Emotional Contagion Test: See How Readily You Catch Other People's Feelings
This emotional contagion test measures how readily you catch other people's feelings and splits the result by positive emotions, negative emotions, and absorption. Get an instant result, advice for when you take on too much, and an optional PDF.
Reviewed by Michael Callans, MSW 
Emotional Contagion Test: How Much You Catch Others' Feelings is a free, confidential 18-question self-assessment, original items, with the Emotional Contagion Scale named but not reproduced. It takes about 5 minutes, runs entirely in your browser, and gives you a plain-language score across 4 interpretation bands plus an optional in-depth report. It is an educational screening, not a diagnosis.
How porous you are to other people's emotions, and in which direction
Emotional contagion is the automatic tendency to take on the feelings of people around you, through mimicry of faces, voices, and posture and the feedback those signals send to your own body. It is neither good nor bad in itself. This test measures how strong the tendency is for you and whether it runs more on positive feelings, negative feelings, or a general sense of absorbing whatever is in the room. Some people walk into a room and pick up its mood within seconds; others barely register it.
Positive emotions
Whether cheerful, excited, or affectionate people lift your mood, whether laughter is catching for you, and whether warmth from others settles into your own body.
Negative emotions
Whether someone else's anger tightens your shoulders, whether tears bring your own, whether another person's anxiety spreads to you, and how long it lingers.
Mirroring and absorption
The mechanism itself: matching tone and posture without meaning to, losing track of whose feeling you are holding, and feeling drained after emotionally charged company.
| Feature | Typical free quiz | Psychology.com |
|---|---|---|
| Splits contagion by emotion family | One score | Yes, positive, negative, and absorption |
| Explains the mechanism (mimicry and feedback) | Rarely | Yes, in plain language |
| Original items, no copied proprietary content | Often unclear | Yes, 18 original statements |
| Neutral framing, not a sponge label | A label | Yes, with strategies for people who absorb too much |
| Clinician-reviewed interpretation | Rarely | Yes, clinician reviewed |
| Optional in-depth personalized report | No | Yes, written to your exact scores |
| Answers stay on your device | Often collected | Scored in your browser; only summary scores if you request a PDF or report |
How scoring works
Answers are scored 0–72 in total. Your result falls into one of 4 bands:
| Score | Band | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|
| 0–18 | Low emotional contagion | Your answers suggest other people's feelings do not transfer to you easily. You notice moods, but you tend to keep your own. |
| 19–36 | Moderate emotional contagion | Your answers suggest you catch other people's feelings to a moderate degree: enough to connect, not so much that company costs you. |
| 37–54 | High emotional contagion | Your answers suggest you catch other people's feelings readily and strongly. Moods reach you fast, and they tend to stay. |
| 55–72 | Very high emotional contagion | Your answers suggest you take on other people's feelings almost automatically and very strongly, to the point where it may be hard to tell your own emotions from everyone else's. That is a lot to carry, and it can be managed. |
How the emotional contagion score works
The test has 18 statements about how other people's feelings land in you, rated from 0 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree), for a total between 0 and 72. We wrote the statements in three groups of six: positive emotions (maximum 24 points), negative emotions (maximum 24), and mirroring and absorption (maximum 24). The grouping by emotion family is our own, designed for reflection; it is not a validated factor structure.
Your total falls into one of four bands: low (0 to 18), moderate (19 to 36), high (37 to 54), or very high (55 to 72). These are educational quarters, not clinical cutoffs, and a high score is not a problem in itself. Where it matters is the breakdown. A person whose positive bar is high and negative bar is low catches joy easily and is largely protected from other people's distress; a person with the opposite pattern may find that company costs more than it gives. The absorption bar shows how much of the catching happens below awareness, which is the part that strategies can most usefully target.
What emotional contagion is and how it works
Emotional contagion was described in detail by Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo, and Richard Rapson in the early 1990s as a three-step process. First, people automatically mimic the facial expressions, vocal tone, posture, and movements of those around them, usually within a fraction of a second and without noticing. Second, that mimicry sends feedback to the body: adopting a tense face and clipped voice nudges you toward feeling tense. Third, as a result, people tend to converge emotionally, catching what those around them feel. This is why a laughing group makes you smile before you know what is funny, and why a tense meeting leaves you tense even if nothing was said to you.
R. William Doherty built the Emotional Contagion Scale in 1997 to measure how susceptible individuals are to this process, with items covering happiness, love, fear, anger, and sadness. We name the scale here because it is the standard research measure of the trait; this test does not reproduce it, and our statements are our own. Doherty's work and later studies found that susceptibility varies widely between people, is somewhat higher on average in women, and correlates with measures of emotional reactivity and empathy. It is a trait with a wide normal range, not a disorder.
Contagion, empathy, high sensitivity, and compassion fatigue
These constructs overlap and are often confused. Emotional contagion is the automatic catching of a feeling; it does not require understanding the other person or even knowing why they feel that way. Empathy, which our Empathy Test measures, adds that understanding and usually a motivation to help, and it can run with or without strong contagion: some of the most effective helpers feel other people's distress only mildly and think about it a great deal. If you often describe yourself as an empath, our Empath Test looks at that self-concept directly, and high contagion is usually a large part of what people mean by it.
