emotional essay

Emotions impact so much of our everyday life. On the other hand so does the emotions of other individuals. Let’s discuss the theory which proves that emotions are contagious and can be transferred from person to person. “Emotional contagion is a term psychologists use when emotions “spread” from person to person, influencing the moods and behaviors of others. We’ve all felt this shift.” (Polly Campbell Gaiam Life 2014) Campbell the writer for this article on Gaiam life gives a good example of what emotional contagion actually means. In layman’s terms it’s the transferring of feelings to an individual based on others feelings or reactions. I can remember feeling more determined and hopeful about my future educational goals as a nurse by reading other nursing students experience and school and learning about their experience. Beforehand I may have had emotions feeling overwhelmed and discouraged by the amount of education and dedication needed to complete my degree. However, by reading more and more on others experience and how they have seemed so optimistic and determined that caused me to change the way I felt. This indeed is an example of how emotions can be transferred from one person to the next. There are so many examples proven the theory that emotions are contagious. Howbeit true there is one example that is very prevalent to this generation and unconsciously effecting our emotions. It is the emotional contagion that transfers from person to person through social media. Mostly all people in the last few generations have at least one social media account. Could be twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. We obsessively check it multiple times a day and spend multiple hours on end scrolling through post after post that people have made. Interestingly enough is the fact that we don’t realize while reading peoples messages we tend to try and relate to their feelings. As a result our own emotions towards the topic ends up mimicking the individuals. Our chapter spent a little time discussing this issue however there has been multiple experiments conducted proven the matter to be true. Adam D. I. Kramer, Jamie E. Guillory, Jeffrey T. Hancock are researchers who conducted a study to test this theory. What they found to be true that emotions are transferred from person to person. “Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness” (Kramer, Guillory, Hancock Para 1). They noticed that when people viewed a news feed filled with positive emotional postings they ultimately exhibited positive emotions. Conversely, when they viewed a feed filled with negative emotional posts they began to feel negative emotions. “These results suggest that the emotions expressed by friends, via online social networks, influence our own moods, constituting, to our knowledge, the first experimental evidence for massive-scale emotional contagion via social networks (3, 7, 8), and providing support for previously contested claims that emotions spread via contagion through a network.” (Kramer, Guillory, Hancock Para 11) With that said one would want to be very cautious and aware of what they allow themselves to read on their news feed. You can’t control what others post however you can control what you allow yourself to absorb mentally. In addition try limiting the time spent on social media. The les time spent scrolling the less likely you will pick up any ill emotions. Although there is a lot of positive aura flowing through the media there is also a lot of negative emotions flowing through too. In a world where watching the news alone can cause one to feel depressed why add more stress to life by contracting someone else’s negative emotions?

References
1. Adam D. I. Kramer aCore Data Science Team, Facebook, Inc., Menlo Park, CA 94025; and

2. Jamie E. Guillory
Departments of bCommunication and

3. Jeffrey T. Hancock
Departments of bCommunication and cInformation Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
Polly Cambell Gaiam Life 2014

References: 1. Adam D. I. Kramer aCore Data Science Team, Facebook, Inc., Menlo Park, CA 94025; and 2. Jamie E. Guillory Departments of bCommunication and 3. Jeffrey T. Hancock Departments of bCommunication and cInformation Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 Polly Cambell Gaiam Life 2014