Next time you find yourself in a bad mood, don’t try to put on a happy face—instead tackle a project that has been stymieing you. Melancholy might just help you hit peak performance, reports Joseph Forgas, a professor of psychology at the University of New South Wales, in the journal Australasian Science. Forgas reviewed several of his studies in which researchers induced either a good or bad mood in volunteers. Each study found that people in a bad mood performed tasks better than those in a good mood. Grumpy people paid closer attention to details, showed less gullibility, were less prone to errors of judgment and formed higher-quality, persuasive arguments than their happy counterparts. One study even supports the notion that those who show signs of either fear, anger, disgust or sadness—the four basic negative emotions—achieve stronger eyewitness recall while virtually eliminating the effect of misinformation. [For more on how a negative mood boosts cognition, see “Depression’s Evolutionary Roots,” by Paul W. Andrews and J. Anderson Thomson; Scientific American Mind, January/February 2010.]
This article was originally published with the title Be Sad and Succeed.
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12 Comments
Add CommentNo, I think it means that grumpy people tend to have a better grasp of reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I am fired up with feelings of fear, anger, disgust or sadness, I can feel my perception refocusing to being "in the moment", truly there. This really annoys my wife, because I have the irritating ability to recall entire arguments verbatim years later. It is amazing we are still together!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFear, anger, disgust, sadness - whether they allow one to focus better on a task at hand is, like many things, a question of degree. Too big a dose of any of the negative emotions will shut down the brain!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is all very well, however until we agree and are able to describe in any sort of objective sense just what fear, anger, disgust or sadness are then reports like this one will remain quaint talking pieces at the water cooler, what have you and nothing more. 'Negative emotions' experienced by each an everyone of us are at first very personal and thus subjective. What then becomes difficult for psychological science is taking these very subjective thoughts and feelings and presenting them in the face of scientific rigour as sound data. I think within society we have a general consensus among friends, family and collegues as to what it is to feel 'good' or 'bad', this is of course a social necessity for communities and societies to work. However, Science then has the job, a tricky one at best, to take what people feel in a private psychological and emotional sense, look then at the social and historical contexts and then maybe clarify what it actually means to be in a 'bad mood'. This is essential (in this case in particular) not just for good scientific papers but just as importantly for the public perception and understanding of Science itself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is all very well, however until we agree and are able to describe in any sort of objective sense just what fear, anger, disgust or sadness are then reports like this one will remain quaint talking pieces at the water cooler, what have you and nothing more. 'Negative emotions' experienced by each an everyone of us are at first very personal and thus subjective. What then becomes difficult for psychological science is taking these very subjective thoughts and feelings and presenting them in the face of scientific rigour as sound data. I think within society we have a general consensus among friends, family and collegues as to what it is to feel 'good' or 'bad', this is of course a social necessity for communities and societies to work. However, Science then has the job, a tricky one at best, to take what people feel in a private psychological and emotional sense, look then at the social and historical contexts and then maybe clarify what it actually means to be in a 'bad mood'. This is essential (in this case in particular) not just for good scientific papers but just as importantly for the public perception and understanding of Science itself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisisn't this just the scientific proof for ignorance is bliss?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, stay sad! Stay grumpy! Don't try to fight to better your world or make others happy!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause sad people consume more and the economy depends on those depressed people to buy worthless stuff trying to dig themselves out of their "grumpy" hole.
While it is true that realists are more focused on details, one can be realistic and still happy. I just wrote a blog post on this fact moments before I stumbled on this article.
Yes, stay sad! Stay grumpy! Don't try to fight to better your world or make others happy!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause sad people consume more and the economy depends on those depressed people to buy worthless stuff trying to dig themselves out of their "grumpy" hole.
While it is true that realists are more focused on details, one can be realistic and still happy. I just wrote a blog post on this fact moments before I stumbled on this article.
http://farrensquare.blogspot.com
i think the fact the article is saying sad ppl are productive is a great thing, becuase they are getting work done, but then it questions whether happy ppl are productive and maybe they should be sad more lol, i thought being sad and happy effects your environment and ppl in your life causing a rippling effect, i wouldnt want anyone to get a bad energy from me. so i would rather have a good attitude or at least attempt to the most i can for work and for school and at home, wherever, when im sad, i liek to think about how i can make the situation better or get over it, not let me go do some work, so i cannot focus, when im sad i cant focus and get distracted adn frustrated because im not taking time to think about the problem..idk, hope that makes sense
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi think the fact the article is saying sad ppl are productive is a great thing, becuase they are getting work done, but then it questions whether happy ppl are productive and maybe they should be sad more lol, i thought being sad and happy effects your environment and ppl in your life causing a rippling effect, i wouldnt want anyone to get a bad energy from me. so i would rather have a good attitude or at least attempt to the most i can for work and for school and at home, wherever, when im sad, i liek to think about how i can make the situation better or get over it, not let me go do some work, so i cannot focus, when im sad i cant focus and get distracted adn frustrated because im not taking time to think about the problem..idk, hope that makes sense
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi think the fact the article is saying sad ppl are productive is a great thing, becuase they are getting work done, but then it questions whether happy ppl are productive and maybe they should be sad more lol, i thought being sad and happy effects your environment and ppl in your life causing a rippling effect, i wouldnt want anyone to get a bad energy from me. so i would rather have a good attitude or at least attempt to the most i can for work and for school and at home, wherever, when im sad, i liek to think about how i can make the situation better or get over it, not let me go do some work, so i cannot focus, when im sad i cant focus and get distracted adn frustrated because im not taking time to think about the problem..idk, hope that makes sense
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting result. Counterintuitive. It matches a huge article on the rumination-analytic hypothesis of depression a month or so ago in the NY Times. I hated it, and my instinct makes me hate this result too, but it may be correct in some complicated way. I too have had years of remembering EVERY conversation verbatim - literally for years - and every activity of every day going back a month while very very severely depressed. All this went away as my mood problems lifted.
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