In this study, researchers asked a group of nearly 90 students to watch one of three video genres: horror to induce anxiety, comedy to induce joy and laughter or "neutral" to have no effect on emotions. After viewing one of the three movies, the students were then shown 28 yearbook-style photos of college-aged people in random order for 500 milliseconde.
Findings showed:
- Students who watched the comedy had much higher positive emotions, while those who viewed the horror movie had far more negative emotions.
- In a testing phase, more images passed by and students were asked to acknowledge whether or not they had seen the photos earlier -- those in a positive mood had a far greater ability to recognize members of another race, while their ability to recognize members of their own race remained the same.
It was concluded that negative emotions create a "tunnel vision" view of the world, whereas positive emotions (i.e. joy, humor and happiness) promote big-picture thinking and allow one to become more inclusive and detail-oriented. Also, positive emotions allow one to think in terms of "us" rather than "them".
University of Michigan News Service
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