The Mechanism Of Emotional Contagion And Its Modulation Model

After studying the literatures available about emotional contagion (EC), wefound that there existed two schools in the concept of EC, one is primitive EC, andthe other is conscious EC. Primitive EC considered that EC represented a largelyautomatic, unconscious process, and conscious EC suggested that EC neededconscious effort. The reasons of the differences suggested researchers could notdistinguish the different types of emotional information, i.e. not differentiatelow-level emotional information from high-level emotional information, and theirdifferences in emotional transmission mechanism. As a result, the meanings of ECexpanded more and more, and finally could not indicate what the exact concept was.Disagreements on the concept of EC brought about the differences in views of itsmechanism. At present, On account of above-mentioned divergences, psychologicalphenomena elicited by some researchers studying on EC were diverse from eachother.Due to disagreements on the concept and mechanism of EC, it showed a lack ofplatform for communication in the research field of EC. In the paper, we traced theorigins of “contagion”, compared emotional contagion with empathy, emotionregulation in order to deduce what the EC is, and made clear what kind of emotionalinformation could be transmitted by EC. And the mechanism of EC was discussed onthe base of above-defined concept and the literatures available of EC.Because EC is always accompanied by other psychological phenomena, whichare inclined to be mistaken for EC itself by many scholars. Actually these phenomenaare generated out of the mechanism of EC, but can regulate the final effect of EC.Therefore, the modulation model of EC was established in the paper, It consisted ofprocessing mechanism of different kind of emotional information, observer’spsychological states (e.g. emotional state or attentional bias), observer’s advancedcognition (e.g. antecedent perception or emotion understanding). The research wasoriented to application in teaching activity. The mechanism of EC and its modulationmodel were created and demonstrated through laboratory experiment. Seven parts focusing on above-mentioned research ideas in the paper are as follows:Part one: Philology, etymology and logistics were employed to argument andconstruct the concept and mechanism of EC in theory. We classified emotionalinformation type, i.e. categorized emotional information into low-level emotionalinformation (sensorial emotional information) and high-level emotional information,and argued differences of these two kind of information on transmission mechanism,finally constructed the mechanism of EC.Part two: On the basis of analyzing past research on empathy, conscious EC,emotion regulation, we constructed the modulation model of EC, worked outexperimental material, such as teaching videos, the emotional contagion scale, theevaluation scale of teaching’s emotional contagion in class.Part three: Laboratory experiment, such as eye movement, bio-feedbacktechnology, and questionnaires were used to explore the differences of observers’emotional awareness, unconscious mimicry, physiologic feedback, emotionalexperience. Path analysis was employed to testify the scientificity of mechanism ofEC.Part four: Laboratory experiment showed that there existed differences in effectof EC of different kind of sensorial emotional information. The effect of ECtransferring through Multi-channel was compared with that through single channel.We testified that semantic emotional information could regulate the effect of EC.Part five: By laboratory experiment, we testified that observer’s emotional state(e.g. happiness or anxiety) and attentional bias (e.g. concentrating on teachingcontents or teacher’s expression) could regulate the effect of EC.Part six: By laboratory experiment, we confirmed that observer’s advancedcognition could regulate the effect of EC. Observer’s antecedent perception (e.g.considering teacher as “authoritative” teacher or as “novice” teacher) could regulatethe effect of EC, and observer’s advanced cognition could regulate the effect of ECwhen the valence of sensorial emotional information was inconsistent with that ofhigh-level emotional information.Part seven: Above-mentioned theory and experimental results were summarized up in part seven. I endeavored to do a tentative exploration in theoriesapplied to educational practice, and gained some strategies with guidance on theeducational practice.Through the above-mentioned research, I drew the following conclusions:Firstly, EC is the process of automatic and unconscious transfer of emotionbetween individuals, in which sensorial emotional information is transferred fromsender to receiver and is mimicked by receiver. As a result, the receiver produces thesame emotional experience as the sender. EC is an emotion-induced process fromphysiological reaction to psychological reaction, in which consciousness is not needed.EC can mix with emotion experience elicited by advanced cognition.Secondly, EC can be regulated by advanced cognition, e.g. emotion experienceinduced by advanced cognition can be mixed with EC. Observer’s advanced cognition,emotional state, attentional bias, antecedent perception all can influence the effectof EC.Thirdly, there existed differences in eye movement, mimicry level, bio-feedback,emotional experience between high score and low score group in emotionalawareness. The mechanism of EC was testified as followed by path analysis: Sensorialemotional information�'observer’ s perception�'observer’ s mimicry�'physiological feedback�'emotional experience.Fourthly, there existed significant differences in the degree of physical arousalunder exposure to positive and negative sensorial emotional stimuli. The effect of ECof sensorial emotional information through multi-channel was better than thatthrough single channel. The emotion elicited by semantic emotional informationcould be cumulative with EC of sensorial emotional information, thus semanticemotional information regulated the effect of EC.Fifthly, student under happy state was susceptible to teacher’s happy emotion,and was resistant to teacher’s negative emotion. Student under anxious state hadimmunity to teacher’s emotion. Teacher’s effect of EC was weakened when studentconcentrated teaching contents, and was enhanced when student concentrated onteacher’s expression. Sixthly, student’s antecedent perception could regulate teacher’s effect of EC.Teacher’s effect of EC was weakened when student could not reasonably explain thecause of teacher’s emotional expression.Finally, the theory and practice of EC could become a part of teacher education.If classroom teaching was carefully designed in light of the theory of EC, andinterference factors were rationally controlled, teacher’s effect of EC could be greatlyimproved.