Social Elevation
Emotional Contagion Theory
Feelings are airborne.
Grounded in the research on emotional contagion
the gist
Emotions spread between people. You automatically mimic others’ expressions, posture and tone, and that feedback makes you actually feel a version of their emotion — you catch moods like a cold.
the science
Mapped by Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo and Richard Rapson. The mechanism is mimicry-plus-feedback: you unconsciously copy a face, and copying it nudges your own state. A controversial 2014 Facebook study even showed it spreads through text feeds — no face required.