Are Feelings Contagious?
Feeling are one of the main things that make humanity. Feelings are one of the main entries to our logic system and we decide upon them. But are they contagious? I don’t think any one is in doubt about the answer, of course feeling are contagious! This is very important to know, as I said we decide upon them and therefore one can change our decision by changing our feelings. Actually that happens a lot in any society. If you are in doubt, watch the following clip (turn on your speakers), if you don’t start smiling, there might be something wrong with you!! I hope they don’t remove the link from YouTube.
But how are feelings created in the first place? I’ve come upon two sources, one is the so called Energy that people give out of themselves, which when reached to a second person, will effect them and the other source is simply what happens around a person. Let’s discuss them further:
People’s Energy
What is this energy? Does it exist or it is just human mind in imagination? I am an engineer and due to the nature of my interests I’ve been exposed to science deeper than average and like to think that I have a logical and scientific mind. I know there are mind boggling facts about the science itself and there is still so much to learn. There is so much complexity to the world that nothing is impossible to me anymore. Therefore I’m sure there is much more than meet the eyes in our universe.
The effect of this energy is not a proven or measured thing that could convince me, in spite of some claims. It might not be even energy, but something else. Of course there is so much electromagnetic energy transferred by the human body that even scientists are working on them to understand and make use of them. But there is no proven effect of these energies on a second person, or at least I haven’t seen anything that I couldn’t explain otherwise. Things that you can’t explain naturally fall into your belief system and I believe that these things, super-natural or natural, exist and it’s just a mater of time until we figure out how they work.
Books written on these subjects are not close to the science we have now, although they try hard to make it scientific and that’s what makes them even less believable in my eyes. It feels like some writers just try to lure people into believing something using people’s lack of knowledge. I can much easier believe books which simply say they have experienced some thing and don’t try to bring reasons.
Anyway, this is how these energies are supposed to work: there are positive and negative energies, like all natural forces that come in pairs. A person with features such as a good, fresh, sharp, happy, smart or artistic attitude and so on with positive human capabilities emits positive energy. On the other hand a person with features such as a sad, unthankful, jealous, tired or evil attitude and etc. emits negative energy.
When positive energies reach a second person, they lift the person’s spirit, charge them, make them happy, hopeful and ready while negative energies bring a person down, make them sad, tired and negative. And this is why someone’s feeling can be contagious, they effect you without you even noticing, and this is theoretically independent to the distance.
Effects of the Environment
This source much easier describes things. A person has five senses by default, and a sixth sense that falls into unproven facts. These senses are human’s channels to the world. The five natural channels (eyes, ears, tong, skin and nose) simply collect the physical changes in the surrounding environment. These physical changes are light waves, sound waves, chemical properties of material or pressure. These are all signals that enter our sensors and turn into electrical signals that travel to the brain.
The brain is us! I mean these signals reach to our minds. From now on, it is our responsibility to interpret what we receive through our senses. Remember that what we receive are simply harmless electrical signals to our brain and if we get hurt, unhappy, angry, sad or on the other hand happy, relaxed or loved, that’s what our minds, which is ourselves, decide to do with those signals and information. A human has some defaults for how to react to human senses to create emotions. But I know that those defaults can change as everyone has the power to change themselves. I believe if these defaults are not kept updated and are not cared for, they can change uncontrollably and the out come can be anything depending on the environment a human lives in.
Considering that a majority of the information that we use to make our daily decisions come from what we interpret from our senses that turn into emotions or feelings, we must maintain and update how we feel and why we feel. That’s what makes a powerful person, a person that makes him or herself the way he/she wants. Making decisions is not the most important thing, how we make them is important. Nothing good comes out of a corrupted feeling system.
We must not turn off our feelings, but we must know that feelings have the tendency to some times bypass our better judgement, especially when they are very strong. What we must do is to block our feelings from directly going to our outputs and put them behind our decision making system (which is always a logic system) along with all other inputs and information for a healthy decision.
Let’s see an example: you are a lady walking in a shopping mall with your purse on. Somebody pulls your purse, you get surprised, you feel scared, you feel endangered, you react and slap the person in the face just to find out it was your best friend! Those feeling are your protective feelings and can be very useful in many cases. But you just let them out and result in embarrassment. They can only help you if you use them, not act upon them directly. In this case you discarded other information you already had, such as you were in a shopping mall with people around you that significantly reduces danger or risk of thieves.
The interpretation of the senses is what makes feelings contagious in most cases. You see someone happy, you become happy of their happiness, you see someone laughing and you start laughing. While it could be the matter of transferring energy, you must note that like the video clip you saw in the beginning, you don’t need a person to be emitting energy to start laughing, but seeing a clip and interpreting the happiness makes you happy and laugh.
