Elsevier

Psychiatry Research

Volume 102, Issue 2, 1 June 2001, Pages 109-124
Psychiatry Research

Are emotions contagious? Evoked emotions while viewing emotionally expressive faces: quality, quantity, time course and gender differences

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0165-1781(01)00225-6Get rights and content

Abstract

In human interactions, frequently one individual becomes ‘infected’ with emotions displayed by his or her partner. We tested the predictions by Hatfield et al. (1992) (Primitive emotional contagion. Review of Personal and Social Psychology 14, 151–177) that the automatic, mostly unconscious component of this process, called ‘primitive emotional contagion’, is repeatable and fast, that stronger facial expressions of the sender evoke stronger emotions in the viewer and that women are more susceptible to emotional contagion than men. We presented photos from the Pictures of Facial Affect (Ekman and Friesen, 1976). (Pictures of Facial Affect. Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto) on a PC varying the affective content (happy and sad), the expressive strength and the duration of presentation. After each photo, subjects rated the strength of experienced happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise, fear and pleasure. Feelings of happiness or sadness were significantly, specifically and repeatedly evoked in the viewer — even with presentations lasting only 500 ms. Stronger expressions evoked more emotion. The gender of the viewer had weak effects. We hypothesize that this fast and repeatable reaction is likely to have a ‘prewired’ neural basis. We propose that the induction of emotional processes within a subject by the perception of emotionally expressive faces is a powerful instrument in the detection of emotional states in others and as the basis for one's own reactions. Detailed knowledge of emotional reactions to faces is also valuable as a basis for psychiatric studies of disorders in affect and/or communication and in studies using functional imaging (fMRI or PET) where faces are increasingly used as stimuli.

Introduction

In human interactions, frequently one individual becomes ‘infected’ with emotions displayed by his or her partner. In psychiatric settings, this phenomenon can help therapists understand their clients’ feelings if they are unable to express them verbally. It may, however, also complicate contact and communication with depressed subjects or patients with reduced facial activity due to neuroleptic medication.

The term ‘emotional contagion’ describes a complex process involving conscious perceptions and social evaluations as well as a more automatic, unintentional mechanism largely inaccessible to awareness (Hatfield et al., 1994). This latter component is called ‘primitive contagion’. It can be defined as ‘the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize movements, expressions, postures, and vocalizations with those of another person and, consequently, to converge emotionally’ (Hatfield et al., 1992, Hsee et al., 1990). Thus, emotional contagion has been conceptualized as a three-stage process in which the perception of facial expressions triggers facial mimicry, which in turn causes afferent feedback from facial receptors or neural structures involved in facial movements and, thus, evokes emotions (Hatfield et al., 1992, Doherty, 1998).

Hatfield and coworkers, in their book on emotional contagion (Hatfield et al., 1994), made a number of predictions about the details of the emotional contagion process. In particular, they hypothesized that subjects with stronger expression of emotions should evoke more emotional contagion (p. 130) and that subjects with stronger facial mimicry, e.g. women, should be more susceptible to emotional contagion (Hatfield et al., 1992). They also hypothesized that emotional contagion is an automatic, ‘moment to moment’ process (p. 10).

The occurrence of facial mimicry in direct contact with, as well as during observation of films or photos of emotionally expressive faces, has been well documented (see extensive review by Hatfield et al., 1994). Walbott (1991) filmed subjects while they judged emotions displayed in photos from the Pictures of Facial Affect (fear, anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise and contempt). Afterwards, the subjects were presented with their own facial reactions. They were able to judge the emotions conveyed to them by the original stimuli at an accuracy level above chance. However, Walbott did not document the subjects’ own emotions while watching the photos. Dimberg, 1982, Dimberg, 1997 and coworkers (Lundqvist and Dimberg, 1995) demonstrated facial EMG changes within several hundred milliseconds (Dimberg, 1997) after the repeated presentation of photos of emotionally expressive faces. This effect was specific for the emotions involved, i.e. happy faces evoked increased activity in the zygomatic muscles — as in smiling; angry faces in the corrugator muscles — as in frowning. The reaction was also accompanied by emotions (Lundqvist and Dimberg, 1995, Dimberg, 1988b), although not in exact correspondence: happy faces increased happiness, angry faces generated fear. Similar results were obtained by Vaughan and Lanzetta (1980).

