THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGYsame way, with either slumped shoulders or raised arms, respectively.
The blind competitors could never have seen another person display
emotion in this way, which suggests that the display of shame and pride
is innate rather than culturally learned.
But not everyone believes culture has no influence on the way that
we express our emotions. Consider a controversial 2009 paper entitled
“Cultural Confusions Show that Facial Expressions Are Not Universal” by
Rachael Jack at the University of Glasgow. Jack’s lab tested the ability of
participants to categorize photos of emotional expressions and reported
that people from East Asia had trouble distinguishing fear and disgust
from, respectively, surprise and anger. The implication, the researchers
Six evidence-based ways to boost your happiness
- Smile The Charlie Chaplin song Smile claims that you’ll “find life is still
worthwhile if you just smile”. Research backs this up. Simone Schnall
and James Laird instructed 46 participants to pull either a happy, sad
or angry face intermittently for half an hour. Admittedly, no effect was
observed for half the participants. However, for the others who were
affected by their own facial expressions, those who’d been smiling
subsequently felt in a happier mood than they had done earlier, and
they were also particularly likely to recall happy events from their
past when prompted by neutral words like “tree”. - Don’t have kids Some psychologists have argued, controversially,
that our widespread belief that having children will make us happy
is misplaced and is an example of a so-called “focusing illusion”. We
persist in thinking children will make us happy, these psycholo-
gists say, because we tend to focus on the good bits – such as our
expected pride on hearing their first word – while neglecting to
imagine the bad bits, such as changing nappies and the stress,
worry and monumental effort involved in raising a child. In fact,
several large-scale studies show that, on average, parents are less
happy than non-parents. - Be grateful Remembering to count our blessings and show
gratitude to others has been linked with increased happiness.
What’s going well in your life right now? What are you grateful for?
Most of us can think of some small way that fortune has smiled on
us. Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology (see p.349),
showed that participants who wrote a letter of thanks and delivered
it to someone who’d showed them kindness experienced increased
happiness for up to a month afterwards. - Become a political activist The idea that active participation in
society fulfils a basic human need, which can be traced back to
Aristotle, is supported by recent research. In 2009 the positive