The Role of Associative Learning in Emotional Contagion
1. Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China;
2. Department of Psychology, Binzhou Medical University, Yantai 264003, China
Abstract:Emotional contagion is a phenomenon of interpersonal emotional matching in social interaction, where emotions can be transferred from the sender to the receiver. The level of emotional contagion on the receiver shows differences in different contexts or situations. However, there is limited attention to these influencing factors' general characteristics and regulatory mechanisms. In view of this, this article starts from the perspective of the origin and development of emotional contagion, and points out that associative learning is not only a general mechanism for developing emotional contagion in social interaction, but also plays an important role in regulating the level of emotional contagion. The article also summarizes the research evidence on using the conditioning paradigm to regulate the level of emotional contagion, and proposes the possible neural basis for the occurrence of emotional contagion and the level to be regulated under the framework of associative learning. Finally, it looks forward to future research on emotional contagion from the perspective of associative learning.