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What you pick up from others
Does other people’s mood rub off on you? The test
A room that tightens, a voice on the phone, a grumpy colleague, and what is left of it by evening.A sigh at the table, a word cut short, and the room is not the same.Eight scenes to see what stays with you afterwards.
8
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1
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80+
avatars
Eight questions, no overthinking. Ready?
In the room, on the phone, at the table
A door shut a little too gently, a voice that tightens, a silence between two digs. Everyone takes all that in their own way, and these symbols go around the lot.
One mood,then another
A voice tightens, a room goes tense, a colleague grumbles. You tick what happens in you, or write what you feel.
The card stays in your space. It only leaves through its private link, if you give it.
Feel what runs through you
Eight moments where someone else's mood walks into the room. You look for what your body does with it.
Pick the right moment
Each test takes a different moment of the day. Take the one that speaks to you tonight.
Catch your breath
Once the test is done, you can carry on with a Persona, at your own pace. Other people's moods stay outside for a while.
How much other people’s moods rub off on you
Some people walk into a room and know, before anyone has said a word, that something is off. A door shut a little too gently, an “I’m fine” in two notes. This free mood test looks at what you do with those signals: you notice them, you keep them, you hand them back, or you move on.
The eight situations are tiny ones, a phone call, a dinner, a mug held in both hands. We have all spent an evening carrying someone else’s bad mood and thinking it was ours, and no answer here is the right one. A Persona asks them one by one, and it takes about a minute.
Three of the eight situations
Nothing dramatic, just moments you get through without thinking about them. Answer the way it really goes, not the way you would like it to.
- A room where the conversation has just stopped dead.
- A friend whose voice tightens on the phone.
- A long day among people, and what is left of you after.
A neighbour sighs in the lift, and this mood test looks at what you keep of it
Someone’s mood arrives before their words, in a chair pulled back a little hard, a sigh on the second floor, a voice dropping one note. This test of catching other people’s moods does not ask whether you catch them: nearly everyone catches a little. It looks at what you do next, what you keep, what you hand back, and what you carry all the way home without having chosen to.
Along the wall, to the empty chair
You follow the wall to an empty chair, close enough to hear, far enough that no answer is owed. The talk starts up again. What the silence left in you, you only untangle later, between two stops, on the way home.
Who stopped talking, and why?
A sentence has been left hanging and you say so out loud, with a smile so it goes down easily. At the table, faced with a parking ticket turned catastrophe, you slip in that from here it looks smaller. It gets a laugh, or it sits badly.
A fork held straight through the jabs
Two people trade jabs with their smiles on and you study your plate. On the phone you listened, helped, hung up. It does not cling to your sleeve. Where does what crossed you for a second go, at night, when you try to sleep?
Shoulders rise before the call ends
The voice tightens in the second sentence, and your shoulders are already up when the call ends. At dinner you speak before the next jab. We have all felt a mood come down the line, like a draught on the back of the neck.
Headphones on, lights low
Headphones on, a metre of politeness around the grumbler, then a room without voices in the evening. It rests you. The day can also keep turning in your head, by itself, with nobody to pick it up where you left it.
One last drink, one last message
A coffee lands on the grumbler’s desk, with a note. The day is over, the last drink gets ordered anyway, the last message goes out near midnight. You bring a lot of voices home. Where do you put them down for the night?
Typing slower than the rest of the floor
On Monday the keyboards speed up and yours slows down, on purpose, because that tempo is not yours. At the birthday you laugh along and start nothing. A borrowed pace is soon given back. What remains is what you would do alone, at your own tempo.
A weekend by the sea, launched between two laughs
The energy of the floor climbs and you grab on, you take on more. When the laughter takes off, a weekend by the sea is launched before the coffee. A good pace pulls you along, and it shows. The question is who else took the run-up, and who only followed.
A glass in hand, one minute to look
Glass in hand, you watch the room for a minute before stepping in. You listen without climbing aboard, you borrow a pace then come back to yours. No scene pulls hard to one side. What actually makes you move is still to be found.
Someone else’s mood is caught on the run, like a last bus. In 1993 Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo and Richard Rapson open their article with a woman going to see her mother, full of lift, who a few exchanges later is short of breath. Their idea: we tend to mimic the face, voice and posture of the people around us, and so catch their emotions in return. It is a review, gathering evidence from several disciplines, and it had no one play a scene.
Sigal Barsade did, in 2002. Ninety-four business students, in small groups, had to run a negotiation exercise while a trained student played a mood in it, pleasant or not, energetic or calm. Where the mood was pleasant, the group cooperated better, with less conflict. One actor played all four roles, in a lab: what it does around a dinner table is left to see.
My eight scenes had no actor, no camera and no control group. They had me, and the memory of a few evenings.
Before you carry someone else’s mood home
Listening without marking
The test looks at four character traits through eight small scenes. It gives no score and makes no diagnosis, it is a game.
Like a weeknight
You tick an answer, or write it in your own words if none fits. Pick what you usually do, not what you would do on a very good day.
What is left, as a card
At the end, the Persona asks for your e-mail to show you your card. It is then kept in your account.