3 - Evidence that emotional contagion exists

Summary

Introduction

In chapter 1, we proposed the following:

Proposition 3. Given Propositions 1 and 2, people tend to “catch” others' emotions, moment to moment.

Researchers from a variety of disciplines have provided evidence in support of this contention.

Animal research

Ethologists believe that the imitation of emotional expression constitutes a phylogenetically ancient and basic form of intraspecies communication. Such contagion appears in many vertebrate species (Brothers, 1989).

In the 1950s, a great deal of research documented that animals do seem to catch others' emotions. Robert Miller and his Pittsburgh colleagues (Miller, Banks, & Ogawa 1963; Miller, Murphy, & Mirsky, 1959; Mirsky, Miller, & Murphy, 1958) found that monkeys can, through their faces and postures, transmit their fears. The faces, voices, and postures of frightened monkeys serve as warnings; they signal potential trouble. Monkeys catch the fear of others and thus are primed to make appropriate instrumental avoidance responses.

Some scientists (Miller et al., 1963) tested these hypotheses by means of a cooperative conditioning paradigm. In such a paradigm, one monkey is shown the CS; a second monkey possesses the power to make an appropriate avoidance response. The question is, “Can the monkeys learn to communicate?” In this cooperative conditioning experiment, each time rhesus monkeys spotted the illuminated face of the target monkey on a television monitor, it was their task quickly to press a lever to avoid electric shock. Sometimes monkeys were shown a calm CS face, sometimes a frightened or pained face.