Emotional attunement, do we catch the emotions of others?

Friday. Six in the afternoon. After work we come home and remember that today is the birthday of one of our friends.

It has been a difficult day, with tension and discussions at work and the reality is that we don’t really want to leave the house. Still, out of commitment, we prepared and attended the event.

After a couple of hours sharing time with friends, and despite not being very participatory, we began to feel better. We have been infected without wanting to. No special effort was required.

The presence of others, their laughter and their stories have connected with our emotions and have expanded within us. without special voluntary planning.

What happened? How has a moment of other people’s smiles been able to defeat a hard week of disagreements at work?

“You understand me or you don’t understand me”

It all starts from two basic powers of the human being: one is to understand the mental state of others, and the other is the ability to understand the emotional state. The latter is what we know as empathy.

Currently we know that the word empathy has almost all the prominence as a strengthener of our social relationships. We highly value people’s empathetic capacity and censure it when it is not present.

We give more value to feeling understood and “accompanied in the feeling” (good or bad) than receiving advice, whether in a friendship, work or family relationship.

Empathy revalues ​​connection with the person in front of us. Build healthy surfaces where you can build the foundations of trust.

An innate “gift”

Are we programmed to infect others? Is it an advantage or a disadvantage?

We all know two types of people, those who steal our energy and those who give it to us. This happens mainly through the innate ability to recognize and adopt the emotions of others.

In a primitive way, we know that There are two basic mechanisms to find emotional harmony. The first of the mechanisms is presented in the most primitive way, in form of emotional contagion.

In the previous example, although we have not been very talkative, we have ended up integrating into the plan, feeling better and enjoying ourselves.

All it took was to be there, that is, to share and synchronize ourselves unconsciously through non-verbal interaction. Little by little, we have made the voice, movements, postures and expressions of our interlocutors our own.

The second way is thanks to feedback facial. This means that without realizing it, someone in front of us who shows a sincere smile and happiness on their face, infects us with their expression.

Gradually, HE They will produce changes in our muscular activity that will later be translated into our emotional experience..

Before we know it, we are sharing an emotional moment with the person in front of us. In this case, we are talking about a party and they are positive emotions, but it also occurs in other cases.

The sorrow and pain of others will convey to us emotions consistent with the person who is suffering. through non-verbal interaction.

There is research that supports this hypothesis. Our emotional state will change after we have synchronized our facial expression in a similar direction to the other person’s state.

What explanation could we give to something like this? It is obvious that getting in tune with someone is a social act that includes us within the group and makes us participants in a whole based on more or less strengthened relationships of friendship, closeness or proximity.

In fact, extreme cases of people who are impervious to this contagion due to the emotional experiences of others are considered carriers of serious personality disorders or poor mental health.

Does one cry and do we all cry?

Professions that share space with many babies or small children simultaneously know of the uncontrollable situations where one of them begins to cry, and immediately a cascade of tears begins in the group.

There are cases where very young children who, although they do not know the reasons for the paternal or maternal displeasure, accuse the emotional state of their parents.

Since they were very young we are prepared to imitate facial expressions.

More than thirty years ago, Meltzoff and Moore’s experiments collected these experiences. Babies less than 72 hours old were able to stick out their tongues or open their mouths in response to the adult doing the same in front of them.

We are prepared to perceive the other and tune in from newborns.

Psychologists who study altruism developed several hypotheses in which they postulated that children close to two years of age They helped others when they heard them cry, to alleviate their own emotional experience.

William James, psychologist of the late 19th century. XIX, postulated that what really happens is that The body changes depending on what is happening around it, in this case, other people’s emotions.

Our bodily changes (especially through gesture) are interpreted by the brain. The sensations of these bodily changes would be what we know as emotions.

We have a “superpower”, and if we use it correctly, we can make our daily lives more pleasant.

Infect and let yourself be infected by those who can enrich your emotional experience.

Lose your fear of that unfriendly salesperson at the corner store and spread a smile.