Implicit emotions can become contagious, meaning they can be easily spread and absorbed by others, who are infected by the emotion they have absorbed in turn, often without realizing it. Some of these people may then tend to spread it further, spreading contagious emotions. They are expressed implicitly but in ways which can be felt by those receiving them, even if below the surface of conscious awareness. This may happen if the receiver has an affinity tor the associated statement made by the speaker that is reinforced by the speaker’s implicit emotion, especially if accompanied by extreme distorted thoughts referring to a grouping of others.
Others may not be aware that we are experiencing internal implicit emotion because it is personal to ourselves and not demonstrated outwardly. We are talking here about the emotional feeling we have inside ourselves, the implicit, hidden emotion, not the outward emotional expression when people are outwardly emotional, expressive and demonstrative. Hidden, internal emotions come out in our mannerisms, voice, and speech, and others can pick it up, often subconsciously, and absorb it.
Implicit emotion is often associated with our affiliations. Many of us associate with an affiliative grouping such as a neighborhood, region, organization, religion, church, school, company, city, state or province, and often identify with it and get attached to it. It is human nature. Part of this can be our belonging to and attachment to an extended family or heritage. People identify with many different types of organizations, and get meaning from them, and this meaning often becomes part of our identity. Attachment brings meaning, and meaning is always involved with emotion, because it brings some form of affinity, understanding, joy, happiness, or recognition that we share. It strikes us inside ourselves as important to us, and we can feel it in our bodies. This is part of the implicit, inner emotion. It is not usually apparent to outside observers, to people who meet talk with us but it is one of the strongest feelings we can have. Most, if not all of us strive to belong to a group and be recognized, loved and cherished by others in that group. The emotion is so strong it doesn’t have to be shown outward, explicitly, we all know it. That is the power of intrinsic, implicit emotion.
This leads to potential issues where implicit emotion can arise, because we tend to naturally get drawn by our attachment to that place or organization. That attachment can bring the implicit emotion to the forefront of our awareness, and sometimes to the forefront of social interaction, such as when we wear crests, t-shirts or caps of organizations which we cherish. And then we can have a problem if people take positions on issues related to that grouping which are either at one end of a continuum or at the other end. Using sports as an example, we may hate an opposing team and love our home team. That is common and acceptable but it is a strong feeling. In some countries it goes too far.
When emotion gets too involved in an issue, as it often does, it pushes positions to an extreme, at the end of a continuum. This happens if they have a strong affinity with a grouping and what it means to them, or what they think it stands for. Many people get caught up in this, and can “fight to the finish” defending their prized grouping. When it happens, emotions can get strong and easily enflamed, and it can produce negative, destructive emotional contagion, as emotions feed off each other automatically. This seems to be happening moreso in politics lately.
That is the nature of emotion. Implicit emotion is seen in the personal meaningfulness we give to positions we take in debates. It stops people’s thinking from placing itself somewhere in the middle because we get worked up about the point if there is personal meaningfulness involved. Then people exaggerate and say distorted, inaccurate things like “They are all crazy” (Referring to a target group of people) or even, in a positive way, “This is the greatest….” . Then we get personal emotional contagion involved, as the internal, implicit emotion that comes from a personal attachment to an issue flows over into the rational part of our mind and influences it unduly. But when there is allowance or space for the rational mind to be involved, we can have wise thinking, since wisdom comes as a result of a blend of rational and emotional input. Then we can say, instead, or think to ourselves, as our inner thoughts are also important, something more fully thought out. For example, we could think, or say, “many people (in the target group) have difficulty coming to terms with the situation” rather than making a universal judgment based on emotion such as “They are all crazy.”
Emotional thinking results in points being made appearing only on one side of a point or the other. There are more and more extreme points of view in society, where people are labelled as anti-this or pro-that, when there is often truth and validity on both sides of a viewpoint. Why do we have to have extreme dichotomous thinking, which involve two completely opposing viewpoints, be so prominent and frequent? This leads to cognitive distortions and extreme positions and severe disagreements. The emotion pulls an opinion to the extreme, likely because we feel a need to battle about something.
For example, in mental health there is an ongoing debate about whether to use drugs or psychotherapy to treat depression, anxiety and other issues. People can easily get into a back-and-forth, either-or argument about which is better. People can either be pro-drugs or anti-drugs, and that “back and forth” produces needless emotional debates. That is all right, it’s ok to debate, and to have an opinion, but in reality, both work, it just depends on for which people with which problem. It’s not all or nothing, that everyone should get psychotherapy and no drugs, or everyone should get drugs and no psychotherapy. Some people need a little of each, some need a little medication and mostly therapy, some need mostly medication and a little therapy, some need only therapy and no medication and some need only medication and no therapy (beyond a supportive, empathic practitioner). But yet people, including governments who fund only one side in Canada, seem to go to the extreme when they argue for one and not the other, as if it is 100% best one way and 0% the other way, when this is rarely the case.
And even the term “therapy” is controversial because it implies, falsely, that the individual seeking therapy has a problem, illness, or deficit of some sort. And that raises emotions also. Let’s call it growth, development, personal improvement, psychoeducation, or some other name or label instead. Then we can talk about how it could be helpful to someone. Removing the emotional triggers allows us to get down to the point.
