Emotional contagion: How do we transmit our emotions to others?

Has it ever happened to you that when you smile at the person you are talking to, they smile back at you? Have you noticed what happens when someone close to you is sad and tells you what’s wrong? What happens to soccer fans when their team scores a goal? The answers to these questions can be found in a phenomenon known as emotional contagion. Let’s see what this is about.

Every time we interact with one or more people, the mechanisms of emotional contagion are set in motion. Whether with our partner, in our group of friends or in the place where we work, our relationships are affected by the way we address each other.

In this way and according to Daniel Goleman, Each of us is largely responsible for how we determine the feelings of the people with whom we interact every day. both on a positive and negative level. But… what are the mechanisms responsible for this happening?

Emotions are contagious

How the bus driver or our partner greets us at the beginning of a new day can make us feel ignored, resentful, or valued. Emotions, despite being invisible, are spread as if they were a virus, and they do it through an underground exchange in each of our relationships, perceiving them as negative or nourishing.

The transmission of emotions is a primitive and unconscious process that acts as a synchronicity and part of our survival. Through various mechanisms, people engage in an emotional dance to become in tune through the mimicry of facial expression. It all starts with a smile, an expression of anger or a few tears. It is enough to see someone express an emotion for that same state to be evoked in us.

Although we are all genetically prepared to be participants in this contagion, There are people who have a greater capacity to transmit emotions or to be infected by others. Hypersensitive people who are like emotional sponges capable of absorbing any emotional apex that occurs around them such as HSPs (Highly Sensitive People). On the contrary, there is also the other side of the coin, those people incapable of feeling emotions like psychopaths. But who is responsible for this emotional contagion occurring?

The role of mirror neurons in emotional contagion

In our brain there are a group of neurons that according to Daniel Goleman function as a kind of “neural wifi” to connect with other brains and they reflect in us what we observe in others. They are mirror neurons. They are responsible, for example, for why we get excited when we watch a movie or for the shock we feel when we see a person take a hit.

When mirror neurons activate They put the same brain circuits into operation as those that are active in the person we observe. So you can feel an emotion as your own, even if you are not executing it. Thus, thanks to them and other areas of our brain, such as the insula, the phenomenon of emotional contagion can be explained.

But which person sets the emotional tone in a group? According to different studies, the most emotionally expressive member is a group of equals. Now, when it comes to a context like work or a class, in which there are power differences, It will be the most powerful person who determines the emotional state of the rest.

Empathy vs emotional contagion

When talking about the phenomenon of emotional contagion, many people assimilate it to empathy, but although they have certain points in common and at some point one uses the other, they are not the same.

Empathizing is putting yourself in the other person’s shoes, taking into account their perspective on life and their feelings. An art that not everyone is able to ignite in their relationships with others but that would be very useful if they did. But putting yourself in someone else’s place does not mean getting rid of your own feelings and emotions. It is simply taking into account that it exists and trying to understand it.

On the other hand, Emotional contagion means taking on the emotions of others as your own. and not knowing how to get rid of them, suffering their consequences.

To understand the difference we can think that Empathy is like diving into water and emotional contagion is like drinking a glass of water. In the first experience we do it to know and understand the behavior of this fluid and in the second so that it becomes part of us.

Now, this difference does not imply that at some point they are not needed and it is that In order to empathize, you need a small dose of emotional contagion, but without experiencing an emotional kidnapping. This is not to say that emotional contagion is bad; The truth is that it reduces our autonomy, but if the emotions that are transmitted are positive, welcome! Who doesn’t like that silly laugh that we are unable to stop and that others infect us with?

To reflect, we leave you a video on the topic and a question: What emotions do you want to spread to others?

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