Stress is something that most people will experience at some point in their lives. According to the World Health Organization, stress can be defined as any type of change that causes physical, emotional or psychological tension, writes livescience.com. There are many events or experiences that can catalyze periods of stress, from starting a new job to having a baby, but is it possible to pick up stress from someone else?
A 2014 paper in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology made headlines after its authors suggested that stress may be contagious. The authors wrote that just seeing another person in a stressful situation can cause our own body to release cortisol, a hormone involved in the stress response. This phenomenon, called “empathic stress,” tends to be more prevalent when you see a loved one or close friend in pain, the researchers suggested, but it can also occur when you see a stranger in pain.
“It is certainly possible to perceive [în subconștient] another person’s emotions, especially negative ones,” Tara Perrot, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Dalhousie University in Canada, told Live Science. “This would have been selected for in our evolutionary past because it would have provided a non- verbally to communicate danger and fear”.
Emotions can “spread” from one person to another through “mirror neurons,” according to a 2013 analysis published in the journal Current Biology. These are brain cells that fire up when they see someone perform a certain action—a yawn, for example—and trigger a response that encourages each other. This means that if a person sees someone who looks tired, they may begin to feel tired, and if they see someone who looks stressed, they may involuntarily adopt their stressed state of mind.
Transmitting emotions is an important survival mechanism, Herbert said. “It activates responses in others that can help solve not just a personal problem, but a more general one.” For example, if a person detects a dangerous situation and responds emotionally, then that signals and alerts others, he said.
“If someone panics, they are in a state of stress,” said Joe Herbert, professor of neuroscience at the University of Cambridge in Great Britain. “Panic can spread throughout the community, just like fear or anxiety, regardless of whether there’s a real cause,” he told Live Science.
This transference of emotions is a subconscious act, according to Perrot, and is not an exclusively human experience. “Other animals can perceive the emotions of members of their own species,” Perrot said. “For example, rats that observe another rat going through a stressful experience show increases in stress hormone levels, even without a direct experience.”
The beneficial role of stress
Although stress is something most people try to avoid, it plays an important role in both humans and animals. However, as Perrot said, not all types of stress are created equal. “The stress response is extremely beneficial,” she said. “It prepares our body and brain to deal with the stressor at hand. If a lion is running at you, you want to mount a strong stress response that releases glucose from stores, increases heart rate, and decreases nonessential functions like digestion.”
However, Perrot said, in modern humans, the stress response is often activated by psychological stressors, letting stress hormones linger too long. “There are many daily annoyances that people come to perceive as stressful, and the stress response can occur too often, which can be harmful to the body and the brain,” she said.
A 2014 study published in the journal Interpersona found that stress can, under certain circumstances, be contagious and concluded that a single stressed person has the ability to “infect” an entire office. So, is it possible to avoid catching another person’s stress? According to Perrot, it all depends on how one approaches and evaluates a given situation.
“Any stress response begins with the perception of the stressor,” Perrot said. According to Healthline, activities such as getting fresh air, doing breathing exercises and exercising can help overcome or at least reduce the impact of taking on someone else’s stress.
The key is to see stress as broken down into two components
“The stress factor is external or internal, for example, a financial request or an illness,” he said. “The stress response is the way the individual reacts – both emotionally and physiologically (hormones, blood pressure, etc.)”. The stress response is adaptive, Herbert said, and learning to control it could be the key to protecting yourself from another person’s stress.
“A high level of empathy will increase awareness of the other’s emotion,” he said. “How this affects the viewer will depend on the circumstances. It might just be helpful, but it might be stressful depending on the demand it makes on the other person. Good leaders and even parents can learn not to take the stress off of others and instead simply deal with the situation at hand.”
