The Adult Brain in the Web of Emotion
Everything We Do Makes the World Better or Worse
We saw earlier how emotion contagion and reciprocity influence interactions among people. Unless we self-regulate, angry people make us angry, sad people make us sad, and irritable people make us irritable. Happy people tend to cheer us up, although reciprocity and contagion work less forcefully with the positive, due to the negative bias of emotions.
The principles of emotion interaction work on a more subtle level as well. All social animals, including humans, put out subtle emotional signals, most of which are outside conscious awareness. Like all social animals, we can pretty much feel when someone is putting out positive or negative emotional energy, even if he or she commits no overt behavior. Although we can’t tell what they’re thinking, we can read the emotional tone of most people with a fair degree of accuracy, whether they’re quiet, brooding, anxious, resentful, or shouting. How many times have you asked someone, “Is anything wrong?”
“No, nothing’s wrong,” was the response. You didn’t buy it because you felt there was something wrong.
Even when we consciously try to shut out our subtle sensing of one another, we retain our natural sensitivity to each other’s emotions. That’s why you feel different when you ignore your spouse compared to the way you feel when he or she is not in the room with you. It’s why you feel different when you’re the only one walking down the street compared to how you feel when the sidewalk is crowded with people, whom you try to ignore.
The Web of Emotion
Compelling evidence from a variety of scientific disciplines shows that we automatically and continuously synchronize with the facial expressions, voices, postures, movements, and emotional displays of others. This automatic emotional reactivity occurs in milliseconds and is thus well outside conscious awareness. The milliseconds our brains take to process emotional tone is much faster than the formulation of thoughts, beliefs, and values. That is to say, we react to emotional tones emitted by others that have little to do with who they really are as people, and so we do not see them.
Our innate sensitivity to one another’s emotional states derives from the social nature of the central nervous system. From the beginning of our time on this planet, humans lived in groups and tribes and communicated, in prelinguistic times, by transmission of emotions. We are very much social animals, hardwired to interact emotionally, in subtle yet profound ways, with everyone we encounter.
On a deep, visceral level, we continually draw small bits of energy from—and contribute small bits of energy to—a dynamic Web of Emotion that consists of everyone we interact with and everyone with whom they interact. Each person you pass on the street subtly reacts to you and vice versa. Everyone you pass by subtly influences each person he or she passes. In the Web of Emotion, you never react to just one person but to everyone that person has recently passed by, and your influence on them holds in a small way with everyone they will subsequently encounter. Whether we like it or not, we’re emotionally connected to virtually everyone we perceive. Our only choice is to make the connection positive or negative, to put out compassion or pick up resentment, to clean up emotional pollution or contribute to it.
Web Sensitivity
Try these three experiments to test your sensitivity to the Web of Emotion.
1. The next time you’re in a meeting or with a group of people, try to note the “feel” of the group, whether it’s subtly positive or negative.
2. Walk down a moderately busy sidewalk and note the emotional tone of passersby. Try to notice the subtle approach modes (friendliness), avoid modes (ignoring you), and attack modes (superior, devaluing, or looking down on others). You should notice that the vast majority of those you pass are in avoid modes, which you might experience as a slight chilliness or even rejection. Some will be in approach mode, and now and then you’ll find someone in attack mode. Note your reactions to each.
3. Try to influence the Web of Emotion. As you pass each person on the street, think that he or she is a valuable and important person. But you can’t just think positively; you have to feel in your heart that everyone you pass is a valuable person, worthy of respect and appreciation, and that every person is capable of love and compassion. (Appreciate that the vast majority of the people you see would share their last bit of water with a desperate child in a desert. This image creates a basic humanity connection with other people that helps you soar above.) Note your feeling after a block or two of doing this.
