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Hundreds of people were asked to colour in a map of the body with where they felt each type of love.
The effect being around stressed people has on the brain.
The effect being around stressed people has on the brain.
Contact with people who are stressed changes the brain in the same way as direct contact with the stress, research finds.
The study may help to explain why family members of those with post-traumatic stress disorder sometimes show the same symptoms as those who have experienced the stress directly.
Dr Toni-Lee Sterley, who led the study, said:
“There has been other literature that shows stress can be transferred — and our study is actually showing the brain is changed by that transferred stress.
The neurons that control the brain’s response to stress showed changes in unstressed partners that were identical to those we measured in the stressed mice.”
The conclusion comes from a study on pairs of male and female mice.
One of the pair was exposed to a mild stress before being returned to its partner.
The results showed that both the stressed mouse and the one that was not directly stressed had the same changes in critical brain networks.
Professor Jaideep Bains, who led the research, said:
“What we can begin to think about is whether other people’s experiences or stresses may be changing us in a way that we don’t fully understand.
The study also demonstrates that traits we think of as uniquely human are evolutionary conserved biological traits.”
Stress caused the mice to release a chemical signal in the form of a pheromone to alert its partner.
Social interactions helped the female mice bounce back from the stress: the affected neurons recovered by around 50%.
The social interaction did not not help the male mice.
Professor Bains said:
“If some of the effects of stress are erased through social interactions, but this benefit is limited to females, this may provide insights into how we design personalized approaches for the treatment of stress disorders in people.”
The study was published in the journal Neuroscience (Sterley et al., 2018).
How young people drift into crime and what develops the habit.
One reason why everyone everywhere always seems to be looking at their phone.
One-in-four children worldwide is maltreated.
There are different paths to success — not everyone gets there by the conventional route of following their dreams and being endlessly positive.
Difficulties dealing with stress are linked to mental health problems.
Difficulties dealing with stress are linked to mental health problems.
Smelling your partner’s clothes helps to reduce stress levels, research finds.
Women who smelled their partner’s t-shirt felt calmer afterwards.
In comparison, those who smelled a stranger’s t-shirt experienced increases in the stress hormone, cortisol.
Women may be particularly susceptible to the effect as their sense of smell is stronger than men.
Ms Marlise Hofer, the study’s lead author, said:
“Many people wear their partner’s shirt or sleep on their partner’s side of the bed when their partner is away, but may not realize why they engage in these behaviours.
Our findings suggest that a partner’s scent alone, even without their physical presence, can be a powerful tool to help reduce stress.”
96 opposite-sex couples were included in the study.
The women were subjected to a mock interview and math test to make them stressed.
Afterwards, they smelled t-shirts that were either unworn, smelled of their partner, or of a stranger.
Saliva tests showed that cortisol was lower when women smelled their partner’s t-shirt.
The stress-reducing effect was even stronger if the women successfully recognised the t-shirt as belonging to their partner.
Ms Hofer said:
“From a young age, humans fear strangers, especially strange males, so it is possible that a strange male scent triggers the ‘fight or flight’ response that leads to elevated cortisol.
This could happen without us being fully aware of it.”
Dr Frances Chen, study co-author, said:
“With globalization, people are increasingly traveling for work and moving to new cities.
Our research suggests that something as simple as taking an article of clothing that was worn by your loved one could help lower stress levels when you’re far from home.”
The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Hofer et al., 2018).
Nostalgia has been rehabilitated from a disease of the mind to a beneficial emotional experience, but it has its psychological drawbacks.
Nostalgia has been rehabilitated from a disease of the mind to a beneficial emotional experience, but it has its psychological drawbacks.
Nostalgia is an emotion related to a past place or time, mainly one that has positive associations.
Nostalgia comes from two Greek words, literally meaning ‘homecoming’ + ‘ache’.
Touch, smell, weather and music are powerful ways of inducing nostalgia in people.
It seems incredible now, but at one time nostalgia used to be considered a psychiatric condition:
“Nostalgia was regarded as a medical disease confined to the Swiss, a view that persisted through most of the 19th century.
Symptoms—including bouts of weeping, irregular heartbeat, and anorexia—were attributed variously to demons inhabiting the middle brain, sharp differentiation in atmospheric pressure wreaking havoc in the brain, or the unremitting clanging of cowbells in the Swiss Alps which damaged the eardrum and brain cells.” (Sedikides et al., 2008)
Nowadays we know that it’s not just the Swiss that ‘suffer’ from nostalgia, it’s most people, to varying degrees.
