Social Contagion
You Become The Company You Keep
You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with
What Is Social Contagion?
Social contagion at the physical level is something that we have all gone to great lengths to avoid during the recent Covid-19 pandemic.
With the phased lifting of the
lockdown, and the resumption of social contact we are now increasingly
exposed to another threat, another form of contagion.
This
renewed threat is known as emotional contagion, which is the effect and
impact of other people's emotions on our own dominant emotional state.
This matters, as many of our life experiences are created or attracted
by our dominant emotional state.
Because the means of transmission is via renewed and increasing social contact I reframe this as emotional social contagion.
Social Contagion - The Tidal Swirl Of Other People's Emotional Turbulence
In her highly regarded book "An Abbreviated Life - A Memoir" former Sunday Times journalist Ariel Leve paints a painful, poignant portrait of our vulnerability to the tidal swirl of other people's emotional turbulence.
This
is especially true when we are children. Leve recounts how as a child
she desperately attempted to ride the emotional waves emanating from her
mother, whom she describes as volatile and narcissistic.
“I
had no choice but to exist in the sea that she swam in. It was a fragile
ecosystem where the temperature changed without warning. My natural
shape was dissolved and I became shapeless.”
Leve explains:
“When
somebody’s mood can shift quickly, you’re always on your toes and
you’re always on guard, which means you can never really relax.
And
as a consequence, as an adult, I find that I absorb the mood and energy
of other people very intensely, so I need a lot of time alone to
decompress.”
Her experience resonates with me.
Is this OK for Dad?
I
recall as a child accompanying my father on his rounds as a grocery
delivery man. Each time we visited a new location, I would immediately
tune in to my highly sensitised "vibe antennae" and take the emotional
and psychic temperature of the site to see if it felt "OK for Dad", was it somewhere that he would like and that would make him happy.
At
the time I didn't know why I did this. But it was a habitual thing and
developed into a form of hyper-vigilance where I was constantly taking
the emotional and psychic temperature of new situations and places.
Church bells and overwhelming feelings of misery
It
was a beautiful sunny afternoon and I was sitting on a bench in the
churchyard of an old English parish church. The sun was shining, birds
were singing, butterflies were fluttering, my mood was mellow and I
basked in the warmth of the late summer sun.
The church bells
started ringing...and within seconds my mood changed and I was
overwhelmed with feelings of sadness, melancholy and misery.
Reflecting
on that experience in early adulthood I realised that the sound of
church bells always had that effect on me since my childhood.
Following
some forensic trawling through childhood memories supported by
corroboration from my elderly mother I came to understand that as very
small child my family had lived next to a church in a small country
village. My mother told me that she was very unhappy at that time and
frequently overwhelmed with feelings of misery and despair.
Her powerful feelings had infected me and become associated with the sound of church bells ringing.
How a leader's emotions infect an organisation
In 2001 Daniel Goleman introduced the concept of what he termed "Primal leadership"
and outlined research that he and his team conducted in a study of
3,871 executives and their direct reports and it showed that the
leader’s style determines about 70% of the emotional climate which in
turns drives 20-30% of business performance.
In an interview (with Stephen Bernhut in "Leaders Edge", Ivey Business Journal May/June 2002) Daniel Goleman said:
"Emotions are contagious, and they are most contagious from the top down, from leader to followers."
"When Likes Aren't Enough" - how social media negatively affects mental health
In "When Likes Aren't Enough: A Crash Course in the Science of Happiness"
Professor Tim Bono tackles the ever-popular subject of happiness and
well-being, but reframes it for a younger reader struggling with
Instagram envy.
The Nursing Times have recently published a study How use of social media and social comparison affect mental health
The Centre For Mental Health recently published: How use of social media and social comparison affect mental health
In June 2014 PNAS published the results of a massive study on Facebook users: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks
Clearly there are so many ways that we are affected by other people's emotions. Given that we are emotional and thus energetic beings, and that as discussed at length in other articles in this series we live in an energetic universe that responds to our dominant energetic state in the experiences that we create and attract, then two important questions arise from this:
(1) How are we so susceptible to other peoples emotions?
