| Affect and emotion have often been considered the "wild cards" or "random error" of organizational life. However, recent research has shown that affect can be a useful construct for understanding individual and group level phenomena within organizations. This dissertation examines one aspect of the influence of affect, its contagious nature. Thus emotional contagion, the spread of affect from person to person, was examined in two studies. Both studies involved a group situation.; The first study was a laboratory experiment, using a confederate as an interpersonal affective stimulus in order to induce contagion. The confederate was trained to enact each of the four poles of the well accepted circumplex model of affect. Additionally, several specific hypothesis concerning the process of contagion were tested in the lab experiment: the influence of (1) the type of emotion sent; (2) personality characteristics of the receiver and susceptibility to contagion; and (3) "affective fit," the interaction of positive and negative trait emotionality and the pleasantness level of the emotion sent. The second study was a longitudinal field study of emotional contagion in friendship and advice networks within an MBA cohort. Students' moods are predicted to be influenced by the trait-emotionality (PA and NA) of their friendship and advice networks over the course of the academic year.; In both the laboratory experiment and the longitudinal field study, support was found for a general effect of emotional contagion. The results were stronger for the lab experiment than the field study, but the field study added external generalizability to the lab results. With regard to the additional contagion hypotheses, no support was found for greater contagion due to the type of emotion sent. Some support was found for the influence of personality on susceptibility to contagion, namely greater susceptibility due to high self-monitoring and mid-level trait emotionality. Lastly, marginal support was found for greater contagion due to affective similarity, or fit, between the sender and receiver. Theoretical implications and practical ramifications are discussed. |
