Have you ever seen those social experiments on youtube? There is so many, but I am going to share one in particular that relates to the experiment I am going to explain later in this report. The social experiments involve actors that test to see if strangers will react the same way the actors are doing, having the strangers judge their face expression and body action to do the same act. To be specific, there was one experiment where 1-2 actors started running away from a direction while ducting and covering their heads demonstrating fear to flee. The results happened to be when strangers saw these 1-2 actors flee, even without knowing why they were running, they ran away too. The fear shown among the actors also brought fear among the strangers to flee as well. All it takes is to see one person of action to then react the same way potentially feeling the same emotion after witnessing and following the same action to flee.
A similar experiment that potentially has the same idea is presented below.
Miller conducted an experiment on facial cuing demonstrating the importance/existence of emotional communication. The experiment set up is to see if monkey A will react after seeing monkey B’s reaction from a shock, also demonstrating a learning behavior. Emotional contagion can also play an effect on emotional cuing by not only reading one monkey’s facial expression and body language but also adopting their emotional feeling. Monkey A and B are in two separate rooms where monkey A has access to seeing monkey B suffer from a shock from the tv showing monkey B live in the other room. Monkey B is going to be shocked to see if monkey A will react and feel the same emotional pain and stress monkey B is feeling. Monkey A has the opportunity to help monkey B by pressing the “prevent shock” button. This will show the pressure monkey A is feeling, seeing the stress monkey B is under to then find a solution to help, which involved observation of the room to take action on doing so. The empathy hypothesis is “consolation reduces the other’s distress (de Waal, 2011),” which happens to be more common in females than males and towards socially close bonds among them already rather than distant relating species.
McDougall recognizes the importance of “the cement that binds all animal societies together, renders the actions of all members of a group harmonious, and allows them to reap some of the prime advantages of social life” (de Waal, 2011). McDougall concluded that having emotional contagion helps bring species together potentially leading into altruism guidance. The emotional state amongst each other helps two species come together to help one other fulfill that need, want, and escape whether it be fear, hunger, playfulness, and sleepiness.
De Waal, F. (2011). What is An Animal Emotion? Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences, (0077-8923), 191-206. Retrieved November 12, 2018, from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/23bd/a9dd0a53a753250edce2b12ac70332394613.pdf.
Alice Edwards
November 14, 2018 — 4:18 pm
It’s so interesting to see these discoveries and how things are conceptualized, I’d never of the idea of an “emotional contagion” before
Erika McDonnell
November 14, 2018 — 4:28 pm
I think this is pretty interesting, because I didn’t know that emotional behavior could actually influence emotion within species. I think it makes sense, though, and is interesting to learn more about emotion in animals.