Jeans for When You’re Feeling Blue

Posted on 2012/03/14 by Jason Hensel

There are a lot of depressed women in the world. I can tell, because they’re wearing jeans.

According to a study conduced by Professor Karen Pine at the University of Hertfordshire in the U.K., women choose to wear clothes based on their emotional states. When surveyed, more than 50 percent of surveyed women said they wore jeans when depressed. One third of them only wore jeans when they were happy.

Match those jeans with a baggy top–57 percent of women said they wore those when depressed–and you have one really sad female.

If you want to change your mood, though, change your clothes. Yes, it’s really that simple. Science wouldn’t lie to you.

“This finding shows that clothing doesn’t just influence others, it reflects and influences the wearer’s mood too,” Pine said. “Many of the women in this study felt they could alter their mood by changing what they wore. This demonstrates the psychological power of clothing and how the right choices could influence a person’s happiness.”

Your happy clothes should enhance your figure, be well cut and made from bright and beautiful fabrics, says Pine, who obviously doesn’t know about Rocky Mountain jeans from the 1990s.

“Jeans don’t look great on everyone,” Pine said. “They are often poorly cut and badly fitting. Jeans can signal that the wearer hasn’t bothered with their appearance. People who are depressed often lose interest in how they look and don’t wish to stand out, so the correlation between depression and wearing jeans is understandable. Most importantly, this research suggests that we can dress for happiness, but that might mean ditching the jeans.”

While you’re ditching those jeans, you might want to watch your typing, too. New research shows that “words spelled with more letters on the right of the keyboard are associated with more positive emotions than words spelled with more letters on the left.” (Beautiful Mind moment: Jeans, the word, has more letters on a keyboard’s left side.)

Cognitive scientists Kyle Jasmin of University College London and Daniel Casasanto of The New School for Social Research, New York showed that there is a link between a word’s meaning and how it’s typed.

Why should the positions of the keys matter? The authors suggest that because there are more letters on the left of the keyboard midline than on the right, letters on the right might be easier to type, which could lead to positive feelings. In other words, when people type words composed of more right-side letters, they have more positive feelings, and when they type words composed of more left-side letters, they have more negative feelings.

Well, then, that explains the seesaw of emotions I’ve experienced writing this entry.

(Photo via Flickr: Kshitij Dewan / Creative Commons)

Send to Kindle

Review: Imagine

Posted on 2012/01/02 by Jason Hensel

There was much talk about innovation and creativity in 2011. In fact, I heard or saw the word innovation so much that its mention would bring on waves of hostility in me. Everyone talked about it, making it not, well, very innovative.

Most writers were telling you what to do to be innovative or creative. Rarely did you read why it happens. It’s as most people wanted to jump to instruction without knowing reason.

That’s where Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer comes in. As with his previous book, How We Decide, Lehrer explores the basis of a brain function that everyone wants to know about. Yes, he does offer creativity advice, but he bases it in reason. You have to know the hows and whys before you can know the whats.

Lehrer leads readers through many examples of innovation and creativity, touching on everything from how Bob Dylan found his writing muse to how no-wrong-answers brainstorming doesn’t work in the long run to the benefits of living in a city. And he keeps your interest, because he’s a great storyteller who asserts authority. He doesn’t just report research; he guides with pristine narrative.

“The Power of Q” chapter is one of the more interesting sections. It’s about socialist Brian Uzzi and his study of Broadway musicals, about why some are successful and some are not. Uzzi found that successful productions needed a certain amount of people who have known each other for a long time and a certain amount who are new to the operation. In other words, a sweet spot of social intimacy is needed.

The reason I found this chapter interesting is because around the same time I was reading it, the Dallas Mavericks were restructuring their championship team, losing several players that helped them win it all last season. I’ve always been one that feels you don’t break up the house, you keep teams together for the long-term in order to ensure yearly success. After reading this chapter, though, I’m thinking differently about teams (sports or work). Perhaps it is best that the Mavericks shook things up, bringing in some new faces to play with a few of the old-timers. (However, maybe it’s not working; the Mavericks are 1-4 at the time of this review.)

What Lehrer suggests–and something he consistently suggests in his writings–is that you should know yourself best. Find what works for you, because for every piece of research saying one thing, there will be another saying the opposite. Maybe you work better getting away from a problem. Or maybe you work better with a group. However you work best, identify that and edge toward it. That is where you’ll find your creativity. For you see, science is primarily about paying attention, and until you pay attention to yourself first, nothing will change. Lehrer’s latest book is a great tool toward this needed self-consciousness in society.

(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer in March 2012.)

Send to Kindle

Hit That Perfect Beat

Posted on 2011/12/202011/12/20 by Jason Hensel

A former band mate of mine once told me he would be happy to have a one-hit wonder. I thought he was crazy. I wanted a long life full of hits (and fame and groupies and all that comes with the rock-n-roll lifestyle). One-hit wonders seemed so fleeting and defining.

Besides, a musician doesn’t set out to write one hit song and then retire for life. If that happened, hit songs would be easy to craft and more people would do it.

But stop the record. A new study has found what it takes for a song to be a hit. University of Bristol researchers claim that predictions can be made using machine learning algorithms.

The team looked at the official U.K. top 40 singles chart over the past 50 years. Their aim was to distinguish the most popular (peak position top five) songs from less popular singles (peak position 30 to 40).