(2) What steps can we take to protect others and ourselves?
Social Contagion - How Are We So Susceptible To Other Peoples Emotions?
Elaine Hatfield Professor of Psychology (University of Hawaii), and co-author of a pioneering academic book Emotional Contagion defines “primitive” emotional contagion as the:
“...tendency
to automatically mimic and synchronize facial expressions,
vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person and,
consequently, to converge emotionally.”
The contagion occurs in three stages:
1. Mimicry
2. Feedback
3. Contagion.
It
has an evolutionary purpose in that is helps us coordinate and
synchronize with others, empathize with them, and read their minds. All
of these are critical survival skills.
Social contagion is a hardwired reflex that is a basic building block of human interaction.
Social Contagion - What Steps Can We Take To Protect Ourselves & Others?
Here are five key steps:
(1) Quarantine yourself until you have figured how not to contaminate others with your bad mood. So, bless them with your absence!
(2) Inoculate yourself with mindfulness practice
(3) Drop the story and find the feeling by meditating with emotions
(4) Flatten the curve of social contagion
(5) Share compassion - and become a bodhisattva-warrior
Further Reading:
The Failure Of Cancel Culture - It's Suppression Not Engagement
Group Culture - The Invisible Software That Rules Your Life
Group Culture and The Tyranny Of The Intolerant Minority
Return to: Techniques For Stress Management
LATEST ARTICLES
Like A Prayer - Life Is A Mystery
It Isn't The Process Of Prayer That’s The Problem, It’s The Way It’s Framed. Regardless of what we feel about Madonna or her song the topic of prayer often arouses strong reactions. Usually, it is som…How Things Really Are - The Inbuilt Design Flaws
Chaos, Disorder And Decay Is The Natural Order Of Things. Nobody has the perfect life. We all struggle and strive to attain health, wealth and personal happiness. Yet these three big areas: our health…Intuition Or Anxiety - Are There Angels Or Devils Crawling Here?
How To Tell The Difference Between Intuition and Anxiety. How do you know whether the voice of your intuition is real or just the product of your inner anxiety? Several months ago I was having a drink…What Is Truth - How To Tell A Partial Truth From The Whole Truth?
How the truth and nothing but the truth is often not the whole truth. My great aunty Flo broke her arm and died. It is true that she broke her arm in 1923. It is also true that she died in 1949. But t…Duality And Life Beyond Your Thinking Mind
Duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuses on the limitations of time, foreground and background, duality and "stuckness". The first aspect of duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuse…The Conscious Mind Is Limited - Be Aware And Be Prepared
Being aware is the first stage of being prepared. The conscious mind is limited in so many ways. There are some who would argue that there is no such thing as conscious thought and that it is represen…Your Inner Map Of Reality - Here's Why You Think The Way You Do
The big picture of how your inner map of reality creates your feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. Your inner map of reality is based on the filters of your own ethnic, national, social, family and rel…The Failure Of Cancel Culture - Suppression Not Engagement
Why we need to wear our beliefs lightly and develop negative capability. Throughout history people have campaigned to fight beliefs, ideologies, and injustices that they perceived to be oppressive, di…4 Big Reasons Why We Get Stuck In Our Attempts At Personal Change
Most People Spend Their Entire Life Imprisoned Within The Confines Of Their Own Thoughts. This first of the 4 big reasons why we get stuck is, in my view, the most important. The "self-help industry…How Do I Change And Why Is It So Hard?
We Would Rather Die Than Change, And We Usually Do In my experience, the vast majority of people who say they want to change don’t change. Most people reading this won’t change because they don’t real…The Illusion Of A Separate Self - Windows 11 With Self Awareness!
Beyond the content of your mind you are so much more than you think you are. When we talk of "myself" this is the conventional way of referring to our self image which is in fact the ego's constructio…Finite And Infinite Games - Dazed, Confused & Ultimately Transcendent
This is not an instruction manual, it is a wake up call!
