Implicit emotions can become contagious, meaning they can be easily spread and absorbed by others. The others are infected by the emotion they have absorbed, often without realizing it. Some of these people may then tend to spread it further, spreading contagious emotions. We need to stop the spread. These emotions are expressed implicitly but in ways that can be felt by those receiving them, even if below the surface of conscious awareness. This may happen if the receiver has an affinity for the associated statement made by the speaker that is reinforced by the speaker’s implicit emotion, especially if accompanied by extreme, distorted negative 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 them up, and absorb them, often subconsciously.
Implicit emotion is often associated with our affiliations. Many of us relate to an affiliative grouping such as a neighborhood, region, organization, religion, political party, 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 always apparent to outside observers, to people who meet and talk with us, but it is one of the strongest feelings we can have. We often have pride in it. 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, since most of us know and feel 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 that 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 very strong feeling. When it goes beyond sports, it can become a problem.
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. On many social and political issues animosity can develop when members of the political or social groups are strongly attached to the position the group has taken. Some issues have serious consequences for various aspects of life. As a result, 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 happens far too much in politics lately as emotions exist near the surface in many of us. People can define themselves very strongly with a political party so that they get very attached to it and define themselves accordingly. Their strong attachment goes a long way in defining their personal identity. People often take a lot of pride in their attachments. This is human nature as it provides much meaning in our lives. The attachments and meaning involve much in the way of implicit internal emotion.
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 many of us 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….” Many U.S. states call themselves the greatest state when only one can actually be the greatest. In reality, however, no one can measure “great.” This involves implicit emotion.
Using strong, exaggerated emotional language like “crazy” or “the greatest” makes it hard to challenge, because emotions don’t think and like to stick to their point because of the strong emotional meaning involved in the person’s emotional identification with the issue. Personal emotional contagion is often 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, because of the pure power of some emotions to dominate the rational mind. That is where the mind’s gatekeeper needs to become tough and resist the automatic effect of powerful internal emotion. It can do this by saying to the emotional part of oneself, about the strong feeling it has and is presenting to oneself, often accompanied by a simple message, like “they are all crazy”, something like “that is interesting, maybe there is something to this, I am going to consider this.” That’s all the emotion wants – recognition and consideration. And then the mind can consider the message being given by one’s internal emotion, often a simple message. When there is allowance or space for both the emotional input and 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, something with perspective, like “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 labeled 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 involves two completely opposing viewpoints, be so prominent and frequent? The media seems to love it because it attracts viewers or readers, but it can be divisive and destructive. This leads to cognitive distortions and extreme positions and severe disagreements which is dangerous for democracy. 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 often produces needless emotional debates and emotional ping-pong games, involving back-and-forth arguments with very quick retorts. That is not a healthy way to debate. In reality, both drugs and psychotherapy work, it just depends on which people with which mental health problem and which severity of the problem we are applying the argument to. 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 of 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, weakness or deficit of some sort. Or worse, that somehow they are less of a person. There is no deficit or weakness, no less worthiness of an individual, and not all practitioners consider mental illness a disease. It is truly growth, development, personal improvement, psychoeducation, or some other name or label instead. We can all learn and improve ourselves when it comes to managing emotions and developing coping skills. Then we can talk about how it could be helpful to someone. Removing the emotional triggers and the implied stigma allows us to get down to the point.
As we see from this example, 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 right on the mid-point. Let’s call it being in the middle of the polarity (like when a survey gives us the choice of endorsing a moderately strong agreement or moderately strong disagreement with a stand on something, rather than totally agreeing or disagreeing). The emotional part comes into play because some people identify emotionally with the position they take and let it define them, and then their position goes to the extreme end of the polarity. 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 stress or lower the fear involved in moving a position a little closer to the middle. Some people cannot tolerate the complexity of 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, while not making it appear unrealistically simple.
Taking a position in the middle of a polarity would be done so that one can still take a position without being right in the middle (halfway, neutral, at 50%), and also without being at the far end of 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 “center-left” or “center-right” on issues. As we said earlier, it’s not all-or-nothing. Very few things are either-or, either one extreme or the other. It’s better to get a healthy balance. For example, with weight, we need to eliminate fat while maintaining enough fat in our body for the body to use should illness strike us, and food intake be difficult. On difficult issues like abortion, it is important for social and personal health so see merit in the other side’s position. For example, some people who are publicly anti-abortion will be silent (although possibly privately disapproving) while a close relative chooses and undergoes an abortion. 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 issues, but by moving a little toward the center 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, and 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. A little humility is desirable here.
The irrational fear people often have is that if they give a little, they will lose a lot as if giving 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. Cooperation brings better results than competition.
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, ability, 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 ends 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 don’t think, since they 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 things are different now and divisiveness is a reality of life. But let’s look at the reasons why it is different. Many people in politics (extreme right-wingers and extreme left-wingers) 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. They are determined to dig in their heels and resist, on either end. It isn’t the way to be strong. It contributes to the divisiveness of the country and the Western world. Although both sides have some merit, and we can disagree, it is better not to be vindictive or cruel in your disagreement 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. Fearing defeat is a losing position. And if there is something to fear, 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 the 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 center 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 if the position is an extreme one. Extreme positions are usually not winning positions.
[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.