How Body Language Secretly Transmits Our Feelings to Others

Why is it that when we watch a funny or sad movie with others, we feel the emotions more intensely than watching the same film alone? It’s because of the emotional contagion process.

Our faces, voices, and bodies constantly emit subtle nonverbal cues of the emotions we are feeling. A smile or chuckle is an obvious sign of happiness. Still, many other body language cues are more subtle and often consciously imperceptible to others – the slumped shoulders of sadness, the slowed speech rate, and sad voice tone.

We captured this emotional contagion process in a laboratory many years ago. Participants were recruited for a psychology experiment, arriving in groups of three.

Some weeks before, we measured each of the participants on their emotional expressiveness, which is their ability to display nonverbal emotional cues. We ensured that each group had a highly expressive individual and two rated moderate to low on emotional expressiveness. When they arrived, participants completed mood scales that measured their emotional states.

We then told them that the experiment was running late and put them in a waiting area. The waiting area had three desks arranged in a circle facing one another. They were instructed to sit quietly and not talk to each other while we prepared the experimental room. Just three minutes later, we had them again complete the mood scales, and the experiment was, to their surprise, over.

We found this: The expressive individuals – the good “senders” of body language cues of emotion – arrived in a variety of moods. It is interesting to note that emotional expressiveness is a key element of “charisma.” Some were upbeat, others a bit anxious about the experiment, and some rated that they were terribly bored. We then examined the other two individuals’ mood scales. We found that the emotions of the non-expressive participants converged, over time, to be consistent with the emotions the expressive group member was experiencing. In short, the expressive person was able to “infect” the others’ moods.

This process of emotional contagion was first discussed more than a century ago to understand better why some crowds may suddenly get violent or fearful (for example, when someone shouts “fire!” in a crowded movie theatre) and the entire crowd starts to be affected by the shared emotions.

You may notice this in your own life. A colleague or significant other is in a particular mood – upbeat or down – and it affects us. Or, we’re in a meeting, and suddenly the emotional tone of the meeting takes a turn, and everyone begins to feel it.

Therefore, the emotional contagion process can help us understand how a crowd, like the January 6, 2021 insurrectionists at the US Capitol, can turn from upset, to anger, to violence or how our spouse’s bad day brings us down.