The recent Facebook controversy about emotional contagion highlights an important area of research.
Dear Professor,
Emotional contagion is the tendency for two individuals to emotionally converge. One view developed by Elaine Hatfield et al. is that this can be done through automatic mimicry and synchronization of one's expressions, vocalizations, postures and movements with those of another person. When people unconsciously mimic their companions' expressions of emotion, they come to feel reflections of those companions' emotions. Emotions can be shared across individuals in many different ways both implicitly or explicitly. For instance, conscious reasoning, analysis and imagination have all been found to contribute to the phenomenon. Emotional contagion is important to personal relationships because it fosters emotional synchrony between individuals. Contagion is mainly focus the communication of an attitude or emotional state among a number of people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion
Thanks and thanks for the reference.
It seems to me that the contagion process, if better understood as an organizational phenomenon, is something that individuals could use to gather people together and move them in a certain direction. Thus, perhaps, it is a social mechanism that enables "leadership" in an organizational sense (rather than an individual sense). Any thoughts on the population level implications on the process you describe?
I accept james statement. Here my question to gopinath how the individual person acts by emotional contagion in the organisation?
In my point of you, contagion acts as a tool for interacting with others. sometimes it will be reveart. i.e. if the person emotionally(angry) interact(mimic) with others as leader/ manager. At the same time it will affect that person those who mimic.
Dear James,
I believe you are on the right track when you regard emotional contagion as a social mechanism that enables “leadership" in an organizational sense. However, this doesn't exclude emotional contagion as a mechanism in an individual sense, such as, infant mimicry of parent leading to emotional contagion with impact on attachment processes. The parent may thus serve as a "leader" in a sense. As far as I know, it seems that leaders are more susceptible to emotional contagion than followers (see for instant papers by Hatfield). Whether this goes for formal leaders too, I don’t know. Nevertheless, your narcissistic boss probably won’t care (see Anna Czarna’s paper on narcissism, available here on ReserchGate).
Hello Professor Hazy:
Recently, I have been reviewing the literature on emotion and leadership. I can share a few references on emotional contagion, which you may find useful in answering your question. I have pasted these citations below.
Best wishes, Russell
Bono, J. E., & Ilies, R. 2006. Charisma, positive emotions and mood contagion. The Leadership Quarterly, 17: 317-334.
Cherulnik, P. D., Donley, K. A., Wiewel, T. S. R., & Miller, S. R. (2001). Charisma is contagious: The effects of leaders’ charisma on obsevers’ affect. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31, 2149-2159.
Dasborough, M. T., Ashkanasy, N. M., Tee, E. Y. J., & Tse, H. H. M. 2009. What goes around comes around: How meso-level negative emotional contagion can ultimately determine organizational attitudes toward leaders. Leadership Quarterly, 20: 571-585.
Johnson, S. K. 2008. I second that emotion: Effects of emotional contagion and affect at work on leader and follower outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 19: 1-19.
Johnson, S. K. 2009. Do you feel what I feel? Mood contagion and leadership outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 20: 814-824.
Sy, T., Choi, J. N., & Johnson, S. K. 2013. Reciprocal interactions between group perceptions of leader charisma and group mood through mood contagion. The Leadership Quarterly, 244: 463-476.
Sy, T., Côté, S., & Saavedra, R. 2005. The contagious leader: Impact of the leader’s mood on the mood of group members, group affective tone, and group processes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90: 95-305.
Volmer, J. 2012. Catching leader’s mood: Contagion effects in teams. Administrative Sciences, 2: 203-22.
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