Y’all know from a recent post that I love a good podcast. This week I listened to the Happiness Lab where Dr. Laurie Santos focused on emotional contagion.

Did you know that your emotions not only affect you, but also the people around you? Like a chain reaction if you express happiness, the people around you are likely to reflect that, contributing to other people’s happiness.

You’ve probably experienced this. If your spouse comes home from work stressed about something, you all of sudden experience stress. If your friend calls to tell you bad news like a death in the family you are sad. If you hear someone laughing you are more likely to laugh.

Yep, it’s kind of cool, but also kind of creepy.

We humans are social animals and we take cues from the people around us. We even do this with our behaviors, mimicking scratching our faces if a person near us scratches their face consistently.

I find this fascinating. But more than that, I find it fascinating that emotional contagion doesn’t just end with in-person interactions. Emotional contagion happens with writing too.

In one study Dr. Sanchez cited, a professor examined whether written communication impacted people’s emotions. Spoiler alert: it did. In another study, a professor partnered with Facebook to curate newsfeed content that included either less positive expressions for one group or less negative expressions for another group.

Guess what? The less positive expressions group ended up using less positive words than the other group when they wrote on their newsfeeds.

Wild right? Think about the weight that puts on our shoulders as writers. I’m not suggesting that you post only happy-go-lucky content and never dive into deep issues or the sadder parts of the human experience. If writing about some sad, deep stuff is your thing, you do you.

What I’m saying is we have immense power as writers. We are basically emotional wizards.

Again, I know we’ve all experienced this. We’ve laughed or cried while reading. We’ve experienced joy when our heroine finally accomplished her goal. We’ve thrown our book at the ground in anger (Wait, you haven’t done that? Maybe that’s just me). It’s why we love our favorite author. He or she made us feel something.

And perhaps that’s the whole point of writing. To share in the emotional experience of being human. To dive into another person’s world and story, so that we cultivate empathy. I don’t know about you, but I think that might just be the most powerful thing in the world. I think reading teaches us how to have compassion for the many different people who occupy this earth, for the many different people whose stories we get to experience.

So, if you are a writer friend of mine, keep doing what you’re doing because emotional contagion is real. Your words will impact someone. Maybe just one someone, but that’s enough to start a chain reaction. That’s enough to change the world.

See, I told you you were a powerful wizard.

Have you ever experienced emotional contagion?

Photos by Ylanite Koppens and Pixabay