An individual's emotions can also have a strong effect on the emotions of others, and this too is to a large degree involuntary. Humans tend to 'resonate' and react to the emotional expressions of another. Laughter often really is 'infectious', and the sadness of another person often makes us actually feel sad ourselves. Sometimes emotional communication can lead to a reciprocal feeling - for example one may feel fear when with a person displaying anger, or disgust when with one displaying excited pleasure.
Much emotional communication, both the emitting of emotional signals and the reception of them, occurs outside the awareness of the people concerned. When someone, for some reason, does not show emotion, or shows one that does not seem to match their words or situation, or when we experience emotions which somehow seem 'out of sync' with the verbal message we are receiving from someone, we feel disconcerted and confused, sometimes without entirely realising why.
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