Have you ever seen a friend nervous before a test and had your heart start to race just as it happened to them? Or have you experienced someone else stumble while speaking in public and begun visualising yourself doing the same? Such reactions are not limited to ‘sympathy‘. Humans are very attuned to other people’s emotions. Seeing the distress of others can affect our own emotions, thoughts and even our physiology (Engert et al., 2014; Nitschke & Bartz, 2023). Empathy, emotional contagion, affect sharing and vicarious stress are factors that have been studied. They assist in understanding how another’s experience of difficulties can at times trigger a personal reaction. This article explores how, by being around others or through observation, people can take in someone else’s state of emotion.
Observing Beyond People’s Emotions
The brain doesn’t recognise the other person’s emotion as something different from their own when seeing them struggling. There are several processes of empathy. It covers observations of others’ feelings, their point of view, and sometimes at least sharing part of their feelings. The emotional dimension of empathy can make another person’s suffering resonate on an emotional level. This could occur without the person being in the same position (Gamble et al., 2024; Zaki & Ochsner, 2012).
Let’s assume that one sees a friend doing a presentation and they look visibly tense. They might see their tight face, their quick talking, or their fidgeting, and they might suddenly be more alert to them. The person doesn’t have to deliver the speech; it’s their friend’s emotional expression that gives them clues to a possible threat. Social-emotional research indicates that emotions can impact observers’ affect, cognition and behaviour through expression. This aspect implies that one’s emotions can be psychologically significant to other people (van Kleef & Côté, 2022).
Emotional Contagion: When Feelings Spread
There is an important explanation that lies in emotional contagion. It is the natural tendency of individuals to converge some of their emotional selves with others. May happen in countless subtle ways. This can be an automatic process of noticing and mirroring facial expressions, voice, body language or other behaviour. A recent scoping review of 277 human-subject studies found that facial expressions, videos, and real-time interactions are common triggers examined in emotional-contagion research (Di Gregorio et al., 2025).
This is why sometimes a room can feel “grabbed” by anxiety. Suppose that one student is outside a room where they are waiting to be interviewed and keeps asking themselves, “What if I mess this up?” If another person sitting there is initially confident, but observes that person’s stress over and over, it can spur them to be more alert as well. It doesn’t have to be an active process. However, the emotional part of the information can sway people before they make a conscious effort to determine what emotions to attach to the situation. But emotional contagion does not occur in all situations. Its form is influenced by the interaction of people, place and interpretation (Gamble et al., 2024; Nitschke & Bartz, 2023).
The “Mirror” Processes Behind Empathy
One piece of the puzzle stems from studies on perception-action and mirror-related processes. In observing another person’s actions or emotional responses, some of the neural systems activated in performing or feeling similar actions or sensations can become activated as well. It isn’t a mirroring of someone else’s experiences in real time in the brain only. Instead, shared representations of the neural system might help us to gain clarity about other people’s behaviour or emotions (de Waal & Preston, 2017).
For instance, if a person happens to witness someone fall during a sport, they will tend to grimace. Likewise, if the person becomes visibly upset, it can create a brief conflict of concern for the one observing them. Studies of embodied simulation have indicated that seeing others could affect individuals themselves. Their actions and feelings can activate motor systems, parietal systems and somatosensory systems that are related to similar experiences within oneself (Keysers & Gazzola, 2009).
The popular notion of “mirror neurons as the basis for empathy” is, however, a lot more twisted than it is often presented. Studies on putative mirror-system activity and emotional and cognitive empathy yielded conclusions that were supported by a systematic review and meta-analysis. It found that there are examples and approaches to empathy that vary (Molenberghs et al., 2012). That is, empathy can’t be limited to one brain system; empathy-related processes may be involved with social understanding.
When Someone Else’s Stress Becomes Our Own
One of the most obvious clues is in a body of research related to vicarious or contagious stress. In one key study, it was discovered that watching a stressful event can lead to a stress reaction in the person who is observing the event. Approximately 26% of participants demonstrated a great deal of cortisol, a hormone that plays a role in the body’s stress reaction. If the observer was emotionally close to the stressed person, the effect was greater. Responses also took place when people were not related to one another and when the stressful situation was presented via video (Engert et al., 2014).
It does not have to be “all in your head” when a person sees a lot of distress. In particular, the physiological state of the observer might shift when stress is observed in another person. Evidence of both physiological and self-reported contagion of stress has been observed in one study in which participants were shown a standardised stressful activity performed by another person (Erkens et al., 2019).
For example, physiological studies have shown that viewing video clips of human stress reactions can affect the heart rates of viewers. What was interesting is that higher dispositional empathy saw these physiological changes happen faster. This suggests that the interpersonal stress contagion may depend on sensitivity and/or responsiveness to another person’s stress (Dimitroff et al., 2017).
