Status, Influence, and Emotions: Emotional Contagion in Status Hierarchies

It is said that happiness can be infectious, but is everyone similarly likely to “spread” or “catch” different emotions? I investigate whether and how status is an organizing structure for emotional contagion. Sociological social psychologists find that individuals who occupy higher status positions speak more often, are more likely to have their ideas validated and have more influence in group tasks than lower status alters (Berger and Webster 2018). Yet we do not know whether one’s status position also affects the likelihood their emotions spread to others. Are the emotions of those who are higher status more contagious? More specifically, do emotions travel in patterns that are consistent with influence in status hierarchies?

My dissertation builds testable predictions from two theories of interaction— expectation states theory and communication accommodation theory—to better understand emotional contagion, specifically how emotions travel based on the composition of the group and the specific emotion being emitted. Using a 3x4 factorial design, I vary status position relative to an alter (high/equal/low) and the types of emotions those alters express (happiness/sadness/anger/no emotion) to examine how status affects emotional contagion across a range of status relationships and emotions. I find that the emotions of high status people are more contagious than those of low status people, and that anger is especially contagious.

My experimental design affords me the opportunity to make a second important contribution. I also investigate whether an expressed emotion makes people who are either high or low status more or less influential. I find that, while low status people generally have little influence, they have significantly less influence when they express anger than when they express no emotion at all.

Understanding the conditions under which emotions travel is important for the development of interventions for unhealthy and ineffective environments. Awareness of these processes can help promote healthy work environments and safeguard against poor emotional cycles among co-workers. In addition, understanding how emotions and status together impact patterns of influence in groups can inform policies that promote equity in the workplace.