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Emotional hot potato

Emotional hot potato cartoon: spreading a bad mood through a family to the dog who pees on the floor

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The boss yells at the employee, the employee yells at their spouse, the spouse yells at the child, the child yells at their younger sibling, the sibling yells at the dog, and the dog pees on the rug. This scene is an excellent example of Emotional Hot Potato, where the "hot potato" emotion makes its painful way through each family member.

Bad moods can be contagious, as can anger and anxiety. Our innate empathy can naturally transfer a bad mood from a coworker to ourselves.

Emotional hot potato can also be a form of projection where we attempt to rid ourselves of an unpleasant emotion by transferring it or attributing it to others. By handling the hot potato of the anger of a teenage child, for example, the parent may find themselves seething while the child feels better having passed on the potato. Ouch!

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I learned the term from Lawrence Cohen in Playful Parenting: An Exciting New Approach to Raising Children That Will Help You Nurture Close Connections, Solve Behavior Problems, and Encourage Confidence , Ballantine Books, 2012.

This sketch features in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures

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Published 30 Sep 2017

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The evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar identified that an average person’s social network appears to follow simple scaling laws. Our networks grow from our closest friends—whom we would seek personal advice or help from in times of severe emotional and financial distress—through our superfamily (or close friends), to our acquaintances (or clan), whom we might invite to a party, and to our most casual friends (or tribe). At each level, the number of people typically increases by about a factor of 3. So you might have 5 close friends, 15 in your superfamily, about 50 in your clan and about 150 in your tribe. The 150, with some variance, seems to be around the limit for the number of people we can keep track of, reasonably call part of our social network, and maintain as a cohesive group. This may be partly due to the limits of our memories and the effort it takes to maintain relationships. There are many instances of the ~150 in action, for example, in challenges of transitioning companies as you exceed 150 employees while maintaining cohesiveness, the size of Neolithic farming communities and the basic unit size of Roman armies. The number is actually 148, but 150 is catchier and seems fine between friends.…The evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar identified that an average person’s social network appears to follow simple scaling laws. Our networks grow from our closest friends—whom we would seek personal advice or help from in times of severe emotional and financial distress—through our superfamily (or close friends), to our acquaintances (or clan), whom we might invite to a party, and to our most casual friends (or tribe). At each level, the number of people typically increases by about a factor of 3. So you might have 5 close friends, 15 in your superfamily, about 50 in your clan and about 150 in your tribe. The 150, with some variance, seems to be around the limit for the number of people we can keep track of, reasonably call part of our social network, and maintain as a cohesive group. This may be partly due to the limits of our memories and the effort it takes to maintain relationships. There are many instances of the ~150 in action, for example, in challenges of transitioning companies as you exceed 150 employees while maintaining cohesiveness, the size of Neolithic farming communities and the basic unit size of Roman armies. The number is actually 148, but 150 is catchier and seems fine between friends.

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