Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Jul 21;7(1):6168.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-05811-1.

Physiological dynamics of stress contagion

Stephanie J Dimitroff  1 , Omid Kardan  2 , Elizabeth A Necka  2 , Jean Decety  2   3 , Marc G Berman  2   4   5 , Greg J Norman  2   4   5
Affiliations

Physiological dynamics of stress contagion

Stephanie J Dimitroff et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Can viewing others experiencing stress create a "contagious" physiological stress response in the observer? To investigate second-hand stress, we first created a stimulus set of videos, which featured participants speaking under either minimal stress, high stress, or while recovering from stress. We then recruited a second set of participants to watch these videos. All participants (speakers and observers) were monitored via electrocardiogram. Cardiac activity of the observers while watching the videos was then analyzed and compared to that of the speakers. Furthermore, we assessed dispositional levels of empathy in observers to determine how empathy might be related to the degree of stress contagion. Results revealed that depending on the video being viewed, observers experienced differential changes in cardiac activity that were based on the speaker's stress level. Additionally, this is the first demonstration that individuals high in dispositional empathy experience these physiological changes more quickly.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overview of observers’ responses to viewing videos (a) Baseline corrected mean IBI of low and high empathy observers while viewing videos. (b) Mean anxiety ratings made by low and high empathy observers while viewing videos. (c) Mean maximum time-lagged correlation between IBI of speakers and observers. (d) Mean lag (in seconds) to reach maximum correlation between speaker and observer IBI. All error bars represent standard error. *=Statistically significant after Bonferroni correction (p < 0.05).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Visual representation of time lag analysis. This data represents one subject. Each line represents the correlation of observer’s IBI with speaker’s IBI, for each video type. As the time lag is increased from zero, we are able to determine at what time the maximum correlation is achieved.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Visual representation of IBI data of observer from Fig. 2 watching a Stress video. The graph on the left shows how IBI of speaker and observer are related when no time lag is implemented. On the left, we see how IBI of speaker and observer are related when a time lag of approximately 8 seconds is applied. A secondary axis was created to help visualize differences in IBI, as the speaker was robustly stressed and as a result had a lower IBI compared to the observer.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Decety J, Norman GJ, Berntson GG, Cacioppo JT. A neurobehavioral evolutionary perspective on the mechanisms underlying empathy. Prog. Neurobiol. 2012;98:38–48. doi: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2012.05.001. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bänziger T, Scherer KR. The role of intonation in emotional expressions. Speech Commun. 2005;46:252–267. doi: 10.1016/j.specom.2005.02.016. - DOI
    1. Ekman P, Paul. Facial expression and emotion. Am. Psychol. 1993;48:384–392. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.48.4.384. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bänziger T, Grandjean D, Scherer KR. Emotion recognition from expressions in face, voice, and body: the multimodal emotion recognition test (MERT) Emotion. 2009;9:691–704. doi: 10.1037/a0017088. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T. & Rapson, R. L. Emotional contagion. (Cambridge University Press, 1994).

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources