How We React to a Jerk Like a Jerk
Principles of Emotion Interaction
Disappointment or discomfort seems like unfair treatment to toddlers. Refusing them something they want, disagreeing with them, or failing to make them more comfortable feels like utter rejection, stirring an impulse to strike back. They can only assert autonomy by saying, “Mine!” and “No!”
When disappointed or irritated, adults stuck in the Toddler brain react more or less the same way. Anything that precludes an easy “No!” response, such as the ambiguities of modern living, makes them feel mistreated. “How dare the world be uncertain and ambiguous!” They get resentful and regard their own unfair demands as justifiable reactions to an unfair world. Their identity veers toward the negative, that is, their reactivity tells them who they’re not, but they’re never quite sure of who they are. Below is an example from my first session with a new client, whom I’ll call “Jack.”
“I agreed to have my brother-in-law, whom I don’t like, move in with us, because my wife wanted it. I knew it wouldn’t work out, but I went along, just to keep the peace. Now I keep noticing things about him that irritate me. I mean, it’s one of those things where almost everything he does gets on my nerves. He snores, he doesn’t comb his hair right. He bangs things around, plays his music when I’m trying to read, that kind of crap. I swear that sometimes he’s trying to get on my nerves.” Jack started to put his hand on the side of his face, but decided to use it instead for a broad gesture to underscore his complaint.
“And his sense of humor bites. He gets an attitude just because I make jokes about guys not getting jobs. I mean, they’re funny jokes. This one I told was about this guy who’s getting interviewed for a job, and the person doing the interviewing asks him, ‘What’s this you put under disability?’ And the guy gets all defensive. ‘I put lazy. What worse disability is there for working?’ ”
I smiled a little, but not enough to satisfy him. Although it would have given us some rapport, reinforcing his sarcasm with a laugh would have been a poor therapeutic choice. Perceiving rejection in my lack of amusement, he protested, “I work hard. I shouldn’t have to put up with this crap in my own house. So I take it out on my wife—if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have to put up with him. She knew I didn’t want him there. She knew I just went along to keep the peace, because I didn’t want a big argument.” He grew quiet for a moment before admitting what he thought was a deep secret. “I’ll tell you, if something bad doesn’t happen to me, I’ll find a way to make it happen. That’s who I am.”
Having his brother-in-law move in turned out to be a bit more complicated than Jack imagined when he agreed to it. In the face of complexity, he reverted to Toddler brain negative identity (“No!”), obscuring his deeper value of love and support for his wife. His behavior at home became one long pout, with only two emotional states: resentment or numbness. To avoid feeling numb, he looked for things to resent, such as his brother-in-law’s snoring and choice of hair styles. Like so many of my clients, he sought out talk shows, political forums, and social issues that stirred his resentment or anger, just to feel more alive. The treatment for Jack, like most of my clients, was training him to access his Adult brain under stress. In the Adult brain, conviction, passion, and fidelity to deeper values make us feel more alive.
Not surprisingly, negative identity like Jack’s—and any adult who gets stuck in the Toddler brain—yields an excess of negative feelings. When they cannot regulate negative feelings internally, people tend to seek external regulation; someone else has to calm them down and cheer them up, as we do for toddlers. Failure to regulate one’s internal experience—be it digestion or emotions—raises the intensity of interactions. They’ll appear needy (if they need validation to feel okay) or like jerks (if they need to think they’re better than others to feel okay about themselves). With a fragile sense of self depending on the outcome, all interactions take on the form of, “I’m not okay unless you do what I want” (“Mine!”), to which the Toddler brain response will always be, “I’m not okay if I do what you want” (“No!”). The higher stakes placed on interactions increase the likelihood of staying stuck in the Toddler brain, as we react to the negative way that others react to us. If you react defensively when other people are defensive, where will that get you? If you react to a jerk like a jerk, what does that make you?
A sure way to get stuck in the Toddler brain is to want other people to regulate your negative emotions for you. You’ll almost always get a negative response, due to the irresistible force of two principles of emotion interaction: reciprocity and contagion.
