Emotional Contagion Spreads Madness—What Can We Do About It?

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In my opinion, emotional contagion is the strongest power known to humankind. Emotions move and flow among people and groups. We absorb others’ emotions. If there were no emotional contagion, then love would not move between people and we would be severely diminished and unhappy. The opposite is also true: When negative emotions swirl, it affects everyone in society.

Purple abstract image

“Emotional contagion” is the technical term for an experience we’ve all had—at its simplest, it includes feeling happy when those around you are smiling and laughing, and feeling sad when someone around you is crying. Emotional contagion has been established in the psychological literature, and the neurobiology of the effect is beginning to be understood; mirror neurons have been established as biological moderators of emotion. Mirror neurons allow us to easily pick up and absorb emotions that we see in others and feel them ourselves.

Bob Avenson describes this effect well, writing, “The mirror neurons activate the areas of the brain associated with the emotion of the speaker, thus conjuring up the emotion as if the receiver were experiencing it naturally.” People are often not even aware they are absorbing others’ emotions.

Consider the many traumatic situations that have played out on ceaselessly on our TV screens, in our newspapers, and on our phones and tablets without respite: The January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol that left us frightened for the future of our democracy; the coronavirus pandemic that left us feeling scared and isolated; the videos of police murdering Black people which led to a summer of protests against racist brutality; floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and fears that climate change will soon lead to an unlivable world; and worsening economic inequality and poverty that left many struggling just to survive.

And consider the news reports that police have pepper-sprayed, body-slammed, choked, and arrested adolescents and children, and put an 8-year-old in handcuffs, and that police have, over the past five years, killed more than 400 drivers who were not wielding a gun or knife and were not under pursuit, and 5,000 civilians overall. And, of course, younger people grew up with the terrorist attack of 9/11 (and the following years of terrorism paranoia) as a formative moment in their childhoods.

The emotions that churn, spread and are absorbed through emotional contagion from these episodes are momentous, and leave a strong residue of turmoil amongst the populace. This swirl of strong negative emotions seems to have been spiraling and seeping into the psyche of America and the Western world for years. And wherever people absorb this massive influx of negative emotions, you will see the madness growing. An increase of conspiracy theories, delusional behavior, paranoid thinking, shootings, rioting and self-defeating behavior such as vaccination resistance are all signs of madness growing.

Alfred E. Neuman would be happy. We are indeed living in the age of madness. But this is real life. It is tragic and sad.

When we wonder why anxiety and depression are on the increase, we must ask ourselves whether contagious negative emotions flow in society, between people, in families, amongst people, amongst groups, in the media, through extreme, hyperbolic emotional language, as seen daily in the media. Hate and revenge seem to motivate people. Competition is heightened to a toxic level as people have even feared the break-up of America. Contagious negative emotions influence the politicians, the media, journalists, people in business, and, of course, the vulnerable public.

But few recognize the toxicity or even the presence of this, and most are unaware of principles of emotional regulation or unwilling or unable to put it into practice given the intensity of the emotional toxicity. In a “spiked” society overwrought with troubling emotions during the pandemic, people easily catch contagious negative emotions like fear, panic, cynicism, pessimism, suspicion, distrust, hate, alienation, demoralization, apathy, and depression. Conspiracy theories and delusional thinking abound.

These fearful emotions have triggered serious cognitive distortions and heightened the imbalance people feel. There may or may not be a chemical imbalance, but one thing is certain: Society is way off balance. Society is in turmoil. And this involves emotions. You can’t have turmoil without emotions. And people can’t expect to be in balance when society is out of balance.

The contagious effects of negative emotional and social contagion are invisible. Feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and lack of control are plentiful in society these days. Many people absorb it, to the detriment of society, producing quick, emotional reactions which are often destructive. Powerful contagious negative emotions circulate in political circles and in the media, as fear, worry, and distrust give way to psychopathology. Fights occur, arguments happen, relationships end, property is destroyed, and people are killed. Emotions don’t think and this is the result.

With social and emotional contagion, there are no bacteria and no viruses. There are no medical doctors, no police and no judges. It can’t be measured on a blood test, an X-ray or an MRI; it can’t be fined or sentenced to jail. Laws don’t stop it. Medical tests don’t pick it up. It can’t be arrested. It can’t be drugged. There is no medication for it.

