In this volume, noted scholars Elaine Hatfield and Richard Rapson focus on the cross-cultural research concerning the passionate beginnings of relationships: how people meet, fall in love, make love, and fall out of love, usually only to risk it all over again. Through in-depth analysis and astute assessment, they compare the way cultures try to set rules for these incendiary matters. Two main questions addressed are: 'What seems to be biological and universal?' and 'What seems to be socially constructed and transient?' Taking a historical perspective, the authors ask where different societies, and the world itself, are headed?

When people are in a certain mood, whether elated or depressed, that mood is often communicated to others. When we are talking to someone who is depressed it may make us feel depressed, whereas if we talk to someone who is feeling self-confident and buoyant we are likely to feel good about ourselves. This phenomenon, known as emotional contagion, is identified here, and compelling evidence for its effects is offered from a variety of disciplines--social and developmental psychology, history, cross-cultural psychology, experimental psychology, and psychopathology. The authors propose a simple mechanism to account for the process of contagion. They argue that people, in their everyday encounters, tend automatically and continuously to synchronize with the facial expressions, voices, postures, movements, and instrumental emotional behaviors of others. Emotional experiences are affected, moment-to-moment, by the feedback from such mimicry. In a series of orderly chapters, the authors provide observational and laboratory evidence to support their propositions. They then offer practical suggestions for clinical psychologists, physicians, husbands and wives, parents, and professionals who wish to become better at shaping the emotional tone of social encounters.

When people are in a certain mood, whether elated or depressed, that mood is often communicated to others. When we are talking to someone who is depressed it may make us feel depressed, whereas if we talk to someone who is feeling self-confident and buoyant we are likely to feel good about ourselves. This phenomenon, known as emotional contagion, is identified here, and compelling evidence for its effects is offered from a variety of disciplines--social and developmental psychology, history, cross-cultural psychology, experimental psychology, and psychopathology. The authors propose a simple mechanism to account for the process of contagion. They argue that people, in their everyday encounters, tend automatically and continuously to synchronize with the facial expressions, voices, postures, movements, and instrumental emotional behaviors of others. Emotional experiences are affected, moment-to-moment, by the feedback from such mimicry. In a series of orderly chapters, the authors provide observational and laboratory evidence to support their propositions. They then offer practical suggestions for clinical psychologists, physicians, husbands and wives, parents, and professionals who wish to become better at shaping the emotional tone of social encounters.