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Emotional Contagion in the Workplace

Emotional Contagion in the Workplace: How Moods Spread During Change

Written by Chloe Arangath on .

This article explores the neuroscience behind emotional contagion and its role in organizational change. By understanding how emotions spread within teams, leaders can better manage the emotional climate during transitions. Key mechanisms like the mirror neuron system and the roles of neurotransmitters and brain regions such as the amygdala and insula, help explain how moods travel. We will also discuss three evidence-based strategies so you have actionable ways to use emotional contagion for positive change.

1. Introduction

Emotions don’t just live inside individuals, they move through teams. Especially in times of organizational change, emotions become contagious. This spread isn’t random; it’s rooted in how our brains are wired to mimic and resonate with others. By understanding and managing this process, leaders can shape the emotional climate of their organizations, increasing morale, resilience, and the likelihood of successful transformation.

2. The Neuroscience Behind Emotional Contagion

Emotional contagion happens because our brains are wired to automatically mimic and resonate with others’ emotions, a key process for social bonding and empathy. This occurs through the brain’s mirror neuron system, where regions like the Right Temporal Parietal Junction (TPJ) and Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG) help us recognize and replicate others’ emotional expressions (Iacoboni & Lenzi, 2002). When we see someone express fear, joy, or frustration, our brain mirrors that emotion, triggering a similar response in us.

Other regions, such as the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) and insula, help regulate and align our emotional responses to others (Harada et al., 2016). This mechanism is rooted in evolutionary survival: social cohesion increases group safety.

Neurotransmitters like serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine also play a role, modulating empathy and emotional regulation (Mondoloni et al., 2024; Coccia et al., 2022). Together, these systems make emotions highly contagious in social environments, including the workplace.

3. Emotional Contagion in the Workplace

In the workplace, emotions often spread unintentionally through both direct interaction and social cues. During change, when uncertainty is high, people become even more sensitive to emotional signals from those around them. This includes leaders’ tone, colleagues’ expressions, and the general atmosphere of meetings or informal chats.

Left unmanaged, emotional contagion can amplify anxiety or disengagement. But when approached intentionally, it becomes a powerful lever for building trust, cohesion, and motivation. Leaders and key influencers play a critical role in shaping this emotional landscape, and consequently, the success of change initiatives.

4. Leadership Support: Setting the Emotional Tone

Leaders play a key role in shaping the emotional climate of an organization, whether intentionally or not. Their emotional expressions set the tone for how teams respond to change, influencing trust, engagement, and the success of transformation. Positive emotional contagion from leaders encourages optimism and commitment, enhancing employee engagement and adoption of change (Johnson, 2008). Transformational leaders, in particular, can leverage emotional contagion to align their teams’ emotions with organizational goals, creating cohesion and motivation essential for navigating change.

The emotional tone leaders set also affects the group’s collective response. Positive emotions build resilience and optimism, while negative emotions can spread resistance and hinder progress (Kashive & Raina, 2024). Emotion regulation strategies such as deep acting, allow leaders to manage this contagion effectively. By actively shaping their emotional expressions, leaders directly influence how engaged and adaptable employees are during change.

Intervention 1: If-Then Plans

If-then plans, also known as implementation intentions, are a powerful tool for leaders to manage their emotional responses during organizational change. By linking specific emotional triggers (the “if”) to desired emotional behaviors (the “then”), leaders can regulate their emotional expressions in real time, ensuring that they create a positive emotional climate. This structured approach helps leaders manage emotional contagion, preventing negative emotions from spreading and encouraging a resilient, optimistic atmosphere that supports successful change initiatives.

Key benefits of using If-Then Plans for emotional contagion include:

  • Promotes emotional regulation: Leaders can pre-plan how to respond in high-stress situations, modeling calm and positivity.
    • Example: If I feel frustrated in a meeting, then I’ll take three deep breaths and refocus on potential positive outcomes.
  • Encourages positive emotional contagion: Consistently displaying confidence and optimism inspires the same in others.
    • Example: If I notice my team feeling uncertain about the change, then I will share an optimistic success story to inspire confidence.
  • Reduces negative emotional contagion: Leaders can redirect their emotions with rehearsed strategies to maintain a constructive tone.
    • Example: If I begin to feel anxious about upcoming changes, then I will openly acknowledge the anxiety and redirect the conversation towards actionable solutions.

Using if-then plans enables leaders to take control of their emotional expressions, creating a supportive environment that improves team engagement and helps navigate the challenges of organizational change.

5. Stakeholder Engagement: Creating Emotionally Resilient Networks

Emotional contagion plays a key role in stakeholder engagement, especially within the informal networks that shape daily interactions. Influential stakeholders often act as emotional amplifiers, affecting not just their teams but the broader organization. When they display positive emotions, it boosts morale, engagement, and commitment to change. In contrast, negative emotions can fuel resistance, disengagement, and burnout, undermining change efforts.

Recognizing and managing emotional contagion in these networks is key to building an emotionally resilient workforce. Stakeholders with informal influence can either reinforce positivity or intensify negativity. Supporting their emotional resilience helps contain negative spread and promotes engagement, creating a supportive environment for successful change.

Here are two interventions to create emotionally resilient networks and strengthen stakeholder engagement:

Intervention 2: Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is a key intervention in managing emotional contagion within an organization. It creates an environment where individuals feel safe to express their emotions, concerns, and fears, preventing the suppression of negative feelings, which can fuel emotional contagion. When people feel secure in sharing their emotions, particularly in times of change, they are less likely to let fear, anxiety, or cynicism spread throughout the organization.