Society certainly tries to use medication, by prescribing anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medication to settle emotional issues without addressing the social or psychological cause. Or by self-medication, through misused prescribed drugs like opioids, through alcohol or street drugs, tobacco or nicotine, or through over-the-counter vitamins, herbs and various mood enhancers, as well as collagens. None of these blocks, prevents or cures negative emotional and social contagion, the main culprit.

Learned helplessness is a phenomenon in which individuals learn that they lack behavioral control over environmental events. This, in turn, undermines their motivation to make attempts to reduce problematic situations, producing further dark, contagious emotions. Repeated exposure to uncontrollable stressors is thought to result in individuals failing to use any options for control or change that may be available, due to learned helplessness, likely resulting in depressive apathy and cynicism. Apathy becomes contagious.

This is one result of the population being psychologically unaware and turning to the biochemical solution, which is partial, incomplete treatment, lacking in humanity. The biological explanation of psychiatry teaches people that their brains are broken, that they can’t change on their own, that they must depend on drugs to live even the semblance of a normal life. Psychotherapy does the opposite, focusing on individual empowerment, teaching people that they are powerful agents for change in their own lives, boosting self-esteem, counteracting depression and anxiety.

Yet mental health professionals tend to ignore or overlook the powerful effect of emotional contagion in inducing the madness that many people now feel. Consider many psychiatrists, expecting that medications alone can somehow prevent depression and anxiety in this troubling environment, without addressing emotional contagion, without providing psychoeducation, without teaching emotional regulation, without teaching interpersonal effectiveness, indeed without a psychotherapeutic approach at all—this leads to the madness growing, to an end that looks like disaster.

Calling an emotional illness such as depression and anxiety a biological illness in a troubled, mad society is microscopic thinking, with the microscope focused on the bodies’ cells while toxic emotions swirl about us. It is like trying to remove the poison from the body while ignoring the fact the environment is poisoned with toxic substances that seep into the body regularly. This is pure madness.

There are many psychological, cognitive, emotional, and social solutions for depression and anxiety that could be invoked, but their importance is not being recognized by the naive biological psychiatrists who seem to think people are purely an organism. This removes the respect and dignity people need.

Medication has failed to relieve the distress. More and more biological psychiatry—to the point that by 2018, one in five Americans were taking a psychiatric drug—has only led to worse outcomes, not better. Suicide rates and disability due to mental health problems continue to rise higher every year.

If the biological approach were as successful as some claim, this wouldn’t be true. If medical treatments for cancer, diabetes or other illnesses resulted in a worse epidemic of that illness, they would be quickly discontinued. When a condition is worsening, becoming an epidemic despite almost 70 years of well-established treatment for it, despite the fact that one in five are being treated, and yet it still grows, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this so-called treatment is ineffective—yet psychiatry still hasn’t.

At the same time, psychotherapy is difficult to access. It may also be unappealing to many people since many perceive that it puts the blame on the person without focusing on society’s madness. But in psychotherapy, where people experience being cared for unconditionally and with authenticity by the psychotherapist, there is the potential for positive emotional contagion—contagion of the feelings of connectedness, gratitude, love. There is rarely positive emotional contagion when the mental health professional sees their job as writing a prescription for medication, and, if there is, it is likely because of their belief that medication is the necessary treatment component, in the same way that a physician may be loving and caring when they set a broken bone.

We need a therapy for society as well as increased access to effective psychotherapy for individuals. It needs to be in the mainstream of popular literature, rather than as a sideshow. We need a psychological inoculation.

The turmoil cannot be medicated away, and the balance produced by satisfactory healthy levels of individual empowerment and respect cannot restored by medication. There is no medication for respect. People are off balance because society is off balance. But because of the domination of the biological approach in psychiatry, a balance cannot be restored.

This balance would involve trust, harmony, respect, and a humanizing, insightful, sharing affirming conversation that would produce empowerment. That’s the goal of psychotherapy. And the lack of this results in a dehumanizing, depersonalized consequence, where people are treated without sensitivity, to the detriment of society.

How Can We Heal Society?

We can work on healing society. Knowing that there is no medication for respect, we can provide it to the population only in a psychotherapeutic manner. It is not truly psychotherapy in the classical definition of the term; it is just human decency, which by itself is therapeutic. It starts with increasing cooperation and reducing competition.

