The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Emotional contagion: When we were babies, we were highly
sensitive to the moods and emotions of our mother; her smiles elicited
our own, her anxiety made us tense. We evolved this high degree of
empathy to the emotions of the mother as a survival mechanism long
ago. Like all social animals, we are primed from an early age to sense
and pick up the emotions of others, particularly those close to us. This
is the third effect of the group on us—the contagiousness of emotions.
When we are alone, we are aware of our shifting moods, but the
moment we enter the group and feel the eyes of others upon us, we
become aware on unconscious levels of their moods and emotions,
which, if strong enough, can displace our own. In addition, among
those whom we feel comfortable and sense that we belong, we are less
defensive and more vulnerable to the contagious effect.
Certain emotions are more contagious than others, anxiety and fear
being the strongest of all. Among our ancestors, if one person sensed a
danger, it was important that others feel this as well. But in our present
environment, where the threats are less immediate, it is more like a
low-grade anxiety that passes quickly through the group, triggered by
possible or imagined dangers. Other highly contagious emotions are
joy and excitement, tiredness and apathy, and intense anger and
hatred. Desire is also highly contagious. If we see that others want to
possess something or follow some new trend, we are easily infected
with the same impulse.
All of these effects have a self-fulfilling dynamic: If three people are
feeling anxious, there must be a good reason for it. Now we become the
fourth, and it gains a reality that others find compelling. The more
people who feel it, the more others will catch it and the more intense it
becomes within us as individuals.
You can observe this in yourself by looking at your own emotions in
the moment and trying to decipher the effect others might have had on
them. Is the fear you are feeling related to something confronting you
in an immediate sense, or is it more secondhand, derived from what

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you have heard or sensed from others? Try to catch this as it occurs.
Discern which emotions are the most contagious for you, and how your
emotions shift with the various groups and subgroups you pass
through. Awareness of this gives you the power to control it.