For now, I will study and hope. 4 days from now I will be heading back home after my interview with the looming prospect of a 'yes' or a 'no'. How utterly, utterly frightening.
Emotional contagion is quite a lovely term for describing the (often) unconscious transferring of one human's emotional state to other humans. It seems to be one part of the complex phenomenon of empathy. By matching an observed emotion with an internal representation of what that emotion feels like, people often come to experience a ghost replica of that emotion. Paying attention to the replica can bring up the emotion for real. In this way, state Hatfield, Cacioppo and Rapsin way back in 1993; "people can and do 'feel themselves into' the emotional landscapes inhabited by their partners". In their initial defining of the term, Hatfield et al. sought to provide evidence that people mimic facial and vocal expressions, postures and behaviours of other persons around them. As a follow on from this, they attempted to show that people "caught" the emotions of others as a consequence of the facial, vocal and postural feedback. They believed that a mechanism for emotional contagion was important in humans because it would certainly aid coordinating group behaviours and help people keep track of the moods of those around them without heavy individual interaction. There is a lot of research on emotional contagion in the context of mob behaviour, which might be pretty interesting to look at.
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| A prime example of an angry mob. |
Hatfield et al. (1993) noted that emotional contagion is thought to be substantionally different from empathy and sympathy. Primitive automatic transferrance of emotional state via unconscious cues such as posture and facial expression is one thing. Actively understanding an experience someone is going through and combining it with memories of similar experience is another. The two processes probably overlap, but it is important to make this distinction at an early stage. For emotional contagion you don't necessarily need context. See a cute girl cry, you're going to feel down even with absolutely no context. See the character Annie, from Community. I'm quite interesting in this difference in definition as one of the potential benefits of my proposal is to gain further insight into autism by seeing how heavily autistic individuals display emotional contagion if at all.
The researchers identified a number of mechanisms by which it takes place, the first being simple mimicry. They believed that during interactions, people automatically copied movements / facial expressions and coordinated them with the person they are itneracting with. I.e. John smiles a lot and gestures with his hands whilst talking to Sam. Sam picks up the smiling and also begins to make exaggerated communicative gestures. Certainly we have seen unconscious copying of movement reported in infants (mainly lip and tongue gestures, e.g. Meltzoff and Moore, 1977), and in studies showing individuals with lesions in frontal brain areas (Lhermitte et al. 1986). Many studies have noted anecdotal evidence of completely healthy adult participants mimicing actions from time to time, such as mirror neuron experiments where special controls had to be in place to stop identificaiton of MN activity being contamination by the participant copying the aciton they were observing. A chap named Ulf Dimberg (1982) used electromyographic (EMG) data to examine what participants did in reaction to watching happy or angry facial expressions. EMG measures skeletal movements, as opposed to EEG which measures brain activity. When the participants observed the happy faces they displayed an increased amount of muscle activity around their cheeks. When observing angry faces their brows had increased muscle activity instead. The visual signs of these movements were absolutely tiny, but it had been revealled that mimicry was in face taking place.
Mimicry in communicative sounds occurs too, quite interestingly. When individuals speak on their own, into a microphone for instance, their speed and style of speech tends to be a heck of a lot more individual than when they are speaking in a conversation. Coulson, Oviatt and Darves (1996) showed that 7 to 10 year old children changed the sound level of their speech when chatting to a computer controlled voice on 77% of occasions. Adults and children have both been shown to change the speed of their speech (Webb, 1972), and even the type of words they will use when speaking to others (Brennan, 1996). On top of all this, people have also been shown to mimic and synchronize their postures and movements with those of others. Bernieri (1988) described the tendency of students to mimic the stance sof tteachers during interactions, and LeFrance (lol, 1979) found similar amongst students. Both of them mentioned that those who shared their movements more, during interaction, tended to have a better rapport. Guegen (2009) went on to summarize most such research showing that mimicry seemed to be so intuitive and beneficial to human interactions that it had probably been an evolutionary selection. Everything from expressions, to movement, to infectious laughter (Provine, 1992).
Back to Hatfield et al. (1993). Having outlined the mechanism of mimicry, they felt it necessary to note that conscious mimicry just cannot compete with the lightning fast automatic system that seems in place. They mentioned a test given to Muhammed Ali in which he was asked to detect a light and throw a punch in response. The fastest he could manage was 190msecs to detect and 40msecs more to punch. Condon and Ogston, in 1966, discovered that college students could synchronise their movements within 21 milliseconds (I tried to find this article but it's an oldie and sauntering into the Abertay library aint as easy when you live 50 miles away. For now I'll take their word for it). What this finding means, is that the automatic mimicry is a whole different process from any conscious attempt, and one either has it, or one does not. Remind me to look into whether autistic children show similar levels of it as healthy adults.
