Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 2, 1993 TAG: 9311020040
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELLEN O'BRIEN KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Because you probably caught it. That nasty mood. You probably caught it like a bad cold.
Moods are as contagious as viruses. We pick them up from other people automatically, unconsciously - and within milliseconds.
That's the bad news. The worse news is that the more accommodating, sensitive and empathetic we are by nature - in short, the "nicer" we are - the more apt we are to become the victims of other people's conquering negativity and plain blue funks.
"It must have been important to us in our primate heritage - to communicate by gesture, look and tone," Elaine Hatfield, professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, says about our boundless human capacity to transmit and receive moods. "We're wonderfully good at it. It must have had some evolutionary advantage ... like fish in an ocean can change in a second, and go in a different direction together."
Hatfield is co-author with her husband, psychologist Richard Rapson, and their colleague, John Cacioppo of Ohio State University, of a tome devoted to the study of mood-catching. "Emotional Contagion," which is to be published by Cambridge University Press, is due for release next month. Hatfield
is a longtime mood-watcher who splices her own insights and experiences into the textbook-style manuscript. "I am so prone to the deadening effects of the depressed that I find it hard even to keep a minimal conversation going," she confesses, by way of example, in the book's introduction. "I keep finding myself sinking off into sleep."
More eye-opening is Hatfield's theory. Basically, it goes like this: In conversation, individuals automatically synchronize their facial expressions, voice levels, postures and movements to those of the people around them - and as soon as they "imitate" an emotion, they "experience" it - at least, "little bits" of it _ at a deep physical level.
Hatfield and her fellow authors contend that physical response by the involuntary nervous system - the system that "makes your heart pound, your hands sweat and shake, and your knees turn to jelly" - can be brought on by the unconscious mimicking of the flicker of an eye, or a split-second downturn o the mouth.
Hatfield quotes the conclusion of psychologist William Condon, whose experiments demonstrated that individuals can synchronize their speech - talking at the same clip, with about the same length of pauses - with one another within 50 milliseconds. That mysterious talent, Condon contended, "requires some mechanism unknown to man."
"People need not, of course, be consciously aware that they are synchronizing their actions with others. ... [But] the ability to be `in tune' with those around us is critically important ...," Hatfield and her colleagues write in the book. "Communication is as rhythmic as music, dance or tennis....
"One colleague told me that he watched in fascination as one person at dinner reached for the salt and all the others at the table would reach for a glass of water, the salt, or a napkin, a split-second later. One diner would shift in his seat in an effort to find a more comfortable position; another would almost immediately mirror his settling-in," Hatfield continues.
An example of that mimicry, or mirroring, from a film that she particularly likes, is the poker game scene in "A Day at the Races" - a scene in which the Marx Brothers' movements became "so intricately intertwined that Groucho, Harpo and Chico ended up transferring the same cigarette back and forth - one exhaling the smoke that the other had inhaled."
"Some people are good `senders' because they're well in touch with their own feelings - and can express them - and are sort of oblivious to other people's," Hatfield said during a telephone interview. And, she said, the stronger the mood - deep anger or depression, for instance - the greater the odds that they can transmit it.
According to Carol Culp, assistant professor of psychology at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa.: "In roommate studies, college students who, through the luck of the draw, get a depressed roommate, will be more depressed at the end of the term." Other psychological studies have also found that men and women with depressed spouses have more trouble with their own moods than those who are have non-depressed spouses, Culp said.
James Coyne, professor of psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Family Practice at the University of Michigan Medical School, has demonstrated that it takes only 20 minutes to catch someone else's depression.
Coyne's experiment consisted of matching pairs of non-depressed and clinically depressed individuals in telephone conversations. Those who were initially in a balanced mood "were depressed and hostile, themselves, after 20 minutes," he said.
In another study, Coyne found that "people living with a depressed person were themselves depressed in their moods, and they felt burdened by the depressed person's symptoms. ... When the depressed person recovered, these people's moods went up, too."
"We don't know a whole lot about these phenomena. These aren't things that are well-studied," Coyne said. "I think people have just thought about mood as being a personal state, you know - private feelings. But I think of it as more of a social phenomenon."
In her book, Hatfield agrees: "An individual's feelings and goals in a social interaction may exert a powerful effect on the shape of emotional contagion." She contends that if you like someone, or want that person to like you _ if that person is your boss or a spouse or a potential mate _ the more apt you are to mirror the person's moods. But beyond that, it depends on your personality.
"Some people are much more sensitive to others' emotions than other people. They're just extra sensitive. ... It seems to be people who pay attention to other people, who are good at understanding others' emotions, [who] mimic people unconsciously," Hatfield said. "Some people feel even more intensely than others."
They are the "receivers" of other people's moods.
They contract their moods subliminally from people with stronger, less empathetic personalities. One such type of "sender" is always enveloped with his or her own drama, Hatfield said; another is the guilt-inflicter.
"There are some people whose life is always extremely hectic. Chaos reigns everywhere. And someone who's sort of sensitive and quiet sometimes tries to help them. And then there are the people who are grabbing the moral high-ground, and trying to make other people feel like a worm".
Hatfield believes that in either case, the best thing to do is to realize that "they're having much more fun the way they are than you would have in their situation. They've just a different nature. Sometimes, that lets you off the hook. ... "You just have to limit the time you spend with
them. And if you expend a heroic effort for a very short time, you can have a positive interaction with them. Then you have to go away and be on your own," she said. To recuperate. Ian Gotlib of Northwestern University's
Department of Psychology said one reason why depression travels so well is that people who are depressed "are more self-focused, talk more about themselves" than other people.
The contagion "gets much worse in more intimate relationships like marriages," Gotlib said.
"When one person becomes depressed ... it takes longer for the negative effects to kick in, if you have a good relationship," he said. "But the effects are much stronger and longer-lasting. Depressed people have a divorce rate that some people estimate as nine times higher than the overall population."
But even in the less intimate interactions involved in socializing or at work, Hatfield said, research indicates that once you escape a bad-mood atmosphere, it still takes time to regain your equilibrium.
"Most researchers say it will take a half-hour. If people are upset, they continue to stay upset. They won't identify the situation ... but physiological studies indicate that the person is still fairly upset."
Still, Hatfield thinks that "if" we can recognize what's happening to us, we're ahead of the game. It is important, she said, "to recognize how much we can use not just our minds, but our small emotional reactions, to read social situations. More and more, scientists are finding out how important emotions are _ they might be the chemistry of communications between the different parts of the body."
Besides, she said, "to be a human being, you have to use emotional information. We're just programmed to use our minds and emotions in making decisions."
In other words, cheer up. Because, as you may have noticed, there are other emotions besides depression and anger and sadness and anxiety. And as Northwestern's Gotlib points out, laughter is also contagious.
by CNB