Affect Transfer: Emotional Contagion, Social Appraisal,

and Interpersonal History

Penny Moore
Christ Church

Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Experimental Psychology

University of Oxford

January, 2011
 Abstract
Penny Moore D.Phil. Thesis
Christ Church Michaelmas Term 2010

Affect Transfer: Emotional Contagion, Social Appraisal, and Interpersonal History

Affect transfer refers to a phenomenon in which emotions or moods transfer between

individuals such that they come to feel similar states. It is thought that during interaction
individuals can be influenced by another’s emotions either automatically and implicitly or
because they alter appraisals of what the situation means. Affect transfer has been well
documented in experimental research, but studies directly comparing these two processes
have so far been limited.

Affect transfer has also been proposed to operate within-groups with the result that
group members evidence a ‘group emotion’ or affective consistency. Group emotion has been
well documented, but researchers have relied heavily on samples where group members
shared an interpersonal history. In addition assessments of real-time emotional convergence
have been limited leaving open the possibility that the documented effects were not the result
of real-time processes.

This thesis therefore aimed to assess the interpersonal transfer of affect at both the
individual and group-level. Specifically the research aimed to assess the impact of appraisals
(i.e., appraisals of targets’ emotion, contextual appropriateness, social identification, and
perceived similarity) on affect transfer. In addition affective responses of participants
interacting within newly formed work groups were mapped over several days.

The studies presented here involved two lines of research; one experimental and one
based on a diary methodology. The experimental research involved a range of laboratory
manipulations. The studies involved presenting participants with stimulus video clips of
targets displaying either positive or negative emotion. Experimental manipulations involved
targets’ appraisals of their own emotions (consistent or inconsistent with their emotional
behaviour), the social context, social group, perceived similarity, and the implementation of a
cognitive load task designed to interfere with participants’ ability to process targets’
appraisals. Participants were asked to give ratings of own-emotion and targets’ emotion.

The diary research involved participants completing affect measures before and after
group interaction over several days. The research also assessed the impact of individual-level
variables (i.e., group identification, emotional expressiveness, susceptibility to emotional
contagion and attention to social comparison information) on group members’ affective
responses.

The results suggested that participants’ social appraisals significantly influenced the
transfer of affect. However, there was no strong indication of affect transferring within-
groups in real-time. Overall the findings highlighted the multifaceted nature of affect transfer
and the importance of the social context.
 Section 1: General Introduction
Chapter 1: Social Emotions

“Choosing whether or not to feel ‘Hostile’ at least two times a day”

(Participant 118)