Hatfield et al's next proposal for how emotional contagion occurs is that individuals take feedback from their bodies that is both conscious and unconscious, which leads them to determine their emotional states based on what their bodies are doing. This links it to mimicry. If Person A has copied the angry expression of Person B, then Hatfield and co. suggest that Person A would make an un/conscious inference that because his face is showing anger, that he must indeed be angry. If this seems like it would be quite a difficult thing to test, you're not the only one to think so. It isn't impossible, and is one of many psychological testing problems which can be solved by ruthless trickery. A wonderful, wonderful experiment by Laird and Bresler in 1992 involved the researchers telling their participants that the purpose of the experiment was to take complicated measurements of the physiology behind their facial movements. Electrodes were connected to their expressive facial areas and then the experimenter, quite freely, arranged participants' faces into emotional expressions; "Hold still whilst I move your mouth into a smile". Asked to self report their emotional state after the expression shift, participants in the different conditions reported emotional attributes much more akin to the expression they were making. Hatfield et al. (1993) provided a brilliant quote from the study:
"When my jaw was clenched and my brows down, I tried not to be angry but it just fit the position. I'm not in any angry mood but I found my thoughts wandering to things that made me angry, which is sort of silly I guess. I knew I was in an experiment and I had no reason to feel that way, but I just lost control."
When participants were asked by Ekman et al. (1983) to either recall an experience of 6 individual emotions OR produce a facial expression matching the emotions, he found that either action prompted similar responses in participants' autonomous nervous system. This is essentially the 'secondary' nervous system that includes most nerves that are not part of the brain or spinal cord. It controls digestion, heart rate, perspiration etc. So, physiological manifestations of emotion were able to be provoked by making facial expressions as well as remembering an experience... I keep making an angry face to see if I feel more angry. It actually sort of works. Odd. Although feedback from posture and vocals has also been found to provoke emotional change, for the sake of focussing on more relevent material I will exclude it for now.
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| Here is a generic but rather pleasant artist's representation of neurons to warn you that we'll be moving onto neurological stuff again! |
Well, if you've been reading my blog over the more recently entries, you'll perhaps be able to see the link between mirror neurons and mimicry. Certainly, more modern research into emotional contagion has started by referencing the existence of a mirroring system in motor-related brain areas, and gone on to look at the potential for similar systems in emotional segments of the brain. I've explained mirror neurons enough throughout my recent articles, so I will avoid doing so here. Mirror neuron studies on humans have shown that, without any corresponding movement, observers will exhibit activation of approximately 20% of the same neurons that they would use in order to copy the action they were observing (Lacoboni et al. 1999). One of the theories I find most convincing is that this neurological system is in place to aid understanding of both the purpose of actions, and the physical requirements of those actions. It isn't so hard to imagine the benefits of having a "quick learning" machine that allows an individual to practise skills without actually having to perform them. It's like physical revision. Indeed it might be of interest to you that imagery is a prominent therapy or preparation technique for atheletes. Mirror neurons have been shown to fire when individuals simply imagine the movements, in some experiments. So...imagining competing... theraputic, helps in practise.... see where I'm going with this?
"Direct-matching", the name for that theory, has been supported by enough evidence to be going on with. Primarily this support was given through studies like Lacoboni et al. (1999) where they discovered that there was mirror activation in both the parietal lobe (when observing odd movements) and in the left inferior frontal lobe (when trying to puzzle out the purpose of the movements). The mirror neuron system is very fast, of course. Studies in which neurons are directly hooked up to electrodes (Mukamel et al. 2010, for instance) are capable of showing that the system activates swiftly upon presentation of an appropriate stimuli. Similar, you might think, to the speed in which automatic emotional mimicry occurs a la the Muhammed Ali inspired study by Condon and Ogston (1966). Whilst I do not suspect that the mirror neuron system and emotional contagion are the same thing, I do believe it is possible that having a motor 'direct-matched' representation of, for example, a facial expression could be a precursor to the swift mimicry of that expression. I.e. Person A observes person B smiling. Person A's relevent mirror neurons fire, giving him an implicit understanding of the physical necessities etc. Person A then begins to smile, all within a minimal amount of time. Of course this is not always the case, but that's the whole point of my proposal, isn't it. What mediates that sort of contagion? Of additional interest in the mixed evidence that autistic individuals have a faulty direct-matching system; "Broken mirrors theory". If they do have impaired mirroring, do they also have impaired mimicry?
