Can your friend catch your bad mood, or can your partner infect you with happy one? <\/p>
If you\u2019ve ever been in a jolly mood, with a spring in your step, then met up with a friend who is feeling grumpy, you\u2019ll know how contagious emotions<\/a> can be. Before you know it, you realise that you\u2019re feeling down too. Happily, it can work the other way around too \u2013 when you\u2019ve been sad, perhaps your friend\u2019s bubbliness has helped to lighten your mood.\u00a0<\/p> Psychologists have shown that when people interact, a lot of mimicry<\/a> goes on without us even realising it \u2013 from body language, to speech rate and pitch, to facial expressions. This is especially the case when we\u2019re interacting with someone we know and care about.<\/p> A lot of these processes have to do with effective communication and mutual understanding. One way we make sense of other people\u2019s feelings is to simulate those feelings in our own mind. The net result of this mirroring is that we can infect each other with our emotions.\u00a0<\/p> You might wonder who wins out \u2013 if you\u2019re feeling happy and your friend is feeling sad, and you meet up, do you succumb to their sadness or do they catch your happiness? Part of the answer is likely to come down to their and your levels of expressiveness and receptiveness.<\/p> Everyone varies in how emotionally expressive and suggestible they are. If you smile a lot when you\u2019re happy, you\u2019re more likely to infect your friend. Likewise, if your friend is suggestible and more prone to facial mimicry, then they\u2019ll be more likely to catch your smiles and start feeling happier (researchers in Germany showed that people who tend to mimic facial expressions are more prone to catching other people\u2019s emotions).<\/p> That isn\u2019t to say that facial expressions are the only way for emotions to spread. For instance, there\u2019s evidence that fear has a smell, and that smelling the sweat of an anxious person can trigger activity in parts of the brain involved in empathy and processing emotions.\u00a0<\/p> In fact, for emotions to spread, there doesn\u2019t need to be any physical contact at all. Researchers have shown that emotions can spread through social media<\/a>. People who are exposed to more negative posts are more likely to go and post something negative themselves.\u00a0<\/p> Whether or not you find it grating to encounter an emotion opposite to the one you\u2019re feeling will come down to the context. Generally speaking, it can be soothing to find we\u2019re on the same emotional wavelength as others. Hence\u00a0the popularity of listening to sad music when we\u2019re feeling down, or the appeal\u00a0of wallowing in heartache with a sympathetic friend.\u00a0<\/p> If and when you encounter an opposite emotion to your own, the experience will likely vary depending on how invested you are in that other person or people. If you care about them, you\u2019ll be more motivated to make an emotional shift to match their state (research shows we\u2019re more likely to mirror the emotions of people we like). Conversely, if you\u2019re feeling sad and a\u00a0bunch of strangers sit near you on the bus laughing their heads off, you\u2019re likely to find it really annoying.\u00a0<\/p> Read more:<\/strong><\/p> To submit your questions email us at questions@sciencefocus.com (don’t forget to include your name and location)<\/em><\/em><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n Can your friend catch your bad mood, or can your partner infect you with happy one? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":37220,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/12\/heres-what-makes-your-emotions-more-infectious-to-others.jpg",1200,800,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/12\/heres-what-makes-your-emotions-more-infectious-to-others-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/12\/heres-what-makes-your-emotions-more-infectious-to-others-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/12\/heres-what-makes-your-emotions-more-infectious-to-others-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/12\/heres-what-makes-your-emotions-more-infectious-to-others-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/12\/heres-what-makes-your-emotions-more-infectious-to-others.jpg",1200,800,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/12\/heres-what-makes-your-emotions-more-infectious-to-others.jpg",1200,800,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Can your friend catch your bad mood, or can your partner infect you with happy one?","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/37219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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