Many believe that the opposite of love isn’t hate but disinterest.
Emotions Revealed author, Paul Ekman takes that finding a bit further. In his research (described in Blink), Ekman discovered that when one person in a relationship expresses disgust for another the relationship is doomed. In fact, the higher the ratio of disgust vs. any kind of positive response one has to another in an interaction, the more rapidly the demise of that connection.
It probably comes as no surprise to you that the more strongly you feel about someone the more intensely you react to whatever that person says or does – or even when you hear about that person
Emotional Intelligence author, Daniel Goleman, in his newest book, Social Intelligence, explains some of the science that backs that instinctive notion. He writes, “One person’s inner state affects and drives the other person. We’re forming brain-to-brain bridges—a two-way traffic system—all the time. We actually catch each other’s emotions like a cold.”
Writes Mark Matousek for AARP, “The more important the relationship, the more potent such ‘contagion’ will be. A stranger’s putdown may roll off your back, while the same zinger from your boss is devastating. ‘If we’re in toxic relationships with people who are constantly putting us down, this has actual physical consequences,’ Goleman says. Stress produces a harmful chemical called cortisol, which interferes with certain immune cell functions.
Positive interactions prompt the body to secrete oxytocin (the same chemical released during lovemaking), boosting the immune system and decreasing stress hormones.
As a doting grandparent himself (with author-therapist wife Tara Bennett-Goleman), the author often feels this felicitous rush. ‘I was just with my two-year-old granddaughter,’ he says. ‘This girl is like a vitamin for me. Being with her actually feels like a kind of elixir. The most important people in our lives can be our biological allies.’”
Win a lottery? You're probably euphoric for some while, yet you'll eventually go back to your usual mood. That is, each of us has “set point of happiness” - our most frequent mood state. Good news. These tendencies are not locked in. Anger-prone people, for example, can “infect” themselves with calmness by spending time with mellower individuals, absorbing less-aggressive behavior and thereby sharpening social intelligence.
Here’s more good news.
The more positively you feel about someone the more likely it is that you will evoke positive feelings in that person towards you. Thus the two of you can spiral up in a pattern of increasingly positive interactions.
Whatever you praise you encourage to flourish.
In effect you’ve instigated a mutually-reinforcing belief, a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will, that you both will prove to be true.
In short: people like people who like them.
Therefore if you’d like to get along with a wider range of people - and have them respond positively to you (who wouldn’t in this age of The Power of Us?) then focus on this, each time you meet or re-meet someone:
• Think about the part of that person you most like and admire as you interact with her
• Speak to about that person, referring to their specific actions you most like and respect.
Here’s some related books if you’d like more tools to follow this approach:
Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman.
LikeAbility by Kare Anderson.
The Dance of Connection by Harriet Lerner.
