Emotions, whether positive or negative, can be transmitted and we can end up “infecting” those around us. In the past I made reference to a curious study carried out at the universities of Chicago, California and Harvard where it was found that having a friend who suffers from loneliness can make us feel lonelier, so that loneliness is contagious .
Now I bring up another study carried out by researchers at the University of Notre Dame in which it was found that surrounding yourself with positive people helps cure depression and vice versa.
Is depression contagious?
The research was carried out with 103 couples of university students who shared a flat and were in their first year. After the first month of stay, they were asked to complete a questionnaire in which their levels of cognitive vulnerability and depressive symptoms were assessed. Three and six months later, everyone filled out this questionnaire again.
Thus, it was observed that when a very vulnerable person shared space with another person who had depressive symptoms, the probabilities of the former’s level of depression increasing increased. In other words, if we have a certain predisposition to depression, sharing space with depressed people could trigger depressive symptoms in us. The interesting thing is that contagion occurs in just six months.
It is worth clarifying that “vulnerable person” is understood as someone who responds negatively to stressful situations and who tends to interpret phenomena as something beyond their control or as a reflection of their inability. These characteristics emerge during adolescence and are fully established in adulthood.
Why does contagion occur?
Emotional contagion is a change in our emotional state that occurs as a result of the emotions that others transmit to us, almost always extraverbally. Researchers have not yet provided a definitive explanation but the cause could be hidden in our mirror neurons, those that are responsible for detecting the emotions of the people around us and reproducing them in us. That way we are more empathetic, we are able to put ourselves in the place of the other because, in a certain way, we feel the same. Obviously, a person who is cognitively vulnerable will be more quickly influenced by the emotions of others and will put up less resistance to them.
There is also a positive contagion
The good news is that when a person who was already showing the first depressive symptoms shared an apartment with someone who showed positive and self-confident attitudes, depression rates tended to decrease. An effect that began to be noticed after three months of living together.
Reference:
Haeffel, GJ & Hames, JL (2013) Cognitive Vulnerability to Depression Can Be Contagious. Clinical Psychological Science; 2(1).
