My most recent page-turner is The Naked Brain, by Richard Restak, where I’ve been learning about the malleability of emotions. Did you know that when we look at another person’s face, we tend to unconsciously adopt the same expression? Not always, of course, but often enough to have a name: emotional contagion.

Haven’t we all experienced it? You’re having a moderate to not-so-hot day and you pass someone on the sidewalk who gives you one of those crinkly-eye smiles and all of a sudden you feel better inside. There’s a reason for that: Perceiving an emotion in someone else, like happiness, actually activates the same brain circuits used to generate those emotions. So if I perceive you being happy, my happiness circuits also start to fire.

Same with crankiness. If a person is particularly highly expressive, they can pass along their negative emotions to others without even saying a word! You know the people, and you try to avoid them—always with the bleak outlook, the seething anger, the angst, the stress, the despair. If you spend enough time with them, you start sharing those emotions.

All of us resonate to the emotions of others—some more so, some less so, but we all do it. Even infants: An experiment found that when a mother deliberately stops facially responding to her baby by showing a neutral face during feeding, immediately the baby turns fussy and looks away. Researchers speculate that we are hardwired from birth to resonate to other brains.

In view of all this research (and I have barely grazed the surface here), Restak suggests a code of conduct: It’s good mental hygiene for ourselves as well as a service to others to try to keep our thoughts and emotions as positive as we can, given the circumstances of the moment.

I couldn’t agree more. Next time you walk into a meeting when you’re having a rough day, try to do the Brownie thing and turn that frown upside down. Can’t do it on your own? Maybe this will help:

Artist Stuart Semple released 2,000 pink smiley faced clouds near the Tate Museum in London. Clouds were made of helium, biodegradable soap and vegetable dye. After 30 min. they dissolved in the air.

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