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“Emotional Contagion” is defined as the tendency to emotionally converge. Elaine Hatfield argues that this can be done through automatic mimicry and synchronization of one’s expressions, vocalizations, postures and movements with those of another person. Emotions can be shared across individuals in many different ways both implicitly or explicitly. For instance, conscious reasoning, analysis and imagination have all been found to contribute to the phenomenon. Emotional contagion is important to personal relationships because it fosters emotional synchrony of other people’s feelings. As described by Elaine Hatfield, when people unconsciously mimic their companions’ expressions of emotion, they come to feel reflections of their partner’s emotions. There is disagreement about what it means to be an emotion family because there are so many factors that influence it. What is agreed upon however, is that it holds many different components such as mimicry and feedback. Research in this area reflects its complicated nature. Many different aspects of this subject have been studied and include topics such as autism and emotional contagion in the workplace.