after they walked over the berm suddenly all the fight was out of
me. I just didn’t feel like I wanted to do this anymore, at least not
this day. It must have been that way for everybody, because every-
body quit. We just stopped fighting.”This story depicts in dramatic fashion an emotional phenomenon that
takes place in everyday life. The dominance of one emotional state over an-
other is the result of intentionality. Intentionality is the tug-of-war that takes
place when two emotional states confront one another and one state wins
out. This is a component of the emotional contagiondiscussed in Chapter 8,
“The Viral Spiral of Emotion.” The resilience component I wish to dissect
here is how to dominate negative environments and situations with the
power of positive intent.
THE MOOD DANCE
A study of mood transfer (reported by Ellin Sullins, Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, April 1991) reported on the subtleties of transferring
one’s emotional state to another.*The study conducted an experiment in
which two volunteers filled out a checklist about their moods at the mo-
ment. After the volunteers completed their checklists, they were left to sit
and face one another silently for a two-minute period. After the two min-
utes, they were given a mood checklist again. What the volunteers did not
know was that they were paired on the basis of their degree of expressive-
ness. One volunteer was highly expressive while the other was deadpan. In
each case, the emotional state of the expressive individual was transferred
to the more passive individual.
This emotional transfer has been explained by some as an “uncon-
scious imitation of the emotions we see displayed in someone else.” Swedish
researcher Ulf Dimberg found that when people view a smiling or angry
face, their own faces show evidence (visible through electronic sensors) of
changing toward that mood.
Think of it as a “mood dance”—a synchrony and transmission of emo-
tional states—that takes place in every conversation. At the end of each con-
versation, this synchrony of mood becomes the measuring stick of whether
we felt the meeting went well or not.
Winning the Emotional Tugs-of-War / The Power of Positive Intent 127*Ellin Sullins, “Emotional Contagion Revisited: Effects of Social Comparison and
Expressive Style on Mood Convergence,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 17
(1991): 166–174.