This is something that Hollywood is expert at, the best movie is one that can strongly involve people’s feelings in the subject, and that’s by just watching some moving pictures and sound! Sometime I feel concerned how much my feelings can be effected!
July 25th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Hello,
Nice post. I watched the video and didn’t have any feelings, no smile or anything. I know I am totally fine. But there should be something wrong with yourself.
July 26th, 2007 at 1:58 am
Hi Dude
I watched the kid’s laughing, and I coudn’t stop laughing too, that means that my feeling woks fine, but i know that I am wrong or in other words False, what should I do then ?
You are a good writer man, It was veey nice and infomtive articel.
July 26th, 2007 at 2:32 am
Hi Kaveh, It means you are somewhat OK! For the rest refer to your psychiatrist! But I guess you are just wrong about being wrong!
July 26th, 2007 at 4:56 am
Nice one, again. And this time too, you bit me to it
About the sources of feelings… There is another one: “our thoughts”. It is very simple, when you think of a happy or sad moment of your life, you become happy or sad.
if you are in control of your thoughts, you can control your feelings too! This is a very powerful technique I came to realize in the past year… My mind, sometimes, gets out of hand and starts thinking things that would alter my mood (feelings) in a sec. Now I know the culprit, and as soon as I see it at work, I just stop it
July 26th, 2007 at 8:29 am
That’s very true Behnaz. I missed that source, and maybe some other sources. I have experienced such feelings too. Some times before seeing someone, I had thought about them, created my imaginary conflict with them and got angry and upset with them! And then I thought to myself what I was thinking! Those poor people hadn’t done anything to me and I was angry with them for no reason!!!
July 29th, 2007 at 7:13 am
It’s not just our feelings that are affected by outside sources and may
not be our true authentic feelings, we also each see the world through different points of view , what I see may be different from what you see
and who is to say which is real.
July 31st, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Mehdi, I think it would be of interest to you to read Jungian psychology. It would add good points to some of the things you mention in your article. In particular:
1- You mix the concept of SENSE and FEELING. The physical inputs that you mention enter our mind create our are senses, not feelings. Feelings are a judging/valuation process.
2- The feeling cognitive process has 5 levels, and your article mostly describes level 1 and 2:
“L1: When feelings do erupt, it is in unpredictable and uncontrollable outbursts of emotion, and they are experienced as intense and overwhelming. They threaten the ego with loss of control, and are considered dangerous and are typically avoided…”
“L2: At level two, feelings are experienced primarily as a wide range of ‘emotions’ (anger, lust, boredom, etc.) ‘triggered’ by outside objects. They are intermittent occurences, differing in intensity and nature. At this level, the existence of feeling is acknowledged and specific feelings are differentiated from one another….”
3- According to Jungian psychology, some people are ‘thinking’ types and some ‘feeling’ types. The feeling types themselves form two groups: those with ‘Introverted Feelings’ and ‘Extroverted Feelings’. In my experience people with feelings in their developed form are very rational people. Many of them are also the exact people who ‘glue’ other people together……..
***
I could go on and on….. but I think that before I go on, you should take the Jung typology test and find your own type and read about it a little:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm
(Tell us about the result. It will be a four level word with percentages).
– Hadi
July 31st, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Hi Hadi,
What you said is similar to what I said, meaning that feelings are the result of your judgement upon what you sense, or like I said the way you interpreter your senses results in how you feel.
I know about Jungian psychology and I have taken tests, my results are not completely conclusive, I’m either “INTJ”, “ENTJ” or “ENTP”. This method tried to make yourself known to yourself, so that you can treat yourself better for more successful outcome of your life. There is no problem with different types.
The problem is that everyone contains all kind of behaviour more or less, and this method shows how you are closer to either one. My results were different out of different ways of testing, because some of my behaviours go both ways depending on the situation. But at least I know my NT part is consistent in all, although their score is weak too.
The truth is that people change, and no matter what you are now, you can change type. One thing I like about myself is that I show a new type almost instantly! This helps me communicate with almost everyone easily. I guess that’s because my behaviour floats between the types!!
My opinion on psychology itself is that although it is helping a lot in many aspects, but there are unlimited unknowns in this science and the results you get from it are always preliminary. It specially tries to bring everything to the surface and to make calculations simple limits its inputs. That’s because many of the inputs are not accessible or scientifically credible, but it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I like to think it is a helpful science, but I always look at its results with doubt.