Emotional contagion between Teachers and Students: Micro- and Macrolevel Analyses

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Anne Frenzel; Professorin Dr. Corinna Reck
• Subject Area: Developmental and Educational Psychology ; General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 282833022

The proposed project focusses on the emotional contagion between teachers and learners in the classroom. Existing empirical work on emotional contagion predominantly addressed dyadic interactions in private or clinical contexts (e.g., couples, therapist/client, parent/child), but it has also been shown in organizational contexts that superiors' positive and negative mood transferred to employees. Surprisingly, the phenomenon of emotional contagion so far seems to have been largely unexplored in educational contexts, although the assumption is obvious that teachers and their classes affect each other in their emotional experiences. Methodologically, one can approach the phenomenon of emotional contagion at a micro and a macro level. On a macro level, the emotions of the interaction partners would typically be assessed via self-report. Covariation between or approximation of levels of the interaction partners' reported emotions then serve as empirical evidence of emotional contagion processes. The examination of what underlies these processes on a micro level presents a major methodological challenge, particularly in the context of field research. In the proposed project, methods of interaction research shall be adapted to tackle this challenge. This approach involves a quantification of the emotional synchronicity of interaction partners in microanalytical moment-to-moment analyses based on video recordings (e.g. Reck et al., 2011). We postulate that the phenomenon of emotional contagion between teachers and learners can be empirically demonstrated using the described macro- and micro-level approaches. There are isolated findings that micro-level aspects of teachers' expressive behavior are positively related to student motivation and their global affect (Babad, 2007; Witt et al, 2004). However, an exploration into possible micro-level covariation between the emotional expressions of teachers and learners is completely lacking. At the macro level it has been shown that teachers' and students' experience of joy in class is positively correlated (Frenzel et al, 2009; Kunter et al, 2011). However, to date there are no systematic longitudinal studies suited to analyze the reciprocal effects of teachers' and students' emotional experiences. The proposed project aims to address these research gaps by using innovative, current data collection and analysis approaches (multi-level cross-lagged analyzes for the the questionnaire data, computer-based coding of videotaped emotion expression, and subsequent quantification of emotional synchronicity in the teacher-student interaction). Based on the project findings, it will also be possible to identify factors involved in the development of adaptive versus maladaptive teacher-class interaction patterns; with implications for the design of optimal teaching-learning environments to minimize teacher stress and increase learners' well-being and performance.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Reinhard Pekrun