Improving Our “Signals” and “Beings”

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou, poet and actress

“Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.” – Mark Twain, highly quoted writer

“You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.” – Anonymous

“I am involved in all of mankind.” – John Donne, 16th century poet

One midnight, I had just finished another shift at a job I didn’t like so I was alive with energy. I smiled, my eyes were open, I felt good about myself. I said my usual goodbyes to a friend and sprung into my car. My friend reversed his car just before I had the chance to leave my car park so he had beaten me this time – it was an unspoken game that took place each time we left from work. I waited for him to get out of the way before I reversed to make my way home.

As I was leaving, the open car park gave me an invitation to have a little fun with my car. If landscapes could talk, this one was whispering into my ear that I should spin the wheels. “Besides, it’s late at night. No one is around and you’re feeling great. It’s an open car park with no danger. Do it!” said the persuasive voice. Like a vulnerable teenager succumbing to peer pressure, I accepted the invitation.

The car became an extension of my body as it began to mimic my ecstatic mood. I put my foot down hard on the accelerator as I spun the wheel left around the first corner. As the rear tires lost their stability and the car went side-ways, I entered the next turn and spun the wheel right. The sound of screeching tires was like water fertilizing my increasing smile. Smoke filled the rims of my tires and a shot of adrenaline filled my body.

Following the consecutive drifts, I straightened the car and approached a set of traffic lights on the main road that would take me home. Had this been during the daytime, about seven cars would be in front of me before the upcoming traffic lights. I decided to keep complying with the road’s persuasive voice as it told me to “be a little adventurous” so I decided, or rather I let the road decide for me, that I should turn left instead of my usual right turn. Not exactly an Indiana Jones adventure, but it was different.

My friend who had left before me had just gone through the traffic lights a few seconds before me so the lights were still green. Keeping in the mood, I put my foot down on the accelerator to catch the green light. I would make it. I turned around the corner with a soft screech of the tires and there, 20 meters in front of me, on the side of the road were two police officers beside their vehicle.

They pulled me over. Opposite to what you might be thinking, I was not concerned. I was still in my elevated state. I wound down my window and an angry officer came charging at me, yelling, “What the hell are you thinking? What the hell is going through your mind?” I paused momentarily, unaffected by his aggressive state. I said smilingly, “I’m just happy, I guess”. Not a smart response.

It just hit me that I was out of it. I knew I should have said something else. I gulped. My mind rushed to think of some communication techniques I could use as a life boat to save me from drowning in the conversation. The moment was intense and all that came to mind were some techniques on getting out of a speeding-ticket. I thought to myself that I’ll give the techniques a shot. After all, I had annoyed the officer enough already.

As I was thinking how to approach this difficult situation, I was still happy of course. My happy mood seemed to pour fuel on his already raging fire. “Bloody hell mate! I could just give you a ticket right now!” My smile began to lower. I no longer made eye contact with the officer. The officer’s raging mood began to infect me and cause me to feel angry. It was as if my body had been overcome by an emotional virus the officer had given me.

I thought of the techniques to get out of a speeding-ticket and realized I was already beginning to use them. Well, it was too late to make the officer feel safe as he approached the car, but I needed to no longer act oblivious to my mistake. I needed to show respect as officers are in a clear position of authority and often experience disrespect throughout their day that only makes them more determined to convict guilty citizens. “You’re right.” I replied. “I was stupid and careless.”

The officer was still enraged and continued to threaten me with a ticket. I knew he could easily write me a ticket, but he wasn’t writing one possibly because officers hate the paperwork created from citizens breaking the law. I kept myself aligned with the officer’s reality by remaining in a “Yes I’m wrong, stupid, and shouldn’t have done that” mood. I continued to play psychological judo, and match my mood with his own, until two minutes later he said to drive off. And oh, I got no ticket!

I drove off – though feeling pleased I had beaten a reckless driving ticket – in an irritated state. The officer had destroyed my happy mood. It took two minutes of talking with the officer to completely transform my happy state into a joyless, gloomy mood. All it took was two minutes to convert my mood and there I was, in an unhappy state for the remaining two hours until I went to bed.

The story I just described is probably a perfect depiction of your reality with emotions. Everyday you are interacting with people at different mood levels. Sometimes you’re happier than people you are talking to, other times they are happier than you. Whatever the case maybe, emotions are being transferred to various people. This is a fascinating peculiarity with emotions. Have you ever noticed how we feel in our interactions is not just dependent on our internal state?

