzes the latter, while at other times it is the reverse. But these automatic tendencies toward mimicry that result in convergence is what is meant by “emotional contagion.”

Emotional contagion relies mainly on facial and other non-verbal communications, although it has been demonstrated to occur via telecommunication. For example, people interacting through e-mails and "chats" are affected by another's emotions without being able to perceive facial or non-verbal cues. Some argue that emotional contagion, in fact, propels social media.

Emotional contagion within groups was elaborated by the 19th-century French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon, ideas which he published in The Crowd: a Study of Popular Mind in France (1885). Le Bon understands a crowd as a group of people bonded by a common belief, idea, or ideology. Suggestibility, he writes, is the main mechanism of contagion bringing the feeling states of the crowd into as a singular “group mind.”

Le Bon argues that the crowd exerts a hypnotic influence over the individual. Also, humans experience their emotions more intensely when experienced in a group. Freud claimed this is a function of the regression that occurs frequently in collectives. By "regression," he meant the personality reverts to an earlier stage of development — rather than handling unacceptable impulses in a more adaptive way. Lynch mobs are examples of this kind of destructive group regression. Often, a leader mesmerizes the crowd with an illusion, which exerts power and influence over the actions of the crowd. Le Bon’s ideas of crowd psychology informed fascist leadership of the 1920s and its techniques of propaganda, which led to atrocities: Hitler owed much to Le Bon's writings, as did Mussolini and Lenin.

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To the extent that one shares in a group experience, usual self-restraints are loosened. An individual’s sense of self, personal responsibility, and critical judgment are surrendered to the group. Intelligence is lowered and the tendency toward more primitive behavior prevails. The anonymity in a crowd permits the convergence of irrational and emotionally-charged behavior. It becomes more difficult for the individual to resist anxiety when surrounded by the alarm of others in a group. The high-pitched emotion of the crowd can feed on itself, expanding through time.

When one is submerged in this soup of collective unconscious, group identity becomes more important than individual identity. Today, with the real threat of COVID-19, one may become so enveloped with a shared anxiety that the slightest cough or sign of irregularity in the functioning of one’s own body can lead to an obsession with one’s health, as though death itself were contagious.

As social life grinds to a halt in the wake of COVID-19, the media stokes fear and worries that our health system may be overwhelmed. Yet it’s important to use our observing capacities to gain realistic perspective and inoculate ourselves from emotional contagion. There are appropriate fears and exaggerated ones. Cool mind, warm heart. Keep an eye on the psychological contagion that accompanies the understandably frightening spread of this virus.