Sharing Emotions is a Powerful Way to Communicate

At the beginning of every semester I tend to have a few students who are so nervous when they present that they make me feel nervous. Research suggests why this happens.

Emotions can be contagious. Researchers have found that anxious mothers can unintentionally pass along their anxiety to their children. And it turns out you don’t even need to be in the same room as another person to transfer emotions. Studies have also shown that social media posts can transmit emotions across networks.  

Sharing emotions is a powerful way to communicate. When I survey my students and professionals, many say that they are more easily persuaded by logic than emotion. Focusing exclusively on logic, however, overlooks what makes us human.

Here’s how emotional contagion works:

1. You express an emotion when you communicate.

2. Your audience’s attention becomes focused in the same direction.

3. Your brain and your audience’s brain synchronize to create a similar psychological state.

4. Your audience processes the information in a similar manner to you.  

All of this happens really fast, before anyone consciously evaluates what they are seeing or hearing. 

Emotions are reactions to external events and internal thoughts. Other than choosing your environment, you cannot control external events, but you can control your internal thoughts. If you feel excited about making a case for something you believe in, your audience is more likely to feel excited. If you are anxious, your audience is more likely to feel anxious too. 

As you prepare your next presentation, choose the emotion you want your audience to feel. Here are some ways to express your emotions so others can sense them.

• Name what you are feeling. Use a specific label like curious, concerned, hopeful, committed, optimistic, or determined. Research in affect labeling suggests that naming what you are feeling will help you regulate it and express it more intentionally, which makes it easier for your audience to sense that emotion. 

• Decide how you want your audience to feel. Ask yourself what emotional state would help them engage with your message. Should they feel confident about a recommendation, attentive to a risk, or energized about an opportunity? 

• Choose verbal cues that match the emotion. Energizing emotions often come through concise sentences and active verbs. Concern or urgency often comes through contrast and direct statements. 

• Align your nonverbal cues. Your vocal tone, facial expressions, posture, and rate of speaking should reinforce the emotion you intend to share. Emotional mismatch can confuse audiences. Emotional alignment creates clarity.

• Rehearse the emotional tone along with the content. Many presenters rehearse what they plan to say, but those committed to expressing emotions with intention will also practice using the emotional tone they want their audience to experience.

As you think about your next presentation, remember that your audience will feel something in response to you. When you are not intentional, they may absorb emotions you never meant to share, including your own anxiety. Choosing an emotion helps you communicate in a way that supports your message rather than working against it.

Sources

Aktar, E., Majdandžić, M., de Vente, W., & Bögels, S. M. (2013). The interplay between expressed parental anxiety and infant behavioural inhibition predicts infant avoidance in a social referencing paradigm. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(2), 144-156. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2012.02601.x 

Kramer, A. D., Guillory, J. E., & Hancock, J. T. (2014). Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(24), 8788-8790. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1320040111

Hasson, U., Ghazanfar, A. A., Galantucci, B., Garrod, S., & Keysers, C. (2012). Brain-to-brain coupling as a mechanism for shared communication and cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16, 114-121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2011.12.007 

Lieberman, Matthew D., Naomi I. Eisenberger, Molly J. Crockett, Sabrina M. Tom, Jennifer H. Pfeifer, and Baldwin M. Way. "Putting feelings into words." Psychological science 18, no. 5 (2007): 421-428. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x