Emotional contagion

Can we experience stress that doesn't originate with us? And could that stress matter for migraine? So the emotion we're going to focus on is stress, but it does apply to many other emotions such as anger, grief, etc.

So in psychology, there's a concept called emotional contagion, and it's going to describe how emotions can spread between people through facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, and social interaction.

So if you think about it, when someone smiles warmly at you, you often smile back without thinking.

And so when someone whispers nervously, you might become more alert.

And I find that one interesting, right? You might spend an entire day supporting a distressed friend, you hold yourself together, you listen, you help, you reassure them, and then you finally get home and everything becomes quiet.

And that's when the migraine begins.

Now this really research does not prove that absorbing another person's emotion causes migraine it involved a relatively small number of participants and the study examines changes in stress not emotional contagion specifically but it gives us an important clue your migraine may respond not only to the stressful experiences but also to the way your stress levels change over time and there's another important piece of the puzzle and that's the hidden cost of always being emotionally available there was a study published in headache the journal of head and face pain in 2023 And it examines the relationship between emotional processing, psychological adversity, and migraine.

And the researchers discussed how difficulties with emotional processing, particularly in people who have experienced adversity or trauma, may contribute to migraine burden.

And for you people on either one of them, you can find the other podcast just by searching for it.

But today we're going to talk about emotional contagion, how emotions spread between people, why your brain participates in it, and how you can influence the emotional atmosphere around you without allowing everybody else's mood to control your day and your mood.

Picture yourself walking into a restaurant on a Friday evening.

You've had a pretty good week, and you're hungry, and you're looking forward to this nice meal at whatever restaurant.

And you haven't changed.

But the emotional atmosphere has changed your experiences of that going out to dinner on a Friday evening.

We psychologists have a name for what you're experiencing, and it's called emotional contagion.

That just refers to the process that we go through when one person's emotions can influence the emotions of another person.

And for you people on either one of them, you can find the other podcast just by searching for it.

But today we're going to talk about emotional contagion, how emotions spread between people, why your brain participates in it, and how you can influence the emotional atmosphere around you without allowing everybody else's mood to control your day and your mood.

Picture yourself walking into a restaurant on a Friday evening.

You've had a pretty good week, and you're hungry, and you're looking forward to this nice meal at whatever restaurant.

And you haven't changed.

But the emotional atmosphere has changed your experiences of that going out to dinner on a Friday evening.

We psychologists have a name for what you're experiencing, and it's called emotional contagion.

That just refers to the process that we go through when one person's emotions can influence the emotions of another person.

Okay.

So let's talk about, and I think, again, you've talked about this on the podcast before, this thing called emotional contagion.

Okay.

So what impact does leadership behavior have in these situations? And can you sort of unpack that from an emotional perspective, Rich?

Yes.

So notice what happened in that situation there.

One of the chickens started to panic and then very quickly this emotional contagion happened and they all started to panic.

Now, as a leader, because of your role and position, we've talked in the past about the office and the role that you bring in to a situation.

Me versus me, baby.

Another one of your many gifts, Passion, which I'm not sure if you're aware of, but there's this thing called emotional contagion.

And it is when you walk into a room, when Passion walks into a room, you light up a room.

The people around you, their body language changes.

Because we have a team that's depending on you.

Right.

And while I didn't know the term emotional contagion, I do know that emotions are contagious.

Right.

Obviously, I think that was still on a scale where I was mostly delightful, surely.

But I think there's research around this sort of emotional contagion.

I think it was Bersard at Wharton that did a paper all about the ripple effect.

And she put business students into groups.

Today, the podcast will be delivered by myself, Dr. Gabby Caviedes and Anthony Alibro.

We will be talking about something called emotional contagion.

And I want to open the scene with a scenario where you walk in to your Monday morning meeting and you sit down in the room and you can immediately feel the tension.

You've got maybe your boss in there, maybe you've got the CFO sitting in there, some people who just have some really serious looks on their faces and the room just becomes quieter.

You kind of close off a little bit too.

And so what's happening here, this is really going to be the topic of our conversation today is When you walk into any room, when you interact in any situation, there's something occurring called emotional contagion.

And it's how the emotional experience of one person carries over to another.

So, Anthony, tee us up here for what we're really going to be talking about in relation to this.

And there's a name for how that energy affects other people in psychology.

It's called emotional contagion theory.

When we're bringing that positive energy to the day by wearing something uplifting, people unconsciously mimic that energy.

They mimic the expressions, the posture of others and the energy of those around them, which pulls their own mood in a certain direction, in that positive direction.

Perhaps a quiet engineer in a meeting disagrees strongly with the proposed solution but doesn't feel safe enough to challenge the program director.

Perhaps a team member whose performance has suddenly deteriorated deteriorated is dealing with the circumstances you know nothing about the emotionally intelligent leader becomes curious before becoming just mental and that matters because leadership depends heavily on information if people trust that they can tell you the truth particularly uncomfortable truth you have a much better chance of identifying problems early recent research has also connected leaders emotional behavior with psychological safety and team functioning even in virtual teams a 2026 study found that leaders emotional expressivity was associated with emotional contagion psychological safety and team output what about relationship management This brings us to the fourth capability.

Using all of this information to manage relationships effectively.

Leadership rarely happens in isolation.