Eating these foods is associated with greater optimism, happiness, higher self-esteem and better relationships.
Eating these foods is associated with greater optimism, happiness, higher self-esteem and better relationships.
Consuming fruit and vegetables could be just as good for your mental wellbeing as it is for your physical health, a new study finds.
The study of 14,000 people in the UK found that the more fruit and vegetables they consumed, the higher their mental wellbeing (Stranges et al., 2014).
Mental wellbeing is about more than just not being depressed: it means positively feeling good.
People with higher mental wellbeing are more optimistic, happier, have higher self-esteem and better relationships with others.
Dr Saverio Stranges, the study’s first author, said:
“Along with [not] smoking, fruit and vegetable consumption was the health-related behaviour most consistently associated with both low and high mental wellbeing.
These novel findings suggest that fruit and vegetable intake may play a potential role as a driver, not just of physical, but also of mental wellbeing in the general population.”
The results showed that amongst those who ate five or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day, 33.5% had high mental wellbeing.
Amongst those who only ate one portion per day, this figure dropped to just 6.8%.
Other lifestyle factors were also important, but only not smoking was as consistently associated with higher wellbeing as fruit and vegetable consumption.
Although this study only tells us that fruit and vegetable consumption and higher mental wellbeing are associated, other studies have shown a stronger connection.
One asked participants to log how much fruit and vegetables they ate over a 21-day period, as well as their mood (White et al., 2013).
The researchers found that eating more fruit and vegetables one day predicted better mood the next day.
There is also much evidence linking fruit and vegetable consumption with better physical wellbeing, so increased mental wellbeing is not a stretch.
Professor Sarah Stewart-Brown, one of the study’s co-authors, concluded:
“Mental illness is hugely costly to both the individual and society, and mental wellbeing underpins many physical diseases, unhealthy lifestyles and social inequalities in health.
… [high] fruit and vegetable intake could [enable] people to enhance their mental wellbeing at the same time as preventing heart disease and cancer.”
New research on 1,000 Americans over 5 years upholds some age-old rules about marriage.
New research on 1,000 Americans over 5 years upholds some age-old rules about marriage.
For a high quality marriage, have fewer sexual partners beforehand and, when you meet the right person, invite at least 150 people to your wedding.
These are two findings of a new report from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia (Rhoades & Stanley, 2014).
The research followed over 1,000 Americans across five years as they got married and had children.
Of the original group, 418 participants got married and the report’s authors looked at how all sorts of factors — like their relationship history and when they cohabitated — affected the quality of their marriages.
Here are the four main findings from the study:
1. Have fewer sexual partners before marriage
The received wisdom amongst the younger generations is that experience of different relationships before marriage doesn’t do you any harm.
However, this new research finds otherwise.
The average number of sexual partner people reported having before marriage was five.
But 23% of people had slept with just one person and it was these people who tended to have the highest quality marriages.
For women, the more men they had slept with before saying “I do”, the less happy they were with their marriages.
As one of the study’s authors, Dr. Galena Rhoades, put it:
“In most areas, more experience is better. You’re a better job candidate with more experience, not less.
When it comes to relationship experience, though, we found that having more experience before getting married was associated with lower marital quality.”
In the report they write:
“More experience may increase one’s awareness of alternative partners.
A strong sense of alternatives is believed to make it harder to maintain commitment to, and satisfaction with, what one already has.”
Apparently, what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas.
2. Commit to marriage before moving in together
People who either got married before moving in together or committed to getting married when they moved in together had better marriages, the study found.
This may be because ‘sliding’ into living together can make it difficult to get out of a relationship that isn’t really right.
On the other hand, if moving in together is treated as part of the road to marriage, it is taken as a more serious step.
It is better, the authors argue, to take moving in together as a very serious commitment, rather than just a handy way of saving on the rent.
3. Invite at least 150 guests to your wedding
Amongst those who had big, formal weddings, 41% of them achieved a high quality marriage.