Key benefits of psychological safety in managing emotional contagion include:

  • Prevents emotional suppression: When team members feel safe to speak up, they are less likely to bottle up negative emotions like anxiety, which can spread and escalate across teams. Open expression of emotions allows for timely interventions before negativity takes hold.
  • Encourages openness and buffers negative emotion: Creating a psychologically safe environment builds trust, curiosity, and hope. These positive emotions can counterbalance negative emotions, preventing them from circulating and influencing others destructively.

The intervention focuses on cultivating psychological safety through strategies like framing the work, inviting input, and responding productively to feedback. These practices create a foundation for building trust and collaboration, allowing positive emotions to flourish and minimizing the spread of negative contagion during organizational change.

Intervention 3: Organizational Network Analysis (ONA)

Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) is a powerful tool for managing emotional contagion by mapping informal relationships and identifying emotional influencers across an organization. Emotional contagion often spreads through informal networks, not official hierarchies, so understanding these networks is key to targeting the right people who can help manage the emotional climate during times of change.

Key benefits of ONA in managing emotional contagion include:

  • Maps informal influence: ONA identifies the “emotional amplifiers” in your organization, those central figures whose emotions, mood, or engagement have a ripple effect on others. These individuals often hold more influence over their peers than formal leaders and can affect how emotions spread within teams.
  • Helps support emotional influencers: Once these informal leaders are identified, you can engage and support them emotionally, empowering them to spread resilience, optimism, and buy-in throughout the organization. By supporting these influencers, you help ensure that positive emotions take root and negative contagion is minimized.

ONA enables change managers to visualize the emotional flow within the organization, identifying who is most likely to influence others’ emotions and behaviors. With this information, interventions can be tailored to engage those informal leaders, ensuring that they are emotionally supported and equipped to act as conduits for positive change during organizational transitions.

Conclusion

Emotional contagion is a powerful force that shapes how teams respond to organizational change. The brain’s automatic mirroring of others’ emotions through systems like mirror neurons and key regions such as the amygdala influences how moods and feelings spread across teams, either fostering resilience or escalating negativity. Leaders who understand these processes can proactively manage emotional dynamics, ensuring that the emotional tone of an organization supports positive engagement, trust, and successful change adoption. 

The good news is that emotional contagion can be managed and harnessed for positive outcomes. Through evidence-based interventions such as if-then plans, psychological safety, and Organizational Network Analysis (ONA), leaders can create an environment where emotions are regulated, and the spread of negativity is minimized. These strategies help leaders influence the emotional climate in ways that align with how people naturally respond to their social surroundings. 

By leveraging insights from neuroscience and emotional dynamics, organizations can enhance their ability to manage the emotional flow during change, leading to a more engaged, resilient workforce. With the right interventions, emotional contagion can be transformed into a tool that accelerates positive change rather than hindering it. For a deeper dive into the science behind these interventions and practical applications, the book The Dynamics of Business Behavior offers in-depth strategies grounded in behavioral research to help organizations navigate emotional contagion effectively.

We hope you found this article on our core change thesis useful and that you learned more about why behavioral science is so powerful for managing organizational change. If you’re looking for a behavioral business partner to drive organizational change, we’re happy to schedule a call. Want to learn more about the application of brain and behavioral insights in management, HR, growth and innovation? Read our blog or view our YouTube channel.

About Neurofied

Neurofied is a behavioral science company specialized in training, consulting, and change management. We help organizations drive evidence-based and human-centric change with insights and interventions from behavioral psychology and neuroscience. Consider us your behavioral business partner who helps you build behavioral change capabilities internally.

Since 2018, we have trained thousands of professionals and worked with over 100 management, HR, growth, and innovation teams of organizations such as Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, Deloitte, Novo Nordisk, ABN AMRO, and the Dutch government. We are also frequent speakers at universities and conferences.

Our mission is to democratize the value of behavioral science for teams and organizations. If you have any challenges in your organization that could use a behavioral perspective, feel free to contact us here.

References

Coccia, G., La Greca, F., Di Luca, M., & Scheggia, D. (2022). Dissecting social decision-making: A spotlight on oxytocinergic transmission. Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, 15, 1061934. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnmol.2022.1061934

Harada, T., Hayashi, A., Sadato, N., & Iidaka, T. (2016). Neural correlates of emotional contagion induced by happy and sad expressions. Journal of Psychophysiology, 30(3), 144-154. https://doi.org/10.1027/0269-8803/a000160

Iacoboni, M., & Lenzi, G. L. (2002). Mirror neurons, the insula, and empathy. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25(1), 39–40. doi:10.1017/S0140525X02420018

Johnson, S. K. (2008). I second that emotion: Effects of emotional contagion and affect at work on leader and follower outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 19(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2007.12.001

Kashive, N., & Raina, B. (2023). Transformation leadership’s emotional labor and follower’s psychological capital: Mediating effect of emotional contagion. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOEPP-04-2023-0159

Mondoloni, S., Molina, P., Lecca, S., Wu, C.-H., Michel, L., Osypenko, D., Cachin, F., Flanigan, M., Congiu, M., Lalive, A. L., Kash, T., Deng, F., Li, Y., & Mameli, M. (2024). Serotonin release in the habenula during emotional contagion promotes resilience. Science, 385(6713), 1081-1086. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adp3897

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