Some may sometimes feel happy or sad without knowing the reason, and this may happen after browsing social networking sites, such as “Facebook, Twitter and Instagram”, or after making a phone call to a friend, and this is called emotional infection, which is when we see someone expressing a feeling What we are affected by and then feel the same sense of sadness or happiness.

Social psychologist, Dr. Elaine Hatfield, spoke about emotional contagion and how a person is affected by the feelings of others, as she explained that there are three steps to contagion of feelings, such as talking to a friend who feels happy, the first step in transmission of infection, is his imitation, such as imitating the body language of a friend or His facial expressions or his sitting position, and the second step is to imitate the reaction, and the last stage is infection, feeling the same feeling as a friend, whether happiness or sadness, according to the British newspaper “Metro” website.

Causes of emotional contagion

Emotional infection spread, during this period, because we browsed social media for a long time during the day, with reading news of the epidemic and some expressions of anxiety due to the emerging corona virus, with many people losing their jobs around the world, and the browser is affected by this daily news.

Tips to avoid emotional infection

Determine the source of feelings

When a person feels happy or sad without a clear reason, he should pay attention and determine the source of this feeling, by talking honestly with himself, to find out the real reason behind this feeling, which makes it easier to know the cause of this feeling.

Notice emotional triggers

When determining the source of feelings, stimuli can be avoided, for example, if a person is sure that his feeling of frustration or despair is caused by following one of his friends or some pages on the social media, in this case he must unfollow.

Being influenced by the feelings of others

watch yourself

An emotional person, who is affected by the words he reads from various publications on social media, must read them as information and not consider them as threats to him.

Get rid of emotional infection

A person cannot prevent himself from being affected by the feelings of others, but he can learn how to control his feelings, such as practicing breathing exercises that help him overcome his negative feelings.

Being influenced by others’ feelings on social media

Take responsibility

A person must remember that whenever he is affected by the feelings of others, he may also be a source of transmission of infection to others, so he must review every word before writing it on his pages on social networking sites, and in the case of feeling the desire to be rejected, he can talk to one of his friends about his feeling Or he talks to himself and gets rid of his negative feelings in his own way.