Principle One: Emotion Reciprocity
“Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you” is more than a virtue; it’s the only way to have positive interactions. That’s because people tend to react in kind to the emotional states they encounter. Psychologists call this principle emotion reciprocity. Because most emotions are either positive, increasing the value of your experience, or negative, decreasing the value of your experience, emotion reciprocity goes both ways. If you approach a person—or a social animal, for that matter—with positive emotion, such as interest, curiosity, enjoyment, compassion, and so on, you’re likely to get a positive response. (Not always, of course; sometimes people respond negatively to positive gestures because they’re distracted, uncomfortable, tired, hungry, depressed, anxious, or stuck in the Toddler brain.) The other side of the reciprocity coin is called negative reactivity. If you approach someone negatively—with resentment, anger, demands, disrespect—you’re even more likely to get a negative response. On autopilot, people are especially negative when interrupted or uncomfortable, tired, hungry, depressed, or anxious. Sometimes folks are able to soar above negative gestures directed at them, as we’ll learn to do later in the book. But without deliberate effort in the Adult brain, emotion reciprocity rules.
Caring tends to prompt caring:
Anger creates power struggles:
And resentment breeds resentment:
This is certain to get a like response:
When in the Adult brain, we’re all smart enough to know that negative gestures rising from blame, denial, and avoidance are almost certain to make any interaction worse. But in the Toddler brain, negative reactions from others only reinforce perceptions of unfairness. Here’s an example that frequently occurs in couples just starting treatment. Typically one of them had read on the Internet or in self-help books, or learned from a previous therapist, certain “communication skills.” It would come so early in the session that they must have planned to say something like, “I don’t feel supported,” or “I feel judged.” They then feel abused by the inevitable negative response from their partners. They were bound to get a negative reaction because they were behaving negatively, despite the careful choice of “I statements.” They were still blaming; the subtext of such statements—what actually gets communicated—is, “You’re making me feel bad by judging me or not supporting me.” The negative reaction to their accusations only reinforced their perception of unfair treatment, making them feel like victims.
I chose this kind of example—“I feel judged; I don’t feel supported”—because it’s a common mistake. Adults in the Toddler brain are likely to confuse reporting or expressing a feeling with making a judgment about the intentions of others. Because we all have a right to our feelings, they seem to believe that putting their judgments in terms of feelings will seem less accusatory than stating what they think, as in, “I think you’re judging me and not supporting me.” Of course, it isn’t. Toddler brain blame often comes in the guise of adult-sounding phrases and “communication techniques.”
The coping mechanisms used to manage emotions are also subject to the principle of emotion reciprocity. Below is a matrix of the only possible interactions when both parties are in the Toddler brain.
Matrix of Toddler Brain Interactions
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You |
Other |
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Blame |
Blame |
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Blame |
Deny |
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Blame |
Avoid |
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Deny |
Blame |
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Deny |
Deny |
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Deny |
Avoid |
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Avoid |
Blame |
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Avoid |
Deny |
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Avoid |
Avoid |
The matrix shows why you go around in circles in Toddler brain interactions. The content of the interactions—whatever you’re trying to talk about—does not matter when the principle of emotion reciprocity is violated. Introducing “facts” or “evidence” will be construed as more blame, denial of responsibility, or avoidance of the real emotional issue, which is usually a devaluing, superior, or dismissive tone. Emotion reciprocity will nail you every time you fail to understand other people’s perspectives.
Always obscured in toddler coping mechanisms are the vulnerable emotions prompting their use. For example, “I’m sad” or “I’m ashamed” is more sympathetic than blame and more likely to invoke a sensitive response or at least a less defensive one.
Principle Two: Emotion Contagion
Did you ever think of how we know what they mean on the news when they say things like, “the mood of the nation,” or “the feel of the community,” or “you can feel the excitement in the air!” These metaphors make no literal sense. Yet we understand perfectly what they mean, thanks to our intuitive awareness of emotion contagion.
The principle of emotion contagion holds that emotions of two or more people converge and are passed from person to person in larger groups. Although we tend to think of them as purely internal phenomena, emotions are more contagious than any known virus and are transmitted subliminally to everyone in proximity. You’re probably aware of how the emotional states of family members affect you; it’s impossible to be happy when they’re down and almost impossible to ignore their “attitudes” without some degree of defensive resentment or numbness.