Over this past week I have read Professor James Carse's highly regarded "Finite And Infinite Games - A Vision Of Life As Play And Possibility"…The Gap And The Gain - How Your Brain Sabotages Your Happiness
How Your Lizard Brain Sabotages Your Happiness We are hardwired to measure our progress in any and all areas of life where we have goals and aspirations. We can't not do it. But what we measure and ho…How To Wake Up - 4 Simple Practices To Help You Wake Up Now
So What Exactly Does It Mean to Wake Up - What Is "Enlightenment"? There is nothing magical, mystical or mysterious about waking up we’re actually having glimpses of enlightenment all the time. Enligh…Situational Communication - Different Strokes For Different Folks
Situational communication is about taking account of 3 often ignored factors about the other person. You are a situational communicator when you recognise that effective communication is not an event…How To Influence Without Authority - 6 Key Tips
The secret to how to influence without authority is that you get what you really want by giving other people what they really want. We live in an interconnected world and knowing how to influence with…Change Questions To Change Your Outcomes
Asking The Right Questions Is Critical For A Successful Change. Every time we initiate a significant change - whether in our personal life or in an organisation - we will most likely over-estimate our…Group Culture - The Invisible Software That Rules Your Life
Group culture is: "How we do things round here". We like to see ourselves as free agents making our own choices and living authentically but the reality is that The Matrix has many layers and we are u…Why Getting From A to B Is Not Aways A Straight Line
In circumstances of significant change, the progress from A to B will not be in a straight line. We run our lives largely on auto-pilot. In most circumstances your experience of getting from A to B is…The Art Of Persuasion Planning For Success - Here's How To Do It!
To be successful in the art of persuasion you must ensure that certain things happen. To be successful in the art of persuasion you must establish a framework of what has to happen to get you to that…The Art Of Persuasion Advanced Communication Skills - Gaining Buyin
Create The Environment Where They Want To Buyin to Your Proposal In order to build the win-win you have to uncover what it is that the other person really wants or needs, and to do that you have to as…The Art Of Persuasion The One Fundamental Principle - Create A Win-Win
The art of persuasion is based on the simple idea that you get what you want by enabling the other party to get what they want. Being a nice friendly person with good inter-personal skills may be a go…Communication Persuasion And Change - Key Skills To Survive & Succeed
It's not the strongest that survive, nor the most intelligent, but those who are most responsive to change, the most persuasive, and the best communicators. We are living in an age of unprecedented ch…The Eisenhower Box - What Is Important Is Seldom Urgent
What Is Important Is Seldom Urgent And What Is Urgent Is Seldom Important. The Eisenhower Box is a time management and decision-making model devised by President Dwight Eisenhower to help him prioriti…Zen Enlightenment [Satori] - The Stink Of Zen
Lost In Our Delusions About Enlightenment. There is something in human nature - a desire to glamorise, sanctify, objectify and idolise – that elevates people who have offered deep insights to the huma…5 Zen Mindsets For Mastery - In Any Area Of Your Life
The Wisdom Of A Person Who Masters In Any Art Is Reflected In Their Every Attitude. The state and quality of your mind has a very large bearing on the quality of your performance in any area of life t…Dealing With The Toxicity Of Online Dating - 6 Key Tips From A Clinical Psychologist
Toxicity Is The Price Tag Of Accessibility. In the early days of online dating, users were vetted and had to go through a registration process and agree to comply with a code of conduct designed to en…Why Understanding Ergodicity Is Critical To Your Long Term Survival
How Not To Be Fooled By Randomness. Ergodicity is an ugly word from the world of mathematics. It is an umbrella term for two sets of conditions of probability and outcome. These two conditions form th…Dealing With Imposter Syndrome - Ego Is The Enemy
How You Frame A Situation Has A Profound Impact On How You Respond To It Emotionally. Imposter syndrome is a psycho-emotional experience of a fear of being found out as incompetent despite ongoing evi…The Challenges Of The Road Less Traveled
Issues You'll Face When Playing The Long Game. The challenges of the road less traveled is loosely based around the phrase popularised by M.Scott Peck with his book "The Road Less Traveled". This arti…