Stress Contagion: Physiological Covariation Between Mothers and Infants
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Emotions are not simply concepts that live privately in the mind, but rather affective states that emanate from the individual and may influence others. We explored affect contagion in the context of one of the closest dyadic units, mother and infant. We initially separated mothers and infants; randomly assigned the mothers to experience a stressful positive-evaluation task, a stressful negative-evaluation task, or a nonstressful control task; and then reunited the mothers and infants. Three notable findings were obtained: First, infants’ physiological reactivity mirrored mothers’ reactivity engendered by the stress manipulation. Second, infants whose mothers experienced social evaluation showed more avoidance toward strangers compared with infants whose mothers were in the control condition. Third, the negative-evaluation condition, compared with the other conditions, generated greater physiological covariation in the dyads, and this covariation increased over time. These findings suggest that mothers’ stressful experiences are contagious to their infants and that members of close pairs, like mothers and infants, can reciprocally influence each other’s dynamic physiological reactivity.
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Physiological synchrony is not always a predictor of better performance outcomes and can be detrimental.
“It should be noted that physiological synchrony is not always a predictor of better performance outcomes. In fact, physiological synchrony can be detrimental.”
From Physiological and Behavioral Synchrony Predict Group Cohesion and Performance (2020) · cites this paper as [81]
The Abstract reports greater mother–infant physiological covariation after negative evaluation, alongside increased infant stress reactivity and avoidance of strangers. This supports the point that synchrony can accompany an adverse state, but the paper does not test whether synchrony predicts performance outcomes or itself causes harm. Page numbers are unavailable in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.83)
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- Authors
- Waters, S. F., West, T. V., & Mendes, W. B.
- Affiliations
- University of California, San Francisco (US)
- New York University (US)
- Venue
- Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2014-01-30
- Volume
- 25
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 934-942
- ISSN
- 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9280
- PMC
- PMC4073671
- OpenAlex
- W2159102798
- Cited by
- 231
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 29 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 22 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 25 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 23.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (T32MH019391)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Pharmacy › Infant Health and Development
- Keywords
- emotional contagion, stress contagion, mother-infant dyads, physiological reactivity, infant social behavior
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Child Development, Electrocardiography, Emotions, Female, Heart Rate, Humans, Infant, Male, Mother-Child Relations, Social Behavior, Stress, Psychological
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