Read More: Empathy in Action: How Communication Skills Foster Compassion and Inclusion
Why Does Their Struggle Feel Like a Threat to Us?
In some cases, people feel the same emotion as another person. This is particularly likely when the observer identifies with the person or situation. When a student sees a fellow student fail an important exam, they feel more than sympathy. They might start to anticipate failure. Likewise, observing an individual’s poor performance at a job interview may cause observers to reconsider their own performance. The literature on affect sharing underscores the importance of more than emotional cues alone in determining others’ response to emotion. Other factors include situational factors and the observer-target relationship (Gamble et al., 2024).
This is also related to vicarious fear learning. Studies have found that individuals can become fearful as a result of other individuals’ responses to a situation. It might mean that people don’t have to encounter an awful situation to understand that something is potentially dangerous. Seeing someone else in fear can give clues as to dangers to avoid or things to be done with caution (Askew & Field, 2008).
Suppose an individual spots another person being really scared of a certain animal. The observer might learn that this animal is dangerous, even if the person doesn’t have a bad experience with it. The same basic idea could apply to the regular social context. Sometimes, someone else’s suffering can serve as an alert that people are meant to listen to and move on (Askew & Field, 2008).
Read More: Why Do Young Employees Experience Performance Anxiety in Their First Job?
Empathy Can Help, But It Can Also Become Overwhelming
It is a fact that empathy is needed for all of these: Cooperation, care, social bonding, and helping. To see someone suffering can inspire us to help, to console, but also to alter our actions (de Waal & Preston, 2017; Zaki & Ochsner, 2012).
When sharing someone else’s distress gets too much or is poorly regulated, it becomes a challenge. While observing, one might instead start thinking, “They’re anxious, and I can support them,” but then progress to, “Something is wrong here, and I’m not able to handle it either.” Empathy and anxiety seem to be correlated. Despite the relatively low scale of the relationship, it does vary as a function of the specific measurement of empathy. In a 2023 meta-analysis, an affective empathy-anxiety correlation was more strongly correlated than some types of cognitive empathy-anxiety correlations (Nair & Ditto, 2023).
It’s a significant difference. Empathy is not necessarily equal to worrying. Perspective taking at a cognitive level can help one comprehend the emotions of another person. At the same time keeping some psychological buffer between them. Indeed, studies in recent times emphasise the dynamic nature of the understanding of empathy. It is flexible and can be altered by context, perspective, interpersonal relationship, and cognitive appraisal (Gamble et al., 2024; Singer & Lamm, 2009).
Why Some People Are More Affected Than Others
The way people bear the sufferings of others is different. One such influencing factor is emotional closeness. Distress of a close friend or family member can have a deeper impact on us than the distress of a stranger. The response may also be determined by personal experience, empathy, attention, interpretation of the situation and the level of stress at this moment (Engert et al., 2014; Nitschke & Bartz, 2023).
Understanding of our own stress level is important since stress can affect the way that we process social and emotional information. Evidence of stress contagion between others exists, but a systematic review also revealed a complex relationship between stress and empathy between people. In some scenarios, stress may enhance emotional resonance, while in others it may obstruct it (Nitschke & Bartz, 2023).
This accounts for why the same thing will trigger vastly differing responses on various days. Taking a look at a friend’s anxiety before a test may seem “manageable” if the individual is not in an anxiety state. However, things can get more uncomfortable if the individual is already concerned about their workload on a stressful day (Gamble et al., 2024; Nitschke & Bartz, 2023).
The Social Function of Shared Emotion
A sensitivity to other people’s emotional state may be beneficial from an evolutionary/social standpoint. Members within a group who quickly identify that someone is frightened, injured or threatened are able to respond as a group. Emotional signals, therefore, have more to do than merely conveying private emotions. They are able to organise behaviour in relationships and groups (de Waal & Preston, 2017; van Kleef & Côté, 2022).
The very system that enables us to see that someone requires assistance can also make us feel temporarily uncomfortable. This feeling may be the brain’s way of saying, “Pay attention, something is happening here”. The key is recognising a threat vs experiencing it as if it is one’s own personal experience.
Conclusion
Humans are highly interconnected emotional systems which can induce anxiety in their observance of another person’s struggles. Empathy and emotional contagion allow us to take in bits and pieces of another’s emotional state. People can simulate a certain part of what they see through mirror-related and perception-action processes.
It can put another person’s hardship into a perspective that is personal to them and also make it a threat. Even another individual’s stress can at times produce measurable physical changes to the observer (Engert et al., 2014; Nitschke & Bartz, 2023). However, this sensitivity doesn’t just indicate a weakness. It is what allows humans to comprehend, relate to, and react to each other. While the idea is not to suppress the emotions of others, it is to acknowledge their emotions without assuming them being are our own.
References +
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