The process of joy, sadness and anger contagion has been studied by psychologists from the Institute of Psychology at the University of Lodz under the supervision of dr hab. Monika Wróbel (prof UL). For the first time, they have taken into account the simultaneous influence of two fundamental factors of social perception – communion and agency – on the emotional contagion.
Agentic and communal traits
- We talk about communion when the sender of an emotion is a warm, cheerful person who is liked by the receiver. About agency – when they demonstrate knowledge, skills and abilities that make them highly competent in the eyes of the receiver – explains prof. Monika Wróbel from the Institute of Psychology, University of Lodz – In our experiments we manipulated these features, that is, we convinced our study subjects that the senders differ in the level of these features.
The researchers from Lodz assumed that a higher level of agency would enhance the impact of communion on the receiver's emotional contagion and the so-called emotional mimicry, i.e., the process of reflecting the other person's emotions with one's own facial muscles (often considered a key mechanism of emotional contagion). In doing so, they assumed that communion would show the study subjects that the sender was a person with friendly, good intentions, while agency would enhance this effect by suggesting that the sender was competent enough to act in accordance with these intentions. A total of three experiments were conducted on groups of 60-70 people.
„We manipulated the senders’ agentic and communal traits and then exposed participants to the senders’ displays of happiness, sadness, and anger” – reads the article published by the researchers from the University of Lodz in the SpringerLink scientific content database. Its full version is available here. – „We expected that happy and sad expressions would evoke congruent emotional responses (that is, participants’ emotions would correspond to emotions expressed by the senders). We also hypothesized that these congruent responses would be promoted by high communion and weakened by low communion. Finally, we expected that high agency would intensify the effects of communion on participants’ responses to happiness and sadness, whereas low agency would lessen these effects. As previously mentioned, we did not formulate any specific hypotheses concerning anger-related responses.”
How to measure emotional contagion?
Thanks to the collaboration with the Center for Research on Biological Basis of Social Behavior at the SWPS University, the experiments used two methods to observe and measure responses in the individuals experiencing emotional contagion. The first used the FACS (Facial Action Coding System) method, i.e., a time-lapse analysis of the movement of the facial muscles of the person under study on a video recorded during the experiment. The second, more precise, is electromyography (EMG), which captures facial activity that is barely visible or invisible to the naked eye using electrodes attached to it. The researchers placed electrodes around the muscles that lift the lip corners (which determine smiling in facial expressions) and the muscles that lower the eyebrows (e.g. involved in expressing anger and sadness). EMG was used only in the final, third, experiment.
– Emotional mimicry is a process that produces often very subtle muscle tensions. Therefore, its recording and measurement requires precise tools – prof. Monika Wróbel explains the use of two measurement methods.– Our experiments have shown that we take over emotions very selectively, because the study subjects were more inclined to adopt and imitate emotions when the senders were both communal and agentic. In contrast, the combination of communion and low agency weakened emotional contagion. This shows that although taking over and imitating other people's emotions are processes that we are not aware of, they are in fact subject to very sublime, automated control.
Sadness is taken over unconditionally
The results of the research conducted by the researchers from the University of Lodz have confirmed the hypothesis that communion and agency together affect both the process of emotion contagion and emotional mimicry, while it has turned out that both processes are modulated not only by the characteristics of the senders, but also by the social meaning of the expressed emotions.
Indeed, the strength and direction of the impact of the two social features were consistent with the predictions of the psychologists from Lodz only when the senders expressed joy. When the senders expressed sadness, the effect of agency or communion on emotional contagion ceased. In the case of anger, the research results have turned out to be inconclusive.
– The expression of sadness is an affiliative social message, and so, we expected that sadness contagion (similar to joy contagion) would be supported by a combination of high communion and high agency. However, it has turned out that it doesn't work that way – explains prof. Monika Wróbel. – One possible explanation is that reactions to sadness reflect the emotional aspects of empathy. As a result, the receivers were able to feel sympathy for sad senders, whether or not those senders had affiliative characteristics. Similar effects have been reported for emotional responses to tears.
Politicians, doctors and... Volodymyr Zelensky
The essence and principles of emotional contagion process is knowledge that should be acquired, among others, by politicians, leaders, teachers, doctors who "work with emotions" on a daily basis. If they are to be effective, it would be useful for them to know that high agency, and therefore, high competence, intensifies the effects of communion, making it easier to communicate one's own emotions to others. As a result, they help manage these emotions among the receivers, i.e., voters, employees, team members, students, patients.
– President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky is a perfect exemplification of the support of the high potential of communion by agency. When he was elected to office, he was well known from TV, he was liked and associated well – a high level of communion made voters trust him and he became the president. In extreme conditions – after the Russian aggression – he additionally demonstrated a high level of agency, i.e., the level of competence of a leader who led his people with dedication into an effective fight against the Russians. The sum of these two main social traits, known in psychology as the 'Big Two', influenced how effectively Zelensky 'manages' the emotions of his compatriots, and made him emerge as a world-class leader in the eyes of many – concludes prof. Monika Wróbel.
Edit: Promotion Centre of the University of Lodz