Emotional Contagion

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This article describes how the prolonged use of a close-up on a character’s facial expression can affect the emotions of a viewer.

Abstract:             

When a director uses a close-up they are effectively forcing an audience to attend more closely to a particular part of the onscreen action. This article discusses what happens when a director uses a close up to place the attention of the audience firmly upon on a character’s emotive face.  More importantly, I shall describe the process known as “emotional contagion” that occurs when a close-up of the character’s face is held for a prolonged period of time. And yes, as you may have guessed by the title, the audience will eventually begin to “catch” the emotions on display.

Contents:

‘Emotional Contagion’ Explained

 The Film Director’s Use of Emotional Contagion

Feeling for the Baddies

A Final Note on Hitchcock

 

Article:

The phrase “emotional contagion” sounds like an infectious disease. Generating images of emotions that jump from one person to the next – making them feel more emotional than ever before! In truth, it’s actually a great analogy for the process that occurs when a viewer is faced with a close-up of a particular character’s emotional expression.

‘Emotional Contagion’ Explained

The process of “emotional contagion” only occurs in a film when a director chooses to hold a close-up of a particular character’s facial expression for a slightly extended period of time.

I will allow the philosopher Amy Coplan to explain:

“First the imitator mimics anther’s facial expression. Making this facial expression then influences the imitator’s subjective emotional experience and induces physiological changes characteristic of the emotional expression that she is mimicking. Consequently, people can end up ‘catching’ the emotions of those they observe.”

(Coplan, 2006, p. 28)

What Coplan is saying is, that when we recognise a person’s facial expression, and we look at this expression for a long enough period of time, then we will physically begin to mimic the expression. Then, the longer we mimic the expression, the more chance there is we will begin to actually experience the emotion we are looking at.

For example, if we were to sit and watch a lady cry, then an instinctive urge to mimic her expression of sadness will descend on our faces. After mimicking the expression of sadness we will then begin to experience a degree of sadness ourselves.

A son mourns the death of his mother – Freddie Highmore in ‘Finding Neverland’ (2004)

Of course, in real life we will not actually mimic most of the expressions we see – in fact, the urge to mimic an expression will often occur at such a low level, we won’t even be aware we ignored it.

And different cultures may contain different expectations regarding the public displaying of emotion.

For example, the emotion theorist Paul Ekman (2003) has studied the difference in expressions of emotions between American and Japanese viewers. In everyday situations the Japanese were found less likely to express emotions – as their social life is governed by stricter rules of display. But when recorded at the cinema (where they thought no one was watching them) their expressive reactions to the films were as strong as the responses displayed by American viewers.

Therefore, if our resistance is lowered (like it is at the cinema where there are no ‘display rules’) and we allow ourselves to begin to mimic another person’s facial expression, then we will also begin to experience a degree of the emotion we are mimicking.

A quick clarification:

When I say a viewer “mimics” a character’s expression. I do not mean that they replicate that expression exactly (although some viewers may). Only that the muscles in the face that are required to pull this expression are activated.  All that is needed is for the viewer’s neurological and muscular systems to recognise – however minutely – the expression that is being mimicked, which may result in the viewer’s facial muscles moving a great deal, or possibly only very slightly.

Even the most emotive of viewers would struggle to precisely mimic the terrified expressions of Shelley Duvall in ‘The Shining’ (1980)

In real life most of us will only engage in emotional contagion with people we are close to. We can stop ourselves easily enough from mimicking, and then eventually experiencing, the emotions of random people we see in the street, simply by not paying them much attention. But with regards to a husband, wife, brother, sister, girlfriend, boyfriend, mother, daughter, father, son, or simply a close friend, then we may find it harder to ignore their emotional expressions.

If a loved one is crying then chances are you will be sitting or standing very close to them. Your attention is drawn to their expressions of pain, and you may find yourself looking at the sadness in their faces for an extended period of time. In such an instance it is quite common to experience a degree of their pain yourself. Not through feeling sympathy for them (maybe you don’t even care!) but by directly mimicking their expression, and at such close range, you cannot help but begin to experience a degree of the emotion yourself.

