Upbeat Emotion That's Surprisingly Good For You

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Link: https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/an-upbeat-emotion-thats-surprisingly-good-for-you/?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fhealth

Article Title: Upbeat Emotion That's Surprisingly Good For You


Article Summary:  Previous health based research has conveyed a relationship between overall health and individual mood. This article outlines scientific methods used by Stellar et. al of the University of Berkeley to observe correlations between subjective feelings of “awe” and the frequency of inflammation experienced by each participant within the last month. Researchers hypothesized that participants with more frequent feelings of “awe” will have lower levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a molecules that promotes inflammation in the body, and better overall health. Aligning with the posed hypothesis, study participants with more positive emotions experienced had lower levels of IL-6 in the body, while those with more negative emotions had higher levels of IL-6. These findings affirm Stellar et. al’s conjecture, suggesting a possible inverse relationship between positive outlooks and poor health.  
Psychology Connection: Emotions have the ability to be a positive force for good. The emotion "awe", which is subjective due to its differential meaning or interpretation for everyone, is still ultimately a positive emotion. The left frontal area of the cerebral hemisphere of the brain is more active when an individual is experiencing positive emotions. The research study discussed in the article also stated that the Freshman college students experienced lower levels of IL-6 when experiencing the 'awe' emotion, which means that the students experienced more positive emotions, which also lead to better health (lower levels of inflammation); the anterior cingulate cortex is one that combines emotional, attentional, and bodily information in order to bring conscious emotional experience, which is what was revealed through the students and how they responded to the emotion.

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 16, 2017 at 10:06 PM

    LaShanah, I enjoyed reading your blog post! It reminded me of one of the recent lecture's that Professor McGinley gave discussing how facial expressions go hand and hand with emotions that we experience. If you are feeling sad but you smile anyway, eventually if you continue to smile you will begin to experience feelings of happiness because certain muscles in our faces send signals to the brain which tells us what emotion is being expressed. It makes sense that someone who has a more positive mood would have better health than someone who shows a more negative mood.

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  2. UnknownNovember 16, 2017 at 10:13 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. Morgan PearceNovember 16, 2017 at 10:13 PM

    I think this is an excellent study. I for one am a strong believer in the notion that your mental state can affect your physical body. Dr. Joe Dispenza wrote an entire book on the mind’s influence on the health called You Are the Placebo. This occurrence is why we have terms like the “placebo effect” in psychology. While this study did not feature a placebo effect, it kind of reminds me of how it might be possible for a placebo effect to work. It did involve altering a state (switching between emotions) that lead to either positive or negative consequences. In this case, participants with more “awe” emotions had less inflammation in the body.

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