Exuberance: The Passion for Life (19 page)

Action and distraction, he knew, will trump the still. In the musical based upon his life, Barnum is portrayed as keeping at bay his own and the world’s ennui by spinning off energy and joy. “
Through a night as dark as space / And cold as the sea,” he sings, “Someone’s got to make it bright / Shoot a rocket, shine a light.” Someone, in short, has to build a fire, distract, and amuse. Exuberance, Barnum knew, is complicated: it may exist on its own or it may keep darker company; it is something people not only want but need.

Following my talk with Jim Dale, and after having returned to the theater to once again watch him captivate his audience with his electric irrepressibility, I added two songs from
Barnum
to my clinic lectures about mania and other elated states. Even the doctors who had been on call the night before—usually a study in the ability, shared with horses, to sleep upright, with their eyes giving only the illusion of being open—were tapping their feet. Exuberance, the real thing,
is
contagious. But why?

There are many reasons. The rapid and accurate communication of emotion among members of a group is essential if they are
to survive. Split-second transfer of fear alerts the group to potential danger and compels a swift, coordinated response. Likewise vital, if less obviously so, the quick dispersal of exuberant or triumphant emotion accelerates the spread of the news of victory, opportunity in the environment, or a new idea. It sends the message that it is time to explore, to gather as a group, to celebrate, to have fun. When there is cause for celebration, or collective enthusiasm and energy are required, infectious fervor will further a swift dissemination.
Malcolm Gladwell argues in
The Tipping Point
that behaviors spread as viruses do. Exuberance is a potent vector; it shoots emotion and opportunity into a group just as brisk, high winds carry pollen and seeds into new fields and habitats. Exuberance is a propitious thermal, which first lifts and then ferries energy, enthusiasm, and hope.

Exuberance draws people together and primes them to act boldly; it warrants that the immediate world is safe for exploration and enjoyment and creates a vivifying climate in which a group can rekindle its collective mental and physical energies if depleted by setback, stress, or aggression. It answers despair with hope: “
How I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm,” wrote John Osborne in
Look Back in Anger
. “Just enthusiasm—that’s all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice cry out Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I’m alive.” By capturing many in its far-flung web, exuberance overrides the inhibition that blocks action or innovation; like other positive emotions, it also enhances learning and fosters communal generosity. Infectious joy pumps life into social bonds and creates new ones through collective celebration and lively exchange. Shared joys rather than shared sufferings make a friend, Nietzsche believed, and there is much truth in this. High spirits beget high spirits; the memory of delight is laid down, the expectation of joy seeded.

C. S. Lewis laid stress upon our need for close proximity to intense experience: “
Good things as well as bad,” he wrote in
Mere
Christianity
, “are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to get wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.… They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry.”

Joy infects. Katharine Graham once said of an editor that “
he had fun and he gave it to others.” But how? How does an emotion spread from one person to another? Are some people better able to transmit emotions and, if so, is that because they themselves are more emotional? Psychologists have asked these questions for years. In an early study, conducted in the 1970S, researchers filmed individuals as they viewed slides whose content was highly emotional in nature (photographs of burned bodies, for example, or of laughing children). People whose facial reactions to the pictures were particularly expressive and easy to read were labeled “
powerful senders”; those whose faces displayed scant or ambiguous emotional cues, on the other hand, were designated “weak senders.” Further investigation revealed that the powerful senders, those who displayed a rich nonverbal language,
scored high on measures of extraversion. The weak senders, in contrast, were far more introverted; their nonspoken language of emotions was barren and tightly held.

Carl Jung had observed this four decades earlier. When the extravert expresses emotion, Jung wrote, he makes a “
visible and convincing appearance” before his public. Although both the extravert and introvert possess enthusiasm, “that which fills the extravert’s heart overflows from his mouth; the introvert’s lips are sealed by the enthusiasm that moves him within.” The introvert, Jung continued, “
kindles no flame of enthusiasm in the world around him.… [H]is laconic expression and the mystified lack of
comprehension it produces in his public” lead others to doubt that he has anything “extraordinary to say.” The extravert, on the other hand, immediately appears intriguing; his manifest success in life is a “vitalizing and invigorating factor.”

The psychologist Howard Friedman, of the University of California at Riverside, devised a test to measure individual differences in nonverbal emotional expressiveness.
The Affective Communication Test, a thirteen-item self-report scale, contains such items as “I show that I like someone by hugging or touching that person,” “When I hear good dance music, I can hardly keep still,” and “At small parties I am the center of attention.”
People who score high on this test tend to be colorful and charismatic, playful, more attractive to others, outgoing, dominant, and able to inspire others to act. (Highly expressive physicians, for example, have more patients than doctors who are less obviously emotional; people who are more expressive are also more likely to be attracted to lives in politics, lecturing, or acting.)

Expressive individuals strongly influence the moods of those who are unexpressive, but the reverse is not true: unexpressive people have little impact on the emotions of those who are expressive. Psychologists find that
more emotional information is conveyed by expressive individuals and that their emotional responses attract greater attention from those around them.
Women, although they in general score somewhat lower on measures of extraversion than men, tend to score higher on emotional expressiveness. (It may be that men score higher on characteristics of extraversion, such as impulsiveness, which are not as directly related to expressiveness.)

The transmission of emotions is rapid. Viewing faces with “happy” or “sad” expressions, for example, quickly evokes those feelings in the viewer.
Barbara Wild and her colleagues at the University of Tübingen in Germany found that communication of most facially expressed emotions takes place within half a second;
the time frame is particularly short if people are looking at “happy” faces. That “happy” faces are registered so swiftly may be partly because happiness, at least as measured by spontaneous facial expression, appears to be
the most accurately communicated of the emotions. Psychologists who study the relative communicability of emotions report that happiness is correctly communicated from one individual to another 48 percent of the time. Fear, in contrast, is correctly registered only 10 percent of the time, anger 13 percent, sadness 17 percent, and disgust 23 percent.

