Taking good care of our physical selves is key to experiencing good feelings.Ģ. Start with the basics, like good sleep and moderate exercise. But, if we suffer frequently from bad moods, it could be useful to have tools available to help lift our spirits.ġ. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we should try to avoid all bad moods-our emotions can provide us with important information about what’s happening around us and give us guidance around what we might need. In just the moment when we could use some support, our ability to connect may be hindered. In addition, since bad moods may be contagious, being in a bad mood could put others in a bad mood, which might impact their ability to empathize with us, as well. What does this mean for our relationships? Being in a bad mood could impact our orientation toward another’s suffering and our desire to alleviate it. So, while our bad moods may affect automatic, unconscious empathic processes, they seem to have less impact on cognitively controlled processes-such as imagining how another person might feel. On the other hand, participants in a bad mood did not consistently make reduced ratings of another’s pain in the painful scenarios. The study extended past research by showing us the neural underpinnings that may be responsible for this effect. In other words, we are less tuned to others when we’re not feeling good. This pattern was mirrored in how they rated their own discomfort at seeing others in pain, suggesting that someone in a bad mood might be less empathic and less motivated to help a person suffering than someone in a good mood.Īccording to the authors of the study, this concurs with previous studies that found people in a bad mood are less able to mirror other people’s actions and facial expressions. Afterwards, they reported how much pain they thought the person in the picture felt and how painful it was for them to see these pictures.įindings revealed that participants in a bad mood showed brain activity linked to lowered emotional resonance with people in pain than participants in a positive or neutral mood. Participants were then shown pictures of people going through painful or neutral experiences-such as getting a hand shut in a door versus seeing a hand closing the same door. To look at how moods might affect emotional resonance, researchers in the new study hooked up 23 students from a Chinese university to an EEG to measure brain activity and had them listen to music or to a broadcast that put them in either a good, bad, or neutral mood. Be curious about others, yourself, and the world this month
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