May 6, 2024

The Power of a Negative Mood: How It Enhances Analytical Thinking

” Mood and language seem to be supported by various brain networks. “We reveal that when people are in a negative state of mind, they are more cautious and analytical. A digital study was used to assess individuals state of minds before and after seeing the clips. While the funny clips did not effect participants moods, the sad clips prospered in putting individuals in a more negative mood, the researchers discovered.
” When believing about how state of mind affects them, many people simply think about things like being grumpy, eating more ice cream, or– at finest– translating somebody elses talk in a prejudiced method,” van Berkum stated.

According to brand-new research study, individuals who are in an unfavorable state of mind may be more effective at discovering inconsistencies in the important things they check out.
According to research study from the University of Arizona, when youre in a bad mood, you may desire to focus on tasks that require attention to information, such as checking.
A brand-new study, published in Frontiers in Communication, led by the University of Arizona recommends that people in an unfavorable mood may be quicker at finding disparities in what they check out. This study develops upon existing research study on the method the brain processes language.
Vicky Lai, an assistant professor of psychology and cognitive science at the UArizona, teamed up with scientists in the Netherlands to investigate the distinctions in how individualss brains respond to language when they remain in a favorable versus an unfavorable mood.

” Mood and language appear to be supported by different brain networks. We have one brain, and the 2 are processed in the exact same brain, so there is a lot of interaction going on,” Lai stated. “We reveal that when individuals remain in an unfavorable state of mind, they are more careful and analytical. They inspect whats in fact specified in a text, and they do not simply draw on their default world understanding.”
Lai and her study co-authors set out to manipulate study participants state of minds by showing them clips from a sad film– “Sophies Choice”– or an amusing tv program– “Friends.” A computerized study was used to examine participants state of minds before and after viewing the clips. While the amusing clips did not effect participants moods, the sad clips was successful in putting individuals in a more negative state of mind, the scientists found.
The individuals then listened to a series of emotionally neutral audio recordings of four-sentence stories that each consisted of a “vital sentence” that either supported or broken default, or familiar, word knowledge. That sentence was shown one word at a time on a computer screen, while individuals brain waves were kept an eye on by EEG, a test that determines brain waves.
For example, the researchers presented study individuals with a story about driving at night that ended with the vital sentence “With the lights on, you can see more.” In a separate story about stargazing, the same important sentence was changed to check out “With the lights on, you can see less.” Although that statement is precise in the context of stargazing, the concept that switching on the lights would cause an individual to see less is a much less familiar principle that defies default knowledge.
The scientists likewise provided versions of the stories in which the critical sentences were switched so that they did not fit the context of the story. For instance, the story about driving at night would include the sentence “With the lights on, you can see less.”
They then looked at how the brain reacted to the disparities, depending upon state of mind.
They found that when individuals were in an unfavorable state of mind, based upon their survey responses, they revealed a kind of brain activity carefully associated with re-analysis.
” We reveal that state of mind matters, and possibly when we do some tasks we need to focus on our state of mind,” Lai stated. “If were in a bad mood, perhaps we need to do things that are more detail-oriented, such as proofreading.”
When in the negative mood condition and when in the delighted mood condition, research study participants completed the experiment twice–. Each trial happened one week apart, with the very same stories provided each time.
” These are the same stories, however in different state of minds, the brain sees them in a different way, with the sad mood being the more analytical state of mind,” Lai stated.
The study was conducted in the Netherlands; individuals were native Dutch speakers, and the study was carried out in Dutch. Lai believes their findings translate across languages and cultures.
By design, the research study participants were all ladies, since Lai and her coworkers wanted to align their study with existing literature that was limited to female individuals. Lai stated future research studies ought to include more diverse gender representation.
In the meantime, Lai and her associates say state of mind might impact us in more methods than we previously recognized.
Scientist Jos van Berkum of the Netherlands Utrecht University, co-authored the study with Lai and Peter Hagoort of limit Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands.
” When believing about how mood impacts them, lots of individuals simply think about things like being grumpy, consuming more ice cream, or– at best– interpreting someone elses talk in a biased method,” van Berkum stated. Picture your laptop computer being more or less accurate as a function of its battery level– thats unimaginable.
Referral: “Negative affect increases reanalysis of conflicts in between discourse context and world understanding” by Vicky Tzuyin Lai, Jos van Berkum and Peter Hagoort, 14 December 2022, Frontiers in Communication.DOI: 10.3389/ fcomm.2022.910482.