One survey finds that 80 percent of people feel nostalgic at least once a week.
There’s some reason to think nostalgia might be bad for you, as it does have negative components.
Nostalgia is often experienced as a loss or longing for what has now gone.
But studies suggest that at the same time people experience warm, positive emotions as they remember happy times.
Indeed, people often find the positive components of nostalgia stronger than the negative.
That’s why far from being seen as a disease of the mind, modern psychologists have been attracted to the positive attributes of nostalgia.
Here are a few of them, with one word of caution:
When people are nostalgic, it almost always involves other people.
As social creatures, nostalgia helps remind us of our connections to others and staves off loneliness.
Indeed, people who are more resilient naturally use nostalgia to help themselves feel better, researchers has found (Zhou et al., 2008).
The study’s authors write:
“Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, is a self-relevant and social emotion: The self almost invariably figures as the protagonist in nostalgic narratives and is almost always surrounded by close others.
Along with close others (family members, friends, partners), the most common objects of nostalgic reverie are momentous events (birthdays, vacations) and settings (sunsets, lakes).”
Nostalgia often includes a mix of positive and negative emotions.
One remembers a far off, warm day surrounded by friends who are now far away or gone.
The feelings of camaraderie are tinged with those of loss and sadness.
However, psychologists still find that nostalgia is, on balance, a positive feeling.
For the study, people were made to focus on loneliness.
This had the effect of making them more nostalgic — especially among more resilient people.
The authors explain the results:
“Nostalgia magnifies perceptions of social support and, in so doing, thwarts the effect of loneliness.
Nostalgia restores an individual’s social connectedness.
[…]…the association between loneliness and nostalgia is
particularly pronounced among highly resilient individuals.It is these individuals who, when lonely, report high levels of nostalgia.”
Nostalgia, in terms of recalling positive memories can promote resilience.
One study found that people who recalled a previous situation that was dealt with successfully became more resilient (Paersch et al., 2021).
The technique works best if the memory is of overcoming a significant challenge.
In contrast, just recalling a positive memory is not enough.
Passing an exam, dealing with a difficult conversation and giving a presentation are all examples of successfully using personal skills.
In contrast, a fun day at the park might be a positive experience, but is probably not testing your mettle.
Memories of successfully overcoming challenging situations, though, help boost what psychologists refer to as self-efficacy.
Professor Birgit Kleim, the study’s first author, explains:
“Self-efficacy is a key element of resilience.
By self-efficacy, I mean the belief that we have the ability to influence things to at least a small degree, even if some things are unchangeable.
Without believing in your own capabilities, you wouldn’t take on any challenges in the first place.”
Recalling positive memories helps to build resilience against depression (Askelund et al., 2019).
While people tend to believe that psychological resilience is set in stone, it is something that can be built up.
Getting nostalgic about happy events and having a store of these to draw on is one way of building up resilience.
Thinking back to better times, even if they are tinged with some sadness, helps people cope with challenging times.
Mr Adrian Dahl Askelund, the study’s first author, said:
“Our work suggests that ‘remembering the good times’ may help build resilience to stress and reduce vulnerability to depression in young people.
This is important as we already know that it is possible to train people to come up with specific positive memories.
This could be a beneficial way of helping support those young people at risk of depression.”
The study included 427 young people who were at risk of depression.
They were asked to recall recent life events that were prompted by a word like ‘happy’.
The results showed that adolescents who recalled more specific happy memories and fewer negative thoughts had lower levels of cortisol.
Cortisol is sometimes known as the ‘stress hormone’.
Adolescents with lower levels of cortisol had a reduced risk of developing depression over the subsequent year.
While nostalgia can be a powerful positive emotion, too much could be damaging.
One study has found that thinking about the future is better for mental health than nostalgia for the past (Dennis et al., 2021).
People who imagined their best possible selves felt more positive emotions than those who engaged in nostalgia.
The best possible self exercise involves imagining your life in the future, but a future where everything that could go well, has gone well.
It is not an exercise in fantasy, rather it requires envisioning a realistic and positive future.
Ms Amelia Dennis, the study’s first author:
“We found that looking to the future and appreciating what is positive in our lives currently is more psychologically beneficial than reminiscing about the past.”
The future-oriented techniques may work best because they tend to foster hope.
When people are looking forward to positive aspects of life, it takes their mind off the current situation.
Despite the caveat that nostalgia should not be overdone, psychologists have found that it has all sorts of other benefits:
So nostalgia is well on its way to being rehabilitated.
From a disease of the mind to a valuable emotional resource: nostalgia really isn’t what it used to be.
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