Cited by 231Attachment and Relationship DynamicsChild and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional DevelopmentInfant Health and Development

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Stress Contagion: Physiological Covariation Between Mothers and Infants

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Waters, Sara F., West, Tessa V., Mendes, Wendy Berry·2014·Psychological Science

DOI 10.1177/0956797613518352PMC PMC4073671

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Abstract

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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Authors: Waters, S. F., West, T. V., & Mendes, W. B.
Affiliations: University of California, San Francisco (US)
New York University (US)
ORCID: Waters, Sara F.
Mendes, Wendy Berry
Venue: Psychological Science
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2014-01-30
Volume: 25
Issue: 4
Pages: 934-942
ISSN: 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
1467-9280
DOI: 10.1177/0956797613518352
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
Licence: journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
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 › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › 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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Stress Contagion: Physiological Covariation Between Mothers and Infants

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