The SuperPower of Emotional Contagion
so let’s talk about superpowers
when we talk about superpowers more
often than not we’re talking about super
strength
or invisibility or super speed or even
crazy insect bites but there’s another
superpower
that a number of superheroes and
supervillains have
that get zero credit and that’s this
ability
to sense or feel what others are
feeling and or thinking and that’s an
amazing superpower if you think about it
right imagine you’re walking down the
street
and you can feel what others
are feeling or even you can see someone
across the street and feel that
that’d be amazing what would you do with
that superpower
and i asked that because research
suggests that you
do have that superpower
when i was a kid when i was real little
i
had this heightened sense almost
overheightened sense almost over
sensitive sense of others negative
emotional states
i would become overwhelmed by them
so much so that i would lose myself
in others negative emotional states like
their sadness or their anger or their
fear
and i would do anything to try to
move that person into a more positive
emotional state
and over time that became so burdensome
that i would start to remove myself from
those situations in which i would feel
those negative states from others
discontinue friendships distance myself
from interpersonal interactions
and you can imagine doing that had its
own
negative side effects so as i got older
i realized that this this sense this
this feeling of other states was not
going to go away
and i really had to work with it and
better understand it
and i have no doubt that that is kind of
what led me into my own research on the
experience of
empathy and within that whole breadth
of research and scholarship and empathy
what you find is a number of concepts
that relate to this superpower of
sharing the emotional states
right emotional sharing emotional acuity
but there’s even a very broad concept
called
emotional contagion and it’s just like
it sounds
so just like a cold is contagious or a
yawn
is even contagious right emotional
states
can be contagious you can catch the
emotional state of another person
and what’s really interesting is that
research shows that that is an actual
innate ability that we have we are born
with the ability
to sense and feel what others are
feeling we are born with this superpower
so just like a deer god is born able to
run
we’re born with this ability to connect
and communicate with other people
even more so it’s shown that this trait
has kind of a
evolutionary resilience right over
eons we’ve been able now to maintain
this quality
this attribute and why well you can
think about that right you can see why
having this ability to sense and feel
what others are feeling give us a
glimpse
into our neighbor’s world it heightens
connectivity
it heightens solidarity it heightens
community we can communicate with others
without explicitly speaking
we can share in something as natural as
an emotional state
now what do we do with this right what
do we do with this superpower well
we can ignore it just like i talked
about the idea when i was younger
that i would just kind of maybe push it
aside a little bit try to remove myself
from those situations
we can ignore that we have this
superpower right it takes a heightened
level of sensitivity
and vulnerability to really engage
in that experience to really acknowledge
that it’s there
so we don’t necessarily have to and in
fact there’s a number of
socialization processes and even a
number of professions
that teach us to kind of push that out
push that down
or we can acknowledge it we can
acknowledge that it’s happening we can
acknowledge that we have this superpower
and we can experience that beautiful
sensation
of feeling another’s emotional states
whether it’s positive state
or a negative state it’s such an
uh an amazing experience
we could also act on it emotional
contagion is just one core element of
the experience of empathy
right so you take that you mix it up
with some nice
cognitive mechanisms and perceptions you
sprinkle in some interpersonal factors
some contextual cues and some
motivational factors and you might get
social support
you might get compassion
right but emotional contagion is a core
element of that process
what’s more so is that we’re starting to
learn that we can hone
this ability this innate ability right
so i’ve told you you have a superpower
and now i’m going to tell you that you
can actually work
that muscle you can work that ability
right there’s a number of programs out
there that engage in workouts and
exercises related to
self and other awareness communication
skills related to listening
presence right understanding and
identifying key emotional traits
and emotional states
working out in this way working out that
muscle of emotional contagion this way
will help you hone
that superpower
so now i’ve told you that you have a
superpower that more than likely you’ve
let lay dormant
for who knows how long and i’ve also
told you that there are ways in which
you can start heightening that
ability so i hope that you use this
superpower for good
and that you utilize it to heighten
connectivity
solidarity and build community
especially during this incredibly
challenging time
thank you