The last two years messed with our heads, as the New York Post describes. The Post says that the vast majority of U.S. adults (87%) agreed it feels like there has been a “constant stream of crises” during the past two years, and more than seven in 10 (73%) said they felt “overwhelmed” by it. https://nypost.com/2022/04/19/yes-the-past-2-years-messed-with-our-heads-psychologists-confirm/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
The article goes on to say that inflation has been a source of stress for 87% of people, and global uncertainty related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a source of stress for 80%. This is on top of the global pandemic, in which 58% of people still feel in 2022 that the pandemic is a daily stressor.
In addition, researchers at Simon Fraser university in B.C. in Canada report that a new project will measure population-level expressions of climate distress in real time. It is likely that a certain number of people find distress about climate change, or the topic, to be a real source of distress. Many people, including 139 elected officials in the 117th congress, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/climate-deniers-117th-congress/ are climate change deniers. Indeed, along the same line, even the topic of the pandemic has been a real distress for many people who worry about whether it is real, whether the vaccine is safe, and whether to wear masks or not.
There were many protests about this, and, indeed, a large number of people have denied that the pandemic was really caused by a virus. A large trucker convoy took over downtown Ottawa, the capital of Canada, for three weeks, protesting a vaccine mandate. The Pew Research Centre said that about six-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (59%) said the virus was a major threat to the U.S. population, compared with only a third of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents. They went on to say that the 26 percentage point gap grew to around 40 points as spring turned to summer and then fall of 2020.
They also say that the U.S.’s political fractures in 2022 are reflected in near-daily disputes over mask and vaccine rules. And thorny new societal problems have emerged, including alarming increases in murder and fatal drug overdose rates that may be linked to the upheaval caused by the pandemic. https://www.pewresearch.org/2022/03/03/two-years-into-the-pandemic-americans-inch-closer-to-a-new-normal/.
It is clear from this data that emotions are running high, Many more people are mentally ill now.
Data from https://www.mhanational.org/issues/2017-state-mental-health-america-adult-data indicate this trend. They say that 43.7 million adult Americans, or 18.29% of adults experienced a mental illness in 2017, 45 million, or 18.57% experienced a mental illness in 2020, and 50 million, or 19.86% experienced a mental illness in 2022. The jump of 1.29% in the last two years was much greater than the jump of .28% in the previous three years.
As we see, in the last few years, people’s emotions have ridden to new heights, often boiling over, especially when differences in social and political issues occur. In this post, let’s talk about how to lower the emotional temperature to a manageable level. When emotions are too high, they can cause turmoil and unhealthy divisiveness. The focus here is on how to talk about political and social issues while keeping emotions and feelings manageable.
Under turmoil, hostility, alienation, divisiveness and even violence can occur. Friends go their own ways. Relationships, families and marriages break up. CNBC reports that “From arguments over Covid rules and restrictions to disagreements over whether children should be vaccinated — and even disputes between families and friends over the very existence of the virus — have seen relationships pushed to breaking point during the pandemic, according to family law experts and psychologists.” https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/21/covid-has-put-pressures-and-strains-on-relationships.html they go on to say that “Marital conflicts have definitely been on the rise since the pandemic. I have noticed a rise in the number of clients seeking a divorce. I get three to four inquiries a day for my services, whereas prior to Covid the inquiries were much less,” New York City divorce lawyer Lisa Beth Older told CNBC.
This trend, in my opinion, reflects significant emotional turmoil running through American society in the past few years. I know of no research defining this, or refuting this, as research of emotions in the general population in times of public turmoil is difficult to do. But the facts seem to fit the theory. In my book, Emotions Don’t Think, Emotional Contagion in a time of Turmoil, I discuss how this appears to be related to emotional contagion and how people can work at overcoming it to lower the turmoil. Findings from laboratory research regarding emotional contagion can be meaningfully generalized to controversial events in society, especially in times of turmoil that we have experienced in the past few years. Many emotions have been synchronized with the emotional state of others during human interaction in society in the last number of years, especially in contentious crowds such as protests, riots, marches, convoys, and political rallies.
When others speak about controversial social or political issues, they often do so with negative emotion, even if implicit. The impact of these emotions seems to be what produces divisiveness. As we absorb the troubling emotions. Each one of us can do our part, by recognizing negative emotions when they come toward us from other people and realize that they are intended to have an impact. We don’t have to let that happen.
And yet people don’t talk much about how to handle their emotions when political and social issues are discussed. We need to discuss the emotions to handle the turmoil. Emotions are fluid and hard to manage. You don’t have to change your opinion about issues, but it would be good to explore ways to not let these strong opinions others have make us feel so emotional. It is best not to let the emotions destroy your relationship, which is easy to do in a time of turmoil with many controversial topics that affect us so much in the world of politics and social relationships.
One way to manage this is to realize that the phenomenon of emotional contagion occurs during verbal exchanges when communicating with others, especially when discussing contentious issues. We can manage and prevent emotional contagion if we realize that it is happening. You can’t change something if you don’t see it happening. Emotions seem to move about from one person to another person, or one group to another, at least it feels this way, and can affect someone else who is part of the conversation, who is nearby or even hears the voice on a video. Emotions are invisible and they may feel like they come against us or even seep into us, but they don’t really. This phenomenon is emotional contagion, and it occurs because of mirror neurons in our bodies.
Emotional contagion as a concept was developed from research by Elaine Hatfield, who defined the term as the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures and movements with another person’s, and to converge emotionally. (Hatfield et al, 1994). It can be triggered by facial expressions, indirect human interactions, and/or by observing other people’s behavior in direct and indirect interactions, according to Herrando and Constantindes (2021) (https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.712606). These authors say that “emotional contagion can be triggered physiologically or neurologically by synchronizing with the emotional state of others during human interactions”. There is no reason to suspect it hasn’t been happening during the past few years of stress.
One way emotional contagion happens is through mimicry. To block the emotional contagion in these situations, make sure you don’t mimic the other person’s style, posture, movements or phrasing. Without blocking emotional contagion, the contagion can have the effect of captivating you. The emotion brings the message with it. If you absorb the emotion you will be more easily persuaded by this person to agree with their ideas because the message tags along with the emotion. If you start to feel the same emotion they do, then the emotional contagion has had an impact. If you block the emotion, you block the message.
Don’t just let the emotion from the turmoil seep into you through emotional contagion. We can readily block this absorption so we don’t feel it inside ourselves, through the things we tell ourselves about what is happening. For example, you could say to yourself, “This feeling is not mine,” followed by a more assertive “I don’t want it.” This happens through a combination of awareness of emotional interchanges and constructive self-talk to direct your emotional experiences.
Hatfield ,E., Cacioppo, J. and Rapson, R. Emotional Contagion. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Herrando C., and Constantindes, E. Emotional Contagion: A Brief Overview and Future Directions (2021); https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.712606