PhronesisEmotional contagion — the automatic catching of others' emotions — is an adaptive social mechanism. Emotional contagion dysregulation is a wrong attractor W_contagion in which the person's affective system cannot maintain its own equilibrium under social-emotional input: others' distress automatically displaces the person's own affective state with no protective boundary. We apply the Displacement Framework to formalize emotional contagion dysregulation.
The resonant attunement ground state S0_attune is defined via Siegel's interpersonal neurobiology: the capacity to accurately feel with others while maintaining self-other distinction and returning to one's baseline. W_contagion arises through the empathic flooding mechanism — exposure to high-intensity emotional other → automatic resonance activation → flooding that displaces baseline → inability to restore baseline — deepened by mirror neuron over-reactivity, interoceptive porosity, and high sensory processing sensitivity (Aron 1996 HSP).
Nine formal propositions cover: S0_attune as resonant attunement (P1), W_contagion as boundary-dissolution wrong attractor with Hatfield et al. automatic contagion and Batson's personal distress pathway (P2), the empathic flooding mechanism (P3), high sensitivity as landscape modifier with Acevedo et al. fMRI evidence (P4), mirror neuron over-reactivity and interoceptive porosity (P5), collective and systemic contagion — news, social media, and Figley's secondary traumatic stress (P6), relational dynamics and parentification (P7), cumulative Phi_contagion across affective, behavioral, relational, and occupational domains (P8), and return paths including somatic grounding, mindfulness-based emotion regulation, DBT, and interoception training (P9).