"Mood contagion": The automatic transfer of mood between persons

The current studies aimed to find out whether a nonintentional form of mood contagion exists and which mechanisms can account for it. In these experim ents participants who expected to be tested for text comprehension listened to an affectively neutral speech that was spoken in a slightly sad or happ y voice. The authors found that (a) the emotional expression induced a cong ruent mood state in the listeners, (b) inferential accounts to emotional sh aring were not easily reconciled with the findings, (c) different affective experiences emerged from intentional and nonintentional forms of emotional sharing, and (d) findings suggest that a perception-behavior link (T. L. C hartrand & J. A. Bargh, 1999) can account for these findings, because parti cipants who were required to repeal the philosophical speech spontaneously imitated the target person's Vocal expression of emotion.