How to Use the Power of Emotional Contagion to Change Your Mood

In psychology, this is known as “emotional contagion” and it describes how one person’s emotions can often trigger a similar emotional response in whoever is around them.

We’ve all experienced this before. We find ourselves in a pleasant mood, then someone else walks into the room who is clearly having a bad day. Almost instantly, our good mood begins to dampen and we start to take on the same negative emotions as the other person.

It’s important to keep in mind that our emotions tend to synchronize with other people’s emotions, and we can use this concept of “emotional contagion” to make smarter decisions about how to manage our own emotions and mood.

Think about it: Who are the types of people you tend to be around on a daily basis? Are they usually optimistic and upbeat, or pessimistic and gloomy? How is that influencing your own mood and well-being?

While we can’t always choose the types of people we are around, there are a number of ways we can take more control over our environment and what type of information we are being exposed to on a daily basis.

Our minds don’t exist independently from our environment and surroundings (especially other people). Instead, we live in a psychological ecosystem where every mind is interacting and influencing every other mind. When a new person enters a room, they can completely change the emotional dynamic of it.

According to one study published in Royal Society Open Science, you can pick up a “good” or “bad” mood from your friends, and individuals who had social circles filled with people who suffered bad moods often reported worse moods in themselves, including other depressive symptoms like “helplessness” and “loss of interest.” The opposite was true for those who had a more positive social circle.

Emotional contagion can be influenced by very subtle factors, including facial expressions and other nonverbal signals that a person is sending to us during a social interaction, often without us even being aware of it!

A fascinating study published in Cell Press shows how our minds have a natural tendency to mimic the facial expressions of others to help us empathize and understand people. The study discovered that common expressions like smiles and frowns are contagious, which is one likely reason why emotions seem to travel from one person to another.

People are constantly sending out emotional signals through their actions, speech, facial expressions, and body language, and we are picking up on those signals and adapting ourselves to them.

Have you ever had the feeling that someone was in a bad mood but you couldn’t explain why? That’s likely due to small nonverbal signals – sometimes called “micro-expressions” – that happen super quickly (less than one second) yet we still pick up on them at an unconscious level.

That’s how strongly our minds can be attuned to other people’s emotions.

Now that you understand emotional contagion and how it works, let’s identify a few tips and techniques that help us to use the power of emotional contagion to benefit and serve our lives in a positive way.

How to Use the Power of Emotional Contagion in Your Everyday Life

Here are practical tips, advice, and suggestions for how to use the power of emotional contagion to change your own mood and emotions.

• Do an inventory of your social circle – Make a list of common people you interact with on a daily basis (including friends, family, coworkers, and anyone else). Then reflect on each one and ask yourself, “Does this person usually boost my mood or dampen it?” Simply being aware of how people influence you is a good first step.
• Maximize time with people who boost your mood and emotions – When you have a choice, try your best to hang around with people who boost your mood and inspire you. Who brings out the best in you? Find ways to spend more time with these types of people, even if it’s just going out to lunch.
• Minimize time with people who hurt your mood and emotions – While we can’t always avoid negative people, we can still find ways to minimize our time with them. Is there a certain coworker who seems to always be grouchy? Then keep your interactions strictly work-focused and don’t spend an extra second with them.
• Be mindful of social media – Our online relationships can also have an emotional contagion effect. One study published in PLOS One discovered evidence of wide-spread emotional contagion through social media like Facebook and Twitter. Considering many of us spend a lot of time on these sites, it’s important that we manage the types of people (and posts) we see on a daily basis, as it is having a strong influence on our everyday mood and emotions. For example, on Twitter you can create a personal list that is only for positive people, then you can check that feed whenever you need an extra boost in motivation or inspiration (to start, follow me on Twitter).
• Improve your emotional intelligence – You also have the power to control what emotions you are sending to others, so don’t forget that you play a role in this “psychological ecosystem” we all live in. Practice improving your emotional intelligence; the better you can manage your emotions, the better you can change the emotional dynamic in a room even when around negative people. Download my “Emotional Intelligence Toolkit” under self-improvement guides to learn a variety of tools and techniques to regulate your emotions – and be aware of what emotional vibes you are sending out in any given social situation.
  

• Pay attention to all information you consume (news, movies, television, etc.) – Just as we pick up emotions from people in our personal lives, we are also influenced by the emotions we are exposed to through movies, television, and news media. The news can be especially focused on negativity since that is what grabs people’s attention the most and gets clicks. Knowing this, you should be super careful of how much news you consume on a daily basis (and how engrossed you become in news stories, which often have very little effect on our personal lives). There’s also a reddit dedicated to /r/UpliftingNews that may be a refreshing change from your everyday broadcasting.
  

• Search the internet for pictures and videos of positive people – With the internet, we have more choice than ever about what type of information we consume. One quick trick you can use to boost your mood is to search for videos on YouTube that are funny, cute, uplifting, or positive. Even just doing a quick Google image search for “happy faces” or “silly faces” and taking a couple minutes to look through them can activate our facial mimicry and create a change in our current emotional state.
  

• Join a club, socialize, meet new people – If your life is currently lacking in positive people, then it may be time to go out and find some new friends. Join a club, go out to a music show, or find people online who have a more positive effect on you and befriend them! Of course this doesn’t mean you need to ditch all of your old friends, but building new friendships will give you more choice in who you spend your time with (and the types of emotions you are being exposed to on a frequent basis). Even just one new friend can introduce you to an entirely new social circle that can be drastically different than your old ones.

These are just a few healthy tips and suggestions on the ways we can use emotional contagion to regulate our daily mood and emotions. Which do you need to focus on the most?

In general, our social circle can have a profound effect on many different areas of our lives, including not only our emotions but also our thinking, habits, and values in life.

This is why, when it comes to self improvement, it is essential that we pay close attention to our relationships and how they influence us.

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