Children
Psychologist Elaine Hatfield theorizes emotional contagions as a two-step process: Step 1: We imitate people, if someone smiles at you, you smile back. Step 2: Changes in mood through faking it. If you smile you feel happy, if you frown you feel bad. Mimicry seems to be one foundation of emotional movement between people. Hour old infants will mimic a person's facial expressions such as smiling.
Martin E.P.Seligman, Ph.D., uses synchrony games to build children's learning that "your actions matter and can control outcomes". When a baby bangs on a table the adult bangs on the table, replicating the action. This is one way emotional learning can be validated by an adult.
Read more about this topic: Emotional Contagion
Famous quotes containing the word children:
“It’s a failure of national vision when you regard children as weapons, and talents as materials you can mine, assay, and fabricate for profit and defense.”
—John Hersey (1914–1993)
“I’m afraid the visit of such a distinguished critic may cause my children to become conceited. To you they are wax, but to me, their creator, they live and breathe.”
—Crane Wilbur (1889–1973)
“It’s likely that adults from the caveman on have created their own fantasies of what children ought to be like and naturally have been convinced that’s precisely how as children they themselves were.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)