Category: Body & Mind

Studying Positive Emotions

How do we study emotion and how do we even think about positive emotions? Why do we even have positive emotions? These questions and more are being investigated by June Gruber, and here she is talking about them:

I thought I’d first start briefly with a tale of positive emotion. It’s a really interesting state because in many ways it’s one of the most powerful things that evolution has built for us. If we look at early writings of Charles Darwin, he prominently features these feelings of love, admiration, laughter. So early on we see observations of them, and have some sense that they’re really critical for our survival, but when you look at the subsequent scientific study of emotion, it lagged far behind. Indeed, most of the research in human emotion really began with studying negative emotions, trying to build taxonomies, understand cognitive appraisals, physiological signatures, and things like anger, and fear, and disgust. For good reason, we wanted to understand human suffering and hopefully try to ameliorate it.
June Gruber is Assistant Professor of Psychology, Director, Positive Emotion & Psychopatology Lab, Yale University. 

 

Stress Shouldn’t Stress You Out

In this TED talk, Kelly McGonigal examines the biology of stress and concludes that we really shouldn’t be all that worried about it.

Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others.

Economists: Reduce Time Spent Working

Since roughly the end of the 70s productivity at workplaces has increased yet wages have stagnated (except for the top 1%) meaning that we are relatively worse off than before. All one has to do is look at the graph below to get the basic idea of this global issue.

Great-Prosperity-vs-Great-Recession

With this in mind, it’s great to see economists calling for a reduced work week. In North America, a standard full-time week is 40 hours, and the economists are calling for a 30 hour work week.

The benefits of working less are huge for individuals as well as society as a whole. Some may think that fewer working hours would mean lost productivity and GDP, but they’d be wrong. There’s no evidence that the reduction will have larger negative economic impacts.

Anna Coote, head of social policy at the NEF, an independent think-tank, said: “It’s time to make ‘part-time’ the new ‘full-time’.
“We must rethink the way we divide up our hours between paid and unpaid activities, and make sure everyone has a fair share of free time.”
Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany have shown it is possible to make changes like these without weakening their economies, the books claims.
It adds: “Time spent providing unpaid care constitutes an important civic contribution that is often unrecognised.
“A shorter working week would both ease the pressure on carers, most of whom are women, and enable their responsibilities to be more widely shared with men. It could therefore help tackle the entrenched domestic bases of gender inequalities.”

Read more here.

Even Moderate Exercise Can Stave Off Depression

There’s a bunch of scientific evidence that already proves the benefits of exercise for one’s mental health, and now we know that even moderate workouts can have a huge impact. Even walking for just 20-30 minutes a day can improve resilience to depression!

So if you don’t want to go to the gym or lace up for a run then don’t – just go for a short walk.

This is the first longitudinal review to focus exclusively on the role that exercise plays in maintaining good mental health and preventing the onset of depression later in life.

Mammen—who is supervised by Professor Guy Faulkner, a co-author of the review— analyzed over 26 years’ worth of research findings to discover that even low levels of physical activity (walking and gardening for 20-30 minutes a day) can ward off depression in people of all age groups.

Mammen’s findings come at a time when mental health experts want to expand their approach beyond treating depression with costly prescription medication. “We need a prevention strategy now more than ever,” he says. “Our health system is taxed. We need to shift focus and look for ways to fend off depression from the start.”

More from UofT and here’s the full report in a medical journal.

Men: Drink With Your Friends to Stay Healthy

Now there’s the perfect excuse to go watch the game with your friends or just chillax in a bar! It turns out that males really benefit when they engage in face to face activities with their friends twice a week regardless of what they actually do.

So go out tonight with your friends and have a round to your health 😉

Professor Robin Dunbar, a leading psychologist at Oxford University, published the report, which shows that whilst speaking to mates is valuable, it is not enough for men.

He said to experience the real benefits of friendship, men must meet up in the flesh at least twice a week and actually ‘do stuff’.

It also demonstrates men who keep strong and well-maintained social groups are healthier, recover from illness more quickly and tend to be more generous.

No word on if going out every night for beers with friends is even more beneficial.

Read more.

Thanks to Shea!