Has it ever happened to you that, when you smile at the person you're talking to, it returns a smile? Have you noticed what happens when someone close to you is sad and tells you what's wrong? What happens to football 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.

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Every time we interact with one or several 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 one of us is largely responsible for how he determines the feelings of the people with whom he interacts day by day, both positively and negatively. But ... what are the mechanisms responsible for this happening?

Emotions are contagious

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

Emotional contagion is an imperceptible and subtle process that occurs constantly in which emotional signals are emitted affecting the people around us.

The transmission of emotions is a primitive and unconscious process that acts as a synchrony and part of our survival. Through different mechanisms, people unfold in an emotional dance to get in tune by mimicking facial expression. Everything begins with a smile, an expression of anger or some tears. It is enough to see someone express an emotion so that in us that same state is evoked.

Although genetically we are all prepared to be part of 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 as the SBP (highly sensitive people). On the contrary there is also the other side of the coin, those people unable to feel emotions like psychopaths. But who are responsible for this emotional contagion to occur?

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The role of mirror neurons in emotional contagion

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

When the mirror neurons are activated, they activate the same brain circuits as those that are active in the person we observe. So you can feel an emotion as your own, even if we 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 is the one that 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 such as work or a class, in which there are differences of power, it will be the most powerful person that marks the emotional state of the rest.

Emotional contagion occurs whenever you interact. Its connecting thread is empathy.

Empathy vs emotional contagion

Many people when talking about the phenomenon of emotional contagion 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.

To empathize is to put yourself in the place of the other, to take into account your perspective on life and your feelings. An art that not everyone is able to ignite in their relationships with others but that would do much good if they did. But this putting on the other does not mean getting rid of one's feelings and emotions. It is simply to take into account that it exists and to try to understand it.

On the other hand, emotional contagion means making oneself the emotions of others and not knowing how to get rid of them, suffering its consequences.

To understand the difference we can think that empathy is like submerging in 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 to be part of us.

However, this difference does not imply that at some point they are not needed and that in order to reach empathy, small doses of emotional contagion are needed, but without experiencing an emotional sequestration. This does not mean that emotional contagion is bad; The truth is that we lack autonomy, but if the emotions that are contagious are positive, welcome! Who does not like that silly laugh that we are unable to stop and that others infect us?

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

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Le9Isb03RY8

Source youtube

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