• How did you feel when someone really annoyed began talking to you? You became more annoyed.
• How did you feel when someone unhappy began talking to you? You began to be unhappy.
• How did you feel when a charismatic person talked to you? You felt his energy and you began to feel happier.

Psychologists call this phenomena “emotional contagion”. It is a psychological and physiological process – a transference of emotion that can occur from mimicking body language. Elaine Hatfield, a professor at the University of Hawaii, in a study with John Carlson and Christopher Hsee had college students watch a videotape of a man describing two very emotional experiences: his life’s happiest and saddest events. While the college students watched the tape, they were taped so the researchers could record the students’ emotional responses. The students were also asked what feelings they experienced for each story at the end of the video. The researchers found that students showed and expressed the recorded person’s emotions. The student’s felt happy when they watched the person describe his happiest event and sad when they watched the person describe his saddest event.

Hatfield and her two colleagues, John Cacioppo and Richard Rapson, in their co-authored book Emotional Contagion, say the psychophysiological phenomena occurs from automatically matching facial expressions, vocalics, postures, and movements. Hatfield says, “People tend to experience emotions consistent with the facial, vocal, and postural expressions they adopt.”

When you are empathetically listening to a friend, true empathy puts you in their shoes so you experience the events they are talking about. The friend describes the argument with their ex-partner, the yelling, the misunderstandings that took place. You can vividly see what your friend is talking about. From this experience you come to feel how your friend feels. As you empathetically listen to a friend discuss a painful event, you will experience a similar pain. Well-known psychologist Albert Bandura says the shared experience results in a shared feeling. That is the price of listening: not only can you catch a cold, but you can catch an emotional cold.

Mirror Neurons: The Mind’s Mirror

There is a scientific explanation behind how our emotions – an experience of mind and body – transfer over to somebody else. In 1980s, three Italian researchers made what is said to be one of the greatest neuroscience breakthroughs in recent times: discovering the mirror neuron. In an experiment, the three researchers had electrodes attached to a macaque monkey’s brain which enabled the researchers to determine what movements caused the neurons to light-up. As the monkey reached for food, the researchers took note of single neurons being fired. When the researchers were handing the monkey some food, they unexpectedly saw the monkey’s neurons fire. By accident, the researchers discovered that when they picked-up a piece of food, the monkey had the same neurons light-up as if it were picking-up the food. They came to name these neurons “mirror neurons” because they were like the mind’s mirror.

Mirror neurons get triggered from an action or observation of someone who is doing the same action. It may not appear as a significant finding, yet the breakthrough discovery has lead to a better understanding of autism, empathy, altruism, and general learning because the mirror neurons are responsible for tuning-in to another person’s behavior. The neurons are responsible for an awareness and shared-feeling between two people. One neuron is responsible for the significant role of learning, understanding, and feeling.

An amazing, almost mystical link, takes place to connect the brains. A signal sent from either individual in the psychological connection travels via the link to similarly affect the recipient. Hatfield says, “We reflect what they feel.” Smile at a baby, or almost anyone for that matter, and the baby’s mirror neurons will be fired to trigger an automatic smile. That is why the age-old saying, “smiling causes the whole world to smile with you”, is true. Not only is emotional contagion a replication of another’s emotions, but it is a biological dance – a shared physical connection. It is an interlinking of mind and body.

The biological dance is an important part in group dynamics. Janice Kelly, a professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University, says emotional contagion causes people to converge into an affective homogeneous group. In other words, group members begin to experience the same emotions overtime as their fellow members. Kelly says that people with highly expressive body language are more able to impose their emotions on others. The distinctive nonverbal signs allows individuals to pick-up on the person’s emotions and become infected by their emotional state. Here we see another age-old saying, “Monkey see, monkey do.” is real.

Another age-old theory of staying away from toxic people – because they will pull you down with them – is now a physiological and psychological fact. Being around suppressing or uplifting people directly affects your body and mind. We were born for interaction and connection with one another. We are a social animal.