The problem is that society is an abstract entity, and we need to start with smaller portions. The best place to start is with ourselves. This means we need to control how we react to stimuli from society. Lowering pessimism and cynicism are ways to do this. Realizing that there is no enemy, but another person with a different approach is a good place to start.

But we have to give ourselves permission to do so. We need to trust this process, but how can we trust if we are cynical and pessimistic, since we may think we are surrendering to negativity? It becomes a vicious cycle we need to break with gradual approximation of successes and feelings of control. We build it up slowly until it becomes contagious. We treat society by this gradual build-up of positive emotional contagion coupled with responsible behavior.

We need to expand the approaches used in psychotherapy to also apply to society. Treating each other with respect is a good place to start. This means realizing that there are no enemies, and each part or organization in society is likely to add something valuable.

We have to realize that psychotropic medication can be helpful for many people. As a (retired) clinical psychologist, people often asked me if I am for or against medication. I tell them that we all have bodies, and we all have minds, and we need to treat both. So medication is good, and psychotherapy is good, but different people need different portions of each. Medication includes nutrition and some people do not need pharmacological agents regularly, but we all need nutrition because we all have bodies. Both are essential, since we all need to be aware of what we put into our bodies and ensure it is healthy, and we all need to make sure that we keep our mind healthy.

We do this by the way we think and how we handle feelings that we receive from others, as well as how we handle feelings that come from our thoughts. This is why we need to think effectively, rationally and wisely, as well as process and manage our feelings effectively. This includes managing emotional contagion. Our mind allows whether we can do this or not and we need to take charge of this by developing an internal gatekeeper. Keeping calm and handling incoming emotions without letting them get up worked up is a good start because when our emotions get worked up, we get less rational and may show some disrespect, make some unwise decisions or act irresponsibly.

The problem here is that society itself does not offer much in the way of either on its own. Advertisements put the consumer last in the way of respect and well-being and the consumer’s money first. We are bombarded with logos, sounds, brands, jingles, colors and shapes daily, all trying to sell us something. Society does this to us. We may not like it but it is real.

Radical acceptance means we need to accept what we may not like but which we have little power to change. We can work at changing it gradually and, in the case of advertisements, if we are aware that we accept the message in ads when we are on automatic pilot and are likely not to if we are aware of why they take a certain approach, then we invoke our defensive strategy, like a football or basketball team does when their fans yell “de-fense.”

So we can work at slowly affecting change in society by watching how we spend or do not spend money and ensuring that we are not responding automatically to the logos, sounds, brands, jingles, colors and shapes which all put us into automatic mode.

We all need to take care of our bodies, and can do it is many ways, as long as they are safe. To be holistic, we also need to take care of our minds, and by doing so we know that we are also taking care of our bodies. Our minds and bodies work together. It is not either-or. Lowering the “either-or” approach is a start. We as people are not commodities, not data, and not organisms. Many may see us in that reductionistic way. Any way in which we can humanize us and treat each other with respect is a way to start.

Healing of society needs to include the media. There are shows like Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil that will either use medical approaches to treat diseases or psychological approaches to help people with emotional or relationship problems. But that is not sufficient. This is the “medical model” treating disease. There need to be regular shows on TV and media presenting the positives, the successes, occasions where police are constructive and helpful, where respect, kindness and effective endeavors are used in dealing with people who engage in criminal behavior, and therapy-like group meetings with members of the public focusing on such matters to clarify misconceptions.

There needs to be a focus on overcoming cynicism, pessimism, and disillusionment, with various techniques used. Call-in shows where these situations and topics would be discussed with professionals trained in relevant therapeutic techniques need to be used. In short, a focus on positive psychology rather than on the negative stance used buy the media which attracts viewers, and which in turn attracts advertisers. Fewer reality shows with vulnerable people who are laughed at will occur, raising respect and with it the mood.

Instead of presenting society’s problems with drama and color and tension, the media needs to do so in a factual, stable, level manner, showing the exceptions to the problems, highlighting the occasions of success, discussing the likely causes of the situation, without highlighting the issues with tension and drama.

