The ripple effect: emotional contagion and its influence on group behavior

Administrative Science Quarterly,  Dec, 2002  by Sigal G. Barsade

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Confederate. A confederate was chosen as the means to transmit the desired affective condition (rather than relying on naturally occurring affect) because having a confederate gave greater control, reduced possible task-related variance, and in a relatively brief lab experiment a confederate could be more successful in serving as a stimulus necessary for contagion to occur. I chose a male undergraduate drama student as a confederate because of the acting talent necessary to play the four different types of emotions for the four affective conditions and the need to "hold character" affectively throughout the experiment. A drama student could also dissociate personally from the task and focus completely on the emotional "acting" needed to play the role in each of the four conditions. The confederate had no personal stake in the task. All of his energies were focused on maintaining verbal and nonverbal affective character within the standardized and prescribed task role he was trained for. The same confederate played all four roles across conditions so that there would be less chance of spurious differences due to different confederates. An undergraduate rather than a graduate student was chosen to play the confederate so that he could fit in with the participants. It was not unusual for the participants not to know everyone in the group (including the confederate), as the experiment consisted of students drawn from two large classes, and participants did not know each other well (x = 1.29, s.d. = .47, on a scale of 1, "Did not know at all," to 5, "Know extremely well").

The confederate did not know the hypotheses or specific purpose of the study. He was extensively trained in the different nonverbal affective behaviors he needed for each condition and in keeping the more verbal task-oriented behaviors as stable as possible across conditions. For nonverbal displays of emotion, the confederate was given extensive instructions about conveying the pleasantness and energy level of the emotion, following the same classifications and protocols of nonverbal behaviors for each quadrant of the affective circumplex model created by Barrel and Saavedra (2000). For example, in the two pleasantness conditions, the confederate was told to smile frequently, whereas in the two unpleasant conditions, he did not smile at all. In the two high-energy conditions, he was told to make much eye contact, have a strong tone of voice, and speak quite rapidly. He was also instructed to sit up straight in his seat looking very intently at the other participants. He began behaving this way the moment he walked into the room for the experiment. For example, in the high-energy conditions, the confederate was instructed to take copious notes and read intently during the time given to participants to review the material. In the two low-energy conditions, the confederate spoke very slowly and had a low voice tone. He avoided eye contact with the other participants, slouched, or laid back in his seat. When he reviewed his materials, he took very few notes and did not look at the material intently. Figure 2 shows how the confederate enacted the experimental conditions.