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Contact: Elaine Hatfield, 956-6276	Air Date: June 25, 1998

Beware of Contagious Moods   Are you feeling a little down? How's the person next to you feeling? If he's blue too, you may have caught his mood. Elaine Hatfield, a psychologist at the University of Hawaii says that a person's mood can sometimes be contagious. The mood is transmitted through unconscious signals all of us send, like tone of voice or posture. Once a person picks up these signals, Hatfield says, he or she may mimic them. The process may take only seconds. Not everyone can send or receive a mood, of course. But if you do feel yourself catching moods, you should try to gain a better understanding of how it happens. While you probably can't stop yourself from catching the mood, she says, understanding how the process works may make you better prepared for a mood change when it happens. Or it may help you avoid an unwanted mood altogether. This is the University Report, I'm Tracy Orillo Donovan.

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