"Grumpy people are better decision-makers! Eat it, Sunshine!" (BBC, thanks Jason Weisberger)
Feeling "grumpy" makes you think more clearly, study says
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"Negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world" --Professor Joe Forgas
I think he may have cause and effect exactly backwards.
yup
It certainly seems consistent with "ignorance is bliss."
Aw, thanks a lot BB. I had always assumed that when I am grumpy and extremely cynical about my life and the world, I was just deluded by my own bad mood. Now you're telling me that those are the only times that I'm really seeing things clearly, and when I'm happy and thinking positive things about the world, that's when I'm not really thinking in an 'attentive, careful' way?
Boy, am I grumpy now.
Well, that certainly explains House MD!
That sounds about on par with this study. I read an article about it recently but can't find that, so here's the abstract of the study:
"Depression is the primary emotional condition for which help is sought. Depressed people often report persistent rumination, which involves analysis, and complex social problems in their lives. Analysis is often a useful approach for solving complex problems, but it requires slow, sustained processing, so disruption would interfere with problem solving. The analytical rumination hypothesis proposes that depression is an evolved response to complex problems, whose function is to minimize disruption and sustain analysis of those problems by (a) giving the triggering problem prioritized access to processing resources, (b) reducing the desire to engage in distracting activities (anhedonia), and (c) producing psychomotor changes that reduce exposure to distracting stimuli."
Basically, depression makes you a better thinker. Or that's the theory anyway.
http://pubget.com/paper/19618990?title=The+bright+side+of+being+blue:+depression+as+an+adaptation+for+analyzing+complex+problems.
this came on exactly the right day for me.
"brilliant people are fucked up" just turned into "fucked up people are brilliant."
and it is true that happy people often seem like idiots to me.
It seems like a pretty big jump to assume that just because you asked them to "dwell on negative events in their life" that they're grumpy. What the study has really shown is that people who just got done thinking about negative events are better at certain tests.
Like a lot of these studies, the results are interesting enough, but for some reason the researchers have to go out on a limb and infer some even more exciting stuff that does not necessarily follow. I guess to get attention?
Normally it's to set a course for future tests.
This might convince me to ask an unhappy person to do a math problem. However, Humans have this illogical drive to perpetuate whatever mood they happen to be in at the moment. Don't ask an unhappy person for help with a life choice, or fixing my brakes.
Here is a man who would not take it anymore.
A man who stood up against the scum, the filth.
Now I see clearly.
- Clash
I should note that Clash lyric originated from the 1976 Robert DeNiro "Taxi Driver" movie.
This article is more interesting for the bad science journalism it represented. It seems that almost no journalist that wrote this story bothered to check the original research article. For example, there is no "Australian Science Magazine" and the study was certainly not published recently. I wrote an article about the screw up around this story. You can see it here: http://www.goodbadandbogus.com/2009/11/reuters-starts-a-dangerous-game-of-chinese-whispers/
How does this explain Dick Cheney?