Kathy Sierra writes a fascinating post: "Angry/negative people can be bad for your brain."
The three reasons are:
- Mirror neurons:
It's what these neurons do that's amazing--they activate in the same way when you're watching someone else do something as they do when you're doing it yourself! This mirroring process/capability is thought to be behind our ability to empathize, but you can imagine the role these neurons have played in keeping us alive as a species. We learn from watching others. We learn from imitating (mirroring) others. The potential problem, though, is that these neurons go happily about their business of imitating others without our conscious intention.
Think about that...
- Emotional contagion:
"...social scientific research has largely confirmed the thesis that affect, attitudes, beliefs and behaviour can indeed spread through populations as if they were somehow infectious. Simple exposure sometimes appears to be a sufficient condition for social transmission to occur. This is the social contagion thesis; that sociocultural phenomena can spread through, and leap between, populations more like outbreaks of measels or chicken pox than through a process of rational choice."
- The nature of happy people:
The idea [of skeptics] seems to be that "happy people" implies those who are oblivious to the realities of life, in a fantasy of their own creation, and without the ability to think critically. The science, however, suggests just the opposite.
Neuroscience has made a long, intense study of the brain's fear system--one of the oldest, most primitive parts of our brain. Anger and negativity usually stem from the anxiety and/or fear response in the brain, and one thing we know for sure--when the brain thinks its about to be eaten or smashed by a giant boulder, there's no time to stop and think! In many ways, fear/anger and the ability to think rationally and logically are almost mutually exclusive.
Kathy's conclusion is "Be around the change you want to see in the world." It's a good reminder, too, that we do a disservice to the people around us when we coddle, feed, and broadcast our own negative attitudes.
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