Enthusiasm and its contagion: Nature and function

Abstract

The paper presents a conceptual analysis of enthusiasm in terms of a goal and belief model of emotions. Enthusiasm is an emotion of the same family of joy, felt when an Agent believes she will very likely achieve a goal she is pursuing, because she has the necessary internal resources to achieve it. The function of enthusiasm is to enhance energy and persistence in goal pursuit. Some positive and negative aspects of the contagion of enthusiasm are presented and some empirical studies about enthusiasm and its contagion briefly overviewed. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.