Note that the word ‘infection’ has a stigma to it, but I don’t mean it to be necessarily a bad thing. I will use ‘disease’ to mean ‘infection with bad consequences’.
the spreading of an emotional or mental state among a number of people: the contagion of mirth.
It explicitly includes culture and has weaker implications of being deleterious. I think what we really need is the terminology of generalised epidemiology, though.
There’s also the word “contagion” to consider.
The dictionary entry for that includes:
It explicitly includes culture and has weaker implications of being deleterious. I think what we really need is the terminology of generalised epidemiology, though.