Empathy Among College Roommates

Abstract

I did a five-day observation of my roommate’s moods and took notes on how they differed each day. This research was conducted to observe the way roommates’ moods affect each other due to empathy. I operationalized my definition of mood and based it upon that. My roommates are not only my roommates but also my two best friends, so our moods and tonations affect each other, when one of us is down, all of us are down.  

Empathy Among Roommates

I operationalized a good mood as having two or more of the following; willingness to talk, willingness to listen, consistent smiling, higher fluctuation and tonation when speaking, and active engagement in conversation. A bad mood is operationalized by essentially the opposite of the good mood’s requirements; unwillingness to talk, unwillingness to listen, very few facial signs of happiness (i.e. smiling), monotone speaking, and very little engagement in conversation.

On the first day of my observations, both roommate #1 and roommate #2 were in good moods. They both were actively engaged in conversations with me and amongst themselves. We all hung out and chatted for the majority of the day because it was a Sunday and none of us had work, at the end of the day we all watched a Netflix show together. I realized that because both my roommates were in good moods, even if I was in a bad mood it wouldn’t last because their positive energy kept me in a good mood. On day two, I woke up in a very bad mood and I didn’t know why. Roommates #1 and #2 were in chatting amongst themselves and laughing, they were audibly in good moods. Upon entering the living room, where my roommates were chatting, I noticed that after a while roommate #1 started picking up on my negative tonations and her energy switched, she got quiet and went into her room. Roommate #2 picked up on this negative energy and also went to her room. This made my mood worse because I started to feel like a burden and that my negativity was swallowing the whole apartment. After a few hours of us all being in our rooms separately I heard my roommates making dinner, I decided to come into the kitchen to initiate a positive conversation which changed the tone and returned things back to our normal. 

On day three I woke up around 1 p.m., both my roommates were awake and doing schoolwork by the time I woke up. I was in a good mood and decided to talk to roommate #1for a little, she was also in a seemingly good mood. I then went into roommate #2’s room and she was clearly not in a good mood, she was unresponsive in conversation and could barely hold eye contact with me. This made me feel shut out and put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day, roommate #2 and I’s bad moods affected roommate #1 and she also got in a bad mood towards the end of the day. For the rest of the day, we all spent time separately just watching shows in our rooms until we all fell asleep. On day four I woke up in a good mood and roommates #1 and #2 woke up after me both in good moods, I had work this day but even when I got home both my roommates’ moods were elevated, we all chatted for an hour or two then watched Netflix together until it was time to go to bed. On the fifth and final day of my study, we were all in good spirits until roommate #1 received bad news from her father that her grandfather had come down with pneumonia for the fourth time this year. She was alone crying in her room until me and roommate #2 went into her room to try to console her, she stopped crying but she was still very down. After about an hour, roommate #2 and I started to take on her hardships emotionally and we both got drained, making us both tired emotionally. We all spent the rest of our day in our respective rooms.

The point of this study was to see how roommate’s/ close friend’s moods affect one another’s respective moods. My observations have shown that when one or both of my roommate(s) are in a negative mood it impacts the mood of the rest of the house. This is because we spend every day together and we care about each other. With this information I can use it to take a step back and analyze the energy of my apartment without letting it get me emotional and putting me in a bad mood, then I might be able to be helpful in listening and trying to turn the energy back from negative to positive in the house.