The Vast Contagion of the Web of Emotion
It takes some preparation, but the following is a fascinating experiment to try. With the secret cooperation of a friend, record a video of a group of five or more of your friends filling out a longish form. Don’t tell them why they’re doing it; just say it’s an experiment. (You probably have friends who will agree to do this for a lark. It really is fun.) After about ten minutes, your secret collaborator should display some very subtle signs of resentment. The goal is to bring out unconscious contagion, so it can’t be obvious. At regular intervals, a couple of minutes apart, your undercover friend should:
After about five more minutes, the people on either side of your secret plant will begin to do the same kind of behavior. Then the ones sitting next to those two will start. On average, this little joke gets 40 to 60 percent of the participants doing miniature displays of resentment as they fill out whatever forms you gave them.1
1 It’s not the length of the forms that causes the resentment; it’s the staged resentment of the secret collaborator. I’ve tried it without a plant, using the same forms, and found no signs of resentment.
Now here’s the kicker. When they’re finished with the forms, ask the friends who showed subtle resentment if they got a little irritated or resentful filling them out. Some will have no idea what you’re talking about. Others will claim to have felt nothing at all. They will be surprised when you show them the recording of their resentful behavior, which they had done completely outside their awareness.
Resentment is the most contagious state in the Web of Emotion, due to its subtlety. More overt displays of anger are repulsive, but resentment seeps in under the radar. Though often invisible, its contagious effects are everywhere.
General and Continuous
Even in its lowest grade of intensity, resentment is a general nervous system arousal. That means it generalizes itself; if you’re resentful at one person, you are less likely to be nice to another. Rather than a defense against a particular offense, resentment is a defensive system that is active much of the time, flowing continuously back and forth from work to home. If your spouse says something you don’t like as you’re leaving the house, you’ll probably drive aggressively and be less pleasant to coworkers or schoolmates when you get to your destination. If something seems unfair at work or school, you’re likely to drive aggressively and not be as sweet to your kids when you get home. Or things can be going just fine at home and work, until a jerk on the road stirs resentment that washes into the other venues of your life, causing you to inject still more negative energy into the Web of Emotion. This happens to only a few of us all the time, but it happens to all of us some of the time.
Common Enemy Bonding
Resentment in the Web of Emotion facilitates a kind of social bonding called “common enemy.” People used to form emotional bonds by mutual values. We were more likely to care about one another if the same things were important to us. Examples are church, school, and professional communities. Today we are more likely to bond if we resent the same things: “You don’t like the president? I don’t either!” Now more than ever we subscribe to the proverb, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Common enemy bonding—us against them—is the most primitive, superficial, and weakest kind of emotional bonding. Toddlers do it on a miniature level in play groups. It emerges more strongly on playgrounds when one child is made an “out girl,” so that the others can bond over resentment of her. As children mature and begin to cluster in groups, one group will make outcasts of another, forming clubs, cliques, and gangs. The adage “Politics makes strange bedfellows” expresses the common enemy syndrome when otherwise incompatible factions join together in opposition to a policy or program. The Allies prevailed in World War II due to the unlikely union of capitalism and communism against a more loathsome common enemy.
Whether on the playground, in Congress, or on the world stage, common enemy bonding is sure to fall apart as soon as the external threat diminishes. If the school bully moves away, the union against him falls apart. We saw the Cold War envelop Europe as soon as the hot one ended. The ethnically diverse populations of the old Yugoslavia held together in part because of the Soviet threat. Once the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the people of various ethnic factions suddenly remembered how much they used to hate each other, even though most of them were not alive during earlier versions of those hostilities.
We occasionally try to use the common enemy effect to mobilize “attacks” on social, economic, and personal problems. Thus we’ve had various “wars” on drugs, poverty, crime, and inflation. The predictable failure of these efforts owes to the inability to extract blame from resentment. Sustained resentment at a common enemy requires demonization of persons, not abstract economic or social phenomena. So we retaliate against those who take drugs, suffer poverty, or commit crimes. We build more prisons, admonish the easiest scapegoats, and lose interest as soon as we can’t figure out who’s to blame for more complicated circumstances. Resentment in the Web of Emotion can lead only to the simplest and least appropriate solutions to complex social, economic, and political problems.
