Social contagion: you become the company you keep
During the 2020 coronavirus lockdown, we have all done our best to avoid this highly contagious virus and experienced varying levels of state-enforced social distancing.
With the gradual lifting of the lockdown and the resumption of social contact, we are now increasingly exposed to another threat, another form of contagion.
This renewed threat is known as emotional contagion, which is the effect and impact of other people’s emotions on our own dominant emotional state. This is important, as many of our life experiences are created or driven by our dominant emotional state.
Because the means of transmission is through renewed and increasing social contact, I rephrase it as social contagion.
The tidal whirlpool of other people’s emotional turbulence
In his highly regarded book”An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir“Former Sunday Times journalist Ariel Leve paints a poignant and painful portrait of our vulnerability to the tide of other people’s emotional turbulence.
This is especially true when we are children. She mildly recounts how as a child she desperately tried to ride the emotional waves emanating from her mother, whom she describes as volatile and narcissistic.
“I had no choice but to exist in the sea she swam in. It was a fragile ecosystem where the temperature changed without warning. My natural form dissolved and I was left formless.”
Levi explains:
“When someone’s mood can change rapidly, you’re always alert and on guard, which means you can never really relax. And as a consequence, as an adult, I find that I absorb other people’s moods and energy very intensely, so I need a lot of alone time to decompress.”
His experience resonates with me.
Is it okay for dad?
I remember as a child accompanying my father on his rounds as a grocery delivery boy. Every time we visited a new location, I would immediately tune in to my highly sensitized “vibrational antennae” and take the emotional and psychic temperature of the site to see if it felt “right for Dad,” if it was a place he’d like, and if it would happy.
At the time I didn’t know why I did this. But it was commonplace and became a form of hypervigilance in which I was constantly taking the emotional and psychic temperature of new situations and places.
Church bells and overwhelming feelings of misery.
It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and I was sitting on a bench in the churchyard of an old English parish church. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the butterflies were fluttering, my mood was calm and I was basking in the warmth of the late summer sun.
The church bells began to ring… and in a matter of seconds my mood changed and feelings of sadness, melancholy and misery invaded me.
Reflecting on that experience in early adulthood, I realized that the sound of church bells had always had that effect on me since my childhood.
After forensic tracing through childhood memories supported by corroboration from my elderly mother, I came to understand that when I was very young my family had lived next door to a church in a small rural town. My mother told me that she was very unhappy at the time and was often overwhelmed by feelings of misery and despair.
His powerful feelings had infected me and became associated with the sound of church bells.
How a leader’s emotions infect an organization
In 2001, Daniel Goleman introduced the concept of what he called “primary leadership” and described research he and his team conducted on a study of 3,871 executives and their direct reports and showed that the leader’s style determines approximately 70% of climate. emotional which in turn drives 20-30% of business performance.
In an interview (with Stephen Bernhut in “Leaders Edge”, Ivey Business Journal May/June 2002) Daniel Goleman said:
“Emotions are contagious, and they are most contagious from the top down, from the leader to the followers.”
“When Likes Aren’t Enough”: How Social Media Negatively Affects Mental Health
In “When Likes Aren’t Enough: A Crash Course in the Science of Happiness“Professor Tim Bono tackles the ever-popular topic of happiness and well-being, but reframes it for a younger reader struggling with Instagram envy.
The Nursing Times recently published a study “How social media use and social comparison affect mental health”
The Center for Mental Health recently published: “How the use of social networks and social comparison affect mental health”
In June 2014, PNAS released the results of a massive study of Facebook users: “Experimental evidence of large-scale emotional contagion through social networks”
Clearly, there are many ways we are affected by other people’s emotions. We are emotional and therefore energetic beings, and we live in an energetic universe that responds to our dominant energetic state in the experiences we create and attract.
Two important questions arise here:
(1) How are we so susceptible to other people’s emotions?
(2) What steps can we take to protect ourselves and others?
How are we so susceptible to other people’s emotions?
Elaine Hatfield Professor of Psychology (University of Hawaii), and co-author of a groundbreaking scholarly book “emotional contagiondefines “primitive” emotional contagion as:
“…tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person and thereby converge emotionally…”
Contagion occurs in three stages:
- mimicry
- feedback
- Contagion.
Social contagion is a hardwired reflex that is a basic component of human interaction. It has an evolutionary purpose in that it helps us coordinate and synchronize with others, empathize with them, and read their minds. These are all critical survival skills.
What steps can we take to protect ourselves and others?
Here are 4 key steps:
(1) Quarantine yourself until you have figured out how not to contaminate others with your bad mood. So, bless them with your absence!
(2) Inoculate yourself with mindfulness practice
(3) Drop the story and find the feeling by meditating with the emotions.
(4) Share compassion, and become a bodhisattva-warrior, with a vow to care for one another.
I leave you with this sobering thought from Jack Canfield:
“You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.”
Read more: Social contagion
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