Emotional Turmoil in Society Caused by Emotional Contagion

American adults as a group are enduring excess panic, anxiety and stress recently. Stress is not just an individual occurrence happening to some individuals, families and workplaces. It has hit most of us. The annual Stress in America survey conducted by the American Psychological Association in February and March of 2022, says that “The vast majority of adults (87%) agreed it feels like there has been a constant stream of crises over the last two years, and more than seven in 10 (73%) said they are overwhelmed by the number of crises facing the world right now.”

The survey says that inflation has been a source of stress for 87% of people, and global uncertainty related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a source of stress for 80%. This is on top of the global pandemic, in which 58% of people still feel in 2022 that the pandemic is a daily stressor.

In addition, it is likely that a certain number of people are distressed by climate change. Many people, including 139 elected officials in the 117th congress, are climate change deniers, according to American Progress[1].

The number of deaths in the U.S. from Covid-19 has exceeded one million.[2] The Pew Research Centre said that about six in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (59%) in the US said the virus was a major threat to the U.S. population, compared with only a third of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents.[3] So even the topic of the pandemic, as opposed to the pandemic itself, has caused real distress for many people who worry about whether it is real, whether the vaccine is safe, and whether to wear masks or not. A large number of people have denied that the pandemic was really caused by a virus. A large trucker convoy took over downtown Ottawa, the capital of Canada, for three weeks, in February 2022, protesting a vaccine mandate.

Emotions are near the surface of social consciousness. Pew says that the U.S.’s political fractures in 2022 are reflected in near-daily disputes over mask and vaccine rules. And thorny new societal problems have emerged, including alarming increases in murder and fatal drug overdose rates, which may be linked to the upheaval caused by the pandemic.[4] And now the topic of abortion is again shaking up America. When emotions hit the surface, their mere presence can invite new emotions to arise from other people about other topics. When people sense that emotions are running high, their own emotions run high as a result.

People’s emotions often boil over, especially when differences in social and political issues occur. When emotions are too high, they can cause turmoil and unhealthy divisiveness. When there’s turmoil, hostility, alienation, and divisiveness, even violence can occur. Friends go their own ways. Relationships, families and marriages break up. CNBC reports arguments over Covid rules and restrictions, disagreements over whether children should be vaccinated, and even disputes between families and friends over the very existence of the virus have led to family breakups and marital conflicts.[5]

So times have changed. This trend, in my opinion, reflects significant emotional turmoil, produced by emotional and social contagion, running through society in the past few years. The focus here is on how to talk about political and social issues while keeping emotions and feelings manageable.

In my book, Emotions Don't Think: Emotional Contagion in a Time of Turmoil, I discuss how this appears to be related to emotional contagion and how people can work at overcoming it to lower the turmoil. Findings from laboratory research regarding emotional contagion can be meaningfully generalized to controversial events in society, especially in times of turmoil that we have experienced in the past few years. Many emotions have been synchronized with the emotional state of others during human interaction in society in the last number of years, especially in contentious crowds such as protests, riots, marches, convoys, and political rallies. People dress similarly and appear to mimic each other’s movements and phrases, conditions ripe for emotional contagion.

One of the problems is that simple messages are conveyed in the implicit emotions people express. Emotions emerge quickly, with distorted thoughts, and give simple messages that seem to be attached to the emotion. This is affective realism. The emotion makes the thought or the belief seem true. Lisa Feldman Barrett says that “affective realism, the phenomenon that you experience what you believe,” gives us “body-[budgeting] predictions laden with affect, not logic or reason, [that are] the main drivers of [our] experience and behaviour.” [6] She says when you hear some news that you immediately believe, that is affective realism. In other words, it feels real because of the realism emotion brings. It keeps you believing something even when the evidence makes it highly doubtful. Simple messages provided by emotion can give a label to something, prompting you to automatically move to where the label points you, probably because it feels good. So people may join a political movement, without thinking critically. This may include protests, convoys, riots, etc., in those predisposed to take part in such activities. Affective realism is one of the serious problems causing the emotional and political turmoil of our times, because many people easily believe political messages, which come laden with affect, such as anger, which is appealing to many people. It is hard to block the affect, and the anger can drive much behavior.

And yet people don’t talk much about how to handle their emotions when political and social issues are discussed. We need to discuss the emotions to handle the turmoil. Emotions are fluid and hard to manage. We don’t have to change our opinion about issues, but it would be good to explore ways to not let strong opinions that others have make us so emotional. It is best not to let emotions destroy your relationship, which as we know is easy to do in a time of turmoil.

Recent research by Cowen et al [7] shows that the voice is an “extraordinarily rich” and pervasive medium that conveys emotion. When others speak about controversial social or political issues, they often do so with negative emotion, implicit in the voice, ie. it is present but not expressed in an obvious, outward manner. The impact of the emotions from the other person conveyed implicitly in the gestures, voice or wording when they make a statement seems to be what produces divisiveness. For example, negative contagious emotions like skepticism, anger, suspicion, or worse may be conveyed that way and people who receive the message may react emotionally as a result, arguing in a way that causes divisiveness and distrust. It is up to both parties to resist this by being aware of the negative contagious emotions and not falling prey to them.

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Emotional contagion seems to come more through auditory channels, such as the spoken word. As we become aware of these emotions in the other person or group, each one of us can do our part, by recognizing negative emotions as they come toward us from other people and realize that they are intended, subconsciously, to have an impact. Mlodinow [8] cites research showing that “while our conscious minds are busy thinking about the meaning of the words people utter, our unconscious is busy judging the speaker by other criteria, and the human voice connects with a receiver deep within the human brain, whether that voice comes from a human being or not.” He cited research by Nass to support his comments. He says students in a research experiment even “hesitated to criticize a computer to its face.”

We don’t have to absorb the emotion. Neither do we have to let our internal emotions about a topic arouse us to the degree that we start to engage in emotional thinking, which comes from “emotion mind.” This is often done subliminally, without awareness. Without blocking emotional contagion, the contagion can have the effect of captivating you. If you absorb the emotion you will be more easily persuaded by this person to agree with their ideas because the message tags along with the emotion. If you start to feel the same emotion they do, then the emotional contagion has had an impact. Awareness while living in the moment is the key to combatting it. Be aware of the effect of emotion in the speaker's voice.

When you feel emotion related to the ongoing anxiety and turmoil in society, don’t just let the emotion seep into you through emotional contagion. We can readily block this absorption so we don’t feel it inside ourselves, through the things we tell ourselves about what is happening. Question people's comments in your own mind as they speak. Don’t necessarily take the feeling in. For example, you could say to yourself, “This feeling is not mine,” followed by a more assertive “I don’t want it.” Or “This may not be as people think.” “What is another way to think about it?”

One way emotional contagion happens is through mimicry. If you block the emotion, you block or dull the message. To block the emotional contagion in these situations, as they speak, make sure you don’t mimic the other person’s style, posture, movements or phrasing. Don’t move your body the way they do and don’t use their phrases. Stop thinking these phrases, question them, ask yourself if they lack perspective. Don't make continuous eye contact with them.

Blocking emotional contagion happens through a combination of awareness of it happening as it happens, during ongoing emotional interchanges and constructive self-talk to direct your emotional experiences yourself.