Emotional contagion is the spread of moods from one person to another, possibly related to ancient animal defense tactics or empathy. Negative emotions have a stronger effect than positive ones and can affect business productivity and family life. Some people use emotional contagion to intentionally influence others.
Emotional contagion is a scientific term that describes how people’s moods can spread to other people around them. For example, if one family member or co-worker is particularly happy or sad, everyone else in the group may start to feel inexplicably the same way, sometimes without even realizing what’s causing their reaction. There is still some debate as to the exact mechanism behind emotional contagion, but there have been numerous studies of its effects and its occurrence is considered to be fairly well documented. Some business management experts believe that managing emotions can be crucial to maintaining a positive work environment, and some people have even practiced using exaggerated emotions as a way to manipulate others.
One of the leading theories on the mechanism behind emotional contagion is the idea that it is related to ancient animal defense tactics. Most social animals are highly sensitive to the moods and behaviors of other animals in their group, often for reasons of self-protection. If there is a group of prairie animals all grazing together and one of them starts to panic, the others will generally be afraid as well, and sometimes the whole group will start running at the same time. Some group animals have even more complex mood-based behaviors, and entire groups can be taken over with playfulness or nervousness all at once.
Another possible reason for emotional contagion in humans is empathy. Most people automatically try to figure out how the people around them are feeling so they can get a better idea of where everyone is coming from. To do this, they often actually try to experience other people’s emotions, which could potentially lead to experiencing the same moods. Many people also subconsciously mimic the facial expressions and mannerisms of others, which may have a tendency to inspire certain moods.
Emotional contagion is thought to be a major factor in business productivity, and the fact that negative emotions seem to have a stronger effect than positive emotions is one of the main reasons. If there’s one person in a room who’s feeling particularly low, everyone around them could be pulled into a vortex of negativity, which could make everyone less effective. Emotional contagion is also thought to play an important role in the quality of a person’s family life.
Some people have tried to use emotional contagion as a way to intentionally influence people’s moods and decisions. For example, a salesperson might perform an act of extreme happiness as a way to make everyone in his audience feel the same way and hopefully help convince them to buy his product. Similar tactics could also be used by a manager of a company to help make workers feel more positive.
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