The DOI matches its Crossref record; 43 of the 43 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Emotional contagion as a precursor to collective emotions
Abstract
Early writers, journalists, and sociologists such as Gustav Le Bon and Charles Mackay sparked an interest in the “group mind” and the “madness of crowds.” They explored the process of hysterical contagion in a variety of societies and natural settings. This chapter reviews the theory of primitive emotional contagion and discusses contagion as a precursor for collective emotions. In recent years, historians, medical researchers, and epidemiologists have begun to apply and extend emotional contagion theory to collective emotions and the social contagion of various mental and physical diseases. This chapter ends by reporting on the new and compelling research documenting that under a variety of conditions, individuals may catch their fellows’ moods and emotions—such as joy and happiness, depression, and loneliness; and may also display increased susceptibility to physical problems that could be sparked by intense emotion—such as allergies, obesity, reactions to chemical spills and environmental hazards, and the like.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Now, via emotional contagion (Hatfield et al., 2014), behavioral mimicry or similar socio-dynamic processes motivating the individuals’ actions, the individual shareholders’ mass-selling of their own stocks creates an affectively charged situation (a spiral of fear, distrust or ‘collective hysteria’) and results in a quasi-collective behavior, eventually harming all shareholders.”
From Collaborative Irrationality, Akrasia, and Groupthink: Social Disruptions of Emotion Regulation (2017) · cites this paper as Hatfield et al., 2014
Citations
Cites
The expression of the emotions in man and animals.
Darwin, C. D. (1872) · J. Murray eBooks · doi:10.1037/10001-000 · Cited by 12,120
Cattaneo, L., & Rizzolatti, G. (2009) · Archives of Neurology · doi:10.1001/archneurol.2009.41 · Cited by 3,137
Autonomic nervous system activity distinguishes among emotions
Ekman, P., Levenson, R. W., & Friesen, W. V. (1983) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.6612338 · Cited by 2,692
The crowd: A study of the popular mind.
Bon, G. L. (1908) · T Fisher Unwin eBooks · doi:10.1037/10878-000 · Cited by 2,030
Depression and the response of others.
Coyne, J. C. (1976) · Journal of Abnormal Psychology · doi:10.1037/0021-843x.85.2.186 · Cited by 1,464
Alone in the crowd: The structure and spread of loneliness in a large social network.
Cacioppo, J. T., Fowler, J. H., & Christakis, N. A. (2009) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0016076 · Cited by 908
Facial and vocal expressions of emotion
Russell, J. A., Bachorowski, J.-A., & Fernández-Dols, J.-M. (2003) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145102 · Cited by 873
Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds.
Mackay, C. (1932) · Noonday Press eBooks · doi:10.1037/14716-000 · Cited by 778
Hess, U., & Blairy, S. (2001) · International Journal of Psychophysiology · doi:10.1016/s0167-8760(00)00161-6 · Cited by 697
Facial Efference And The Experience Of Emotion
Adelmann, P. K., & Zajonc, R. B. (1989) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.ps.40.020189.001341 · Cited by 697
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Conversano (2020) · PubMed · doi:10.36131/cn20200212 · Cited by 64
Collaborative Irrationality, Akrasia, and Groupthink: Social Disruptions of Emotion Regulation
Szanto, T. (2017) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.02002 · Cited by 12
McDonnell, A. (2014) · Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science · doi:10.4236/jbbs.2014.47035 · Cited by 6
Metadata
- Authors
- Hatfield, E., Carpenter, M., & Rapson, R. L.
- ORCID
- Hatfield, Elaine
- Venue
- Collective Emotions
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Published
- 2014-01-30
- Pages
- 108-122
- OpenAlex
- W2487867701
- Cited by
- 102
- References
- 43
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 4
- FWCI
- 221.49
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Oxford University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › History of Emotions Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
- Keywords
- emotional contagion, collective emotions, group mind, hysteria, crowd psychology, social contagion, depression, loneliness, happiness, allergy, obesity, environmental hazards
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Emotional contagion as a precursor to collective emotions. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199659180.003.0008
- The paper
- Hatfield, E., Carpenter, M., & Rapson, R. L. (2014). Emotional contagion as a precursor to collective emotions. Collective Emotions. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof%3Aoso/9780199659180.003.0008