When she leaves, will the negativity linger behind?
Image: iStock/Deborah Cheramie
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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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Imagine that your co-worker has just moved into a new office. The woman who used to work there spent many unhappy months in the office complaining about her job. In fact, she ended up quitting in a fit of rage. Upon moving into the office, your co-worker tells you that she senses some “bad energy” leftover from the previous employee. Would you believe her? Or would you think she’s a tad crazy?
Or imagine instead that you’re choosing between two apartments. They are identical with one exception: you happen to know that the former tenant in one of the apartments was an extremely happy, joyful person. Would you be more inclined to choose that apartment, based on an expectation that you might experience some lingering good feelings?
Your answers reflect how much you believe in “emotional residue,” which is the idea that emotions can hang around a physical environment, long after their owners have left. New research suggests that at a gut level, most of us believe that emotional residue exists. However, the culture we’ve grown up in determines the extent to which we consciously and openly endorse those beliefs.
Krishna Savani of Columbia University, along with his colleagues, ran several identical studies using both American and Indian participants. In an initial study, he asked participants whether it’s possible for emotions to travel outside of the human body. Many of the Indian participants agreed with this possibility, while most Americans disagreed with it. However, when Savani measured people’s beliefs in more subtle ways, he found that both Americans and Indians seem to believe strongly in emotional residue.
He had participants from both countries read scenarios about David, a college freshman who moves into a new dorm room. The previous student who lived in the room was described as having spent a lot of time there feeling either very happy or depressed. Savani asked his participants to predict how David would feel a couple of weeks after living in his new room. Both Indians and Americans predicted that David would feel similarly to the student who had lived there before. In other words, he’d feel happy if the previous student had been happy and sad if the previous student had been sad.
Using a different scenario, Savani looked at people’s beliefs about how emotional residue influences other people’s behavior. He had participants read about Margaret who sublets an apartment from a woman named Alice. Unbeknownst to Margaret, Alice spent the last couple of months in the apartment feeling very sad, due to problems she was having with her boyfriend. Margaret moves into the empty apartment and immediately begins feeling very happy. Savani asked his participants, “To what extent do you think Margaret’s behavior is surprising?” Both Americans and Indians said they found Margaret’s behavior surprising. They expected her to feel sad after moving into a space that had witnessed so much recent sadness.
In a final study, Savani looked at whether beliefs in emotional residue influence people’s actual behavior. He ran an experiment where he gave people a choice of two different rooms in which to fill out a survey. The sign on the door of one room indicated that the previous occupants had spent the past two hours recalling happy life events. The sign on the other door indicated that the previous occupants had spent the last couple of hours remembering unhappy life events. He then made note of which room the participants chose to enter. Savani found that the majority of both Americans and Indians chose to fill out their surveys in the room where they thought people had previously spent time recalling happy memories.
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18 Comments
Add CommentTo better test the objective aspects of this "emotional residue", researchers could randomly tell subjects that the information on which they based their responses was false--that the rooms identified as having "happy" inhabitants were in fact where "sad" memories were recalled, etc. If subjects were truly sensing the emotions of previous inhabitants, then the change in label should not affect their responses. If they are fooled by the label on the door and discover or reveal they "really" felt the opposite of what they originally claimed, then we can assume they are reacting to words and not some biological "residue".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhereas I do not believe in "emotional residue"- if picking between an apartment where the previous resident was happy- and one where the previous resident is sad- even if all else appeared equal- it might make more sense to pick the apartment where the previous resident was happy. (assuming I am unable to tell the difference between the two apartments in any other fashion).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, chances are, he was just a happier person; however, there could have been an unperceived environmental trigger- such as quality of light entering window. Could have had differnt neighbours.
Emotional residue doesn't sound convincing to me- but environmental triggers that can adjust someones mood does.