Dimberg and Lundqvist (1990), as well as a number of other groups (for an extensive review, see Kring and Gordon, 1998), have found that women are more facially expressive than men when reacting to emotional stimuli. The findings regarding sex differences of emotional experiences, however, were mixed. Kring and Gordon (1998) used film clips and subsequently inquired about feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. They found no differences in the subjects’ reports of experienced emotions with regard to sex, although females were more facially expressive than men. Similar results were reported by Zuckerman et al., 1981, Greenwald et al., 1989, Lang et al., 1993 and Wagner et al. (1993). Stronger facial expressivity concomitant with stronger emotional experiences in women was found by Schwartz et al., 1980, Choti et al., 1987 and Gross and Levenson (1993). Most of these studies, however, used stimuli other than facial expressions to evoke emotions. Doherty et al. (1993) (cf. Hatfield et al., 1994), using a questionnaire, found that women reported being more susceptible to emotional contagion than men did. To our knowledge, no study, aside from the one by Dimberg and Lundqvist (1990), has directly addressed the subject of gender differences in emotional contagion.

It has been shown that the experimental manipulation of facial activity can produce specific changes in corresponding emotional feelings (see reviews by Laird, 1984, Laird and Bresler, 1990). Laird and his co-workers demonstrated this for anger, sadness, fear, happiness and disgust (Laird, 1984, Duclos et al., 1989). Using other methods of manipulation, Strack et al. (1988) and Levenson et al. (1990) also showed that facial movements were capable of inducing emotions.

Emotional contagion has been demonstrated in non-experimental social situations (ranging from neonate/parent interactions to clinical settings and contacts between non-human primates; see review by Hatfield et al., 1994) as well as in a number of experiments. Mood transmission was demonstrated from ‘senders’ to viewers or listeners by: direct interactions (Sullins, 1991, Gump and Kulik, 1997); images presented on video (Hsee et al., 1990, Doherty, 1998); photos (Dimberg, 1988b, Sokolowski, 1992, Lang et al., 1993, Lundqvist and Dimberg, 1995, Kemps et al., 1996, Surakka and Hietanen, 1998) or audio recordings (Hietanen et al., 1998). Aside from altering conscious emotional states, photos of emotionally expressive faces have been shown to have an influence on a number of unconscious processes. Depending on the emotion, they elicit differential effects on sympathetic dermal and cardiovascular reactions in the viewer (Dimberg, 1988a, Lang et al., 1993), facial EMG (Dimberg, 1997), skin reaction to conditioned stimuli (Lanzetta and Orr, 1986, Dimberg, 1988a, Esteves et al., 1994), event-related potentials (P450, Orozco and Ehlers, 1998), amygdalar activation in functional imaging studies (even with subliminal presentation (Morris et al., 1998, Whalen et al., 1998) and altered speed in a writing task (Sokolowski, 1992) as well as attitudes towards everyday life scenes (Kemps et al., 1996).

These studies, however, differ in regard to which emotions were successfully transmitted. For happiness, positive evidence was reported by Hsee et al., 1990, Dimberg, 1988b, Lundqvist and Dimberg, 1995, Surakka and Hietanen, 1998 and Doherty (1998). In contrast, Sullins (1991), in an experiment observing non-verbal communication between facially high and low expressive subjects, only reported mood convergence for anxiety, aggression, sadness and fatigue, and not for elation (they did not ask about happiness). Faces expressing fear or anger seemed to be strongly evocative of emotions and autonomous reactions (Lanzetta and Orr, 1986, Dimberg, 1982, Dimberg, 1988a, Dimberg, 1988b, Lundqvist and Dimberg, 1995, Gump and Kulik, 1997) in observers. The induced emotions, however, also included disgust and fear as a reaction to angry faces and disgust as a reaction to fearful faces. Expressions of sadness mainly induced sadness (Hsee et al., 1990, Sullins, 1991, Lundqvist and Dimberg, 1995, Doherty, 1998).

