Tweet you right back: Follower anxiety predicts leader anxiety in social media interactions during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

Recent research has shown that organizational leaders’ tweets can influence their employees’ anxiety. In this study, we turn the table and examine whether the same can be said about followers’ tweets. Based on emotional contagion and a dataset of 108 leaders and 178 followers across 50 organizations, we infer and track state- and trait-anxiety scores of participants over 316 days, including pre- and post the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and crisis. We show that although leaders traditionally possess greater authority and power than their followers, followers have the power to influence their leaders’ state anxiety. In addition, this influence is particularly strong in the case of less trait anxious leaders. Overall, this study provides strong evidence of a bidirectional emotional contagion effect between leaders and followers in a social media context