Antecedents and Consequences of Emotional Contagion

Abstract

Emotions exercises pronounced influence over organisational communication internally and externally. Emotions establish great impacts on society. Emotions are contagious and people tend to take on one another s emotions when they interact with each other. This process is known as emotional contagion. As previous researcher have stated, there is abundant opportunity of exploration in the arena of emotional contagion from the gender and generational perspective. Therefore, we examine this gap and build a well-rounded model of understanding on emotional contagion. newlineThe purpose of this research was to find out the factors which lead to positive and negative emotional contagion within an organisational setup and also to understand its impact or outcomes. The population group has been divided into two broad categories on the basis of gender and generation. A mixed method approach based on both qualitative and quantitative methods have been applied for a comprehensive understating of antecedents and consequences of emotional contagion. This topic is examined in the context of the influences on and outcomes of the emotional contagion at workplaces. This study spans across a plethora of industries in India. newlineThe aim of this research is to analyse the impact of factors like stress, personality and impression management on emotional contagion. On the other hand, it also aims to understand the results of emotional contagion on performance, work engagement and well-being. Previous studies have focused on specific industries. This was one of the major gap areas which has been addresses with the help of this study. The aim is to get a generalized picture across all industries in India. newlineThis is an exploratory research with the main objective of hypotheses testing. A sequential mixed method approach has been adopted for an in-depth understanding of the antecedents and consequences of emotional contagion. There are two phases of this research- quantitative followed by and qualitative.