In comparison, amongst those who did not have a formal ceremony, just 28% went on to have high quality marriages.
Even the number of guests at the ceremony was associated with marriage quality, with 150 turning out to be a decent round number.
The authors speculate that the more people that witness a marriage, the more seriously the two people take the commitment.
4. Have children after getting married
One of the most disastrous factors for a marriage in this research was having children before getting married.
Amongst college-educated couples, only 3% of those who had a child before marriage went on to have a high quality marriage.
However, of those who got married before having a child, 44% went on to have a high quality marriage.
Sliding versus deciding
The study’s co-author, Professor Scott Stanley, explained that there was too much sliding through traditional relationship transitions, without the requisite commitment:
“We believe that one important obstacle to marital happiness is that many people now slide through major relationship transitions — like having sex, moving in together, getting engaged or having a child — that have potentially life-altering consequences.
Another way to think about ‘sliding versus deciding’ is in terms of rituals.
We tend to ritualize experiences that are important.
At times of important transitions, the process of making a decision sets up couples to make stronger commitments with better follow-through as they live them out.”
The vital role expectations play in our happiness is revealed by data collected from 18,420 people worldwide.
A mathematical equation which can predict our moment-by-moment happiness has been developed by researchers at University College London.
The equation (below) was based on a study of just 26 people playing a simple game involving risks and rewards…
The vital role expectations play in our happiness is revealed by data collected from 18,420 people worldwide.
A mathematical equation which can predict our moment-by-moment happiness has been developed by researchers at University College London.
The equation (below) was based on a study of just 26 people playing a simple game involving risks and rewards (Rutledge et al., 2014).
The equation was then tested on data collected from 18,420 people all around the world through a smartphone app.
The app tracked people’s momentary happiness and found that their mood didn’t just result from what they were doing, but also their expectations and how they felt beforehand.
Based on recent events and their expectations, the equation could predict how happy people would feel in the moment.
Dr Robb Rutledge, lead author of the study, said:
“We expected to see that recent rewards would affect moment-to-moment happiness but were surprised to find just how important expectations are in determining happiness.
In real-world situations, the rewards associated with life decisions such as starting a new job or getting married are often not realised for a long time, and our results suggest expectations related to these decisions, good and bad, have a big effect on happiness.”
In building the mathematical model, the researchers also imaged the brains of participants.
Activity in two particular areas of the brain was associated with higher levels of happiness: the ventral striatum and the insula.
The ventral striatum is the reward centre of the brain, containing a high concentration of dopamine neurons.
The insula, meanwhile, is vital for a range of functions, including the regulation of emotions like happiness.
Expecting to feel good
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, strongly highlighted the importance of expectations in how happy we feel.
Rutledge continued:
“Life is full of expectations — it would be difficult to make good decisions without knowing, for example, which restaurant you like better.
It is often said that you will be happier if your expectations are lower.
We find that there is some truth to this: lower expectations make it more likely that an outcome will exceed those expectations and have a positive impact on happiness.
However, expectations also affect happiness even before we learn the outcome of a decision.
If you have plans to meet a friend at your favourite restaurant, those positive expectations may increase your happiness as soon as you make the plan.
The new equation captures these different effects of expectations and allows happiness to be predicted based on the combined effects of many past events.”
All products were not created equal: some can even make you happy, new psychological research finds.
All products were not created equal: some can even make you happy, new psychological research finds.
It’s often said that always hankering after more stuff is not good for your happiness.
People who are more materialist, research has found, are more likely to be dissatisfied with life, more depressed, more paranoid and more narcissistic.
Experiences improve with time in the memory, whereas possessions just fade and decay.
Experiences are difficult to compare, whereas it’s easy to see that your phone is out of date.
Experiences tend to be more social, and being social makes us happy.
At least, that was the received wisdom in psychology until recently.
Experiential products
Now, though, a new study has shown that not all possessions are created equal.
There are purely material items, like a piece of jewellery, and there are purely experiential items like concert tickets.
