Emotional Contagion, Emotional Resonance, and Responsibility for Shared Agency

Oct 22, 2026

Emotional contagion describes the convergence of emotion between people through mimicry rather than direct attention to others. The paper examines shared (practical and epistemic) agency cases that appear to undermine appraisal-based views of emotion activation and complicate moral responsibility because contagion-driven actions are socially mediated and less aligned with intentionality-based standards. Drawing on neuroscience, emotions are treated as embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended, enabling reflective agency while raising questions of individual responsibility, attributability, and autonomy.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages1

Reading Time3 min

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Emotional contagion and emotional resonance

Challenges to appraisal-based theories

Moral responsibility and shared agency

Emotions as embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended

Autonomy and attributability standards

References

Emotional Contagion, Emotional Resonance, and Responsibility for Shared Agency Carla Bagnoli (University of Modena-Reggio Emilia) “Emotional contagion” names the tendency to converge emotionally with others by mimicry (Hatfield et al., 1993) . The imitation mechanism is supposed to explain a distinctive variety of phenomena where emotions are activated by unconsciously echoing others’ emotions, rather than by attending directly to others or responding to the object of their attention. Such phenomena include instances of shared (practical and epistemic) agency which are perplexing on two counts. First, they seem to disprove the view that emotions are activated by appraisals i.e. evaluations of the stimuli in relation to the well-being of the subject (Lazarus 1991) . Second, actions generated by emotional contagion challenge the standards of moral responsibility grounded on intentionality: they seem to be too complex and socially mediated to be comprehended by the same standards that governing individual actions or actions shared via intentions. Building upon recent work on neuroscience, this paper takes emotions to be embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended. As complex processes, emotions concur to generate forms of massively shared agency which are not articulated by intentions or plans (vs. Bratman 2018, Shapiro 2014) . Yet (practical and epistemic) actions generated through emotional resonance can be genuine exercise of reflective agency and raise the issue of the agent’s individual moral responsibility. This is because emotions do play a role in modulating and regulating our (emotional, creedal, and agential) convergence with others. This is because they are reflexive and, as such, they enter epistemic and practical reflection, and counterfactual reasoning (Brady 2013, Gendler 2006, Mackenzie 2002) . The trust of the argument is that to correctly identify the standards of attributability and moral responsibility for shared actions driven by emotional resonance, we need a conception of autonomy robust enough to accommodate the reflexive functions of emotions and the complex normative roles that they play in self-governance and deliberation. References - Brady, Michael S. (2013) . Emotional Insight: The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience, Oxford University Press. - Bratman, Michael. (2018) . Planning, Time, and Self-Governance. Oxford University Press. - Gendler, Tamar Szabó (2006). Imaginative contagion. Metaphilosophy 37 (2):183-203 . - Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1994) . Emotional Contagion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press - Lazarus, R. S. (1991) . Emotion and Adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press. - Mackenzie, Catriona (2002) . Critical Reflection, Self-knowledge, and the Emotions. Philosophical Explorations 5 (3): 186-206. - Parr, Lisa A. (2001) . Understanding Other's Emotions: From Affective Resonance to Empathic Action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (1):44-45 . - Schapiro, Scott 2014. “Massively Shared Agency,” in M. Vargas and G. Yaffe, eds., Rational and Social Agency: Essays on The Philosophy of Michael Bratman, New York: Oxford University Press.

FAQs

What does emotional contagion mean in this paper?

It refers to the tendency to converge emotionally with others through mimicry, where emotions are activated by unconsciously echoing others’ emotions rather than by direct attention.

Why does emotional resonance complicate moral responsibility?

Actions generated through emotional contagion appear too complex and socially mediated to be assessed using the same intentionality-based standards that govern individual or intention-shared actions.

How does the paper address the autonomy requirement for responsibility?

It argues that identifying the standards for attributability and moral responsibility in contagion-driven shared actions requires a robust conception of autonomy that can incorporate emotions’ reflexive functions and their normative roles in self-governance and deliberation.

Oct 22, 2026

Uploaded by Taylor Morgan