Are 'Vibes' For Real?
Shade, negative energy, bad vibes — whatever you call it, you may not be imagining it. (Getty Images)
It’s happened to many of us: You meet someone who, for whatever reason, gives off a negative vibe, making you feel guarded or even a little stand-offish. Or you walk into a new setting or location, and you get a sense that something is just not quite right.
Even without any physically obvious cues, there are times when we pick up on the “energy” or thoughts — good or bad — of an environment or person. An art exhibit even provided a visual representation of this power of thought by translating brainwaves into sound waves to make water vibrate.
While some may dismiss vibes as silly superstition, there is some scientific evidence to back up the idea that we can sense others’ feelings and emotions, even when we can’t see or hear evidence of these emotions outright.
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“Vibe” may not be a totally scientific term, but the belief that we leave something behind when we experience an emotion might actually be chemically based. One study even refers to it as “emotional residue.”
An article published in the journal Science showed, for instance, that human tears emit a chemical that other people are able to detect and respond to. That study showed that women’s tears are associated with a reduction in testosterone and sexual arousal in men. And researchers from Rice University found that the chemicals in human sexual sweat also emit distinct chemicals, which can be detected by the human brain.
While chemicals we are not consciously aware of may play a role in our detection of “vibes,” other factors — like a scent or slight body language quirk — likely also come into play. “Animals secrete hormones that others instinctively respond to, so why wouldn’t it be the same for humans,” says certified behavior analyst Jessica Stephans. “But, I think this idea of a vibe is a combination of things. We use our sensory organs like sight, touch, and smell to make split-second decisions on people and places.”
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For instance, a microscopic smell might give you a certain feeling about an environment. Or a person’s style of movement may make you feel a certain way about him or her. In the book “Blink,” author Malcolm Gladwell explores the idea that we are able to tell the emotions of a person just by looking at his or her face, something he refers to as “thin-slicing,” or using limited information to come to a conclusion. This idea is partially based on the studies of Paul Ekman, a psychologist who created the Facial Action Coding System, which indicates that a lot of “thin slicing” can be done within seconds by unconsciously analyzing a person’s fleeting look (also called a microexpression).
There’s a good reason to care about the kinds of “vibes” you give off — experts say positive and negative energy is, in some ways, “contagious.” Our demeanor, attitude and mood affect not only us, but also others around us.
“Surrounding yourself with negative people is only going to make you negative,” says Sherry Blair, CEO of Innovative Specialists Inspirational Services, a positive psychology-based counseling services company. “I truly believe that happy people are friends with other happy people.”
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