Emotional Contagion and Empathy
Abstract
Most clinical and counseling psychologists have identified three distinct skills required in true empathy: the ability to share the other person’s feelings, the cognitive ability to intuit what another person is feeling, and a “socially beneficial” intention to respond compassionately to that person’s distress. Scholars from various disciplines, including sociology, biology, neuroscience, social psychology, and life-span psychology, argue that primitive emotional contagion—a basic building block of human interaction that allows people to understand and to share the feelings of others—can shed light on human cognition, emotion, and behavior. This chapter discusses emotional contagion and describes three stages in the process of emotional contagion: mimicry, feedback, and contagion.
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Theories of emotional coregulation describe how people help one another maintain emotional balance through emotional contagion and counter-regulation.
“Theories of emotional coregulation in psychology describe how people help one another maintain emotional balance through mutual processes such as emotional contagion (sharing emotions) and counter-regulation (responding in a calming way to intense emotions), unfolding through subtle synchrony in movement, speech and physiological signals [2, 13, 21, 22, 26, 50].”
From Emotional Coregulation in Close Relationships with AI Agents: A Survey of ChatGPT and Replika Users (2025) · cites this paper as [21]
Cites
The functional architecture of human empathy
Decety, J., & Jackson, P. L. (2004) · Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews · doi:10.1177/1534582304267187 · Cited by 3,407 · cited 4× · see citing works
“…however, agree that true empathy requires three distinct skills: the ability to share the other person’s feelings, the cognitive ability to intuit what another person is feeling, and a “socially beneficial” intention to respond compassionately to that person’s distress (Decety & Jackson, 2004).”
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The social neuroscience of empathy
Singer, T., & Lamm, C. (2009) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04418.x · Cited by 1,981 · see citing works
Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats
Bartal, I. B.-A., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2011) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1210789 · Cited by 934 · see citing works
The Antecedents and Consequences of Human Behavioral Mimicry
Chartrand, T. L., & Lakin, J. L. (2013) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143754 · Cited by 662 · see citing works
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Decety, J. (2011) · Emotion Review · doi:10.1177/1754073910374662 · Cited by 521 · see citing works
Putting together phylogenetic and ontogenetic perspectives on empathy
Decety, J., & Svetlova, M. (2012) · Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2011.05.003 · Cited by 508 · see citing works
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Facial mimicry, empathy, and emotion recognition: a meta-analysis of correlations
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Emotional contagion as a precursor to collective emotions
Hatfield, E., Carpenter, M., & Rapson, R. L. (2014) · Collective Emotions · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199659180.003.0008 · Cited by 102 · see citing works
Self-citationSinger, T., & Steinbeis, N. (2009) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04733.x · Cited by 86 · see citing works
Barr, P. (2012) · Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice · doi:10.1111/j.2044-8341.2011.02034.x · Cited by 27 · see citing works
Emotional Coregulation in Close Relationships with AI Agents: A Survey of ChatGPT and Replika Users
Pruss, E., Alimardani, M., Struijs, S., & Koole, S. L. (2025) · Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction · doi:10.1145/3765766.3765801 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
- Authors
- Hatfield, E., Rapson, R. L., & Le, Y.-C. L.
- Venue
- The Social Neuroscience of Empathy
- Publisher
- The MIT Press
- Published
- 2009-03-20
- Pages
- 19-30
- OpenAlex
- W2495361128
- Cited by
- 419
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 68 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 43 · 2021: 36 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 21 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 28 · 2013: 20 · 2012: 18
- FWCI
- 30.85
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The MIT Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
- Keywords
- emotional contagion, empathy, mimicry, feedback, compassion, emotional sharing, social cognition, human interaction
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