The development research of the emotional contagion theory

Abstract

Emotional contagion (EC) is a basic theory explaining social interaction, and plaies important roles in a variety of contests, such as reciprocal emotional influence between employees and customers would change customers service experience. Most researchers agree that emotions are organized, meaningful, generally adaptive systems functioning as a whole that include expressive and instrumental behaviour, patterned physiological processes, cognitions and subjective feelings. This paper reviewed the mechanism of the EC and key moderator variables, besides, the authors, integrating the EC with service management and group behaviour, presented the future research directions of the theory.