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Perceiving Positive Facial Expression Can Relieve Depressive Moods: The Effect of Emotional Contagion on Mood in People With Subthreshold Depression

Emotional contagion is a phenomenon by which an individual’s emotions directly trigger similar emotions in others. We explored the possibility that perceiving others’ emotional facial expressions affect mood in people with subthreshold depression (sD). Around 49 participants were divided into the fo...

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Autores principales: Yamashita, Yuko, Yamamoto, Tetsuya
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8631783/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34858241
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.535980
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author Yamashita, Yuko
Yamamoto, Tetsuya
author_facet Yamashita, Yuko
Yamamoto, Tetsuya
author_sort Yamashita, Yuko
collection PubMed
description Emotional contagion is a phenomenon by which an individual’s emotions directly trigger similar emotions in others. We explored the possibility that perceiving others’ emotional facial expressions affect mood in people with subthreshold depression (sD). Around 49 participants were divided into the following four groups: participants with no depression (ND) presented with happy faces; ND participants presented with sad faces; sD participants presented with happy faces; and sD participants presented with sad faces. Participants were asked to answer an inventory about their emotional states before and after viewing the emotional faces to investigate the influence of emotional contagion on their mood. Regardless of depressive tendency, the groups presented with happy faces exhibited a slight increase in the happy mood score and a decrease in the sad mood score. The groups presented with sad faces exhibited an increased sad mood score and a decreased happy mood score. These results demonstrate that emotional contagion affects the mood in people with sD, as well as in individuals with ND. These results indicate that emotional contagion could relieve depressive moods in people with sD. It demonstrates the importance of the emotional facial expressions of those around people with sD such as family and friends from the viewpoint of emotional contagion.
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spelling pubmed-86317832021-12-01 Perceiving Positive Facial Expression Can Relieve Depressive Moods: The Effect of Emotional Contagion on Mood in People With Subthreshold Depression Yamashita, Yuko Yamamoto, Tetsuya Front Psychol Psychology Emotional contagion is a phenomenon by which an individual’s emotions directly trigger similar emotions in others. We explored the possibility that perceiving others’ emotional facial expressions affect mood in people with subthreshold depression (sD). Around 49 participants were divided into the following four groups: participants with no depression (ND) presented with happy faces; ND participants presented with sad faces; sD participants presented with happy faces; and sD participants presented with sad faces. Participants were asked to answer an inventory about their emotional states before and after viewing the emotional faces to investigate the influence of emotional contagion on their mood. Regardless of depressive tendency, the groups presented with happy faces exhibited a slight increase in the happy mood score and a decrease in the sad mood score. The groups presented with sad faces exhibited an increased sad mood score and a decreased happy mood score. These results demonstrate that emotional contagion affects the mood in people with sD, as well as in individuals with ND. These results indicate that emotional contagion could relieve depressive moods in people with sD. It demonstrates the importance of the emotional facial expressions of those around people with sD such as family and friends from the viewpoint of emotional contagion. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-11-11 /pmc/articles/PMC8631783/ /pubmed/34858241 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.535980 Text en Copyright © 2021 Yamashita and Yamamoto. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Yamashita, Yuko
Yamamoto, Tetsuya
Perceiving Positive Facial Expression Can Relieve Depressive Moods: The Effect of Emotional Contagion on Mood in People With Subthreshold Depression
title Perceiving Positive Facial Expression Can Relieve Depressive Moods: The Effect of Emotional Contagion on Mood in People With Subthreshold Depression
title_full Perceiving Positive Facial Expression Can Relieve Depressive Moods: The Effect of Emotional Contagion on Mood in People With Subthreshold Depression
title_fullStr Perceiving Positive Facial Expression Can Relieve Depressive Moods: The Effect of Emotional Contagion on Mood in People With Subthreshold Depression
title_full_unstemmed Perceiving Positive Facial Expression Can Relieve Depressive Moods: The Effect of Emotional Contagion on Mood in People With Subthreshold Depression
title_short Perceiving Positive Facial Expression Can Relieve Depressive Moods: The Effect of Emotional Contagion on Mood in People With Subthreshold Depression
title_sort perceiving positive facial expression can relieve depressive moods: the effect of emotional contagion on mood in people with subthreshold depression
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8631783/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34858241
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.535980
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