Is a Bad Mood Contagious?

 

Have you noticed how the emotional tenor of the workplace has become more negative? There are many reasons for this. People feel overwhelmed with too much to accomplish and think about, leading to a constant sense of never being done. There’s also significant stress in society, with political tension and financial pressures contributing to negative emotions in the workplace. The problem is that we know emotions are highly contagious.

When we’re around people in a mood, whether positive or negative, we can pick it up through what’s called emotional contagion, which is why protecting yourself from the bad moods of those around you is super important.

What can you do to protect yourself? Let’s talk about things you can do to inoculate against emotional contagion and bad moods, things you can do in the moment to reduce the transfer, and then things you can do to cure it if you’ve picked up a mood from somebody else.

Innoculate Yourself Against a Bad Mood

How do you inoculate yourself or prevent and make yourself a little more immune to negative emotions?

1. Invest in Your Energy

When our energy is low because we haven’t slept, eaten properly, or processed our own issues, our self-regulation suffers. We become less aware of the moods we’re picking up from others and less able to recover from negative influences. The best way to protect yourself against bad moods around you is to invest in your resilience, both at work and at home.

For example, I remember having two teenage girls in the house, and I needed to invest in my self-regulation. On the days I didn’t, it was awful! You could feel their moods coming and had no control over picking them up. But on days when I invested in my resilience and felt high energy, I could sit beside their emotions and watch them happen without the same infectious effect.

2. Work on Mindfulness

The way emotional contagion works is fascinating. Early science believed that when someone near us feels an emotion, they convey it through body language, gestures, and tone—a very physical expression. Through mirror neurons, we, as social creatures, mimic their furrowed brows, pinched faces, and slumped shoulders. Our brains interpret this body language as, “Oh, we must feel bad.” This multi-step process is why practicing mindfulness is the second tip for inoculating yourself against negative moods.

Whether through meditation or mindfulness practice, many great apps and resources can help you improve. The benefit of these different options is that they increase our awareness of physical sensations in our bodies. You start noticing when your palms get sweaty, your face scrunches up, or you wear your shoulders as earrings. Remember, their emotion turns into their body language, which turns into our body language and then our feelings. By noticing these signs before our brain interprets them as stress, we can interrupt the process. So anything that makes you more in tune with the physical sensations of your body will make you immune from that emotional contagion effect.

Reduce the Transfer of Emotional Contagion in the Moment

What about in the moment? For example, I’m standing beside somebody who is highly infectious with negative mood. How do I make it less likely they will transfer their negative mood to me?

1. Name What You’re Seeing

The first step is to name what you’re seeing. Remember, in the transfer, emotion goes from someone else’s body language and gestures to yours. If you can back it up and say, “Oh, I see they’re talking quickly,” or ” Wow, I notice they’re breathing shallowly,” you can name it. By doing so, you have the chance to interrupt it before it affects your body language. This is really interesting.

2. Become a Sleuth

Next, become a sleuth. We want to interrupt the automatic subconscious emotional story that’s happening. By engaging our intellectual side and asking, “Hmm, what might be going on for them? What could this be about?” we can make it a more analytical exchange. This approach helps protect us from picking up that emotional state in the same way.

3. Ask for Their Help

Another counterintuitive but effective strategy is to ask for their help. Research shows that offering help makes us more empathetic and kinder to ourselves. So, if someone is in a bad mood or not feeling well, try flipping it on its head and ask for assistance with something manageable. You might say, “I’m struggling with this,” or, “I don’t know how to approach this.” When they help you, your body language becomes more positive in response, and this positive body language can help improve their mood and make them kinder to themselves. It may not be your first instinct; you probably want to say, “Just get me out of here,” but if you can find something genuine and authentic to ask for help on, that may turn the tide of their mood.

4. Create Distance

If nothing else works, then you probably want to create some distance. It sounds like I mean physically, and maybe physically, but more importantly, I mean creating emotional distance.

We’re more susceptible to emotional contagion from people we have much in common with or identify with. If someone at work is upset or frustrated and telling you all about why this is horrible and you’re doomed and whatever else, creating emotional distance can help. For example, you might remind yourself, “This person has a different manager than I do, and I have a different relationship and a more positive experience, so I have a reason to feel emotionally different than they do.” Or, “They have three kids under five at home, which is a lot to deal with, while I got eight hours of sleep last night.” This perspective helps maintain emotional separation.

Create a little distance, not to other them, but to empathize with them, while also recognizing that you can have a different experience, narrative, or perspective about the same situation due to your unique circumstances or because they’re different from you.

Cures for Emotional Infection

You can do four things in the moment to reduce the transfer of negative emotions. But what if you realize, “Oh, no, I’m fully infected. Now I’m feeling deflated.” You might need some cures.

1. Change That Feeling

One thing you can do to recover from that is interrupt. Emotions are subconscious and automatic—they happen quickly, and we often lack control over them. However, what we perceive as emotions are actually feelings, which are emotions processed through our past experiences, biases, and stories we tell ourselves. What you can do is recognize that just because you’ve caught someone’s negative emotion doesn’t mean you have to take on their narrative, which may not be a good narrative.

Okay, what’s another approach?

Ask yourself: What’s another explanation for how I’m feeling? What can I do to change how I’m feeling? It’s important to recognize that emotions and feelings aren’t the same. Emotions simply exist, but we make them bigger, badder, and scarier by attaching elaborate stories, typically with an unreliable narrator in our heads. By interrupting this process, we gain the ability to select a different course of action, which is really helpful.

2. Sync With Someone Else

If you’ve been infected by negative emotions and you need to restore a neutral or positive mood, another thing is to sync with someone or something else. Emotional contagion isn’t solely negative; it can absolutely be a positive emotional experience as well. Who could you find to sync with? Who could you talk with and say, “Hey, I just had a really rough conversation, and I could really use some cheering up. Can we reminisce about something, or can you tell me about something I have to look forward to?” Even just being around their positive body language, gestures, and tone can help shift your mood towards something more positive.

Of course, it may be a thing if there’s not a person. Music is an incredibly effective option. I have a playlist of songs that I can’t be grumpy to, and I put on one of those, and I’m like, okay, I’m good.

If you’ve synced with somebody who is in a negative mood, you can re-sync to someone or something else to disconnect from that negative emotion.

3. Limit Your Exposure

The last thing is to intentionally limit your exposure. We have to have empathy for people with depression or mental health issues, but if someone is in a rough state for a prolonged period, it’s really important to take care of yourself. You won’t help them if you get pulled into that despair. So, what are the things you can do to limit your exposure and sync with other people more frequently? Be deliberate about syncing with others more often. Pay attention to when you engage with them or spend time together: it’s essential to do so when your own resilience is strong. Recognize there are days or moments when your resilience might be low, and during those times, it’s important to limit your exposure.

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As humans, we naturally catch the emotional states of those around us. We can influence how likely we are to pick up the emotional state of others by investing in our resilience and becoming more mindful and aware of our bodies. In the moment, we can limit exposure by being more aware and labeling what we see in terms of body language, being more intellectual about it, and creating some emotional distance from it. We can also recover when we’ve been through it. Just knowing and being aware that you can catch emotions like you can catch a virus means that you need to practice good emotional hygiene just like you would everything else.

More On This

Strategies for Managing Emotional Contagion for a Healthier Team Dynamic

Why Your Message Might be Misinterpreted

How to Deal with Someone Who is Not Self-aware

Video: 4 Tips for Managing Your Emotions at Work

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