Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

What’s That Thing Where You Feel That Thing and It Makes That Other Thing Happen?

May 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
dictionary

You know that sudden rush of existential dread that comes from your alarm seemingly going off just moments after you shut your eyes and you are no longer able to ignore the cosmically-pointless-but-personally-frightening impending machinations of the day ahead? Or that thing where you see a dog, blissfully unaware of the futility of its own existence, getting sprayed in the stomach by a water hose and you can't help but wonder why not me? There are no words for those feelings because there are no words for a lot of feelings. Other languages often do a better job—think "schadenfreude," or ... Read More

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How Positive Emotions Lead to Better Health

May 8, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
happy-fingers

We’ve all experienced downward spirals, in which dark emotions lead to destructive behavior that damages our health, strains our relationships, and leaves us feeling even worse than when we started. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an uplifting equivalent to that destructive chain of events? Newly published research suggests there is. What’s more, this delightful dynamic helps explain the well-documented link between joy, appreciation, and good health. “Positive emotion, positive social connections, and physical health influence one another in a self-sustaining, upward-spiral ... Read More

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Why Is He Oblivious to Her Emotions?

April 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Ladies: Do you often feel misunderstood by men? Do they fail to pick up on fairly obvious nonverbal signals, such as expressions of fear or disgust? Newly published research suggests your perception is entirely valid—but it’s not their fault. A study from Germany finds that men do a much better job of interpreting one vital set of signals—the emotions conveyed by the eyes—when they’re communicating with another man, compared to another woman. “The finding that men are superior in recognizing emotions/mental states of other men, as compared to women, might be surprising,” a ... Read More

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Overwritten, Maybe, But Less Overwrought

March 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
American lit in the 20th century wasn't exactly known for its cheer.

There’s a widespread perception that we’ve gotten more touchy-feely over the past couple of generations—increasingly willing to express our emotions. If so, it’s not reflected in our writing. A new study finds that, in a large dataset of English-language books, the use of terms expressing six basic emotions steadily decreased over the course of the 20th century. “We believe the changes (in word usage) do reflect changes in culture,” writes the research team, led by anthropologist Alberto Acerbi of the University of Bristol. Writing in the online journal PLOS One, they ... Read More

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Music of Vivaldi Boosts Mental Vitality

March 13, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Vivaldi

The Mozart Effect—the notion that listening to certain pieces of classical music can boost one’s brainpower—was initially embraced, widely popularized, and then largely debunked. But like an operatic character who keeps singing robustly on her deathbed, it refuses to go quietly. Now, new research from the U.K. has found cognitive benefits from listening to one of the most popular pieces in the repertoire: Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. In an experiment, the work’s evocative Spring section, “particularly the well-recognized, vibrant, emotive and uplifting first movement, had the ... Read More

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Struggling to Reconcile Conflicting Beliefs? Listen to Some Mozart

October 3, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
mozart

Countless claims have been made regarding the music of Mozart. Studies have suggested it can relieve depression, decrease pain, and even spark an increase in certain types of intelligence. One recent paper found it even increased heart transplant survival in mice. Two researchers have identified another benefit. They provide preliminary evidence that listening to Mozart can help us cope with cognitive dissonance—that intense feeling of discomfort that arises when we realize two of our core beliefs are at odds. The ability to recognize and accept the unpleasant reality that our ... Read More

More like this: Culture & Society, Findings
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That’s Disgusting: Researcher Studies Gag Reflex

March 12, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Not many people have had the fortunate pleasure of judging the “Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneakers Contest” held yearly in Montpelier, Vermont. But Rachel Herz, who served as the event’s celebrity judge in March 2008, didn’t just come away with a gag-worthy tale to shock her friends and colleagues. As a fragrance consultant and research psychologist investigating the sense of smell since 1990, Herz was inspired to immerse herself into the study of the emotion of disgust, culminating in her book That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion, published by Norton & Company in ... Read More

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Negativity and the Niqab

September 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Of all the images that have come to symbolize the post-9/11 clash of cultures, one remains particularly provocative: That of an Islamic woman covering her face with a veil. France has gone so far as to outlaw the practice in public, asserting it is incompatible with society’s ideals of secularism and gender equality. Is this an example of cultural prejudice? Not entirely, according to newly published research that suggests Westerners' discomfort with the veil reflects deeper psychological impulses. “The attempt to decode emotions in covered faces leads one to perceive more ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Findings
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Different Cultures, Different Robots

October 13, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Cultures have their own songs, holidays, special foods ... and robots. Selma Sabanovic, an associate professor of informatics at Indiana University, described why last week during a talk on "Emotion in Robot Cultures" at the 7th International Conference on Design and Emotion in Chicago. People building social robots in the West and in Japan are interested in ending up with two very different types of machines, she explained. Western robots are engineered to more explicitly express emotion, while those from Japan are generally as expressive as the masks worn by actors in traditional ... Read More

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An Emotional Timeline of Sept. 11, 2001

September 1, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
9/11 Text Message Timeline

The morning of Sept. 11, 2001 remains crystal clear in most of our memories. Tragedy has a way of imprinting itself in the mind, making it easy to recall both the horrifying events and the jumble of intense feelings that followed. A unique new research study finds a definite trajectory to the emotions we experienced that day. Fear, grief, rage: All were present, but only one — anger — rose steadily as the hours passed by. That’s the conclusion of an analysis just published in the journal Psychological Science. By no means definitive, but undeniably fascinating, it analyzes the ... Read More

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