The researchers used musical features such as, tempo, time signature, song duration and loudness. They also computed more detailed summaries of the songs such as harmonic simplicity, how simple the chord sequence is, and non-harmonicity, how ‘noisy’ the song is.

A ‘hit potential equation’ that scores a song according to its audio features was devised. The equation works by looking at all the U.K. hits for a certain time and measuring their audio features. From this the researchers had a list of weights, telling then how important each of the 23 features was and allowing them to compute a score for a song.

The researchers classified songs as hits or not-hits based on their scores. The team had a 60 percent accuracy rate and noticed some interesting trends.

Before the 1980s, the danceability of a song was not very relevant to its hit potential. From then on, danceable songs were more likely to become a hit. Also the average danceability of all songs on the charts suddenly increased in the late 1970s.
In the 1980s, slower musical styles (tempo 70-89 beats per minute), such as ballads, were more likely to become a hit.
The prediction accuracy of the researchers’ hit potential equation varies over time. It was particularly difficult to predict hits around 1980. The equation performed best in the first half of the 1990s and from the year 2000. This suggests that the late 1970s and early 1980s were particularly creative and innovative periods of pop music.
Up until the early 1990s , hits were typically harmonically simpler than other songs of the era. On the other hand, from the 1990s onward hits more commonly have simpler, binary, rhythms such as 4/4 time.
On average, all songs on the chart are becoming louder. Additionally, the hits are relatively louder than the songs that dangle at the bottom of the charts, reflected by a strong weight for the loudness feature.

You can read more about the research at ScoreaAHit.

My favorite trend is the part about the late 1970s and early 1980s as periods of more creative and innovative music. I definitely agree with that.

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have a hit song to write. The secret formula has been found.

(Photo via Flickr: Paul Townsend / Creative Commons)

Send to Kindle

Sleep Could Improve Your Memory

Posted on 2011/10/032011/10/02 by Jason Hensel

I’m a night owl. I’m one of those people who works better at night and feels like there is a lot to do while awake. Sleep can come later. And studies have shown that night owls have higher intelligence than those who wake up early. Yep, stay up late and become smarter. I knew I was doing something right.

Not so fast, opposing scientists say. In fact, sleep helps you learn and remember.

“We speculate that we may be investigating a separate form of memory, distinct from traditional memory systems,” said Kimberly Fenn, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. “There is substantial evidence that during sleep, your brain is processing information without your awareness and this ability may contribute to memory in a waking state.”

In a study appearing in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, findings suggest people derive vastly different effects from “sleep memory,” with some memories improving dramatically and others not at all. This ability is a new, previously undefined form of memory.

“You and I could go to bed at the same time and get the same amount of sleep,” Fenn said. “But while your memory may increase substantially, there may be no change in mine.”

She added that most people in the study showed improvement.

Fenn says she believes this potential separate memory ability is not being captured by traditional intelligence tests and aptitude tests such as the SAT and ACT.

“This is the first step to investigate whether or not this potential new memory construct is related to outcomes such as classroom learning,” she said.

It also reinforces the need for a good night’s sleep.

“Simply improving your sleep could potentially improve your performance in the classroom,” Fenn said.

My memory is not what it used to be, and I’ve chalked that up to getting older. Maybe, though, it’s my lack of sleep. Maybe I’m trading memory for intelligence, and I’m not sure that’s an exchange I want to make. Would you?

(Some story materials provided by the University of Michigan.)

(Photo credit: Austin King / Creative Commons)

Send to Kindle

Embarrassed People are More Trustworthy

Posted on 2011/09/30 by Jason Hensel

You may be embarrassed by being embarrassed, but that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it makes you more trustworthy.

“Embarrassment is one emotional signature of a person to whom you can entrust valuable resources,” said University of California Berkeley social psychologist Robb Willer, a coauthor of a study published in this month’s online issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “It’s part of the social glue that fosters trust and cooperation in everyday life.”

The researchers conducted a few experiments to get to their findings.

In the first experiment, they videotaped 60 college students recounting embarrassing moments such as public flatulence or making incorrect assumptions based on appearances. Typical sources of embarrassment included mistaking an overweight woman for being pregnant or a disheveled person for being a panhandler. Research assistants coded each video testimonial based on the level of embarrassment the subjects showed.

The college students also participated in the “Dictator Game,” which economics researchers use to measure altruism. For example, each was given 10 raffle tickets and asked to keep a share of the tickets and give the remainder to a partner. Results showed that those who showed greater levels of embarrassment tended to give away more of their raffle tickets, indicating greater generosity.

Researchers also surveyed 38 Americans whom they recruited through Craigslist. They asked survey participants how often they feel embarrassed. They were also gauged for their general cooperativeness and generosity through such exercises as the aforementioned dictator game.

In another experiment, participants watched a trained actor being told he received a perfect score on a test. The actor responded with either embarrassment or pride. They then played games with the actor that measured their trust in him based on whether he had shown pride or embarrassment.

The results consistently showed that embarrassment signals people’s tendency to be pro-social.

“You want to affiliate with them more,” said Matthew Feinberg, a doctoral student in psychology at UC Berkeley and lead author of the paper. “You feel comfortable trusting them. Moderate levels of embarrassment are signs of virtue. Our data suggests embarrassment is a good thing, not something you should fight.”

How easily do you get embarrassed?

(Story materials provided by the University of California Berkeley.)
(Photo credit: Sarah Rebecca / Creative Commons)

Send to Kindle