But in between are ‘experiential products’: things which ultimately help to facilitate experiences.
For example, a tennis racket enables you to experience tennis, books allow you to experience the author’s mind and interests, video games let you experience a virtual world and a guitar lets you experience music.
Researchers at San Francisco State University decided to test out how these three types of purchases affect people’s happiness (Guevarra & Howell, 2014).
To investigate, they asked people about various purchases they’d recently made and how happy these had made them.
The results were surprising.
As expected purely material purchases made people the least happy, but the experiential products made people just as happy as the pure experiences.
Ryan Howell, the study’s co-author, said:
“This is sort of good news for materialists.
“If your goal is to make yourself happier but you’re a person who likes stuff, then you should buy things that are going to engage your senses.
You’re going to be just as happy as if you buy a life experience, because in some sense this product is going to give you a life experience.”
Enriching ourselves
When they looked at the reason why experiential products were such powerful forces for happiness, it turned out that it was because they give or enable us to gain skills and knowledge.
In other words learning to play tennis, gaining knowledge from a book, even conquering a video game all provide us with a feeling of achievement.
On the other hand, experiences tended to make people happy because they were generally shared with others.
Howell continued:
“They are essentially two different routes to the same well-being.
If you’re not feeling very competent, the best way to alleviate that deprivation would be through the use of experiential products.
On the other hand, if you’re feeling lonely, you should buy life experiences and do things with others.”
People now spend up to 25% less time enjoying nature than they did 20 years ago. What is that doing to our minds?
People now spend up to 25% less time enjoying nature than they did 20 years ago. What is that doing to our minds?
People are spending less and less time enjoying the outdoors and nature with every passing year.
The recent shift away from nature has been incredible: some studies estimate people now spend 25% less time in nature than they did 20 years ago (Pergams & Zaradic, 2007).
Instead, recreational time is often spent surfing the internet, playing video games and watching movies.
This is a pity not merely because of the physical benefits of being outside, but also because of the psychological benefits.
Here are 10 of the most remarkable ways in which being outside, in nature, can heal the mind.
1. Feel more alive
Being inside all the time gives you a dead, flat feeling.
Being in nature, though, makes people feel more alive, which several studies have confirmed (Ryan et al., 2010).
It’s not just about the extra amount of exercise people get when they’re in nature, it has its own special effect.
Nature itself genuinely makes people feel happier, more healthy and more energetic.
Professor Richard Ryan, who has studied how nature benefits the mind, said:
“Nature is fuel for the soul.
Often when we feel depleted we reach for a cup of coffee, but research suggests a better way to get energized is to connect with nature.”
And this extra vitality has all sorts of knock-on benefits:
“Research has shown that people with a greater sense of vitality don’t just have more energy for things they want to do, they are also more resilient to physical illnesses.
One of the pathways to health may be to spend more time in natural settings.”
2. 50% more creative
Going into nature for an extended period can have remarkable effects on creativity.
A recent study had participants take a four- or six-day trip into the wilderness.
Their study showed that…
“…four days of immersion in nature, and the corresponding disconnection from multimedia and technology, increases performance on a creativity, problem-solving task by a full 50 percent,” (Atchley et al., 2012)
Why does it work? The psychologists explained:
“Our modern society is filled with sudden events (sirens, horns, ringing phones, alarms, television, etc.) that hijack attention.
By contrast, natural environments are associated with gentle, soft fascination, allowing the executive attentional system to replenish.” (Atchley et al., 2012)
3. Reduce acute stress
The Japanese are big fans of walking in the forest to promote their mental health.
The practice is called shinrin-yoku, which literally means ‘forest bathing’.
One study conducted by Japanese researchers has found that the practice is particularly useful for those suffering acute stress (Morita et al., 2006).
Their study of 498 people found that shinrin-yoku reduced hostility and depression as well as increasing people’s liveliness compared to comparable control groups.
4. Ease dementia symptoms
Gardens in care homes may have therapeutic benefits for those suffering from dementia, according to a review of 17 separate studies (Whear et al., 2014).