Negative emotions, although less accurately transmitted than positive ones (a strange finding, given the importance of the swift communication of fear), are more contagious; that is, expressive individuals are better able to infect others with negative emotions than with positive ones. This is consistent with recent psychological research, which finds that
many types of negative stimuli, such as negative words, are detected faster than positive ones. Experimental subjects more quickly locate an angry face among happy ones than a happy face among angry ones. This is almost certainly because the
immediate
survival of an individual or a group is dependent upon the threat of danger being quickly recognized and spread among its members.

Happiness, which is what psychologists have studied rather than joy or exuberance, is a dilute version of these more energetic and communicable states. Nonfacial as well as facial communication of exuberant moods is more obvious than that displayed in the less effusive “happy” ones, and body language and olfactory communication surely play a far more important role than we now appreciate in the transmission of information, including the nature and intensity of our emotions. We know this is true for other species.
Mice, for example, form complex images in their brains about the sex and genetic makeup of other mice on the basis of subtle chemical signals called pheromones.
Young male Asian
elephants in musth secrete a honeylike odor from their temporal glands, which scientists believe signals youthful and erratic behavior rather than competitive intentions to older males. The temporal-lobe secretions of mature elephants are instead fetid and distinctly different from those excreted by the young males. Being able to correctly distinguish the odors excreted in youth from those of maturity appears to increase harmony between two otherwise potentially competitive groups of elephants. Researchers cite ancient Hindu poetry which speaks of the arrival of bees to “
gather sweetness from the temples” of young musth elephants. We do not know that there isn’t a like sweet smell of joy and playfulness in humans.

The psychologists Elaine Hatfield at the University of Hawaii and John Cacioppo at Ohio State University have been particularly interested in the specific mechanisms responsible for emotional contagion, as well as the psychological characteristics of people who “catch anxiety” or “catch joy.” Evidence is strong that people quickly mimic the physical movements, voices, and facial expressions of those with whom they are in contact and that such “catching” of others’ emotions is a universal human phenomenon. Hatfield developed the
Emotional Contagion Scale to measure individual differences in vulnerability to emotional contagion; for example, the susceptibility to “catching” anxiety (“When someone paces back and forth, I feel nervous and anxious”), or joy (“When someone laughs hard, I laugh too”).

Those who are most susceptible to “catching” others’ emotions tend themselves to be more emotionally reactive. They pay close attention to the emotions of others, are adept at reading them, and are more likely to mimic the facial, vocal, and physical expressions.
Gender is also a factor. Hatfield and her students interviewed nearly nine hundred men and women from a variety of ethnic groups (Hawaiian, Chinese, African, Filipino, and Korean, among
others), as well as from different professional backgrounds (students, military personnel, and physicians), and found that in all groups
women were far more susceptible than men to “catching” both negative and positive emotions.

Other researchers have shown that
people who are themselves happy are in general more attentive to verbal and nonverbal cues. In particular, they are more attentive to emotional expressions.
Depressed individuals, although they are more sensitive to expressions of anger, are far less sensitive and responsive to expressions of happiness.

The effects of expressed joy or sadness show themselves early.
Nine-month-old infants, observed as they watch and listen to their mothers express either joy or sadness, look longer at their mothers and express greater joy when their mothers are themselves expressing joy. They also engage in more playful behavior.
One-year-olds after watching a videotape of an adult actress portraying either positive or negative emotions, will not only mimic the actress’s tone and expression but will also alter their level of joyfulness accordingly.
Adults, too, when interacting with someone who is happy tend to imitate that person’s smiles, laughter, and positive gestures; at least under experimental conditions, this generates positive emotions in the person exposed to another’s happiness.

Laughter, because it is both obvious and pleasurable, is one of the more irrepressible communications our social species has. Although it is by no means exclusively bound to exuberance, laughter is nonetheless its clarion messenger. It is attached to exuberance like a clapper to a bell, and their evolutionary histories progress together in like manner. Laughter is universal in humans and it is innate. Children who are deaf, blind, and mute, for example, and who are therefore unable to imitate the behavior of others, nonetheless laugh when tickled.
Darwin believed that laughter was the ultimate expression of joy and an important way for infants and
young children to influence their parents’ behavior. It signals, “I enjoy this, do it again.” The pleasure of the child triggers a respondent pleasure in the parent, who then repeats the behavior, which the child enjoys and continues to encourage. The reverberating delight perpetuates. Laughter creates and strengthens the bonds between parent and child, and among other members of a social group.

Biologists believe that human laughter also signals to other members of the group that it is safe to relax, safe to play. There is evidence for this view in the behavior of nonhuman primates.
Chimpanzees and pygmy chimpanzees make panting noises or “play chuckles” and show a “play-face” (formally called a relaxed open-mouth display) when they engage in social play or tickle one another.
Tickling, according to Roger Fouts and other primate researchers, is an important behavior in the lives of chimpanzees; chimps that have been taught sign language, for instance, frequently “talk,” or sign, about tickling. Their play-face, like laughter in humans, seems to be incompatible with fear or aggression. The chimpanzee “grin-face” (a relaxed bared-teeth display), which is more analogous to human smiling, denotes submission and is associated with affinitive behavior. Affinitive displays, such as smiling, precede and often lay down the emotional groundwork for social play in both human and nonhuman primates. Play rarely
precedes
smiling, however.