title: Contagion without contact: anticipatory mood matching in response to affiliative motivation.
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).
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL 60626, USA. jhuntsinger@luc.edu
authors.forename: Jeffrey R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Huntsinger
authors.forename: Janetta
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lun
authors.forename: Stacey
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sinclair
authors.forename: Gerald L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Clore
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect; D001364:Awareness; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D012919:Social Behavior; D012931:Social Environment; D012938:Social Perception; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires