YOUTUBE, TJADOThe idea that emotions can spread from person to person is not new. But recent research is starting to uncover the physiological mechanisms behind such “emotional contagion.” A study published this month (May 9) in Psychological Science, for example, showed that infants dilate or contract their pupils in response to depictions of eyes with the corresponding state, suggesting that emotional contagion may develop early in life. A 2014 study found that mothers could pass emotional stress on to their babies in a largely unconscious way. Together, the findings add to a growing body of research revealing the role of this phenomenon in human interactions.
“One of the most important things as a human species is to communicate effectively,” said Garriy Shteynberg, a psychologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who has shown that emotional contagion is enhanced in group settings. In order to do that, “we need cognitive mechanisms that give us a lot of common background knowledge,” Shteynberg told The Scientist.
Scientists have shown emotions can be passed between humans (and other animals) by various sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, and tactile.
Christine Fawcett of Sweden’s Uppsala University and colleagues recently studied pupillary contagion—changing one’s pupil size in response to seeing another person’s pupils dilate or contract—in 6- and 9-month-old babies. The researchers showed the infants images of black circles of varying sizes designed to look like pupils, ...
