Why do others affect us so much? - Episode 1

What we copy without realising it

Have you ever noticed that when someone yawns beside you, without your having decided anything, without anyone having asked you anything, your body simply follows, all on its own, without your even having to think about it?

More striking still: it is likely that, as you read these lines, the mere fact of thinking about someone yawning has already brought on a yawn in you.

It is such an ordinary phenomenon that we no longer pay attention to it, and yet it says something important about the way we function.

We believe ourselves to be separate individuals, with our own thoughts, our own reactions, our own character.

But we spend our days absorbing other people.

Without wanting to, without even knowing it.

And often, without even noticing it.

What the body catches in a second

Let us try a small experiment: observe a conversation, any conversation, in a café or a corridor, in the street, wherever you happen to be, and watch the bodies rather than the words.

When one crosses their arms, the other crosses their arms a few seconds later.

If one leans forward, the other leans forward too.

When one speaks quickly, the other’s pace picks up.

And when one lowers their voice, the other lowers theirs as well.

No one decided anything.

The psychologists Tanya Chartrand and John Bargh gave this phenomenon a name that suits it well: the chameleon effect. In their work published in 1999, they showed that we spontaneously reproduce the postures and mannerisms of the people we talk to, without being aware of it — and that this imitation increases the liking between people. The more the other mirrors us, the more agreeable we find them. Without ever knowing why.

We tune to one another, like instruments.

Let us come back for a moment to a famous scientific story, because it circulates everywhere, often badly.

In 1992, a team of researchers in Parma observed, in the brain of a macaque, cells that fire both when the animal grasps an object and when it watches someone else grasp one.

They would come to be called mirror neurons.

The discovery is fascinating, and within a few years it was being used to explain almost everything: language, empathy, autism, culture.

Everything and anything.

The neuroscientist Gregory Hickok devoted an entire book to it in 2014, showing that the conclusions had largely outrun the data.

In human beings, only one study has measured these cells directly — that of Roy Mukamel and his colleagues in 2010, on epileptic patients fitted with electrodes. And the cells observed were not exactly where they were expected to be.

In other words: the phenomenon is quite real. We imitate, we resonate, we tune to one another.

It is its explanation that remains under discussion.

And this nuance matters…

…because it keeps us from believing that a single cell is enough to explain…

…what we live through with others.

Then something changes scale

Everything we have just spoken of (a yawn, a posture, a pace of speech) plays out in a second.

But there is another form of copying, far slower, far deeper, and far less visible.

One that is not caught in a second, but over years. And that does not concern gestures, but ways of doing things.

This is no longer immediate resonance. This is learning.

We learned to react by watching others react. We learned to feel by watching others feel. We learned what is said and what is not said, what is shown and what is hidden, what is forgiven and what is never forgiven.

No one gave us lessons.

We simply watched.

A thousand times. And we took it up.

What we learned without knowing it

Take an ordinary situation, and look at what you do with it.

·       When the tone rises:

Some raise their voice, while others fall completely silent or leave the room. Others defuse it with a joke, systematically, before even knowing whether there was any danger.

·       When an emotion overflows:

Some name it, while others put it away somewhere and move on to something else. Others turn it against themselves, and others displace it onto the first person available.

·       When one ought to ask for help:

Some simply ask, while others circle around it for days. Some even apologise for existing before they have even formulated the request. And others never ask at all, whatever the price.

·       When someone pays a compliment:

Some say thank you, while others play it down at once or send the compliment back like a burning ball. Others still change the subject.

·       When there is bad news to deliver:

Some say it straight away, while others prepare the ground at length. Some wait until the last moment, and others let the person find out on their own.

None of these ways of doing things was chosen one day, consciously, after due reflection.

They were seen...

Then taken up...

And by dint of being taken up, they ended up resembling a character.

What looks like our nature

As long as a reaction appears to us to be our nature, it remains difficult to question.

One does not argue with what one believes to be one’s nature; one endures it, one apologises for it sometimes.

And one often ends up making an identity of it.

“ I am someone who blows up. ”

“ I am incapable of asking for help. ”

“ That is just the way I am. ”

But when we discover that a reaction is perhaps not the whole of our identity, that it is also a strategy learned, developed or reinforced over time, it then becomes possible to change, to alter what is.

→ What has been learned can be observed.

→ What has been learned can be questioned.

→ And what has been learned can sometimes be experienced differently.

So, among your most habitual reactions, which ones have you really chosen?

Which ones have you developed in order to adapt?

And which ones did you simply see around you, before repeating them in your turn?

For if we can be influenced to this extent by the gestures, the attitudes and the ways of reacting of others…

…what happens within us when someone suffers in front of us?

Do we understand them?

Do we feel something with them?

Do we experience sympathy, empathy or compassion?

Or are we simply drawn into their state, as when we catch a yawn?

For we sometimes come to resemble the people around us…

…long before having decided to resemble them.