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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15 COMMENTS

  1. An interesting topical article! I am glad to see that the author is against ‘drugging’ and the current dreadful trend of “biological psychiatry”. And I agree that the answer is an individual one. I am coming from a Jungian perspective: Jung believed that only the single individual could effect change in societies. What the author has stated here about “emotional contagion”, Jung would call a “collective shadow”. We all, according to Jung, have a Shadow–undesirable traits that we prefer to ignore and repress, since we like to be seen as good rather than the complex self that we really are. When our shadow is not faced and acknowledged, we tend to ‘project’ our undesirable characteristics onto others. A whole group or society is also capable of this and we all know of corrupt leaders that have used a group shadow to their advantage: it is the fault of the ‘other nations’, never ours. And so, the answer can only be the difficult challenge of individual change–one person at a time who will eventually spread his/her understanding to others by example. We need to look inward instead of focussing our attention on popular social movements and messages.

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  2. How to heal a society. This is a large question that requires all of us.

    What I do know is this.

    We are relational creatures, and need to be a part of something bigger than ourselves
    Since we are physical in nature, we need to have a physical space we occupy that is ours.
    We are creative and as a result need to be contributing something positive that is tangible.

    If we lack these things, we are likely to be mentally unbalanced.

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  3. In these times where people are being scared witless by the fear porn of there being a contagion alleged to be a virus causing Covid 19, and as you may know, governments, like in the UK, have actually employed teams of psychologists to make sure people KEEP fearful (and there is evidence for what I say here), why do you not mention this in your article, and call the spreading of emotions like love a contagion?

    We also cannot be reduced to ‘mirror neurons’ when we feel others. It is better to understand this as both physical AND spiritual.

    “And wherever people absorb this massive influx of negative emotions, you will see the madness growing. An increase of conspiracy theories…” I would immediately ask you here what you mean by that term ‘conspiracy theories’? As you may know this is a weaponized term by the CIA whose main purpose is for people not to question official narratives, This is very important to look into, because IF these official narratives are intended to cause, increase, and maintain fear, then questioning them would resolve the fear. it would resolve a fear based on ignore~ance

    “We need to expand the approaches used in psychotherapy to also apply to society. Treating each other with respect is a good place to start. This means realizing that there are no enemies, and each part or organization in society is likely to add something valuable.” I would say there very MUCH is an enemy, and that is the one who has been totally causing relentless fear in people worldwide, and forcing them to take injections which have harmed and killed thousands! And faced with this genocide, the so-called experts of this society, the doctors, for example, mostly deny any harm being done to victims caused by the injections and will even tell them they have mental illness!!

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  4. Perhaps we should accept it no? Perhaps it is very much part of what makes a society work? After all, don’t we look at others and think that they are not being, or living or thinking in the right way?
    Radical acceptance is really only good as a suggestion and not something someone else should do. Is it up to me to tell someone to accept what they cannot change? Then really, how could there ever be change at all.

    Not everyone is natural to life as a stoic.

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    • Kind and too kind are two kinds of kindness.

      We must strive to be kind but hesitate to be too kind. The warm hand and the cold boot.

      Acceptance and radical acceptance are two kinds of acceptance. If we were all to radically accept, then the cold boot would dominate. All totalitarian regimes stand as lived examples of widescale radical acceptance.

      Acceptance is enough, but can be more than enough. In fact, it is more than enough, in most examples. This is why only very relatively miniscule numbers of people are engaged in efforts towards active and actual social change and most people do not accept them, they resist them, maybe even radically resist them.

      Radical resistance to social change.

      What we need is heaps more radical unacceptance. Even a little bit of plain old simple unacceptance would be enough.

      I accept the things I cannot change because it makes life much easier for me and change is hard, maybe the hardest of all. Also, what about my creature comforts and the decadent lifestyle habits I’m dependent upon for my sanity?

      Give me convenience or give me death.

      “People are off balance because society is off balance.”

      People are off balance because people are off balance. THis includes psychotherapists. They are also off balance, all of them. Every society throughout all of time demonstrates how off balance people were at that time. And all of them were off balance. Why doesn’t society find balance? Because people don’t have a balance to achieve. Soon as anyone, without exception, considers themselves to have found balance (putting aside the alarming personal biases and delusions that could even lead to such a conclusion) they will be jolted and tossed and thrown asunder by the random, the unforseen, the unaccounatable, the unimaginable, the horrible, the unforgiveable, the lamentable, the ridiculous and absurd. And so on. It’s a long list. Very, very long indeed.