You’ve heard that you should make friends with wealthy people if you want to be wealthy because the technique works. If you want to be happy, you make friends with happy people. If you want to be confident, you make friends with confident people. If you want to be funny, you make friends with funny people. Being around people you want to be like is a secret of self-transformation to stimulate that emotional desire needed for growth. Athletes are able to play their sport better upon watching superior athletes excel in their sport through the magic of transference. Observance creates transference. You come to pick-up the characteristics you see in others because they infect you with their style, knowledge, and emotions.

Whether you intend to be infected by someone or not is irrelevant because mirror neurons are responsible for imitating other people. You don’t make a choice as to what you are exposed to that causes your mirror neurons to fire; it’s an automatic process. Our parents told us to avoid hanging out with the wrong people for a reason. “People are like dirt.” said the classical Greek philosopher Plato. “They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.” It is reality that you come to absorb the characteristics of people you observe.

Put yourself in a group where the individuals are depressed and you will become depressed. Put yourself in a group where the individuals blame others and you will come to blame others. Put yourself in a group where the individuals are prejudice against blacks, and you will come to be prejudice against blacks. Or in my case: do something stupid on the road in front of a police officer to make him angry so that you become angry.

Mirror neurons are not all bad news. Mirror neurons do not have to be the only source of influence on your mood or way of thinking. You can still be with depressed, blame-filled, or prejudiced individuals without taking on their characteristics. Therapists, social workers, and doctors are just a few people who need to work with people in the “don’t infect me with your emotional disease” category. Even so, people in such professions and positions will have a harder time in making themselves immune from emotional diseases because mirror neurons are a part of the brain every moment of our lives.

Even though you and I will always be around less-than-optimal people, we need to put ourselves around people who have the characteristics and emotions we want to take on. We naturally gravitate towards these people. They have a set of likable characteristics that draw us into them to bring out the best in ourselves. As Mark Twain said, “Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

The Brain’s Low Road and High Road

While emotional contagion is an important part in transforming yourself to who you want to be, it is important that you don’t rely on other people to make you feel good. Letting the emotional parts of your brain – mostly the almond-shaped amygdala, which is located near both sides of your temples – roam like a child on the streets is dangerous. Neuroscientists say that you can control emotional responses – to a certain extent.

When our ancestors were faced with a dangerous predator, they had to make a quick decision, an emotional response void of time-consuming rationalization that puts the person’s life at risk. Their eyes would widen and pupils dilate to visually take-in more information. They receive a shot of adrenaline to increase the supply of oxygen and glucose to muscles for strength and speed. Unnecessary bodily functions like digestion becomes suppressed. Additionally, the brain detours the slow responding high road – taking the low road to produce a quick response. Going straight to the more primitive amygdala produces reflexive, unconscious decisions. It is these primitive parts of the brain that neuroscientists say is difficult to change.

One low road response could be your reaction to a loud bang. The loud sound causes all the adrenaline responses mentioned earlier – such as widened eyes, dilated pupils, increased supply of oxygen – in the first few milliseconds you hear the sound. You quickly look towards the sound to rapidly figure out if the sound is a signal of danger. If you can’t see the sound, you rely on social proof as you look at people’s faces to see their reactions and how you should respond.

In a low road response, the sensory signals bypass the cortex and go straight to the amygdala to produce a reflexive response. If your brain puts too much emphasis on the low road in everyday living, you would live spontaneously and quickly destroy your life from poor decision-making. If you screamed and sprinted away each time you heard a loud bang, you would be an emotional wreak. This is where the high road, a neurological path in your the brain, comes in to better control your emotional responses.

As the first few seconds – or even less – pass after hearing the loud bang, you transition over to the high road as you begin to analyze the situation. While the low road is responsible for reflexive decisions beyond your control, the high road can jam a cognitive wedge in the low road to better adapt and survive.

The high road is a slower response path that uses parts of the brain like the frontal cortex and the hippocampus (your memory) to respond appropriately to stimulus. These parts of the brain are vulnerable to neuroplasticity, physical changes of the brain. Over time your brain physically shapes itself as it learns that all loud bangs are not dangerous. A cooking saucepan dropping on the hard kitchen floor doesn’t automatically make you run to the neighbors for help. (I recommend you grab Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence to better understand the neuroscience behind emotions).

Shaping Your Emotional Responses

While some neuroscientists say it is impossible to control all emotional responses, due to the brain’s low road producing a quick response for survival, you can better utilize the high road. Thinking about an emotional response uses the prefrontal cortex of the brain to override the signals received by the amygdala. This is where neuroscience meets personal development. One of my favorite techniques to do this is reframing. In reframing you are changing your initial interpretation, often a quick-response, in a situation to produce a response that is beneficial to you and your relationships.

