Spreading Moods

Kathryn Britton at Positive Psychology News Daily discusses the importance of sharing positive moods to improve task performance.

clipped from pos-psych.com Social Contagion: Spiral Up or Spiral Down? Kathryn Britton, MAPP, CPC, former software engineer, is a certified professional coach working with professionals to increase well-being, energy, and meaning in their lives. Visit Theano Coaching. She is writing about her experiences as a Positive Organization Advisor within a very large corporation. She recently started a blog, Reflections on Positive Psychology. Full bio. Social contagion is a term for moods spreading from person to person. We are physically constructed to make this possible. We pick up emotions from others not just because we see and interpret them rationally, but also because we experience them directly in the firing of our mirror neurons. This ability to mirror other’s experiences in our own brains leaves us open to social contagion in either upward or downward spirals. In the workplace, this is important because our moods contribute to our task performance.