Emotional Contagion in the Online Environment : Investigating the Dynamics and Implications of Emotional Encounters in Mixed-Motive Situations in the Electronic Context

This paper explores the effects of individual emotional encounters in mixed motive situations on each individual outcomes, dyadic outcomes, and attitudes in an electronic communication context. Results of the experiment show that positive emotions expressed online tended to lead to greater emotional contagion than did negative emotions, and can be beneficial for a future relationship, while negative emotions online tended to exert influence over individual gains. Specifically, our data indicates that those participants who negotiated with an emotionally negative other obtained lower individual outcomes than did their counterparts, while those negative counterparts had the biggest share of the pie among all conditions. Implications for theory and research are discussed