Emotional Contagion in Open Software Collaborations

The most effective monsters of horror fiction mirror ancestral dangers to exploit evolved fears. For most of human evolutionary history, we have faced threats in the domains of predation, conspecific violence, contagion, status loss, and dangerous nonliving environmental features. We thus very easily acquire fears directed toward threats from these domains. This chapter argues that the nonrandom distribution of human fears is reflected in horror, which features stimuli that mirror evolved fears, often in incarnations that are exaggerated and/or counterintuitive for increased salience, including giant spiders, supernormal monsters such as evil clowns, and physics-violating ghosts. Many monsters are also equipped with contagion cues, thus exploiting an evolved disgust mechanism. Some monsters evoke moral disgust through their violation of norms. To strengthen audiences’ emotional responses to such monsters, horror artists often provide descriptions of characters’ reactions which are mirrored by the audience through an adaptive mechanism enabling emotional contagion.

Download Full-text

Watching others in a positive state does not induce optimism bias in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus), but leads to behaviour indicative of competition

Animal Cognition ◽

10.1007/s10071-021-01497-1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

J. E. C. Adriaense ◽

V. Šlipogor ◽

S. Hintze ◽

L. Marshall ◽

C. Lamm ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Emotional Contagion ◽

Negative Control ◽

Emotional States ◽

Common Marmosets ◽

Optimism Bias ◽

Negative State ◽

Group Life ◽

Judgement Bias ◽

Negative Condition ◽

Positive State

AbstractEmotional contagion is suggested to facilitate group life by enhancing synchronized responses to the environment. Cooperative breeders are an example of a social system that requires such intricate coordination between individuals. Therefore, we studied emotional contagion in common marmosets by means of a judgement bias test. Demonstrators were exposed to an emotion manipulation (i.e., positive, negative, control), and observers perceived only the demonstrator’s behaviour. We predicted that the positive or negative states of the demonstrator would induce matching states in the observer, indicating emotional contagion. All subjects’ emotional states were assessed through behaviour and cognition, the latter by means of a judgement bias test. Behavioural results showed a successful emotion manipulation of demonstrators, with manipulation-congruent expressions (i.e., positive calls in the positive condition, and negative calls and pilo-erect tail in the negative condition). Observers showed no manipulation-congruent expressions, but showed more scratching and arousal after the positive manipulation. Concerning the judgement bias test, we predicted that subjects in a positive state should increase their response to ambiguous cues (i.e., optimism bias), and subjects in a negative state should decrease their response (i.e., pessimism bias). This prediction was not supported as neither demonstrators nor observers showed such bias in either manipulation. Yet, demonstrators showed an increased response to the near-positive cue, and additional analyses showed unexpected responses to the reference cues, as well as a researcher identity effect. We discuss all results combined, including recently raised validation concerns of the judgement bias test, and inherent challenges to empirically studying emotional contagion.

Download Full-text

Recurrent Emotional Contagion for the Crowd Evacuation of a Cyber-Physical Society

Information Sciences ◽

10.1016/j.ins.2021.06.036 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Heng Liu ◽

Dianjie Lu ◽

Guijuan Zhang ◽

Xiao Hong ◽

Hong Liu

Keyword(s):

Emotional Contagion ◽

Crowd Evacuation

Download Full-text

Catching My Anger: How Political Elites Create Angrier Citizens

Political Research Quarterly ◽

10.1177/10659129211026972 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 106591292110269

Author(s):

Carey E. Stapleton ◽

Ryan Dawkins

Keyword(s):

American Politics ◽

Emotional State ◽

Emotional Contagion ◽

Political Elites ◽

Online Experiment ◽

Linkage Effect ◽

State Of Mind

Anger is a common feature in contemporary American politics. Through the process of affect linkage, we argue that one way the electorate becomes angrier about politics is by observing angry displays from political elites. Affect linkage occurs when a person’s emotional state of mind changes to match the emotions displayed by someone else. Using an online experiment in which subjects are randomly exposed to an angry or unemotional debate between a Democrat and Republican running for Congress, we show that exposure to an angry in-party politician significantly increases the amount of anger, disgust, and outrage expressed by co-rank-and-file partisans. This increase in aversive emotions, moreover, increases the likelihood that citizens report the intention to vote, and this affect linkage effect is most pronounced in those who are most likely to stay home on election day: the weakest partisans. Interestingly, angry rhetoric by political elites does not have any effect on out-partisans, suggesting that anger via emotional contagion does not cross party lines.

Download Full-text

Durkheim’s French Neo-Kantian Social Thought: Epistemology, Sociology of Knowledge, and Morality in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

Kant Yearbook ◽

10.1515/kantyb-2020-0002 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 33-56

Author(s):

Dustin Garlitz

Keyword(s):

Sociology Of Knowledge ◽

Religious Life ◽

Emotional Contagion ◽

Social Thought ◽

Legal Philosophy ◽

Paradigm Case ◽

Intellectual Context ◽

Hans Kelsen ◽

Formative Years

AbstractThis article presents Durkheim as a Neo-Kantian social thinker and a source of the theory of emotional contagion. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life is examined as Durkheim’s paradigm case of Neo-Kantianism. He is first considered among the intellectual context of French Neo-Kantianism and its figures Charles Renouvier, Émile Boutroux, and Octave Hamelin, all whom were influential in his formative years. Durkheim’s Neo-Kantianism in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life is then juxtaposed to the Neo-Kantian legal philosophy of Emil Lask and Hans Kelsen. Agued is that Durkheim’s notions of distortion and emotional contagion are his leading contributions to Neo-Kantianism.

Download Full-text

Emotional contagion as a trigger for moral disengagement: Their effects on workplace injuries

Safety Science ◽

10.1016/j.ssci.2021.105317 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 140 ◽

pp. 105317

Author(s):

Laura Petitta ◽

Tahira M. Probst ◽

Valerio Ghezzi ◽

Claudio Barbaranelli

Keyword(s):

Moral Disengagement ◽

Emotional Contagion ◽

Workplace Injuries

Download Full-text