Emotion contagion works even when there is little or no affiliation. Even in a crowd of strangers, emotion contagion makes us feel what the rest of the group feels. Experiments show that we’re more likely to get impatient at a bus stop if other people are acting impatiently. But we’re more likely to wait calmly if others seem resigned to the fact that the bus is late. And it’s why the “electricity in the air” gets you excited at a sporting event or political rally, even if you were not particularly interested in the outcome, and you just went to be with a friend.
To understand the power of emotion contagion, you only have to consider its survival advantage. Sharing group emotions gives us multiple eyes, ears, and noses with which to sense danger and opportunity. Hence it’s common to all social animals—packs, herds, prides, and, in the case of early humans, tribes. When one member of the group becomes aggressive, frightened, or interested, the others do, too. Witnessing the fear or distress of another person in a group can easily invoke the same emotional state within us. Happy people at a party make us happy, caring people make us care, the interested attract our interest, and the bored bore us. We avoid those who carry chips on their shoulders and those who bring us down or make us anxious.
Like anything that affects emotional states, contagion greatly influences thinking. Opinion pollsters know that they get one set of responses to questions they ask of people in groups and another when they ask the same questions of individuals in private. It’s not that folks are lying when in a group or that they change their minds when they’re alone. It’s more accurate to say that, at least on some issues, they have different public and private minds, due to the influence of emotion contagion.
The principle of contagion also accounts for groupthink, which makes people apt to conform to the majority at a meeting or to act collectively against their own better judgment. The high-risk behavior of teen gangs occurs as emotion contagion spurs kids to move beyond, sometimes far beyond, their personal inhibitions into dangerous, cruel, or criminal behavior. Similarly, corporate and governmental scandals reveal how otherwise good people can get swept up in a frenzy that overrides their personal morality. Emotion contagion produces solidarity parades, protest marches, and, on the ugly side, “mob justice,” lynching, riots, and looting. On a less dramatic level, it gives us constantly changing fashions, cultural fads, and political correctness.
Negative Emotions Are More Contagious
Did you ever wonder why people are more likely to notice things that stir negative emotion than those that might invoke a positive response? I’m not talking about the “negative people” who constantly look for the possibility of a dark cloud somewhere amid silver linings. Everyone gives disproportional weight to the negative. Consider how much you think about positive experiences compared to negative. Which consumes more time and energy running through your mind?
Emotions have what psychologists call negative bias. Negative emotions get priority processing in the brain because they’re more important for immediate survival. They give us the instant adrenaline jolt we need to avoid snakes in the grass and fend off saber-toothed tigers, at the cost of noticing the beauty of our surroundings. Negative bias is why loss causes pain disproportionately to the joy of equivalent gain. Having a nice meal is enjoyable, but, in most cases, incomparable to the distress of missing a meal altogether. Finding $10,000 will be pleasant for a day or so; losing $10,000 can ruin a month. More poignantly, having a child is a joyous occasion (at least until fatigue sets in); losing a child takes a lifetime of recovery.
In relationships dominated by the Toddler brain, the negative bias of emotions makes it unlikely that I’ll notice all the things people do that benefit me; appreciation is the province of the Adult brain. But I’ll surely resent when they don’t do what I want. In family relationships, research shows that it typically requires at least five positive gestures to counterbalance one little negative remark.
Ironically, positive emotions are more important to long-term well-being. You’ll live longer and be healthier and happier if you experience considerably more positive emotions than negative ones. Life is better for those who are able to appreciate the beauty of the rolling meadow and the sun dappling the edges of surrounding trees, as long as they are able to notice the snake in the grass. We have to survive the moment to appreciate the world around us.
The negative bias of emotions profoundly affects emotion contagion. Even low-grade defensive/aggressive states like resentment spread relentlessly from person to person. If someone comes into work with resentment, by lunchtime everyone around that person is resentful. Aggressive drivers make other drivers aggressive. A hostile teenager ruins the family dinner, an impatient spouse makes TV viewing tense and unpleasant.
