Intentional Emotional Contagion in the Perspective of Social Interaction

WEI Yan-Qiu; CHEN Jing-Lou; XU Xiao-Hui; HU Beng

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2023, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (1) : 130-136.

Intentional Emotional Contagion in the Perspective of Social Interaction

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Abstract

The birth of hyperscanning technique led to the evolution of social cognitive neuroscience from the observation of "single-brain" to the interaction of "multi-brain". The exploration of brain activity under natural situations has become a new research trend of social cognitive neuroscience. And more and more researchers began to pay attention to the inter-brain neural synchronization mechanism of emotional contagion in social interaction with the rise of hyperscanning technique. Different from primitive emotional contagion, intentional emotional contagion involves more cognitive resources. What’s more, the self-other representations of intentional emotional contagion are relatively separate. In this paper, we introduced two related theories and summarized three highly relevant literature of intentional emotional contagion in social interaction, and then, we proposed some future directions on intentional emotional contagion in social interaction. First, the Social Relations Model described three main variables in interpersonal communication: the sender, the receiver, and the social relationship between sender and receiver. The Self-Other Overlap theory showed us that higher levels of self-other overlap could promote our empathy for others’ emotions, enabling people to understand the intentions and emotional states of others in a timely and accurate manner. In this way, higher levels of self-other overlap could promote the effects of emotional contagion between two interacting individuals. Secondly, the paradigm of the three highly related papers used the “sender-receiver” communication mode. The senders tried to indulge themselves into their emotional situations and tried to share their emotional feelings with their partners. While the receiver tried to feel with the sender. Anders et al. (2011) and Smirnov et al. (2019) used fMRI pseudo-hyperscanning technique to explore intentional emotional contagion based on auditory channels. The pseudo-hyperscanning technique explored brain mechanisms in social interaction by recording one person's brain activity in advance and then having the other individual receive pre-recorded stimuli. Therefore, the information transmitted from receiver to sender was missing. While Kinoshita et al. (2019) conducted a real EEG hyperscanning study of intentional emotional contagion based on visual channels. The two participants in the same room interacted via the real-time video. However, this study was also not conducted in natural situations. And the results of the above research showed that inter-brain neural synchronization may be used as a neuromarker of intentional emotional contagion. Besides, the brain mechanism of intentional emotional contagion in social interaction mainly involved two nervous systems: mirror neuron system (MNS) and mentalizing system (MS). Thirdly, on account of the application of the “sender-receiver” communication mode in the field of intentional emotional contagion and the natural situation paradigm in other social cognitive neuroscience, we firstly propose that whether self-other overlap could also be used as the psychological mechanism for inter-brain neural synchronization of intentional emotional contagion. For future research, we can use natural situation paradigm to explore the influence of different social factors on intentional emotional contagion and its inter-brain neural synchronization. At the same time, we can also build a multimodal hyperscanning platform to carry out related research.

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Intentional Emotional Contagion in the Perspective of Social Interaction[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2023, 46(1): 130-136

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Funding

National Social Science Foundation of China (Major Program);Fund for Building World-class Universities (disciplines) of Renmin University of China. Project