Contagion’ is a popular metaphor for the spread of behaviour. Simply put, it is the idea that behaviour spreads automatically between people, like a disease. It comes from the Latin roots ‘con’ meaning ‘together with’ and ‘tagere’ meaning ‘to touch’. It conveys the idea that behaviours spread essentially through exposure or contact (whether literal or metaphorical).
If you do a search on Google Scholar you will see that research articles using the term ‘contagion’ can be found across multiple disciplines, including marketing, public opinion research, sociology, animal behaviour studies, economics and public health, as well as psychology. The ‘contagion’ concept has been applied to numerous topics, from simple behaviours such as yawning, scratching, smiling, clapping and anxiety, to complex social phenomena, including obesity, suicide, market ‘panic’ and rioting.
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