Part of the role of emotion regulation in a time of turmoil is to work on bringing various aspects of debates closer to a mid-point, without actually being at the mid-point. Let’s call it being at the middle of the polarity. The emotional part comes into play because some people identify emotionally with the position they take and let it define them. Feelings of distress prompt a desire for clarity, and extremist belief systems provide meaning to a complex social environment through a set of straightforward assumptions that make the world more comprehensible.[1] To do this they think they need to take it to the extreme. That’s not healthy. We need to lower the distress, or lower the fear involved in moving a position a little closer to the middle. For some people, they cannot tolerate the complexity in an issue but they are still bothered by the issue so they want to lower the complexity. We need to make it a little simpler not just for them, but for most of us.
Instead, taking it to the middle of a polarity would be done so that one can still take a position without being right at the middle, half-way, at 50%, and also without being right at the extreme. That’s the key. That’s where the phrase “most of us” comes in. We don’t mean to be exclusionary, but most of us are “centre-left” or “centre-right” on issues. This allows people to see the merit in their point, while compromising a little without yielding and seeing some merit in other points as well. The compromise comes by not being at the extreme on an issues, but by moving a little toward the centre while maintaining the essence of the position they have taken. This is the gist of compromise. There is nothing wrong with that, you aren’t giving in, you are not losing. You are taking a risk, true, and being a little humble, which is acceptable, and joining with others on your side.
The irrational fear people often have is that if they yield a little, they are giving in, and will lose a lot, as if yielding or giving in a little means you are weak and vulnerable. That irrational belief is the culprit here. Even the word “give” implies yielding because it makes you think you are soft or weak, which isn’t the case. It’s better to think of it merely as change. That’s what it is. We all have to “give” a little and it does not make us weak. The facts of the point or the data you take in on an issue may demand a change in your position. A change is an objective word, with no implicit emotion involved, whereas the words “give” and even “yield” may, for some, involve some implied weakness or softness on a person’s part. This is an unproven assumption and only exists in a competitive environment, rather than a cooperative environment. But we do know that compromise in a cooperative environment works.
We need a cooperative environment since we are not trying to compete to prove anything about ourselves. You may think you are, and in some cases it could be true, but it is important to leave that mindset or that environment behind and enter a mindset of cooperation and respect, where a change does not mean you are a loser, weak or soft. It means you are joining a respectful group where we work at accepting each other, regardless of race, IQ, gender, education, religion, nationality, size, birthplace, dress, hairstyle, sexual orientation or age.
In Canada, there used to be a story where MPs (Members of Parliament) from the three major national political parties, the Progressive Conservatives, The Liberals and the New Democratic Party, on their way back home, would sit in the dining car of the train and talk with each other, probably over drinks, exchanging stories as friends. Of course, the extremists would not be allowed, probably because there weren’t many who were elected to Parliament. But you would never see an extreme left-wing member, a Marxist-Leninist or an extreme right-winger there. While I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the story, it illustrates the respect that was there. We need to be more like that. Respect the person even if you disagree with their position.
People get drawn to one side of an argument or the other by the private internal emotion which is involved in disputes. This is the emotion that comes with identifying with a certain position as part of oneself. Disputes and arguments involve emotion, and emotion tends to polarize us or pull us to an extreme, where behavior can become more destructive. Sometimes we want it so badly that we take it to an extreme. Emotions have no reason to them and so flourish and seem strong when they take extreme opposite positions. Instead we need to have more reason to see how polarizing emotions are often false, and how they come to be false, and destructive. We as human beings have strong emotional drives and part of this is the heightened drive for a positive or fulfilling internal emotional experience inside ourselves. But it is not a healthy, rewarding positive experience when it comes through defiance or stubbornness. Coming through compromise is a way of joining, and hence preventing divisiveness.
You could say that this idea is unrealistic and things are different now. But let’s look at the reasons why it is different. People feel so forced to take their point right to the end, right to the extreme, as if they feel that is the way to be strong and resolute about their position. (Extreme right wingers and extreme left-wingers). They protest and march and are determined to dig in their heels and resist, on either end. It isn’t the way to be strong. It could contribute to the divisiveness of the country and the Western world. Although both sides have some merit, it is better not to argue about that and instead to move a little toward a more moderate position. The person with the other viewpoint is just another person, there is probably nothing to fear here. And if there is, you won’t win by going extreme yourself, you just create divisiveness. I am not saying that you lose. Fear needs to strike out[2], as it did in the movie, and be replaced with courage to see the strength as it exists in the position you take without going to the extreme. Pushing it to the extreme isn’t going to save it, it should be left at the mid-point of the polarity, at about halfway to the extreme, where it still presents as plausible to most people. Its time still hasn’t come yet, maybe it will come when people realize that the midway point between the centre and the extreme is the winning point. It doesn’t mean you are a loser, if your position on a particular principle doesn’t win that debate. It just defeats it by making it extreme. Extreme positions are not winning positions.
Who goes first? Who moves first? You do. Try it yourself and see what happens.
[1] Van Prooijen, J-W., and Krouwel, A. Psychological Features of Extreme Political Ideologies, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2019.
[2] Based on the movie Fear Strikes Out, about the life of baseball player Jimmy Piersall, who experienced manic-depressive disease, now called bipolar disorder,