Beware of forming bonds with individuals or groups because you dislike the same people or resent the same things. The trick, once again, is to focus on what you are for rather than what you’re against. Say that an organization against domestic violence keeps its focus on everything that it devalues. Its members motivate themselves with anger and resentment, which they inevitably turn on one another. Such places are notorious for complaints, infighting, backstabbing, and sabotage; they are unpleasant places to work. Advocacy groups motivated by resentment tend to multiply like rabbits without increasing their membership. Disagreements within the groups splinter them into smaller and smaller units, competing with each other for media attention and community resources. The message of the cause becomes secondary to the competition for advancing it. But an organization for something—like safe, respectful relationships—keeps the focus on everything it values. Its members are motivated by passion for what is right—what they stand for—rather than resentment about what is wrong. Such organizations enjoy more cohesion and cooperation, and are simply more pleasant places to work. Bond over what you stand for, not what you’re against. The latter inevitably leads to resentment and aggression, which you’ll automatically transmit to others via the Web of Emotion.
Resentment and Aggression
Suppose you’re driving down the road at a baseline level of arousal, that is, with no resentment or anger of any kind. Suddenly an obnoxious event occurs, like someone flipping you the finger and shouting something about your mother as they speed by your car. If you’re at baseline to begin with, that might get you about 30 percent aroused, which is no big deal. Your response will likely get no worse than sarcasm; you’ll think, What a jerk, or maybe even shout something back at him. That kind of anger dissipates in a few minutes and is forgotten about completely within a couple of hours. You’re not likely to remember it ever happened.
But if you get into the car resentful about something going on at home or at work, you’re already about 20 to 30 percent aroused at the start. So that same obnoxious event isn’t hitting you at baseline. You’re starting out partially aroused and are more likely to reach a 60 to 70 percent arousal level. That’s where you begin to get aggressive, with a hair-trigger mechanism for escalation, should there be any negative response to your aggression. Add caffeine, anxiety, or a startle response to the mix, and the adrenaline can easily go through the roof. This kind of anger will stay with you in various degrees for the whole day, and you’ll get pissed every time you think of the incident.
Aggressive Driving in the Web of Emotion
My agency, CompassionPower, has offered court-ordered classes to people arrested for aggressive driving violations in Maryland and Virginia. Our work there has yielded evidence of the Web of Emotion at work on our roads and highways. By way of background, incidents of aggressive driving are more likely to occur if the driver is resentful about something. Of course, Toddler brain impulsivity and entitlement make aggressive drivers regard the road as theirs, giving them the “right” to drive any way they want. But there’s a more subtle aspect to the relationship of resentment with aggressive driving. Resentment is a low-grade form of anger. All anger prepares the organism for one purpose and one purpose only: to fight. The physical and mental changes that occur with resentment impair judgment and deteriorate fine motor skills; you’re more likely to be impulsive and do things like turn the wheel too hard when resentful. Your eyes dilate slightly, increasing peripheral vision at the cost of depth perception, because early human predators used to attack from the side, never from the front. In other words, you become less accurate at judging distances, which explains why so many resentful drivers tailgate and cut off other motorists; they’re actually closer than they perceive. Resentment degrades judgment and slows reaction time. Due to the increased blood flow to the muscles during any kind of anger arousal, you are likely to drive faster than normal. It doesn’t take much of an increase in blood flow to make the foot a little heavier on the gas.
If you doubt the effects of resentment on your driving, try this experiment. The next time you drive at the speed limit on the highway, try to think of some occurrence at work or home that stirs your resentment. Think about how unfair it is and how you deserve better treatment—how it should be this way or shouldn’t be that way. After a minute or so, look down at the speedometer. You’ll notice that you’re going fifteen to twenty miles per hour above the speed limit. If the traffic doesn’t allow so big an increase in speed, you are likely to be tailgating, with an impulse to change lanes abruptly.
All right, you get the picture that resentment can cause aggressive driving, but how does that prove the effects of the Web of Emotion? A survey of people who were court-ordered to take our aggressive driving course showed that nearly 80 percent of them were caught responding in kind to being cut off, tailgated, or screamed at by other drivers. Because it was done to them, they felt justified in doing it to someone else—a classic response of Toddler brain resentment.
