Emotional Infection: How We Pass On Our Feelings To Other People

Have you ever thought that when you smile at someone you are talking to, they smile back? If someone close to you feels sad, have you noticed what happens when they tell you what is happening? What happens to someone who loves sports when his team scores? You will find the answer to these questions in a phenomenon called emotional contagion. Let’s look at what that means.

Every time we are with someone, the mechanism that transmits emotional infection starts. It does not matter if it is your better half, a group of friends, or colleagues; the relationship you have with each other is affected by the way you interact.

That is why, as Daniel Goleman said, each of us has a great influence on the feelings of the people we deal with every day, either positively or negatively. But… what is the mechanism that makes all this happen?

Emotions are contagious

The way a bus driver or your partner greets you at the beginning of a new day has power that can make you feel ignored, bitter – or, on the other hand, valued. Although emotions are invisible, they are as contagious as viruses. There is a lot going on beneath the surface in a relationship.

Emotional transference is a primitive, unconscious process that has much to do with the survival of our species. The mechanisms are part of an emotional dance people use to get in sync with each other, by copying facial expressions. It all starts with a smile, an angry expression, or tears that roll. All it takes is to see someone express a feeling for you to start showing signs of exactly the same feeling.

While we are all genetically programmed for emotional transmission, some people are better at transmitting their emotions or taking on the emotions of others. They are hypersensitive, like emotional sponges that absorb any trace of emotion around them. They can be highly sensitive people.

But there is another side to the matter. There are also people who can not feel, like a psychopath. But what are the underlying mechanisms of emotional transmission?

The role of mirror neurons in emotional transmission

There are neurons in our brain that Goleman says act as a kind of “neuron-wifi” to connect with other brains. They take what they see in other people and reflect it inside us. Hence the name mirror neurons. There are neurons that are responsible, for example, for when you get emotional watching a movie. They make us feel shocked when someone is hurt.

When the mirror neurons are activated, they trigger the same brain circuit that is active in the people you are looking at. This is how you end up feeling that feeling as your own, even if you do not really experience it naturally. So it is in the mirror neurons and other parts of the brain such as the insula, that we find the explanation for the phenomenon called emotional infection.

But who ends up setting the emotional tone for a group? According to various studies, there is no one who is most emotionally expressive, if it is a group of like-minded people. On the other hand, if it is in a work or school context, where there is a certain difference in power, it is the strongest person in the room who will set the tone for all the others’ emotional state. 

Empathy versus emotional contagion

When people hear about emotional contagion, they automatically associate it with empathy. Although they have some common features and can sometimes be confused with each other, they are not quite the same.

Showing empathy means putting yourself in the other person’s shoes, thinking about their worldview and feelings. It’s a real art not everyone knows how to use. But it would have been great if they did.

But putting yourself in other people’s shoes does not mean disconnecting from your own feelings. All it means is to remember that the other person is there and to try to understand them. On the other hand,  emotional contagion means making other people’s feelings your own. You are largely unable to  not  experience their emotions as if they were your own.

Think of empathy as going out into the water and emotional contagion like drinking a glass of water. In the first case, you do it to experience and understand how the bag feels. But in the second case, you do it and it becomes a part of you.

That said, it does not mean that you do not sometimes need both. Sometimes, if you want to show empathy, you need a small dose of emotional contagion.  But that is only as long as you can avoid emotional hijacking.

Emotional infection is not bad. Even if it takes away some of your freedom, if the infectious feelings are positive, then it is, as they say, “the more, the better!” Who does not love infectious laughter?

To conclude, here is an interesting video on the subject and a question for you: what emotions do you want to send over to other people?