#CONTAGIOUS OPTIMISM BOOK FREE#

In effect, you “catch” their anxiety and transfer it to others, who relay it back to you, in an almost unending circuit of negative emotion.Īnd while feelings are more contagious in person, they can still be transmitted online - and by email, phone, or any other ongoing remote interaction with other people. It’s easy to become infected by the negative emotions of coworkers, the newscaster you’re watching, friends on social media, or your family. When you have legitimate reason to worry, as we do now, you’re even more likely to be influenced by everyone else’s justifiable fear.

What happens next is also “infectious”: Through a variety of physiological and neurological processes, we actually feel the emotions we mimicked - and then act on them. It starts when we automatically mimic other people’s facial expressions, body language, tone of voice - which we’re hardwired to do from infancy.

Learning about that mechanism is key to dampening negative emotional contagion and making us feel a bit less frantic.Īs research has shown, we generally have little awareness of emotional contagion and its influence on our behavior. We’ve long known that panic spreads, but experts more recently have come to understand emotional contagion, the mechanism by which people’s emotions (positive or negative) “go viral” within groups, influencing our thoughts and actions. Stemming negative emotional contagion - and making positive emotions more infectious - will make us feel more prepared and in control during this frightening period. But experts in emotional intelligence also have something powerful to offer - a way to help us manage a different type of contagion that, if we let it run rampant, will only make things worse. While medical and public health leaders are working as hard as they can to control the spread of the novel coronavirus, we of course listen to and heed their advice. And it doesn’t necessarily feel short-term. We aren’t sure what will happen to us, our livelihoods, our families. And with good reason: Things are uncertain. Everyone you seem to know on social media is scared. To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter.

#CONTAGIOUS OPTIMISM BOOK FREE#

In these difficult times, we’ve made a number of our coronavirus articles free for all readers.

Contagious optimism book