EMOTIONAL CONTAGION IS ONE OF THE GREATEST POWERS WE KNOW.

Emotional contagion is one of the greatest powers we know. It is largely ignored. It comes out at times of turmoil in society and politics like in the past few years.

People catch divisive, controversial emotions automatically and react to them impulsively. Anger rises. Anxiety increases. Cynicism and conspiracy theories abound. Erratic behavior runs rampant. Families are disrupted. Relationships are damaged. People march and protest, even Moms and Dads. People are divided. And, sadly, people are injured and killed. Contagious emotion and its resulting action cause much of it. 

Emotional contagion occurs when emotion spreads through people so that it converges into one type of emotion experienced by many people almost simultaneously. As Huffington Post states, people’s emotions can rub off on you, so that emotions can be caught by people who receive the emotion from other people. Emotions flow and can be transferrable, irresistible and self-perpetuating. We catch emotions from others; it is as if they spread from one person to another, like an infectious disease

Emotional contagion is a little-known phenomenon where one person’s emotions and related behaviors directly trigger similar emotions and behaviors in other people. Emotional contagion is responsible for how moods and emotions affect others.  When emotions are expressed outwardly by a person or by a group, they may move to an adjoining group or person. People involved in a similar cause often pick up and absorb the same emotions. It is not done consciously. In this way they not only transfer but can also enflame the emotions of an adjoining party. If one group is angry about a cause, like discrimination against indigenous people, and hears that another group is protesting a similar cause, like prejudice against races, their angry emotions can be enflamed.  Also, they may come together and bond in a mutual psychological affinity. They may be less likely to be triggered emotionally by a singular cause This is likely to happen when the emotions are strong, appealing and hard to resist, since they are contagious.

For example, one group is protesting against racist comments toward blacks and another group is sympathetic toward natives, who also have darker skins, and so they may become more inclined to protest against racism at that time, because they identify with them psychologically and feel their pain. 

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When we consider the power that negative emotional contagion has when it infects our systematic reasoning abilities, and when we consider the various emotions that affect systematic reasoning, one has to suspect that the power of hate is probably the greatest power from all the emotions in influencing and dominating systematic reasoning, to be pushed only by its cousin fear in the race for the greatest power of all emotions. Fear is also a very powerful emotion, although having nowhere near the destructive power of hate. Nowhere is it stronger than seen in the ability of hate to infect one’s own reasoning abilities. Although there are no microscopic germs in the infection produced by emotional contagion, as there is in a disease-causing organism, the power of infection generated by hate is just as great if not greater, as it has the ability to infect people’s minds to the extent that it kills hundreds of millions of people, as we have seen in many wars over the time of mankind. 

This past year, we have seen the great effects of positive emotional contagion in massive protest marches across the U.S.  We see the effects of emotional infection, in the deaths of black people. But, as with emotion, but it also brings the positive emotional contagion, in the power of the people.  We see the power of emotional contagion is spreading the love, the brotherhood and sisterhood, the cooperation, the long overdue and as yet tentative arrival of the power of wisdom in society. The power comes in the ability to feel the love in a tangible way.  We see the commitment to peace, to love for each other, regardless of color, the commitment to kindness. In peace marches we see a few wise commentators, a few wise politicians, but mostly we see wisdom in the patience, the endurance and the signs of the protestors. And more recently in the voting. The power of positive emotional contagion turns its potential into action, as the protest marches spread across the US and set the stage. The emotional contagion, as it spread between and among people, who all felt it directly, in a tangible way, motivated people to come together. It was a very powerful force, more powerful than words alone or people alone.  It was the emotion that brought the force. The emotion of love, dignity and respect. People came together across the country and to the ballot box and to the election of a new American president. This action is the antidote to negative emotional contagion. When positive emotional contagion is felt through love, it is the greatest positive force known to human beings.