and nods. The other group experienced positive feedback couched in negative body language — frowns and narrowed eyes. As it turns out, those who emerged from good-natured negative feedback sessions felt more optimistic than those who received praise from cranky supervisors. “In effect,” Goleman and Boyatzis conclude, “the delivery was more important than the message itself. And everybody knows that when people feel better, they perform better. So if leaders hope to get the best out of their people, they should continue to be demanding but in ways that foster a positive mood in their teams. The old carrot-and-stick approach alone doesn’t make neural sense.”
Like horses, who are keenly aware of nonverbal cues, people respond to the emotional atmosphere behind our words more profoundly than they do to the actual content and meaning. But vocal tone, body language, and mirror neurons are just the tip of the iceberg. Research into the human-equine relationship continues to uncover even more subtle interpersonal dynamics, and while no one understands the mechanism yet, it turns out that horses and riders don’t have to see any evidence of movement or gesture to affect each other physiologically. While this may seem obvious when you’re riding a horse — you can feel what’s going on in his body and vice versa — emotions and sensations are contagious even when you appear to be walking calmly beside each other.
In a 2009 article published in the Veterinary Journal, researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences performed a simple, elegant experiment designed to study the effect a nervous handler has on the heart rate of his or her mount. Twenty-seven horses of various breeds and ages were led or ridden at a walk by thirty-seven amateur equestrians. Wearing heart-rate monitors, each team traveled a thirty-meter distance between two cones a total of four times. Just before the final pass, however, the person was told that an assistant, who had been standing next to the path the whole time, would open an umbrella as the horse went by.
Now, as someone who’s worked with a number of flighty horses over the years, my own heart skipped a beat just reading about this minor institutionalized threat. I mean, even right now, sitting at my computer, I actually cringe at the thought of the sound an umbrella makes when it flies open, especially when I visualize this happening five feet away from my Arabian stallion. If mirror neurons are involved in these palpable physiological responses, they’re bouncing off a projection screen in my head. And the effect of imagination, interestingly enough, is what the researchers were ultimately measuring. Those scientific pranksters didn’t open the umbrella (as any equine-liability insurance company would be relieved to know). Even so, the heart rates of both human and horse rose significantly as they passed the now suspect, inclement-weather-savvy lab assistant. Even more remarkable, no behavioral differences were observed in either horse or handler when the animal was being led, though there was a tendency for riders to shorten their reins after the dreaded news was conveyed. So, especially in the case of people leading their equine companions, the mere human thought of the umbrella’s spooking power was enough to raise the arousal of the horse, who I’m pretty sure would not have understood the experimenter’s warning in Swedish or any other language.
Let’s not mince words here. What we’re talking about is a mild form of telepathy, which, I might add, comes from the same root as empathy and sympathy. Telepathy literally means “feeling at a distance.” Because we’re methodically and relentlessly taught to dissociate from the environment and our own bodies, modern humans downplay rather than develop this ability, but the information still manages to leak through now and then in the form of “gut feelings” and other forms of intuition. While culturally conditioned minds work overtime to discount insights that bypass rational thought, the brain itself can’t help but gather and process multifaceted somatic impressions with the split-second accuracy of a computer calculating a complex spreadsheet.
Logic, though useful at times, moves like a snail on quaaludes compared with the warp-speed conclusions coordinated by spindle cells. Four times larger than most brain cells, these neurons have an extralong branch allowing them to attach to other cells more easily, transmitting environmental impressions, memories, thoughts, and feelings at hyperspeed. “This ultrarapid connection of emotions, beliefs, and judgments creates what behavioral scientists call our social guidance system,” Goleman and Boyatzis emphasize. “Spindle cells trigger neural networks that come into play whenever we have to choose the best response among many — even for a task as routine as prioritizing a to-do list. These cells also help us gauge whether someone is trustworthy and right (or wrong) for a job. Within one-twentieth of a second, our spindle cells fire with information about how we feel about that person; such ‘thin-slice’ judgments can be very accurate, as follow-up metrics reveal. Therefore, leaders should not fear to act on those judgments, provided that they are also attuned to others’ moods.” (And, I must emphasize, provided these leaders are also aware of their own projections and prejudices, a topic I explore in chapter 12.)
It works both ways, of course. Spindle cells, mirror neurons, and horse heart-rate responses to threats imagined by humans add to growing scientific evidence that everyone — from your employees to your kids, your spouse, your mother-in-law, and your dog — is designed to read your mind. Kind of levels the playing field, doesn’t it?
Here’s an even more intriguing, or disturbing, bit of news, depending on whether or not you like to hide your emotions and intentions from others. In Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, emotional-intelligence pioneer Daniel Goleman cites studies showing that not only does a person’s blood pressure escalate when he tries to suppress feeling but the blood pressure of those interacting with him also rises. Lie detector tests, of course, measure arousal fluctuations. However, you don’t have to be hooked up to a machine to reveal a hidden state of mind. Living beings are hardwired to transmit and receive this information at a distance. Our culturally induced emphasis on verbal communication lessens awareness of this valuable information over time, but anyone who retains or reclaims use of this natural ability appears downright psychic compared to the rest of the population.
The volume of this little-understood “sixth sense” is turned way up in prey animals such as horses, who become noticeably agitated in the presence of people who are incongruent, who try to cover anger, fear, or sadness with an appearance of well-being. This is not an equine judgment of our tendency to lie about what we’re really feeling; it appears to be a reflection of emotion’s physiology — and its contagious nature. In well over a decade of working with horses to teach human-development skills, I have regularly seen these animals mirror the precise emotion being suppressed, then calm down the moment the handler openly acknowledges that feeling — even if the emotion is still there. Let me say it again: The emotion doesn’t have to change in order for the horse to show some signs of relaxation. By making the fear or anger conscious, by becoming congruent, the handler effectively lowers his own blood pressure, even if only slightly. But it’s enough to drop the horse’s blood pressure in response, which the animal demonstrates by sighing, licking and chewing, and/or lowering his head.
Unless you’re a sociopath (which we’ll get to later in this chapter), your blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing intensify when you’re frightened or angry, even when you’re wearing your best poker face. It takes extra energy to hide these feelings, which adds to the anxiety radiating from your body through a complex process that scientists are only now beginning to uncover. (It’s important to emphasize that horses can detect hidden emotions that I cannot see in the client. Sometimes this person doesn’t realize what he or she is feeling until the horse acts it out, oddly enough. Yet sure enough, when the client acknowledges this previously suppressed emotion, the horse will relax, sigh, lick, and chew. Something operating beyond the scope of mirror neurons is at work in humans as well, or the blood pressure of someone who’s suppressing emotion would not affect the arousal of the people he or she is interacting with.)
The good news is that positive feelings are contagious too. A person who truly feels peaceful in situations that unnerve others can have a calming effect on everyone around her. This is a key skill in becoming a great rider or a great leader. In fact, with more time in the saddle,
