Contagion without contact: Anticipatory mood matching in response to affiliative motivation

Jeffrey R. Huntsinger, Janetta Lun, Stacey Sinclair, Gerald L. Clore

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

41 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigated whether the desire to have a smooth and pleasant interaction with an anticipated interaction partner caused participants' moods to become similar to their imminent partners' moods. We found evidence of anticipatory mood matching when participants were motivated to affiliate with a partner through goal priming (Experiments 1 and 2) and outcome dependency (Experiment 3). Prior research has demonstrated mood contagion arising from actual social interaction but these experiments establish contagion without contact, an outcome evident regardless of whether mood was assessed via self-report (Experiments 1 through 3) or information-processing style (Experiment 3).

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)909-922
Number of pages14
JournalPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Volume35
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2009

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Social Psychology

Keywords

  • Affiliative motivation
  • Emotional states
  • Interpersonal convergence
  • Mood
  • Mood contagion

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