A major drawback of most studies demonstrating the effects of emotional contagion is the use of behavioral sequences with durations of more than 1 min (Hsee et al., 1990, Sullins, 1991, Gump and Kulik, 1997, Doherty, 1998). Where shorter stimuli were used, they were ‘blocked’ and emotional reactions were only recorded for these ‘blocks’ (Lundqvist and Dimberg, 1995, Dimberg, 1988b, Surakka and Hietanen, 1998). However, if primitive emotional contagion is a ‘moment-by-moment’ process which is evoked by facial expressions in normal social contacts (most of which are shorter than 10 s; Frank et al., 1993), it should also be evoked by stimuli with a short presentation duration.

The goal of the present study was, thus, to investigate in detail the timing, quality and quantity of experiential reactions to single short presentations of faces displaying happy or sad expressions in women and men. To do this, we established a highly standardized procedure. Photos of happy and sad faces (digitized version of photos from the Pictures of Facial Affect, Ekman and Friesen, 1976), varying systematically in the degree of expressed emotion, were presented on a computer screen. Each presentation was immediately followed by the presentation of a computerized questionnaire. The strength of experienced happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise and fear had to be marked on continuous scales ranging from ‘not at all’ to ‘very strong’. We also asked how ‘pleasant/unpleasant’ the picture presentation was perceived to be using a similar scale. We tested for an effect of presentation duration (0.5–10 s) and for gender effects. We are aware that the subjects’ answers were completely subjective, but saw no other way to investigate these conscious feelings other than to ask about them. We agree with Laird and Bresler (1990) that ‘verbal reports of emotional experiences have the same status as reports of any other experience — those of perceptions, for example’ and are ‘ordinarily truthful reflections of an individual's experience’.

We developed the following hypotheses: if emotional contagion is an automatic and ‘moment-to-moment’ process, it (1) should also be present with stimulus presentations in the duration range of normal facial expressions (<10 s). Furthermore, (2) the emotion-evoking effect of a stimulus should be stable and repeatable. We also wanted to test the propositions by Hatfield et al. (1994) that (3) stronger expressions evoke stronger emotions and (4) that women are more susceptible to emotional contagion than men.

Section snippets

Methods

The study had three parts. We presented 40 different pictures: in part one for 6 s each; in part two for durations varying randomly from 2 to 10 s. Because we had not seen any effect of the presentation duration, we used the four pictures from each category which evoked the highest degrees of happiness and sadness, respectively, and presented them in random order five times each for 0.5–2 s in part three.

Significant effects of picture type

The picture type (happy/sad) had a highly significant effect on the evoked feelings of pleasure (t=−18.1, P<0.001), happiness (t=26.0, P<0.001), anger (t=−5.8, P<0.001), sadness (t=−15.3, P<0.001), surprise (t=2.8, P<0.006) and fear (t=−6.3, P<0.001) and on answering duration (t=−3.6, P<0.001), but none on disgust. This finding was replicated in part two for pleasure (t=−11.7, P<0.001), happiness (t=16.6, P<0.001), anger (t=−3.3, P<0.001), disgust (n.s.), sadness (t=−13.1, P<0.001), surprise

Discussion

The main results of this study were: (1) viewing faces with sad or happy expressions specifically evoked the expressed feelings in the viewer; (2) this was a fast process taking place within 500 ms; (3) we found weak effects of the strength of displayed facial emotion; and (4) the gender of the viewer had no marked effect on the ‘target emotions’ of happiness and sadness. In contrast, photos of happy women evoked more happiness and photos of sad women evoked more sadness than photos of men. (5)

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a grant from fortüne to B. Wild. We are very grateful to Paul Ekman and David Perrett for their permission to use the stimuli and to Appletree Rodden for his help and contagious humor.

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