What best describes emotion contagion?

• A. Emotion contagion is the deliberate sharing of feelings through verbal statements.
• B. It is a conscious, voluntary process of feeling others' emotions.
• C. It involves recognizing emotions in others but not actually feeling them.
• D. People catch others' emotions through social cues and empathic processes.

Answer: (D)

Emotion contagion is the automatic spread of emotions from one person to others through social cues and how we empathically process them. When you notice someone’s facial expressions, tone of voice, or body language, you often “mirror” those cues and start to feel a similar emotion ourselves, often without intending to. This is different from deliberately sharing feelings with words or trying to feel a certain way on purpose, and it's also not just recognizing someone’s emotions without feeling them. So the idea that you catch others’ emotions through social cues and empathic processes best captures what contagion is.