      What we need way more than synthetic relationships are organic (what a word!) relationships, real, actual, non-monetised, non-codified, non-manipulative (or openly manipulative, who can say?) human relationships.

      But not rightwing ones. They are not authentic.

      They must be Green and Marxist, Eco-Marxist, Eco-Left. And they must be real and genuine, so they must also be beautifully and honestly pessimistic, and deeply, honourably cynical, and unfashionably, wonderfully rude and antagonistic, impatient, impertinent, derogatory and foul-mouthed.

      Otherwise, why bother?

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      • I agree with you right up to the statement about Green and Marxist, Eco-Marxist, Eco-Left. My observation is that the Marxists are no more grounded or real than the rightwing they hate.

        An ancient teaching is that “you become who you hate”. The solutions being offered by this group simply do not work. I speak as someone who uses green energy systems, and has an ecological trust protecting our natural environment. I also speak as someone who has devoted much of my life to serving the poor.

        If you really want to solve these issues, you first need to listen. Listen to the poor, listen to the guy who fixes your plumbing, listen to the waitress who serves you coffee. They don’t talk about Marx. They talk about their kids school, and how to keep the water on.

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        • “If you really want to solve these issues, you first need to listen. Listen to the poor, listen to the guy who fixes your plumbing, listen to the waitress who serves you coffee. ”

          The guy who fixes my plumbing blames the non-white migrants for everything. Mention Marx, he’ll punch your lights out. The waitress who serves me coffee spends all of her spare time taking photos of herself, editing them, and then uploading them to Instagram. Mention Marx, she’ll ask you for his social media details. What the alienated people want more than anything, is more of the same, forever. They want to increase their spending power, so they can consume more. They want tokenistic solutions to ecological disaster, like planting a few trees and putting their discarded fast fashions into plastic bags for men in white vans to take away. They do not want to fundamentally change the system, because that would mean fundamentally changing themselves, maybe even finding themselves for the first time in their lives. I do not wish to listen to these people. It is time for them to shut their mouths. It is time for them to listen.

          But, there are plumbers who are fighting back against their alienation, waitresses and housewives who are seeing that direct action is the only way. They are joining with radical Eco-Marxist groups to bring the fight to the billionaires and the globalists that are destroying them, their communities and the planet and keeping people in ignorance with endless and pointless distractions.

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          • You missed the point. Try really listening to the plumber. Hear the fear, hear the displacement, hear the anger at not feeling valued. Why does the plumber feel afraid, displaced, unvalued. Start by acknowledging the plumbers fear, displacement, and being unvalued and let it unfold from there. The plumber does not want to talk about Marx (and if the plumber is from Eastern Europe they might just tell you why they don’t want to talk about Marx)

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  5. Well this does explain the mass minds so prevalent today. Related is the work, When Prophecy Fails. It is old but still valid. What do doomsday groups do when they are proven wrong? They gather together and shout their falsehoods more loudly.

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  6. @John1963

    It doesn’t matter how far you sink your trembling head into that bucket of excrement, you will come out stinking of excrement.

    As I said, it is time for these bullyboys and these numbskulls to shut up and join up with their local Eco-Marxist revolutionary Co-op, and fight for the very air that they breathe.

    Individualists of the world disunite.

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  7. Maybe if people weren’t at war against me, if every narrative wasn’t twisted and poisoned to the extent where unarmed protestors surrounded by a lethal military force hand-picked to exclude any possible sympathy, asking for their vote to be counted fairly, who then left peacefully, is an “insurrection.” Maybe I’d have less negative emotions toward the people involved in that war and those narratives? Maybe I’d be a little more interested in listening if you didn’t pretend I was the root of all evil in the world. You can’t call for reason and rationality while committing genocide.

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    • It would be fascinating for you to point to the time when you believe the world was non-mad, or not “gone mad” or not “going mad”.

      As far as I can tell, the world has never been anything but mad. Utterly insane. And the places and peoples that are most insistent and at turns supercilious about their non-madness compared to all others turn out to be, under closer inspection, the maddest of them all.

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