You become infected by it!

Smiling is one of the more infectious of expressions. Once mimicked you cannot help but ‘catch’ the emotion of joy.

Which brings us to film.

The Film Director’s Use of Emotional Contagion

What a film director can do with his use of a close-up, is to force an audience into a state of emotional contagion.

Should a film director wish to quickly enforce an emotional experience upon her audience, an extended close-up of an emotional expression is a particularly quick, sure-fire way of doing it.

By holding the close-up on the screen without cutting away you, as a director, are essentially recreating the type of intimate closeness that most people only have with loved ones, with the emotional expression (thanks to the close-up) seeming so close.

We are forced to attend closely to the expressions of Hannibal Lecter in ‘Silence of the Lambs’ (1991) – causing viewers to directly ‘catch’ the unsettling intensity of Antony Hopkins unblinking eyes.

Carl Plantinga (1999) explains how by holding the audience’s attention on a particular emotional expression you are preventing them from diverting their attention elsewhere (as they would do with most expressions they may happen to see on any given day), and so you actively encourage a degree of emotional mimicry.

For example, a supporting character could be very upset and be subsequently crying. However, this character has not been in the film all that much, and so an audience has not invested much time in her goals. Because of this the audience will still be keeping themselves at a bit of an emotional distance from her.

A quick close-up of her sad expression is unlikely to generate a strong response from the audience, at least not in the way it would if the central hero was sad. However, if the director holds the close-up for a longer period of time – far longer than the time it takes for the audience to simply comprehend that the character is sad – then there is a good chance they will automatically begin to mimic and then to experience (to a lesser degree) the sadness that is on display.

In this example the audience are coaxed by the use of the close-up into feeling a closer emotional connection with the character, and in a way they may otherwise have not.

Note: An appropriate use of lighting and sound will dramatically enhance the contagion of whatever emotion is on display.

The crucial part of this process of emotional contagion is that it is automatic.

This means that if your hero is particularly happy, sad, fearful, or disgusted, and you want to get this feeling across to your audience in a more forceful way, then a simple extended close-up of the expressive face (the better the actor the stronger the process!) will automatically generate (to varying degrees throughout the audience) a partial experience of the emotion being displayed.

And this process will occur whether they agree with the nature of the sadness or not. The audience may think the hero has no right to be sad at this point in the film. But the direct power of the emotional contagion means that the sad emotion being expressed by the character will bypass their conscious “lack of agreement” – and so will encourage them to feel a degree of sadness regardless of whether they approve.

The more interesting by-product of this process is that because the passing of the emotion from the character’s facial expression to the audience is automatic (meaning it cannot be helped) the director can choose to use it to encourage emotions where the audience would perhaps normally not feel them.

Feeling for the Baddies

As Murray Smith (1995) points out, such is the power of “affective mimicry” (mimicking the emotional expression of the character) followed by “emotional contagion” (where we begin to feel the emotion ourselves because we have been mimicking the character’s expression) that the audience can end up experiencing an emotion that is different to their overall appraisal of the film.

Time for a really good example: Alien Resurrection (1997).

I have stolen this example from Amy Coplan (2006) because her analysis of the film is so great.

Human expressions are on display by the alien hybrid.

Picture the scene:

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has just used her own acidic blood to puncture a small hole in the spaceship’s hull. The vacuum created begins to gruesomely suck the last surviving alien (an alien/human hybrid) out into space. The alien believes Ripley to be its mother. And as the alien realises that its horrible fate has been sealed by what it believes to be its own mother (Ripley), the alien produces a very human expression of pain and sadness, just before it perishes.

Coplan describes how, as an audience, we are simultaneously disgusted by the sight of the alien being torn apart, happy that the final threat to Ripley has been eliminated, and saddened by the alien’s clearly expressed suffering prior to its death.