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| Having had personal experience of a man with autism, I am conflicted about causes which speak about "curing" or "facilitating the lives of" autistic people. It being a disorder in which there are many points on the spectrum, treating the condition like it is necessarily riddled with depression is almost insulting. None the less I absolutely encourage research into it, and trying to inform people a little more about what is involved. |
Mimicry is, on a basic and not yet perfectly understood level, entwined with mirror neuron activity. I believe that, anyway. The systems seem so similar as to make it unlikely that they aren't both involved. As for emotional feedback it is definitely worth examining whether there are any studies showing 'mirror-like' systems in brain areas associated with the experiencing and production of emotion. I'll get back to that, after I've congratulated my Mum on passing her interview and getting a new job!!! Wow! That's got to be a good omen for my Roehampton thing! Brb, celebration.
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Alright, couple of hoursh later and I am... well... Let'sh jusht shay I had to copy/pashte "inebriated" to shpell it correctly. Letsh get back to it....hic!
There is a veritable treasure room of studies showing some extent of 'mirroring' of emotion in reaction to observing physical signs associated with certain emotions. These studies have been limited by how easy it is to provoke participants into giving baseline neural activity for when they show an emotion. It is relatively easy to immediately incite a disgust response, or pain for example. Ethical issues come into play for panic, terror or anger, and it is difficult to accurately prime someone to be happy or sad. Ekman et al. (1983) asked participants to think of a fond memory, which certainly might work but isn't a particularly controllable variable. Despite these issues there have been successful studies. Wicker et al. (2003) used disgust in their fMRI study due to the relative ease of getting participants to feel disgusted and the strong reactions to seeing other people experience it.
Food poisoning has always been a threat to humans. Developing a disgust response based on other human's avoidance of certain food would be a survival advantage and so that response is very pervasive even to this day. Wicker et al. noted that in a range of previous research the insula and the amygdala had been activated during exposure to disgusting smells or tastes. These findings have been supported by fMRI imagining and EEG studies. The insula appears to be activated when observing disgusted facial expressions (Krolak-Salmon et al. 2003). To verify whether the same areas of the insula and amygdala were activated both during disgust and observations of disgust, Wicker et al. gave participants a simple series of tasks. They were asked to observe a video of a small number of individuals smelling into a glass filled with coloured liquid. They either displayed an expression of disgust, pleasure or neutrality. The same participants were later asked to smell a pleasureable or disgusting gas. All tasks took place under an fMRI (so the design was especially clever as it involved little to no movement). Unlike with the pleasant conditions, observing and experiencing disgust did indeed activate the same areas of the anterior insula. The participants were all right handed healthy adult males, so although that study alone doesn't provide concrete evidence, adding all of their cited research makes a much stronger case.
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| NOT where the disgusting gas was produced... as far as the participants knew. |
In a fine example of international collaboration, Cheng, Yang, Lin, Lee and....Decety (2008) conducted an experiment following the same line of thought. Similar neural circuits had become associated with the observation and experience of pain and they wanted to look into it further. They mention in their introduction that the 'initial component' of human empathy is mimicry followed by feedback, the whole shebang that we've been discussing this whole time. Isn't it nice when you get a clue you are on the right path? Their experiment had participants observing static images of body parts in painful or non painful situations (one dreads to imagine). The results, like other studies of pain, showed similar 'mirrored' activity in a whoooole range of brain areas. This particular study focussed on the suppression of the somatosensory cortex but other pain research has spotted many others. The terminology is somewhat too complex for my purposes as of yet. Suffice to say, we have some real evidence of realistic experience of emotion in response to observation, not just physical mimicry.
In summary, emotiona contagion is the automatic transference of emotion between humans. Current research has established evidence for two mechanisms through which this occurs: mimicry and feedback. Humans incredibly swiftly adopt their posture, facial expressions, even vocal style to that of a person they are interacting with (unless consciously inhibited). The speed at which this happens is faster than any realistic conscious effort could manage. The whole phenomenon is heavily supported by mirror neuron research showing activation in motor-related brain areas occurs in response to the observation of certain behaviours (particularly mouth and hand movements...key expressive areas). Feedback draws, in part, from mimicry. It is the process through which the brain decides that because the individual has a certain facial expression / posture / tone then the individual must be experiencing that emotion. An actual experience of that emotion results. This phenomenon is supported by studies showing that simply forcing a certian facial expression can bias self-reports of emotional state towards the expressed emotion. Additionally, neurological studies showing that the same brain areas are activated during experience and observation of an emotion provide strong support. Also, my Mum is awesome!
Important questions: To what extent to autistic individuals experience emotional contagion? Are there any empirically examined differences? If so, what consequences might this have on empathy, given that mimicry and feedback are widely believed to be the precursors to full blown human empathy?
Thanks for reading. This has been a long but pretty fascinating one I hope.
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