Our emotional neighbourhoods

Does how we feel depend on what other people in our social network are feeling? Recent research suggests that it might; this article examines the evidence and describes some of the mechanisms that may enable this to occur. Also what cognitive or social functions could be served by the transfer of feelings between people, and is there an equivalent transfer of feelings in online social networks? More generally this article aims to illustrate how social network research offers psychologists concepts and methods that they may find useful in their own work.