High sensory processing sensitivity, covered by Highly Sensitive Person (Empath) Test, is a broader trait that includes deep processing of all kinds of input, and people who score high on it frequently score high here as well, because they register emotional signals that others miss. Compassion fatigue is what can happen when high contagion meets sustained exposure to other people's suffering, in caring work, in a family crisis, or in a relationship with someone in constant distress; Compassion Fatigue Test measures it. If your negative emotions bar is high and you are in a caring role, that test is worth taking alongside this one.
If you absorb too much: what helps
High contagion is not something to fix; it is something to manage, and the people who manage it well tend to use the same small set of strategies. The first is labeling whose feeling it is. When you notice a mood shift in company, ask, silently, 'is this mine?' Simply naming a feeling as caught rather than owned weakens its grip, because it interrupts the feedback loop between your mimicry and your body. The second is attending to the body directly: unclenching your jaw and shoulders, slowing your breathing, and changing your posture are not just relaxation; they are removing the physical signals that were feeding the caught emotion back to you.
The third is boundaries around exposure. People with high negative contagion often need shorter doses of distressed company, a few minutes alone after difficult conversations, and the right to leave a room that has turned hostile. Our Boundaries Test can show how comfortable you are claiming that. The fourth is recovery: time with calm or cheerful people is not indulgence for someone with high contagion, it is the same mechanism working in your favor. If you find that other people's feelings regularly leave you drained, anxious, or unable to tell your own emotions from everyone else's, a therapist who works with emotion regulation can help you build these skills, and that is worth doing early rather than after burnout.
Pair this reflection with Emotion Regulation Test: Reappraisal vs Suppression for two regulation habits, or Emotion Recognition Test for a separate task involving written emotional cues.
Methodology & sources
This test is informed by the research on emotional contagion established by Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson (1993, 1994), who described the process as automatic mimicry of others' expressions, posture, and voice, feedback from that mimicry into one's own emotional state, and the resulting convergence of feeling between people. The standard research measure of individual susceptibility is the Emotional Contagion Scale (Doherty, 1997), which covers happiness, love, fear, anger, and sadness. We name that scale so you know where the construct comes from; this test does not reproduce it. The 18 statements here are original and were written for Psychology.com, and the three-way breakdown into positive emotions, negative emotions, and mirroring and absorption is our own grouping for reflection, not a validated factor structure.
Each statement is rated on a five-point agreement scale from 0 to 4 and the engine sums the total (0 to 72) and the three group scores. The bands are educational quarters, not clinical cutoffs. Emotional contagion is a normal trait with a wide range, not a disorder, and the result is framed accordingly: higher scores describe greater porousness to other people's feelings, which can be a strength or a strain depending on direction and circumstances, and the interpretation points toward strategies rather than toward a diagnosis of anything.
References
- Doherty RW. The Emotional Contagion Scale: a measure of individual differences. J Nonverbal Behav. 1997;21(2):131-154. doi.org/10.1023/A:1024956003661
- Hatfield E, Cacioppo JT, Rapson RL. Emotional contagion. Curr Dir Psychol Sci. 1993;2(3):96-100. doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.ep10770953
- Hatfield E, Cacioppo JT, Rapson RL. Emotional Contagion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1994. ISBN 978-0-521-44948-9.
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, October 5). Emotional Contagion Test: How Much You Catch Others' Feelings. Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tests/emotional-contagion
Emotional Contagion Test: How Much You Catch Others' Feelings FAQ
What is emotional contagion?
It is the automatic tendency to catch the feelings of people around you. Within a fraction of a second you mimic their expressions, voice, and posture; that mimicry feeds back into your own body; and your mood moves toward theirs. It happens in everyone to some degree, and this test measures how strongly it happens in you and which feelings you catch most.
Is high emotional contagion the same as being an empath?
They overlap a lot. When people describe themselves as empaths, high emotional contagion is usually the core of what they mean: feeling other people's moods in their own body. Empathy as researchers define it adds understanding and a wish to help, and can exist with or without strong contagion. Our Empath Test and Empathy Test look at each in turn.
Is it bad to score high?
No. High contagion means warmth and joy reach you easily, which is a real advantage in relationships and in most kinds of work with people. It becomes a strain when the negative side is high and exposure is heavy, such as in caring roles or around someone in constant distress. The breakdown shows which applies to you, and the strategies on this page are for the second case.
Why do I feel drained after being around certain people?
If you catch feelings readily, time with someone anxious, angry, or low means your body has been running their emotion alongside your own, and that costs energy. Labeling the feeling as caught rather than owned, attending to your own posture and breathing, and taking short breaks after difficult company all reduce the cost. If this is constant, our Compassion Fatigue Test is worth taking.
Is the test really confidential?
Yes. It runs entirely in your browser. Your individual answers are scored in your browser and are never sent to us or linked to you. They stay in this tab so you can return to your result, and closing or clearing the tab clears them. If you ask us to email the PDF, we receive your summary scores with your email address, never your individual answers. No account is needed.
Does this test use the Emotional Contagion Scale?
No. The Emotional Contagion Scale by R. William Doherty is the standard research measure of this trait, and we name it so you know where the construct comes from. Our 18 statements are original, our three-part breakdown is our own, and your scores are not scores on that scale.
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