关键词: 情绪同步, 情绪感染, 合作, 竞争, 自我建构

Abstract:

Emotional contagion acts as a catalyst for social cohesion and the strengthening of interpersonal relationships, resulting in the harmonization of behaviors, focus, and emotional states among individuals. While it is widely perceived as an involuntary phenomenon, the extent of emotional resonance between individuals is significantly influenced by various social cues. Prior research has predominantly examined the impact of social context on emotional mimicry from a singular perspective. However, emotional exchange is not limited to unilateral imitation. Affective synchrony is a critical mechanism integral to emotional contagion, and its study deepens our understanding of the dynamics and mechanisms at play within social settings. In recent advancements, social neuroscientists have utilized hyperscanning methodologies to investigate affective synchrony during social emotional exchanges. Facial expressions, which are synchronized to express emotions, are a pivotal physiological cue that facilitates the exchange and interpretation of emotional signals. Unlike the less visible physiological and neural synchronies, facial expression synchrony represents a tangible manifestation of affective alignment. In our research, we utilized Electromyography (EMG) hyperscanning technology and implemented a dyadic interaction framework to simulate various social scenarios, thereby examining the effects of cooperative and competitive contexts—two quintessential forms of human interaction—on emotional synchrony and its underlying processes.

The aim of Studies 1 and 2 were to investigate the effects of interpersonal contexts primed by cooperative and competitive social interactions on emotional contagion. We measured facial expression synchrony, the congruence of subjective emotional experiences, and the self-perception of emotional contagion by observers during face-to-face emotional communication. Additionally, to understand the underlying mechanisms of how interpersonal interaction contexts affect emotional communication, we assessed participants’ self-construal orientation under both cooperative and competitive conditions. Subsequently, regression analyses were conducted to explore the relationship between self-construal and emotional synchronization.

Our findings indicate that cooperative and competitive situations can enhance or diminish interpersonal emotional contagion to varying degrees. Specifically, compared to non-interactive contexts, both cooperative and competitive interpersonal interactions are more likely to induce emotional synchrony. Observers in cooperative conditions reported higher emotional responses than those in non-cooperative conditions during emotional communication. Moreover, the cooperative group showed greater consistency in emotional experience and facial expression synchrony, particularly in conditions of happiness. In contrast, observers in competitive conditions reported lower emotional responses, and the competitive group displayed reduced facial expression synchrony in both happiness and sadness conditions compared to the non-competitive group.

Ultimately, the interdependent self-construal activated in cooperative context were found to positively predict facial expression synchrony, while the independent self-construal activated in competitive context negatively predicted it. These results enhance our understanding of social-emotional interactions in naturalistic settings and highlight the importance of employing hyperscanning technology to study affective synchrony in interpersonal communication from a dyadic perspective.

Key words: emotional contagion, affective synchrony, cooperation, competition, self-construal