| Emotions can be transmitted from person to person,and the process by which our emotions become more similar to those of others as a result of exposure to their emotions is called emotional contagion.The theories of the process of emotional contagion include the automatic mimicry-feedback theory and the conscious social appraisal theory.However,so far there have been few empirical studies on whether emotional contagion only depends on one psychological mechanism and whether there is interaction between different mechanisms.Moreover,the occurrence of emotional contagion involves both sides of emotional interaction,which is a dynamic process.However,there is a lack of research focusing on the real-time change process of different individuals’ emotional states（subjective experience and sympathetic activity arousal）and the relevance between them.Therefore,the current study set up two experiments,using the behavioral and BIOPAC technology,and set up the real interactive emotional experimental situation.Each pair of the participants were randomly assigned as expresser or receiver.Through the collection of the two individuals’ self-reported subjective experience and autonomic nervous activity index,the study is to investigate the process of emotional contagion during the interaction between individuals,as well as relevant psychological mechanism（mimicry-feedback,social appraisal）,and to provide objective evidence for emotional contagion.Experiment 1 based on the mimicry-feedback theory of emotional contagion,and focused on whether facial expression mimicry would cause interpersonal emotional contagion,and examined the difference in the effect of positive and negative emotions on emotional contagion.Self-reported emotional experience and physiological indicators（EMG,heart rate,heart rate variability）were recorded using a complete within-subject design（N=30 pairs）with 2 tasks（mimicry task vs.control task）×2 emotions（positive vs.negative）.The results showed that the emotional states（including self-report results and physiological arousal）of expressers and receivers showed similar changes during the mimicry task,and compared to the control task,the physiological synchronization between expressers and receivers was significantly higher in the mimicry task.However,there was no significant difference in physiological synchronization between positive and negative emotions.The results of Experiment 1 showed that the mimicry of facial expressions did cause interpersonal emotional contagion,but the effect of contagion did not differ among different emotional valence（positive or negative）.Experiment 2 focused on whether the psychological process of social appraisal affected emotional contagion,and whether the mimicry of expressions would occur automatically,and whether the effect of emotional contagion varied with discrete emotional types.In Experiment 2,receivers were only asked to observe the facial expressions of expressers without the intentional mimicry task.A mixed experimental design(Nfriends =24 pairs;Nstrangers =28 pairs)with 2 interpersonal relationships（friend vs.stranger）×3 emotional types（happiness vs.anger vs.sadness）was used,in which interpersonal relationship was a between-subject variable and emotional type was a within-subject variable.The dependent variables were subjects’ self-reported emotional states and physiological indicators（EMG,heart rate,heart rate variability）.The results showed that under the three emotional conditions of happiness,anger and sadness,the subjective experience and physiological arousal of both the emotional expressers and the receivers had similar changes,which proved the occurrence of emotional contagion.EMG results showed that although there was no intentional mimicry task,the receivers automatically mimicked the expressers under all three emotional conditions.Therefore,the automatic mimicry-feedback mechanism may be the most common psychological mechanism of emotional contagion.What’s more,people mimicked the happy faces of friends more than strangers,and the heart rate synchronization was significantly higher between friends than between strangers in the happy condition.In the anger condition,heart rate synchronization was also higher between friends than strangers,but there was no significant difference in expression mimicry between friends and strangers.Therefore,both mimicry-feedback mechanism and social appraisal mechanism played a role in the contagion of happiness and anger,but happiness might be more dependent on the pathway of mimicry-feedback,while anger might be more dependent on social appraisal.To sum up,the conclusions of this study are as follows:（1）When emotional contagion occurs,there will be convergence of subjective emotional experience and synchronous change of heart rate or heart rate variability of different individuals of emotional contagion.（2）Both mimicry-feedback mechanism and social appraisal mechanism play an important role in emotional contagion,but mimicry-feedback may be a more common mechanism of emotional contagion relatively.（3）In terms of the effect of discrete emotions,the emotional contagion of happiness and anger are dependent on both mimicry-feedback mechanism and the social appraisal mechanism,but happiness contagion is more dependent on the mimicry-feedback pathway,while anger is more dependent on the social evaluation.Mimicry-feedback mechanism also plays a role in the sadness contagion.This study provides empirical evidence through pair emotional interaction tasks and physiological recording technology,to support the two psychological mechanisms of emotional contagion: mimicry-feedback and social appraisal,and confirms that the automatic bottom-up mimicry process and the top-down cognitive control process will jointly act on the interpersonal emotional contagion. |
