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. 2014 Apr;25(4):934-42.
doi: 10.1177/0956797613518352. Epub 2014 Jan 30.

Stress contagion: physiological covariation between mothers and infants

Sara F Waters  1 , Tessa V West, Wendy Berry Mendes
Affiliations

Stress contagion: physiological covariation between mothers and infants

Sara F Waters et al. Psychol Sci. 2014 Apr.

Abstract

Emotions are not simply concepts that live privately in the mind, but rather affective states that emanate from the individual and may influence others. We explored affect contagion in the context of one of the closest dyadic units, mother and infant. We initially separated mothers and infants; randomly assigned the mothers to experience a stressful positive-evaluation task, a stressful negative-evaluation task, or a nonstressful control task; and then reunited the mothers and infants. Three notable findings were obtained: First, infants' physiological reactivity mirrored mothers' reactivity engendered by the stress manipulation. Second, infants whose mothers experienced social evaluation showed more avoidance toward strangers compared with infants whose mothers were in the control condition. Third, the negative-evaluation condition, compared with the other conditions, generated greater physiological covariation in the dyads, and this covariation increased over time. These findings suggest that mothers' stressful experiences are contagious to their infants and that members of close pairs, like mothers and infants, can reciprocally influence each other's dynamic physiological reactivity.

Keywords: electrophysiology; emotional development; infant development; social behavior; stress reactions.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Overview of the procedure. Dashed outlines indicate that the mother was alone; for all other periods, the mother and infant were together. Bold outlines indicate the periods from which the mother’s and infant’s physiological data were taken for covariation analyses. Q&A = question-and-answer session.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Mothers’ and infants’ physiological reactivity during the poststress interviews: (a) mothers’ mean increase in ventricle contractility and (b) infants’ mean heart rate reactivity as a function of mothers’ evaluation condition. Error bars represent ±1 SE.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Infants’ mean behavioral avoidance of the interviewers as a function of mothers’ evaluation condition. Error bars represent ±1 SE.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Covariation of infants’ heart rate (HR) reactivity and mothers’ ventricle contractility (VC) reactivity over time, from reunion through toy play, in the three evaluation conditions. Covariation is indexed as the effect of (standardized) infants’ HR reactivity on (standardized) mothers’ VC reactivity.
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