Do emotions travel from one person to another? Obviously. By hearing, eyes, touch, etc. And it is understandable why a building which has experienced unusual horror and violence to be torn down. One does not have to invoke the supernatural to explain it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTHE ONLY PARAGRAPH WORTH READING IN THIS IS THE LAST ONE - THAT IS WHERE THE RESEARCH SHOULD BE...THE REST IS JUST PROJECTION.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs soon as the researcher put Good and Bad over the doorways, the test no longer had the double-blind objectivity one expects in an experiment to see if people can feel emotional residue. This is because the researcher placed an expectation in the mind of the subject. All the researcher is testing is people's attitudes and not the presence or existence of this residue. And reporting people's attitudes doesn't seem like a rich vein of science to this old researcher. Marketers use focus groups to determine this sort of thing. You may as well report on a study determining whether or not consumers like their soap powder in a white box.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTHANK YOU FOR YOUR OPINION!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRobLL, I believe your comment in particuler and these 'studies' in general are ludicrous, far to many other outside influences are at work in all these scenarios to possibly explain one person's sadness or another's happiness in any given room. Perhaps David was a better student, perhaps the prior resident did drugs, had mental issues, mother died recently. To conclude that emotions are physically residual defies intelligence. Think this through!....and to suggest a building be torn DOWN due to soemthing bad having happened there?? Are you NUTS?! The American White House would be razed due to the War of 1812, every lighthouse ever built would need to be dismantled and the entire lower half of Manhattan would need to be bulldozed due to 9/11!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTry to get a grip on REALITY Rob, otherwise I have a happy bridge I want to sell you, guaranteed no one's died on it or jumped off of it...
Ask a realestate agent, properties with notorious crimes are often difficult to sell. Not always, but often.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOthers have noted this in earlier comments, but I also wanted to register my complete disapproval at the methods used by the researchers. Making people read an essay about how someone felt in a dorm room and then asking them to guess how someone else would feel in the same room gives absolutely zero evidence that they believe in bad juju or whatever. I don't, and I would answer exactly the way they did, because with that limited information, I would assume that this hypothetical sad David lived in a room that's depressing for ordinary reasons (bad light, thin walls, mold, drafts, etc.). I can't believe that someone who was granted a Ph.D. could make such a boneheaded mistake in designing and interpreting an experiment!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisImagine if I asked it this way: David ordered item 52 from the menu, and he found it very unappetizing. Do you think you would enjoy eating menu item 52? Of course you wouldn't, but not because you think it acquired "bad energy" from David's disapproving experience.
A more reasonable way to test the hypothesis would be this: There are two almost identical apartments, A and B. Apartment A has a porch (or some other good feature) and B doesn't. The previous occupant in A was a depressive person, while the previous occupant in B was a gregarious, social and happy person. If you could have either apartment, which would you choose? If it were me, I'd pick A even if someone had recently been murdered there. It has a porch!
Some science would be good. Blind studies? As it stands, this article isn't worth the paper it isn't printed on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Emotional residue" can be just a manifestation of how our unconscious works. The unconscious fuses into one, and atributes the features of one of them to the other, of two objects that are or have been close, in time or in space, and for the mind, everything is an object, from images to concepts. Experience, education and power of the rational mid can blunt this kind of effects, but as the unconscious acts in arranging all in the person's mind to the goal of survival, and this includes abstract thought and decission making abilities, it's better not to dig too deep or try to modify the unconscious.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe words in the concluding para "taking together these findings suggest" sounds like "two and two put together". Without concrete evidence, this looks like grandma's story conclusion. Like Einstein said a man should look for what is and not for what he thinks should be. This entire argument makes us feel the author is trying to provide scientific evidence for superstitions!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe words in the concluding para "taking together these findings suggest" sounds like "two and two put together"! Without concrete evidence, this looks like
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisgrandma's story conclusion. Like Einstein said a man should look for what is and not for what he thinks should be.This entire argument makes us feel the author is trying to provide scientific evidence for superstitions!
This is like astrology or fortune telling. It might belong in a supermarket magazine, but it's hard to see why it would appear in anything sponsored by the Scientific American.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter reading this, I was expecting to see an advertisement for the next episode of Ghost Hunters on the sidebar.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGot what you paid for then didn't you?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm far more likely to believe in chemical residue than in emotional residue. How long do these emotionally affiliated chemicals take to break down and do they become airborn? We know that a lot of "hauntings" are cause by EMF or ultra low frequency sound waves so if someone is depressed in a certain place there may be causative factors in that place.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo emotions travel from one person to another? go to any funeral or wedding and you can see that it does, a "party pooper" or basher can wreck a whole scene not just because of ones behaviour but also because the emotion is sent round the room. Holler at your spouse and that emotion 'lingers'weather people are present or not, the family daog can come in the room after the fact and immediately 'sense' something awry. Feng Shui advocates have been using this principle for years. not only that, but residual memories may exist in the "molecules" of the previous persons presence. Even if the new person knows nothing about the previous person simply by touching old items the person can subconsciously 'pick up' on old memories and emotions. Sensitive individuals claim to bring this to the conscious mind (Psychometry)Too many variables both known and unknown to make a valid assessment on the small amount of information provided here. regardless, not a very 'scientific' approach to the question if you ask me.
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