One of the most powerful reframes I describe in the second edition of my communication secrets of making people like you program is positive intention framing. In positive intention framing, you identify the positive intention relevant to the limiting situation. Let’s say you are in a serious argument with your spouse. Most people in such an argument let: 1) the low road control the argument as they react impulsively and later regret the things they said during the heated disagreement, and 2) emotional contagion infect themselves with a negative mood for hours following the argument. You can have a degree of control over impulsiveness and emotional infections by reframing.

A positive intention reframe could identify your spouse’s yelling at you as their need to be heard, understood, and received; instead of a personal attack. Alternatively, you could positively reframe your spouse’s yelling as a welcomed release of their frustration so you can listen to what concerns him or her. The purpose of this type of reframing is to help you better utilize your mental resources without having them work against you. The reframing helps you use your prefrontal cortex to take the high road and interpret the situation in a way that lets you act in a resourceful manner. Because of this, reframing is proven by research to be one of the most effective anger management techniques.

Happy people are the experts of reframing. They may not have learned reframing techniques from a book or online article, but I guarantee you they use the technique. Happy people are logical people. They are logical in the sense they reframe, interpret, and use their prefrontal cortex to take the brain’s high road – and live a more fulfilling life. What happens outside of them does not matter as their mental attitude is what matters. “Happiness doesn’t depend on any external conditions,” said Dale Carnegie, “it is governed by our mental attitude.”

Let’s say an aggressive person is talking to someone with effective communication skills. The effective communicator is able to defuse the aggression through their communication style even though the emotional aggression is still received. A good communicator feels the aggression, but they reframe their response which enables them to control their emotional contagion and destructive low road reaction. They see it in frames such as, “Oh, he’s just trying to get me to understand him.” or “I enjoy the problem coming to surface instead of it remaining hidden where it eats away the relationship.” From these frames the effective communicator is able to use his or her own mental resources very efficiently.

When you express anger, you give it a pathway to infect your relationships and escalate the emotional infection. Expressing your anger gives it to someone who gives it back to you in a greater quantity. Happy people get angry; but their anger is a momentary feeling, a function of the low road which is later controlled by the high road. Happy people reframe their anger instead of expressing it and letting it grow.

In terms of depression, emotional contagion and reframing is no different. Depressed individuals seek isolation to feel better about themselves. The isolation compounds their depression – an ironic effect. Those with depression are better off forcing themselves to interact with other people who are more happier than they are in order to beat depression. They need to reframe their negative states to put themselves into an empowering state. Similarly, they should make mirror neurons benefit themselves by smiling – even if it feels artificial – as it forces the person’s body to feel happy. Emotional contagion can work for you or against you if you let it.

Shaping People’s Emotional Responses: The Emotional-Leveling Technique

We see that reframing controls our responses to the situation, but what about other people’s responses? Are we suppose to let other people react in whatever way they happen to react? Is there a technique we can use to uplift other people and have emotional contagion help our relationships?

Generally, you do not need to worry about people’s responses because your response is what matters. Worrying is a powerless concern for the future. That isn’t to say that people’s responses and emotional states are irrelevant; because they are vital as you will soon see. You need to observe people’s emotional states and adjust yourself accordingly instead of worrying about people’s behaviors that are beyond your control.

How do you shape a person’s emotional response? You maybe thinking that if negative emotions can be injected into people to spread into further harmfulness, is it just a matter of being positive to decontaminate individuals from negative emotions?

In many cases, positiveness and forcing your emotions on an unhappy, negative, or angry individual is more counter-productive than useful. When I was happy and smiling to the angry police officer, he became more infuriated. Seldom does positiveness alone overrule negative emotions. The next time someone around you is angry, look them in the eye, smile, and tell them what a beautiful day it is. Their anger will be overpowering to your mood – making the technique unsuccessful and possibly increasing their anger. They will likely become more angry saying something like, “It’s a disgusting day”, with an even unhappier face.

Other times your happy attitude may change their unhappy perspective, but the technique does not create a reliable solution that you can depend on because anger builds on itself. Anger is like a good investment that builds on itself, though of course, it’s a harmful emotion. What is an effective communicator to do when emotional contagion is working against him or her?

