Watching others in a positive state does not induce optimism bias in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus), but leads to behaviour indicative of competition

Emotional contagion is suggested to facilitate group life by enhancing synchronized responses to the environment. Cooperative breeders are an example of a social system that requires such intricate coordination between individuals. Therefore, we studied emotional contagion in common marmosets by means of a judgement bias test. Demonstrators were exposed to an emotion manipulation (i.e., positive, negative, control), and observers perceived only the demonstrator’s behaviour. We predicted that the positive or negative states of the demonstrator would induce matching states in the observer, indicating emotional contagion. All subjects’ emotional states were assessed through behaviour and cognition, the latter by means of a judgement bias test. Behavioural results showed a successful emotion manipulation of demonstrators, with manipulation-congruent expressions (i.e., positive calls in the positive condition, and negative calls and pilo-erect tail in the negative condition). Observers showed no manipulation-congruent expressions, but showed more scratching and arousal after the positive manipulation. Concerning the judgement bias test, we predicted that subjects in a positive state should increase their response to ambiguous cues (i.e., optimism bias), and subjects in a negative state should decrease their response (i.e., pessimism bias). This prediction was not supported as neither demonstrators nor observers showed such bias in either manipulation. Yet, demonstrators showed an increased response to the near-positive cue, and additional analyses showed unexpected responses to the reference cues, as well as a researcher identity effect. We discuss all results combined, including recently raised validation concerns of the judgement bias test, and inherent challenges to empirically studying emotional contagion. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10071-021-01497-1.