Emotional Pollution
The rapid, largely unconscious transmission of defensive or aggressive emotions such as resentment has created a kind of emotional pollution that keeps us locked in the Toddler brain. The psychological equivalent of litter and secondary smoke, emotional pollution is the display of defensive or aggressive emotions in the environment, in complete disregard of their adverse effects on others. The most casual contact with emotional polluters can make you feel ignored, defensive, impatient, self-righteous, sullen, or depressed, with no clue of the source of those feelings. If you encounter emotional pollution at work or on the street, you’re not likely to be so loving to your family when you get home but are likely to blame your negative feelings on them. If you get into it with your spouse or kids before you leave the house in the morning, you’re likely to drive aggressively or carelessly on the way to work and be in a sour mood once you arrive. Emotional pollution passes cubicle by cubicle throughout the workplace, car by car down the road, locker by locker in school, and room by room at home. Worst of all, if you’re exposed to enough emotional pollution, you’re bound to start spreading it yourself, unless you develop strong self-regulation skills: the ability to stay in the Adult brain amid a world of toddlers.
It’s easy to understand why an aggressive emotion like anger would be so contagious. Our brains are constantly scanning the environment for threats to safety, and anger is a way to warn others not to mess with you. But the vast contagion of a more defensive emotion like resentment might seem harder to fathom, until you consider its duration and inherent self-deception. Resentment lasts a long time relative to other emotional states, including anger, so it has more time to spread to more people. More important, we don’t conceal resentment as successfully as other emotions. Resentful people perceive no need to hide their resentment, as they might choose to do with their anger. That’s because resentment feels very different on the inside than it looks on the outside. To see what I mean, try this experiment, especially if it seems as if no one understands you or cares about what you think or how you feel, and you can’t figure out why.
The world does not see the unfairness, hurt, or betrayal you feel inside. It sees only the resentment you display, which seems unfriendly, rejecting, even mean. If you feel that nobody truly gets you or appreciates where you’re coming from, you may well be guilty of some form of emotional pollution that inevitably influences the way people react to you.
The hidden effects of emotional pollution can be more harmful to your well-being than taking in someone else’s cigarette smoke and more aesthetically disquieting than stepping over other people’s trash. Think of how much overreaction you see in the course of typical day—while driving, in stores, at work, at home, and in the media. I’m not talking about dramatic flare-ups. Think of the number of people you see who are not quite attuned to the moment and seem to bring emotion from somewhere else to the interaction you’re observing . . . and what you see is just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the effects of emotional pollution are unconscious, processed by the brain in thousandths of a second. For every overreaction you consciously perceive, there are thousands more subdued displays of negativity. These can be scowls, impatient grimaces, vacant stares or looks of disgust, superiority, impatience, resentment, anger, or intolerance—so subtle that you aren’t consciously aware of them or of how often your body and mind have to put up defenses against them. And here’s the really sad news: those very defenses—conditioned responses over time—are less likely to shield you from emotional polluters than to make you one of them.
If you’re around a resentful, angry, sarcastic, narcissistic, petty, vindictive person, you are likely to respond in kind, at least in your head. Unless you put up a conscious effort to stay in the Adult brain, they will make you almost as negative as they are. That much may not be surprising. The more alarming point is that you’re just as likely to respond in that same negative way to the next person you encounter, unless that person makes a special effort to be gracious to you. But if your well-being depends on other people making special efforts to be nice to you, in no time at all you’ll become powerless over how you feel, and as a result, behave more impulsively. You’ll become a reactaholic, with the experience of your life controlled by reactivity to emotional pollution in your environment.
One way to think of Toddler brain reactivity is resistance to the unconscious pull of emotional pollution. It can be obvious, as in, “I’m not putting up with your attitude!” Or it can be passive, like trying to ignore your spouse’s feelings. Once again, the aspect of Toddler brain reactivity that makes it difficult to see, let alone change, is its illusion of autonomy and free will. You think that you’re acting of your own volition, when you’re merely reacting to someone else. As long as you’re in the reactive mode of the Toddler brain, you’ll react to negativity with negativity, react to jerks like a jerk, react to abuse with abuse. The Toddler brain struggle for autonomy makes us slaves to emotion contagion and reciprocity.
All of this means that behavior motivated by the Toddler brain prompts others to react in kind and pass those reactions onto others. If someone says something disrespectful at work or if you encounter a jerk on the drive home, you’re not likely to be as nice to your kids as you might ordinarily be, and they are more likely to act out or try to ignore you in response. (More about this in Chapter 12.)
Person by person, we build a culture of toddlerhood and an Age of Entitlement.