Researchers at the University of Exeter Medical School found that gardens reduced patients’ agitation, encouraged activity and promoted relaxation.
The study’s lead author, Rebecca Whear, said:
“There is an increasing interest in improving dementia symptoms without the use of drugs.
We think that gardens could be benefiting dementia sufferers by providing them with sensory stimulation and an environment that triggers memories.
They not only present an opportunity to relax in a calming setting, but also to remember skills and habits that have brought enjoyment in the past.”
Marc G. Berman and colleagues at the University of Michigan wanted to test the effect of natural scenery on cognitive function (Berman, Jonides & Kaplan, 2008).
In the first of two studies participants were given a 35 minute task involving repeating loads of random numbers back to the experimenter, but in reverse order.
After this they were sent out for a walk – one group around an arboretum and the other down a busy city street – both while being tracked with GPS devices.
They each repeated the memory test when they got back.
The results showed that people’s performance on the test improved by almost 20% after wandering amongst the trees. By comparison those subjected to a busy street did not improve.
6. Greater sense of belonging
A small study of 10 children from a mostly Christian background found that those who spent more time outside felt more humbled by nature’s power as well as feeling a sense of belonging in the world.
Being outdoors more also enhanced the children’s appreciation of beauty.
These children took greater notice of colour, symmetry and balance in nature as well as displaying greater imagination and curiosity themselves.
The study’s lead author, Gretel Van Wieren, commented:
“This is the first generation that’s significantly plugged in to a different extent and so what does this mean?
Modern life has created a distance between humans and nature that now we’re realizing isn’t good in a whole host of ways.
So it’s a scary question: How will this affect our children and how are we going to respond?”
7. Urban mental health boost
There is hope for those who live in cities.
The benefits from nature to people’s mental health aren’t restricted those who live in the countryside.
“We’ve shown that individuals who move to greener areas have significant and long-lasting improvements in mental health.
These findings are important for urban planners thinking about introducing new green spaces to our towns and cities, suggesting they could provide long term and sustained benefits for local communities.”
8. Increase self-esteem
All kinds of exercise in nature can boost your self-esteem. And it’s surprising how little you have to do to get the boost.
One review analysed data from 1,252 people who took part in 10 different studies (Barton & Pretty, 2010).
People’s activities varied considerably, including things like gardening, walking, cycling, boating, fishing and horse-riding.
The study found that just 5 minutes ‘green exercise’ gave the largest boost to self-esteem.
9. Improve ADHD symptoms
Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder who play more outside have less severe symptoms, according to research.
Talylor and Kuo (2011) found that amongst 400 children diagnosed with ADHD, those that routinely played outside in green settings had better concentration.
Not only that but they were usually calmer, relaxed and happier.
The study even found that children who sat indoors looking out at a green space did better than those who were outside, but in a man-made environment without trees or grass.
That’s the power of the green spaces.
10. Help your brain work in sync
Tranquil natural scenes, like a seascape, cause vital areas of the brain to work in sync, according to researchers at the University of Sheffield (Hunter et al., 2010).
By contrast, man-made environments like roads disrupt connections within the brain.
Dr Michael Hunter, who lead the research, said:
“People experience tranquillity as a state of calmness and reflection, which is restorative compared with the stressful effects of sustained attention in day-to-day life.
It is well known that natural environments induce feelings of tranquillity whereas man-made, urban environments are experienced as non-tranquil.
Into the light…
As William Wordsworth put it:
“Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.”
How to be happy at work, at play, with our money and with our minds. The first two are among the most popular TED talks ever recorded.
How to be happy at work, at play, with our money and with our minds. The first two are among the most popular TED talks ever recorded.
1. Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness
Dan Gilbert, author of “Stumbling on Happiness,” challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.
2. Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work
Shawn Achor, author of “The Happiness Advantage“, explains why we believe that we should work to be happy, but could that be backwards? In this fast-moving and entertaining talk, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that actually happiness inspires productivity.
3. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow, the secret to happiness
Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, author of “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,” asks, “What makes a life worth living?” Noting that money cannot make us happy, he looks to those who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring about a state of “flow.”
4. Michael Norton: How to buy happiness
Michael Norton, co-author of “Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending,” shares fascinating research on how money can, indeed buy happiness — when you don’t spend it on yourself. Listen for surprising data on the many ways pro-social spending can benefit you, your work, and (of course) other people.
5. Matthieu Ricard: The habits of happiness
What is happiness, and how can we all get some? Biochemist turned Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, author of “Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill,” says we can train our minds in habits of well-being, to generate a true sense of serenity and fulfillment.
6. Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory
Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman, author of “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” reveals how our “experiencing selves” and our “remembering selves” perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy — and our own self-awareness.
‘Unhappy’ cities have always been unhappy, new analysis of U.S. satisfaction with life finds.
‘Unhappy’ cities have always been unhappy, new analysis of U.S. satisfaction with life finds.
New York, Pittsburgh and Louisville top the list of unhappiest cities in the U.S., according to a recent government study.
At the other end of the scale, the happiest metropolitan areas in the U.S. are Richmond-Petersburg, VA, Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, VA and Washington, DC.
The study by the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research, found that many people in ‘unhappy’ cities likely sacrifice their happiness in return for lower housing costs and higher incomes (Glaeser et al., 2014).
It relies on a large survey asking people across the U.S. about their satisfaction with life.
One of the study’s authors, Joshua Gottlieb of the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver School of Economics, said:
“Our research indicates that people care about more than happiness alone, so other factors may encourage them to stay in a city despite their unhappiness.
This means that researchers and policy-makers should not consider an increase in reported happiness as an overriding objective.”
There were also some fascinating trends across all the cities.
Unsurprisingly, people who lived in declining cities tended to be less happy — except that these cities were also unhappier in the past, even when they weren’t in decline.
It turned out that people who’d just moved to ‘unhappy’ cities were equally as unhappy as those who’d lived there for a long time.
Both of these trends suggest that some cities are unhappy places in the long-term.
Here are the unhappiest metropolitan areas with populations over 1 million:
New York, NY
Pittsburgh, PA
Louisville, KY
Milwaukee, WI
Detroit, MI
Indianapolis, IN
St. Louis, MO
Las Vegas, NV
Buffalo, NY
Philadelphia, PA
These are the happiest metropolitan areas with populations over 1 million:
Richmond-Petersburg, VA
Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, VA
Washington, DC
Raleigh-Durham, NC
Atlanta, GA
Houston, TX
Jacksonville, FL
Nashville, TN
West Palm Beach-Boca Raton, FL
Middlesex-Somerset-Hunterdon, NJ
Here are the unhappiest metropolitan areas with populations under 1 million:
Scranton, PA
St. Joseph, MO
Erie, PA
South Bend, IN
Jersey City, NJ
Johnstown, PA
Non-metropolitan West Virginia
Springfield, MA
New York, NY
Evansville-Henderson, IN-KY
Here are the happiest metropolitan areas with populations under 1 million:
Tastes good? Despite how individual our emotions feel to us, the brain processes them in a remarkably similar way.
Tastes good? Despite how individual our emotions feel to us, the brain processes them in a remarkably similar way.
The brain translates emotions into a standard code that’s similar across people, a new study finds.
While happiness and sadness might feel quite different to us, the brain actually represents these emotions in a remarkably similar way (Chikazoe et al., 2014).
Cornell University neuroscientist Adam Anderson, senior author of the study, explains:
“We discovered that fine-grained patterns of neural activity within the orbitofrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with emotional processing, act as a neural code which captures an individual’s subjective feeling.
Population coding of affect across stimuli, modalities and individuals.”
This finding contrasts to the established view which is that there are specific, separate regions in the brain for positive and negative emotions.
In fact, the results of this study suggest, the picture is more subtle.
