Inward or outward: where a buyer's emotion flows

One person reads your email, gets angry and writes a furious review. Another reads the same email, gets just as angry, says nothing, closes the tab and never comes back. The emotion is identical. The behaviour is opposite, because emotional energy has two channels: it either turns inward, into the person, or flows outward, out of them.

That direction decides who writes to you and who leaves without a word, and whether a “buy now” button works as an invitation or as an irritant. Below: how to tell the two states apart, why a blocked outlet produces resentment, how anger differs from will, and where the Russian market reads all this differently from the markets most foreign companies know.

What “energy inward” and “energy outward” mean

Some emotions stay inside: shame, anxiety, guilt, resentment, self-criticism, low mood. The person goes quiet and puts up with it. From outside everything looks calm; inside, pressure builds with nowhere to go. Psychology calls this internalisation: emotion turned inward.

Other emotions go outward: anger, excitement, determination, laughter. Energy leaves through action, speech or the body, the pressure discharges, and the system can return to calm. This is externalisation, emotion turned outward.

The difference lies in where the feeling flows, not in its strength. Two people can be equally furious. The first writes a scathing comment and forgets it an hour later. The second swallows the anger and replays it for a week. The first found a channel. The second had the channel closed, and that is what made it worse.

Why a blocked outlet turns into resentment

The most destructive state appears when energy pushes outward and the exit is shut. It assembles step by step.

Something important happened that touched the person directly. The disagreement is strong, the feeling sharp. The system wants to answer, release, react. Then it hits a wall. You cannot answer because the person in front of you is your boss. You cannot change anything because it has already happened. You have no right to react because “that is not how things are done”.

The energy met a closed channel and turned back inside. That is resentment: anger that was not allowed out. Sadness is quiet and carries no tension; open anger has a free exit. Resentment is anger locked inside that presses day after day.

For a business this is concrete. A customer treated rudely at the till who chose not to argue takes the resentment home. They do not complain to you. They stop buying and tell people they know. A blocked outlet turns into quiet churn that you do not see in reports until it is too late. A feedback form or a live chat is the channel through which resentment gets out before it becomes departure.

Where the Russian market differs

Here a company coming from Western Europe or the US often misreads the signal. In many home markets a dissatisfied customer complains loudly and expects a formal process. In Russian practice the closed channel is common, and the phrase “that is not how things are done” from the original logic is a real brake. Many buyers will not write to an email address that looks like it goes nowhere, and will not fill in a long complaint form. They will, however, write a few lines in a messenger, or leave a review on Yandex Maps or 2GIS, where the review is visible to everyone else.

So the practical rule for Russia is to put the outlet where people already talk. A Telegram or WhatsApp contact on the page, a chat that answers in minutes rather than a ticket that answers in days, a reply from a real person to public reviews. If the only route for dissatisfaction is a support address in English, the energy has nowhere to go but inward, and you will meet it later as an account that went silent.

The same mechanism works inside a team. An employee told something uncalled-for at a meeting cannot answer the manager back. A month later it looks like burnout or a resignation letter, and nobody connects it to that meeting. A one-to-one conversation and an honest “what bothered you” discharge the pressure before it becomes destructive.

Anger and will: one energy, different channel

Anger is energy released outward without a channel. The system is overfull, and the pressure breaks out through the first available route: a shout, a sharp word, a fist on the table, an impulsive decision. The flow is chaotic. It either breaks something, relationships or processes, or simply relieves pressure without building anything.

Will is the same outward release directed into a specific channel: a decision, an action, an obstacle overcome. Anger says “I am about to explode”. Will says “I will do it”. The amount of energy is the same. The presence of a channel is what differs.

This changes how people are managed. When an employee “has no willpower”, it is often not weakness. It is the absence of a channel. The energy is there, but it is either locked in as resentment, scattered on trivia as irritability, or turned inward where it shows up as low mood. In all three cases there is fuel and no pipe.