A hearty laughter erupted around the main plenary; a group of evidently inspired
students were jubilantly performing a skit about their experiences on a graduate training
course. The course specialised in fostering interpersonal skills and I was attending in the hope
of collecting data for some of the research I present later in this thesis. Course attendees were
asked to compose and perform short sketches which demonstrated their newly acquired skills.
Most took this task quite seriously; however, one particular group decided instead to exercise
their creative abilities. Unbeknown to me they had obtained several copies of my
questionnaires to use as props. During their performance one of the students bounded around
the stage continuously brandishing the questionnaires at anyone and everyone. Others made
paper aeroplanes of them in the background, while two particularly witty members of the
group discussed (aloud) each question in great detail, hence the above quote. In fact,
participation in my research appeared to feature quite prominently in their skit.
In response to the above the majority of the audience, including myself, laughed.
What struck me most about this, was how the attention shifted almost instantaneously from
the stage, to me, and more importantly, to my reaction. In those few moments I had witnessed
first-hand some of the very processes which spurred the research presented later in this thesis.
I had glimpsed and succumbed to a primitive form of emotional contagion: members
of the audience spontaneously laughed at the unfolding parody, looking towards each other in
acknowledgement and appreciation of the performers, their smiles and laughs rapidly rippled
throughout the audience. I had also been the focus of their social appraisals: on swift
realisation that I was the subject of this mockery, many of the audience instinctively turned to
me, and to my reaction. Their broad smiles momentarily shifted to apprehensive glances as
they scanned my face for any signs that I had taken offence. On realisation that I too found
the sketch very funny the hullabaloo continued. By appraising the emotional reaction of
myself and others present they had made sense of the situation; satisfying themselves that
their own emotional responses were circumstantially acceptable or appropriate. I suspect that
had I or others evidenced outward signs of distress or disapproval they would have attempted
to stifle their obvious amusement.
While we may experience the sensations of emotions such as joy, sadness, jealousy,
embarrassment, love, anger, guilt or pride, subjectively, emotions are nearly always elicited
within an interpersonal context, be it real or imagined. We experience sadness at the loss of
loved ones, jealousy in response to a threatened relationship, pride at being held in high
esteem, embarrassment of having committed a social faux pas, anger at having been wronged,
guilt in having been wrong, joy when engaging with others, and love when engaging with
people we consider particularly special. Emotions are fundamentally social things. It should
come as no surprise that human beings are instinctively sensitive and reactive to the
emotional behaviour of one another.
We are so sensitive in fact, that this intrinsic reactive process can manifest in the form
of emotions transferring between individuals; the research reported later in this thesis
suggests that individuals need not even be engaged in interaction, just being witness to
another’s emotional display can be enough to evoke a corresponding emotional feeling.
Given that we spend the vast majority of our lives embedded in various different social
networks; in relationships, in families, at work, with friends, in clubs, societies, and
organisations, it is easy to see how such emotional dynamics can and do exert a significant
impact on our everyday lives. This social sharing of emotion reverberates around our
interpersonal worlds exercising its influence at a number of levels.
Clearly the emotional behaviour of those around us can influence us on an individual
level; we smile in response to someone else’s smile, we feel sadness in response to someone
else’s distress, and feel awkward in response to someone else’s embarrassment. Our own
subjective emotional experiences, functioning, and behaviour are influenced by the emotions
of others. Moreover this transfer of emotion can also influence the functioning and behaviour
of groups and even organisations. But what is this contagious interpersonal process? How
does it happen? The transfer of emotion between individuals and within groups was the main
focus of the research reported in this thesis. Specifically the present research considers the
processes that underlie interpersonal affect transfer, factors which may influence this process,
and how individual’s membership of groups can influence their subjective emotional
responding.
In this chapter I first place emotions within the social context. I then go on to describe
briefly the phenomenon of emotional convergence. I make a distinction between affect
transfer operating via automatic implicit processes (i.e., emotional contagion) and affect
transfer based on appraisals. I also differentiate between affect transferring in real-time
during the course of interaction, and emotional convergence which results from a shared
interpersonal history. I then define the key terms and clarify the terminology used throughout
this thesis. In the following sections I first outline real-time mechanisms before discussing the
long-term influences which can shape interactants emotional responding.
1.1 Explanations of affect transfer
There are potentially many ways in which emotion might transfer between people but
previous researchers have tended to favour explanations which emphasise either an automatic
subconscious transfer of affect (e.g., primitive emotional contagion theory, Hatfield,
Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994), or more conscious processes in which individuals make
appraisals of others’ emotional responses in order to make sense of a given situation (e.g.,
social appraisal theory, Manstead & Fischer, 2001). Affect transfer based on emotional
contagion occurs automatically and instinctively; individuals need not be attentive to the
meaning or personal significance of others’ emotional responses in order to catch them. In the
