Transcription
One of the things I find most tragic in luxury is this. Someone who genuinely knows their product inside out and the client never hears a word of it because the delivery was rushed or nervous and the client's brain has filed that under unreliable.
Elaine Hatfield, who was a psychologist at the University of Hawaii, studied this. She brought people into a controlled setting and exposed them to someone displaying a particular emotional state. So, slight anxiety, calm, irritation, nothing exaggerated though.
What she found was that other people would begin to mirror those cues very quickly. Their facial expressions would shift, their posture would change, and even their heart rate would start to move in the same direction. What was fascinating is that this happened before they were consciously aware of it.
It's called emotional contagion and it involves the unconscious mimicry of things like facial expressions, posture, vocal patterns, and pace. So, when you walk into a meeting slightly anxious or slightly rushed or slightly unsure, you're not just feeling that internally, you're influencing the state of the people around you.