There’s also a peculiar anonymity to driving. We respond emotionally to vehicles rather than anonymous drivers whom we can’t see through tinted windows or hear with our radios blaring. Because vehicles are not personal, you can play out your Toddler brain reactivity on any of them, not necessarily the one that offended you, much like a toddler pulling the ear of the dog because Mommy said “No” to a request for a cookie. So an SUV might cut you off, but you’re likely to tailgate or speed by the first car that gets in your way because it feels like you have the right. You were offended, damn it, why should you have to wait in line, too? Resentment makes you feel like a victim, which seems to justify almost any kind of lashing-out retaliation.
In regard to the Web of Emotion, the most aggressive behavior on the road is not cutting someone off or tailgating, although these are certainly dangerous things to do. In terms of the maximal effects, leaning on the horn when someone else drives badly is by far the most insidious. The loud noise of sustained horn blowing increases the arousal level of everyone near you, not just the jerk you want to punish. The jerk may have made you mad and more likely to drive aggressively, but you have done the same to every driver who was startled by your horn blast and every Toddler brain driver they pass down the road.
Wait, it gets worse. I was asked to develop an aggressive driving program a few years ago. I knew that the core of the program would be emotion regulation techniques based on core values, which I had developed for family violence offenders. Since we already had a large database of graduates of that program, I suggested that the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) analyze a sample of our graduates’ driving records. They randomly selected 300 graduates of those who were court-ordered to attend family violence classes. Their analysis uncovered a surprisingly strong link between aggressive driving and family violence. Fully two-thirds of the family violence offenders had multiple aggressive driving violations in the year before treatment. These are violations like tailgating, running red lights and stop signs, and unsafe lane changes—impossible to detect without the coincidental presence of a police officer. Yet the average number of convictions for these offenses by the family violence offenders was 3.4 in one year. By normal estimates of the number of infractions versus the number of times getting caught, these people were driving aggressively virtually all the time. Of course, some of the resentment that fueled their aggression started at home and went onto the road, but since most of the infractions occurred in the afternoon rush hours, a lot of it was starting at work or on the road going home. A great many of the incidents of domestic violence and child abuse our clients reported started within an hour of arriving home from a stressful commute. The aggression these drivers bring home with them is exacerbated by the fact that so many of them reach for a drink or two or three once they get there, just to “unwind.”
Another finding in the Maryland MVA analysis that pertains to the Web of Emotion was that CompassionPower’s family violence intervention, which never mentioned driving, reduced these aggressive violations by 98 percent in the year following treatment. This was three times better than a matched group of drivers ordered into standard driver improvement classes, which focused on driving skill but did not address resentment, anger, or aggression. Our classes managed to greatly reduce aggressive driving by shrinking the baseline resentment levels of our clients. The classes spent a lot of time teaching emotion regulation skill, which helped clients shift from the Toddler brain to the Adult brain, where they were less likely to drive aggressively. Our graduates were not only driving less aggressively, they reported less resentment and strife at work, while 86 percent of them were free of violence one year following treatment, based on reports of the spouse or child victim’s social worker.
The good news here is that stricter enforcement of traffic laws, which require classes in impulse control and emotion regulation as a consequence of violations, may reduce family violence. Conversely, raising other people’s resentment on the road can lead to abuse in untold households. The great news is that being nice to the people you meet, even jerks on the road, may help prevent child abuse. By virtue of the Web of Emotion, we can protect the safety and well-being of every other driver on the road and that of their families and coworkers off the road.
Remember the mirror test in Chapter 4. The world does not see the unfairness, hurt, or betrayal you feel inside; it sees only your resentment, which seems unfriendly, rejecting, or even mean. In the Web of Emotion, other people react only to what they see on the outside. To change the way people react to you, you must change the way you feel, which means activating your core value motivation to improve, appreciate, connect, or protect whenever you feel resentful. The stakes couldn’t be higher. If you do not try to spread compassion and well-being in the Web of Emotion, you will most certainly let in streams of resentment, putting yourself and everyone you encounter on a path to misery.
The next chapter shows how to build a web of compassion, kindness, and love.