But surely this isn’t normal?

Usually the death of the villain at the end of the film is a cause for celebration. Certainly in an Alien film, where let’s be honest, there are no ‘good’ aliens. They either murder people or capture them and use them as live feed for their children. So why be remotely sad that one of them is dead?

Well, the alien at the end of Alien Resurrection is half-human, and is the only alien in the series that displays clearly recognisable human expressions. In this case it expresses sadness. And sadness is a basic emotion that is recognisable everywhere (even on an alien hybrid!) – see extensive research by Paul Ekman (2003) on the universality of particular emotional expressions.

Remember, emotional contagion is automatic. It bypasses our conscious thoughts. If we think about it, the alien does not deserve any sympathy. But what we experience is not sympathy. We do not pity its death. Instead we experience a very direct transfer of the alien’s pain and sadness at dying by its own mother’s hand. The expression of sadness conveyed by the alien is transferred to the audience through emotional contagion. No conscious thought takes part in the process.

Key point: Emotional contagion is automatic and involuntary (you can’t control it, it just happens!).

A Final Note on Hitchcock

In the Hitchcock film Saboteur (1942) the villain, named Fry, dies at the end of the film after falling from the Statue of Liberty. The hero, Kane, does not fall, and manages to climb to safety where he embraces his girlfriend.

Murray Smith describes how this celebration of a triumphant finish for the hero is somewhat dampened by the nature of Fry’s death. All our sympathy throughout the film has been with the hero, Kane, as Fry, the villain, seemed devoid of any positive, heroic, qualities. Yet, because Hitchcock used a medium-close up of the villain (Fry) just before he fell to his death, the audience were exposed to the ‘emotional contagion’ that was transferred from his terrified expression through to the audience.

A fearful villain about to fall to his death.

Hitchcock was reportedly unhappy with audiences empathetic reactions to the last minute sadness that was generated by the villain’s death (Durgnat, 2004). And Murray Smith notes that in Hitchcock’s next film which followed a similar type of story, Lifeboat (1944), when the villain dies the audience do not witness his facial expressions at all, preventing any chance of emotional contagion from taking place.

It is because emotional contagion is a direct process that it can be used in a variety of ways. Either to add extra emotional weight to a minor character, or to further enhance a particular response to a central character, or even to create a conflict of emotions when a ‘baddy’ is involved. It becomes a useful and adaptable tool. And one worth considering.

Primary References:

Amy Coplan’s article on emotional contagion is really nice (page 33 -36 if you want to get straight to the examples) – ‘Catching Character’s Emotions: Emotional Contagion Responses to Narrative Fiction’ which can be found in: Film Studies: An International Review, Issue 8 (edited by) Christie, Ian, and Grant, Michael, and Smith, Murray, and Stanfield, Peter (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2006)

Murray Smith’s book – Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995) – is larger in scope, with pages 94-104 containing the discussions of “affective mimicry” and “emotional contagion”.

Film directors will certainly find most use in Carl Plantinga’s article –‘The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film’ which can be found in, Passionate Views: Film Cognition, and Emotion (edited by) Plantinga, Carl and Smith, Greg M, (Maryland, John Hopkins University Press, 1999)

I will probably upload Plantinga’s article in its entirety, since it almost offers a step by step guide for how to generate the strongest forms of emotional contagion, by using music and lighting to enhance the overall experience.

Secondary References:

Raymond Durgnat – The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock (London, MIT Press, 2004)

Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo, Richard Rapson – Emotional Contagion: Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993)

Stephanie Preston and Frans de Waal – ‘Empathy: Its Ultimate and Proximate Bases’ in Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 25:1 (2002), p. 1 – 21

Paul Ekman – Emotions Revealed: Understanding Faces and Feelings (London, Phoenix, 2003) – describes basic expressions of emotions that are found in all cultures around the world.

And finally, an online discussion regarding emotional contagion and facebook: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/338007/title/Catching_a_mood_on_Facebook