Thursday, July 16, 2020

Emotions Are Contagious

Coronavirus isn’t the only thing that can spread like wildfire. Your mood—negative or positive—can also spread easily throughout your family and work community

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By Ben Timmermans, Representative

I love listening to podcasts. I listen to them every time I get into the car as I commute to work or visit a job site.

I much prefer this over the radio, and it is one of the many things I’ve missed during the COVID-19 lockdown because I’m not driving around as much. I’ve had to find other times when I can sneak in a new episode here and there, like when I’m having my morning coffee on the deck.

I listen to a number of different podcasts, some insightful, some funny, and some that are just plain relaxing to listen to while cruising down the highway. I highly recommend Revisionist History or Ear Hustle for starters.

I also highly recommend The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laura Santos, a newer podcast that just finished its second season. Dr. Santos is professor of psychology and head of Silliman College at Yale University. She started teaching a course called “Psychology of the Good Life,” which teaches students how to use the science of psychology to make better choices and live a more fulfilling life.

The course went on to become the most popular one at Yale as students were looking to reduce stress and get more enjoyment out of their very busy lives. Dr. Santos started the course because she noticed that many of her undergrads were facing mental health crises at an alarming rate. She wanted to use cognitive science and behaviour therapy to help them out.

In one of her episodes, she discusses the effects of emotional contagion—how those around us can either cause us to feel more positive or more negative. It may sound obvious, but merely by choosing to be more positive or negative, others around us are not just affected, but actually take on that mood as well.

I want to add a quick note that this does not necessarily apply to those suffering with a mental illness, which typically takes this power and choice away from them. Emotional contagion spreads to those who are not currently experiencing any mental health concerns.

If you think this doesn’t make any sense, or don’t believe it, Dr. Santos talks about the canned laugh track that is so often used in TV sitcoms. They developed these laugh tracks to make people more likely to laugh and, therefore, feel positive emotions about the show.

If you want to check this out, google a sitcom without any laugh track, and you’ll be amazed at how unfunny these shows can be! Want to try it? Just google “the big bang theory without laugh track.”

As we’re grappling with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s pretty easy to become negative and think about everything that’s going wrong in the world. But once we realize we have the power and the ability to help those around us be more positive, I think it’s pretty empowering to make that choice to lift up others—and ourselves—by choosing to be positive.

Simply making yourself act more positively—even if you don’t feel like it at first—will have the effect of boosting the mood of others around you. Eventually, you’ll notice that your mood has changed, and you’re feeling more positive as well.

This doesn’t mean that feelings of sadness and anger are not good and justified at times—we’re not robots. But we can utilize this technique to make the lives of those around us a bit better.

So challenge yourself to choose to be a bit more positive each day. You’ll soon discover that the communal effect of your good mood has become contagious.

Emotions Are Contagious

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