The Power of the Herd. Linda Kohanov

concept of “sociosensual awareness.” In many ways, I still prefer this term because of the lilting, almost musical way it rolls off the tongue. Sociosensual awareness also has a decidedly positive connotation compared to affect contagion, a term I came across in the 2001 book Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain by psychiatrist Elio Frattaroli. Not only did this phrase characterize how people sometimes feel victimized by others’ emotions, but it also carried more weight with skeptics because of its medical connotation. Frattaroli’s definition recognized that the hidden emotions of one person could infect another. While he framed this as something akin to a communicable disease, he recognized that it couldn’t be explained away by conventional counseling principles like transference and countertransference. He subsequently learned to use affect contagion in his practice — in one case to accurately sense a patient’s unspoken suicidal mood when standard psychological tests, and the opinions of respected colleagues, insisted the man had no self-destructive intent.

      Frattaroli’s realization that he could use his own body to sense his clients’ emotions and Goleman’s interest in capitalizing on neurological processes for the purpose of “driving emotions” of others “in the right direction” are two sides of the same empathic coin, one that equestrians have been tossing for centuries. If you specialize in training flighty, abused, or simply inexperienced horses, it’s not just helpful to draw on these interrelated skills; it’s essential to your survival.

      Here’s how it works. A second before your horse shies, bucks, or bolts, he sends what feels like an electrical charge pulsing through your body, causing your gut to clench and your heart rate to rise. Depending upon the severity of the situation, you might also feel your breath catching in your throat and the hair rising on the back of your neck as the information moves on up to your brain. When used effectively, this somatic alarm allows you to prepare for, and possibly avert, a troublesome spook. Remember, spindle cells can assess multiple inputs and choose the best response within one-twentieth of a second, giving you a brief window of time to modify the horse’s reaction by consciously altering your own nervous system’s response. Ultimately, how you handle this potent input determines whether you stay on his back (or in the case of leading a horse, whether or not he rears over you, kicks out, drags you to the ground, and/or leaves you with a painful case of rope burn as he breaks free and runs screaming around the farm working the rest of the herd into a frenzy, possibly setting in motion an even more unfortunate chain of events, including, but not limited to, unseating several unsuspecting riders in adjacent arenas).

      An inexperienced rider can’t help but respond to this massive dose of affect contagion instinctually, usually by collapsing into a (supremely unbalanced) fetal position, grabbing hold of the horse’s mane, and wrapping her legs around his body. Leg pressure, being the cue to “go faster,” is like hitting the “turbocharge” control on a race car, catapulting the horse forward. Those who manage to hang on through this little rite of passage get to experience the next round of responses — namely, a series of increasingly frantic bucks, which the horse employs mostly to regain his balance as the frazzled human dangling around his neck becomes an unfocused blob of dead weight. Actually the effect is worse than dead weight: a frightened rider’s supercharged nervous system broadcasts its own breath-holding, gut-clenching, heart-racing alarm back into the horse’s body, which intensifies the flight-or-fight response.

      Breaking the spell of this dangerous feedback loop is a nonverbal skill. The words whoa and relax mean nothing to a horse when the rest of your body is screaming, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” However, as Stephanie Argento discovered during that post-Christmas trail ride, hearing a companion shout “Night of the Lepus!” might make all the difference in the world.

      The Opposite of Fear

      Revisiting the details of that first rabbit-induced spook, Stephanie was intrigued to find that she’d experienced, viscerally, the dangers of affect contagion — and, accidentally, the power of its hidden potential. When a supersized bunny startled the horse in front of her, Charger too had shied, causing Stephanie’s gut to clench and her heart to skip a beat. Had this process continued unabated, she probably would have rolled over into a fetal position and grabbed hold of his body with her legs, heightening Charger’s impulse to turn tail and run. But quite unexpectedly, Marie had made her laugh, literally disarming a volatile physiological trend.

      Fear, especially among social animals, is a sociosensual phenomenon, immensely efficient as an empathic alarm that shoots through the herd. Horses, after all, don’t have to turn around and shout, “There’s a lion in the grass; I think it would be prudent for all of us to flee in an easterly direction and reassess the situation on that hill over there.” A split second before the threat-sensing horse can move his thousand-pound body into a flight-or-fight pose, let alone turn around and run, a shock wave of heightened arousal blasts through his nervous system — and the nervous systems of every horse, bird, rabbit, deer, and human in the vicinity. This potentially lifesaving form of shared emotion, however, can create a destructive hall-of-mirrors effect: any rise in blood pressure or muscle tension from the rider amplifies the horse’s trepidation, needlessly inducing panic when, in the case of a jackrabbit, mild, momentary concern is the correct response.

      Experienced riders learn, sometimes unconsciously, how to avert a spook by meeting the affect contagion of fear with the affect contagion of relaxation, focus, elation, and/or amusement. Physiologically, this means that when you feel that initial shock wave coursing through your body, you breathe into the tension, loosening your spine, unclenching your gut, releasing your jaw. Rather than bracing against the horse or grabbing his mane, you sit deeper in the saddle, maintaining an agile, balanced position. It actually helps to smile — if appropriate. Remember, incongruent emotion — such as covering fear with an appearance of well-being — causes your own blood pressure, and consequently that of the horse, to rise. However, the idea that a twenty-pound jackrabbit could pose a threat to the half-ton powerhouse of muscle underneath you is so ridiculous that the mere thought might produce an authentic chuckle or two.

      It’s particularly dangerous to dissociate at this point, because if you go blank and numb, you leave the choice of what to do and where to go up to a frazzled horse. You avoid the haze of indecision not by trying to disconnect from sensation overload but by feeling what’s happening and using those feelings as information. This obviously takes courage and practice. To up the difficulty level, you must then modify your own physiological response to fear in order to drive the emotions and attention of your horse in the right direction. With mind and body fully engaged, breathing deeply, regaining balance if not total relaxation, you focus your mount toward the desired outcome — either away from a legitimate threat, like a royally pissed-off rattlesnake, or right on down the trail as that wild hare leaps across your path.

      When it comes to consciously broadcasting the opposite of fear, you must be present to win. During that first spook, however, Stephanie’s hide was saved by a timely joke. And laughter, it turns out, is one of the most efficient ways to turn a destructive emotional trend around. As Goleman and Boyatzis reveal, humans actually have a special subset of mirror neurons “whose only job is to detect other people’s smiles and laughter, prompting smiles and laughter in return.” Horses can’t laugh, obviously, but the sudden mood shift that their handlers experience when amusement takes over is reliably contagious across species lines.

      Whether you’re a rider, a parent, a teacher, or a manager, a good sense of humor may well be the ultimate secret weapon, useful not only for disarming an out-of-control flight-or-fight impulse but also for achieving higher performance overall. Goleman and Boyatzis cite the research of Fabio Sala, who found that top-performing leaders elicited laughter three times more often in staff members than did midperforming leaders. “Being in a good mood, other research finds, helps people take in information effectively and respond nimbly and creatively. In other words laughter is serious business.”

      As with most forms of emotional intelligence, however, good judgment and sensitivity to nuance are essential in using laughter effectively. Sarcasm, for instance, is innately incongruent, allowing people to express contempt and anger in glib yet divisive ways, producing noxious by-products on both sides of a conflict. Those aligned with your perspective may be momentarily amused by your