The habitual move is to motivate, adding energy to a system that is already overfull, like pouring petrol into a tank with a blocked fuel line. The better move is to build the channel. “Do this by Friday” works better than “believe in yourself”, because the first gives the energy a route.

Two audiences: who needs a button and who needs a turn first

The inward state and the outward state require different communication. The same message lands on one and passes straight through the other, and the reason is direction.

An audience in the inward state is anxious, ashamed, uncertain or low. A call to action is useless here. There is no outward channel, and “buy now” breaks against a closed door. First you need to turn the energy: show that an exit exists, that acting is safe, that the risk is small, that the person can change their mind. A refund guarantee, a free first step, cancellation in one click, an honest answer to the fear. None of this is about discounts. It is about opening an outward channel before asking for action.

An audience in the outward state is excited and ready. It needs a channel right now: a button, a phone number, a clear next step. Without a route the energy goes to a competitor or the next tab. Here delay costs more than weak copy.

How this maps onto Yandex placements

This is where the Russian advertising stack gives you a useful split. A person typing a query into Yandex search is usually further along: they formulated a need and went looking. Search traffic in Yandex Direct leans toward the outward state, and the landing page for it should be short, with the price and the contact visible. A person who sees your ad in the Yandex Advertising Network while reading news is in a different place. They did not ask for you, and many of them are in a quiet, inward mode. Sending both streams to the same page with the same loud call to action is the typical mistake.

A company shows an inspiring video with a powerful call to people who are currently anxious. Inspiration calls outward, anxiety holds inward, and the signal passes through untouched. The report says “weak creative”, though the creative may have been excellent: it hit the wrong state. So audience setup starts with one question before age and interests: is this person ready to act now, or do they first need a door opened?

Compare two purchases. Someone choosing a gift an hour before a celebration is pure outward energy: they need a large button, fast delivery and a clear price, and any obstacle sends them to whoever is simpler. Someone choosing an expensive medical service, afraid and reading reviews for weeks, is inward energy: they need a calm tone, answers to fears and a first meeting without pressure. One landing page cannot serve both well.

How to read where a person’s energy flows

Direction shows in behaviour, and you can read it without tests.

Signs of the outward state: an open posture, a loud voice, fast speech, readiness to argue and act. The body takes up space.

Signs of the inward state: a closed posture, a quiet voice, slow speech, avoided eye contact. The body closes in, as if the person wants to become smaller.

Online the same signals show through actions. Outward energy means active comments, reposts, quick clicks, immediate purchase, a question in chat. Inward energy means long reading without a single click, saving for later, months of silent observation, an abandoned cart. A subscriber who has read your newsletter for half a year and never replied is not a dead contact. They are in the inward state. They need a small, safe reason to take a first step, and another loud call will not provide it.

For a company selling into Russia from abroad there is a practical tool for this that has no direct equivalent in Google Analytics: Webvisor in Yandex Metrica, which records sessions. Watching a few dozen recordings of visitors who scrolled through the whole page and left without clicking tells you more about the inward share of your audience than any demographic report.

Speed matters too. Outward energy decides fast and a long questionnaire kills the impulse; inward energy will not be hurried and values detail. Sometimes the answer is two checkout paths: a short one for the ready and an explanatory one for those who hesitate.

Build the channel first, then call to action

Emotion always flows somewhere, inward or outward. When it pushes outward and the exit is closed, resentment forms and quietly eats into both the person and your revenue. Anger and will are the same force; the only difference is whether there is a channel. Give the outward audience a channel: a button, a step, a clear action. For the inward audience, open the door first, show that stepping out is safe, and only then invite.

A miss has one cause: the message pushes where the person’s energy is not flowing right now. Match the direction, and the same message starts to work.

If you want to see which state your Russian audience is in and where its energy is flowing now, start with a review. Sometimes turning a single signal is enough for people who have been reading you silently for years to finally take a step.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Russian version of this article on belokrylovo.ru: Эмоция внутрь или наружу: куда течёт энергия