Emotional Receptivity: Hearing What Is Not Said
Imagine that you are having a drink on a terrace with some friends and that one of them suddenly starts laughing out loud and can’t stop. His/her laughter gets louder, until eventually everyone at the table starts laughing too, without knowing exactly why. The laughter is infectious.
We can give another example of contagious feelings : in a nursery full of children, one of the children starts to cry uncontrollably. Almost immediately afterwards the other children look at him and they also start to cry louder and louder, as if they have been invited to a festival of tears.
We transfer our moods to others in a truly magical way. Emotions are contagious and our emotional state can change surprisingly quickly. We are constantly sending out these emotional messages, usually in a very subtle way, with varying degrees of intensity, and in conscious and unconscious ways.
People who are able to control their emotions well are the most pleasant. These are people who put us at ease and make us feel good, even when they just said hello and smiled kindly at us.
It has been proven that when we interact with others and pick up on their emotional state of mind, our musculature adopts the same attitude as the person we are talking to. This means that when someone smiles subtly during a normal conversation, we also tend to smile.
According to psychologist John Cacioppo, during a conversation we often tend to unconsciously look for a connection with our conversation partner, so that we can synchronize our own state of mind with his/hers.
Ultimately, it is a collective composition in which the harmonies formed by the melody depend on how we adjust our movements, how we approach or isolate ourselves and how we adjust our posture. Continuing with this musical metaphor, we can say that when the notes are more in tune, the unit will be more balanced and express as much as how many positive or negative moods are received. For example, if our partner is sad or irritable for weeks on end, then regardless of our own mood, we will at some point feel a similar sadness or irritability to our partner.
In addition, the more dedication and connection there is between two people, the better the synchronization will be. Researchers like Cacioppo argue that the ability to show each other that you understand each other is one of the most important factors for a successful and successful relationship.
The people we perceive as strong are the people who are able to identify the moods of others or impose their own moods on others. When someone is able to motivate someone else, it is because they have managed to match the tone in which they speak.
The fact that we are all so inextricably linked is one of the most admirable aspects of our human nature. It seems that more and more explanations for this can be found in science and in recent years it has been found that these explanations are centered in the mirror neurons. These neurons are brain cells whose purpose is to reflect the activity we observe and, for example, make us yawn ourselves when we see someone else yawning.
As Peter F. Drucker concludes, “True empathetic listeners can hear what is being said in silence. In communication, it is especially important to listen to what someone is not saying. ”
–Image courtesy of Ellerslie–