case of social appraisal however affect transfer results from appraising the meaning of others’
emotional responses. Other people’s emotional responses alter or shape our own appraisals
of a situation and hence influence our emotional responses. Just as in the above example,
audience members engaged in social appraisals to determine whether it was appropriate or
not to laugh.
Affect transfer has also been previously reported to occur in groups such that group
members come to experience a shared ‘group emotion’. In other words group members have
been shown to demonstrate consistency in their affective responses. Furthermore, the
affective tone of the group and the configuration of affect within-groups (the extent to which
individual members’ affective responses are characterised by homogeneity or heterogeneity)
have also been shown to influence the function and behaviour of the group as a whole.
Although previous researchers have made a good case for affect constituting a meaningful
construct at the group-level, none have attempted to distinguish between affect transferring in
real-time via mechanisms such as emotional contagion and social appraisal (during group
interaction) and affective consistency resulting from processes occurring over the longer-
term.
Mechanisms such as emotional contagion and social appraisal postulate that the
emotional behaviour and verbalisations of others influence our own emotional responding
either subconsciously or by providing meaning pertaining to the social situation. Either way,
both of these processes are based on the operation of real-time mechanisms (e.g., mimicry,
perception of bodily feedback) which, generally speaking, would be expected to occur during
the course of interaction. However interactants may also come to experience convergent
emotional states through processes which develop over comparatively longer periods of time.
1.2 Explanations of emotional convergence
Within-groups and organisations we are more often than not interacting with
individuals not by chance, but by choice. In other words we are commonly embedded within-
groups which we selected. We choose our relationship partners, we choose our friends, we
choose where to live, where to work, and with whom to spend our free time (through our
membership of clubs, organisations, societies, and so on.). While of course our social
interactions are not always subject to selection or choice, by and large, the people with whom
we interact, especially those with whom we spend the most time, were selected.
The research discussed later in this thesis suggests that we are attracted to, and
selected by, specific people, groups, and organisations who are similar to ourselves. Crucially
individuals within specific social contexts may be similar with respect to personality
characteristics which influence their affective responding (e.g., George, 1990). Individuals
within specific groups and organisations might also develop shared ways of emotionally
appraising and responding to external events and shared norms which govern the
communication and expression of emotion. These influences could ultimately manifest in an
affective consistency between individuals in the absence of real-time processes. Throughout
this thesis I argue that when addressing the issues of what causes emotional convergence and
how it happens, it is necessary to make a distinction between affect transferring during
interaction and affective similarities manifesting as a result of shared interpersonal forces
which typically develop over longer periods of time.
1.3 Terminology
In keeping with previous research (e.g., Scherer, 1994; 2005) addressing the thorny
issue of what emotions actually are, the terms emotion and affect are used synonymously
throughout the present thesis. We all know what it is to be emotional, but trying to define
what an emotion is, becomes more problematic. Emotions have taken on an almost enigmatic
quality due to their capacity to evade a coherent and concise definition. According to many
definitions emotions result from a combination of different processes. For example, emotions
frequently result from things which happen to us, they involve some kind of evaluation about
whether we like or dislike what is happening, they usually involve some kind of
physiological or bodily reaction, they may prepare us to take action, and they are usually
accompanied by some form of behaviour such as facial expressions. Emotions serve us well,
both in our interactions with our immediate environment, and with our relations with others,
they are adaptive mechanisms increasingly being recognised as multi-component processes
(e.g., Scherer, 1994; 2005) involving all of the above.
In contrast to emotion the term Mood has typically been used to describe a more
diffuse affective state which is longer in duration and need not have a specific cause or
elicitor. Emotions are usually elicited by something specific, are more intense in experience,
and shorter in duration. The term valence has been used to describe the quality of the
emotional experience, specifically whether it is positive or negative. The term emotional
convergence has been used to describe congruent emotional responses, while emotional
contagion refers to the implicit processes of primitive emotional contagion described by
Hatfield and colleagues (1994).
Affect transfer in the present thesis is used to describe a process where emotional
messages of others exert emotional effects in real-time, either directly or through changing
appraisals of the situation. Affect transfer can include complex emotional reactions that need
not necessarily be congruent. In other words affect transfer might involve incongruent
emotional reactions, for example, a sly sadistic smile elicits fear as opposed to joy. For the
sake of simplicity I use the terms real-time to refer to mechanisms operating during
interaction and long-term to refer to interpersonal processes which typically occur over time.
My distinction between affect transfer and emotional convergence hinges on the operation of
real-time processes. Emotional convergence is used as an all-encompassing term to
essentially describe emotional consistency between interactants, whereas affect transfer is
reserved specifically for the operation of real-time mechanisms.
In the following section I discuss the theoretical background of affect transfer in
experimental and group-level research.