Anderson explains:
“If you and I derive similar pleasure from sipping a fine wine or watching the sun set, our results suggest it is because we share similar fine-grained patterns of activity in the orbitofrontal cortex.
It appears that the human brain generates a special code for the entire valence spectrum of pleasant-to-unpleasant, good-to-bad feelings, which can be read like a ‘neural valence meter’ in which the leaning of a population of neurons in one direction equals positive feeling and the leaning in the other direction equals negative feeling,”
To reach these conclusions they had participant rate pictures and tastes while inside a brain scanner.
What they found was that when someone liked a taste, for example, there were specific patterns of activity in the areas associated with taste, along with activity in the orbitofrontal cortices.
This means our sensory experience of the world is very tightly bound up with our emotional response at a fundamental level.
They also found that across different people, there were similar patterns of activation in the orbitofrontal cortices associated with positive and negative emotions.
Anderson thinks this suggests the brain has a standard way of representing the emotions that’s common to different people.
He concludes:
“Despite how personal our feelings feel, the evidence suggests our brains use a standard code to speak the same emotional language.”
Image credit: Image courtesy of Cornell University
On the other side, as it were, other research has shown that men think that women wearing red is a sign of sexual receptivity.
Still, vital questions have been left unanswered.
For example: do women notice that their man has noticed that another woman is wearing some red apparel and, therefore, get all protective and jealous?
I’m happy to say, thanks to a new study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, we now have the answers (Pazda et al., 2014).
They showed women pictures of other women dressed in dresses of either green or red (see above).
Then they tested for signs of either ‘derogation’ or ‘mate-guarding’.
The lead researcher, Adam Pazda, explains:
“Derogation [involves] speaking poorly of another person to make them seem inferior, undesirable, or unlikeable, while making oneself seem superior and more likable by contrast.
Mate-guarding is the act of protecting one’s own romantic partner from romantic or sexual encounters with others.”
The answer: yes, women were more likely to ‘derogate’ and ‘mate-guard’ when the target woman was wearing a red dress.
So there it is.
Evidence that we all know what red means: the people who wear it, those who see it and those who see them seeing it.
All you wearers-of-red have been warned about the ticking time-bombs you are draping over your bodies.
Better to play it safe and dress in gray, I say.
Image courtesy of Society for Personality and Social Psychology
We have a new ally in the struggle to resist temptation.
We have a new ally in the struggle to resist temptation.
The feeling of gratitude can help people resist temptation, according to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science.
While practising gratitude is now well-established as a powerful way to enhance happiness, its links to decision-making are much less clear.
Many people feel that emotions tend to get in the way of decision-making: that we should be ‘cold’ and ‘calculating’ to make the right choices.
For example, when we’re faced with a tempting choice to spend (or waste) a whole load of money, we usually call on our powers of self-control to resist temptation.
The new research, though, finds that the emotions can also be harnessed to rein in desire.
In the study, conducted by Northeastern University’s David DeSteno and colleagues, 75 participants were given a classic test of their financial self-control (DeSteno et al., 2014).
They were told they could have $54 right now or $80 in 30 days.
Before they made their decision, though, they were put into one of three emotional states:
Grateful.
Happy.
Neutral.
The results demonstrated that people who were either happy or neutral showed a strong preference for having less money but getting it now.
This is the usual situation: most people don’t want to wait.
The people in the gratitude condition, though, showed much more restraint and were willing to wait for a larger gain.
And, the more gratitude they felt, the greater their patience for the larger reward.
One of the study’s authors, Professor Ye Li, said:
“Showing that emotion can foster self-control and discovering a way to reduce impatience with a simple gratitude exercise opens up tremendous possibilities for reducing a wide range of societal ills from impulse buying and insufficient saving to obesity and smoking.”
We don’t know exactly why gratitude has this effect, but it may be because it makes us feel more social, co-operative and altruistic.
In other words: gratitude may make us feel less selfish, which gives us more patience.