Let’s review what occurs during emotional contagion so we can convert it for our own benefit. Emotionally destructive conversations all start out with one person injecting a state into their conversational partner. When the conversational partner is a poor communicator who reacts impulsively, letting his mirror neurons mimic the person’s harmful state, the two individuals experience intensified emotions. The newly infected person becomes a carrier, reciprocating the infection to the original carrier who’s emotional disease worsens. Once the emotional infection has become too much for the individuals, they leave the conversation only to contaminate other people. A simple disagreement escalates into a large – sometimes life-threatening – conflict with innocent people. An emotional infection outbreaks.

You can probably think of other scenarios in your relationships where one person injects a bad emotion into the relationship. The partner becomes infected and the relationship goes downhill. It’s a downward spiraling cycle that damages relationships. On one level you need to prevent yourself from becoming a carrier, while on the other level you need to prevent other people from becoming carriers. Doing these two things will control emotional contagion to build happiness, power, and healthy relationships.

When talking to a friend in need, on one hand you are faced with the challenge of empathizing with your friend’s pain. This involves drawing yourself into your friend’s struggle, feeling the same pain, and allowing yourself to be infected by their emotional state. Other times, you will need to shape your friend’s pain into an emotionally empowering state. You will need to emotionally lift-up another person from their destructive state. Being focused on personal development and bringing out the best in yourself everyday, means you are faced with these mood challenges.

Reframing minimizes the likelihood of becoming a carrier of a dangerous emotional virus, while a technique I call “emotional-leveling” helps you to prevent people from remaining carriers of destructive emotions. The emotional-leveling technique firstly adjusts your emotions to reflect the other person’s harmful emotions, followed by slowly raising your emotions – and simultaneously their emotions – until the person reaches your desired level.

To decontaminate harmful emotions in other people with the emotional-leveling technique, you firstly connect at their level. This is opposite to immediately imposing a positive state on someone in a negative state. If the person is aggressive or depressed, you should not reciprocate their aggression or depression, but have a lower emotional level to build empathy and help them feel more understood. Verbally fighting back at a person isn’t going to do anyone any good.

For an aggressive person, if they are walking around, you should also be walking around. If they are talking fast, you should also talk at a fast rate. For a depressed person, you can show you are also feeling depressed without really developing depression. Be slower in your movements, speak softer, and have similar facial expressions as the person. Your goal is to enter their state without escalating the problem.

Once you have connected at the person’s level, begin to raise your emotional state. Make a joke or use a reframe on the situation. Because you are in the person’s emotional state, your reframe will not be rejected! If you were happy and told an unhappy person who recently experienced a break-up that they should lighten-up because their break-up is not that serious, they will reject your reframe and hate you. On the other hand – and this is where the power of emotional-leveling comes in – if you are also unhappy after talking with and listening to the person such that the person knows you share the same emotional state with them, they will accept a reframe like, “I see now that break-ups are a part of life. It’s not like everyone stays with one partner for their entire life.”

Being at a person’s destructive emotional level allows you to bring them out of their emotional hole. Instead of reaching down to pull them out of their emotional hole – only to have them reject your assistance – you are jumping in the hole and letting them stand on your shoulders to climb out.

Combining the reframing technique and the emotional-leveling technique will have you in control of your own emotions and thoughts, as well as helping other people get in control of their emotions and thoughts. These two techniques are great for bringing out the best in people, but they should only be a sample of an array of conflict management techniques in your communication bag. Having these skills will help you remove emotions you do not want infecting your relationships.

Knowing how to decontaminate poor emotions in your relationships will give pathway to positive emotions. Effective communication skills will present you with a profound ability to further destroy poor emotions in your relationships. Adjusting your body language and words to empathize with the other person and using other effective communication techniques is a great way to improve the emotional outbreaks that damage your relationships.

Emotional contagion is a fascinating topic. You can make it work for you instead of being a victim of it everyday. Interact with people that you want to be like. Make other people’s mirror neurons come to mimic your rising state and their biology will force them to become like you. Do the same for yourself and you’ll be more happier. Once you know how to adjust yourself to fit the person’s state and use powerful reframes, you’ll be well on your way to mastering emotions for better relationships and happiness. When you do this, you’ll be amazed at your control over emotions and thoughts. It will seem like magic.

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