'I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.'
Walt Whitman, 'Song of Myself'

There was a time when my work obliged me to take quite a number of long-haul flights.

Despite the frequency of these trips, I remained something of an amateur: making the most of the superior meal and movie selection in Business Class; exploring the variety of options enabled by the adjustable seating; availing myself of the ample supplies of oaked chardonnay; and making myself cozy in the grey tracksuit pyjamas that Virgin gave passengers back in the day. Ideal!

Nonetheless, I always admired the professional travellers: the seasoned veterans that eschewed the fuss and finery; rejected the in-flight meal, entertainment and alcohol - and got straight to work.

I particularly recall being seated next to one such executive on a plane to Boston. He was a lean, suited man, who made no gesture of greeting on arrival. He carried one of those bulky lawyer’s briefcases that suggest seniority and seriousness.

After take-off he set out his paraphernalia for in-flight comfort, neatly arranging his unguents, earplugs and blindfold on his tray table. He refused food, donned his reading glasses and settled straight into a set of files, reports and spreadsheets, making authoritative notes in the margins.

After a good few hours of focused industry, my neighbour was satisfied. Having secured his documents in the overhead locker, he sat back, switched on a monitor, donned his headphones and poured himself a glass of water.

He then selected ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ from the movie menu and proceeded to cry profusely all the way through. Floods of tears poured down his cheeks, and he made no effort to stop them, to hide them or to mop them up. He just focused intently on Grant, MacDowell, Scott Thomas et al, lost in his own melancholy reverie.

Finding this all rather moving, I took another sip of oaked chardonnay and began to cry too. The mood was contagious.

'No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.'
Theodore Roosevelt

The Guardian recently had a piece about Emotional Contagion (24 Jan 2021).

This is the phenomenon whereby humans synchronise their emotions with those of others. Typically, we mimic our friends’ expressions and gestures. If someone smiles at us, we smile back, and the act of smiling improves our mood.

Emotional Contagion is found particularly to occur in people who are empathetic – those who feel a connection, read non-verbal clues and echo behaviour. Indeed, according to a 2011 study by scientists at the University of Southern California and Duke University, people who take a course of Botox are robbed of their ability to understand what others are feeling, because they are physically unable to copy their emotions.

You could argue that, as advertisers, we are in the business of Emotional Contagion. Our communication campaigns are not designed to convert every audience member directly and independently. Rather we create a positive predisposition in the few that becomes, in time, a positive predisposition of the many. We catalyse an emotional response to a brand that others share and distribute. We prompt infectious affection.

It’s one of the reasons mass media are an important part of the advertiser’s armoury.

But we should be wary of the power at our disposal.

A 2014 study by Facebook demonstrated that Emotional Contagion could occur even without personal interaction. Researchers - somewhat controversially - manipulated the emotional content of 700,000 users’ newsfeeds and found that those who had been exposed to negative content tended to share more negative posts with others.

More recently, scientists from the universities of Oxford and Birmingham have concluded that young people are particularly inclined to ‘catch’ moods from each other – and that bad moods spread with greater virulence among them.

The phenomenon of Emotional Contagion reaffirms the need for brands and communication agencies to adhere to ethical practices; to use their power responsibly; to be a force for good in people’s lives.

In this social media age, this Age of Anxiety, we should also encourage mental toughness in our friends, colleagues and consumers; and be mindful that empathetic people require that resilience more than most.

When the flight landed in Boston, my neighbour and I went our separate ways without exchanging a word or glance. I had assumed at the outset, from his cool demeanour and serious disposition, that we had little in common. But when we parted I felt we had formed an emotional bond – albeit one established around a sentimental Britflick.

'Baby, baby, when I look at you
I get a warm feeling inside.
There's something about the things you do
That keeps me satisfied.
I wouldn't lie to you, baby,
It's mainly a physical thing.
This feeling that I got for you, baby,
It makes me wanna sing.
I feel for you.
I think I love you.’

Chaka Khan, ‘I Feel for You’ (L D Anthony / D Andrea)

No. 326