Slashdot Mirror
Evidence That Good Moods Prevent Colds
duguk writes in with another reason to keep happy over Christmas. A new scientific study suggests that people who frequently experience positive emotions are less likely to catch colds. Psychologist Sheldon Cohen and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University interviewed 193 healthy adults daily for two weeks and recorded the positive and negative emotions they had experienced each day. The researchers then exposed the volunteers to a cold or a flu virus. Those with "generally positive outlooks" reported fewer cold symptoms. From the article: "'We need to take more seriously the possibility that a positive emotional style is a major player in disease risk,' Cohen says... Although a positive emotional style bore no relation to whether participants became infected, it protected against the emergence of cold symptoms. For instance, among people infected by the influenza virus... 28 percent who often reported positive emotions developed coughs, congestion, and other cold symptoms, as compared with... 41 percent who rarely reported positive emotions."
...but I would like to take the opportunity to point out that this Sheldon Cohen is not the same as the former IRS tax commissioner who wrote the tax code in '78 and is the author of the famous and controversial book on the insight into the IRS's inner chamber members that so many of us are familiar with.
I was introduced to the former Mr. Cohen at Stanford in '98. After reading a few of his papers on the immune system, I would not doubt the legitimacy of his trials. Here's a bit more on his works!
This reminds me of another study to determine the relationship between height and basketball. Subjects were sorted into two groups: those who played basketball and those who did not. The basketball-playing group was, on the average, several inches taller. The conclusion? Playing basketball makes you taller!
Correlation does not imply causation.
People who report fewer negative feelings also report fewer cold symptoms.
Of course if you had read the article you would have seen the part where the subjects were kept under constant observation for 5 days. They're not just going by the subjective reports.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I would say, it's partly because, for every thoughtful, intelligent psychological theorist out there, there are five guys taping electrodes to monkey testicles in order to prove that apes percieve the color blue as the smell of radishes.
Add to that the stigma that, while sickness is external, and needs treatment, sadness is internal..."in the head" as it were, and thus is a symptom of a weak/unstable mind.
I come down somewhat in the middle myself, so while acknowledging that there are many different types of mental illness that respond well to treatment, I'd never put "sadness" in that category. Being happy and unhappy, in most people, is more about your life than about anything else, and to take a pill to be happy all the time is a little too Brave New World for me.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Oh, and here's a link to the full text of the original article in case anybody's interested.
My father always said that laughter was the best medicine, which is why so many of us died of tuberculosis.
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
Well, for some of us, it's most likely a chemical imbalance. In my case, geneology and medical history have shown that no amount of well-wishing or good life circumstances is going to cure my depression. It comes and it goes, and I can (and have) lived better through chemistry, but I am currently off the meds. The side effects are too much for me, and even if they weren't, I don't like the idea of being dependant on anything, much less drugs. That, and my depression isn't currently that bad.
I realize I'm not "most people", but it's not out of the realm of possibility that chemicals in the brain affect your mood, and you can thereby bring a person whose mood is *always* crippling depression up to a level of at least liveable malaise using chemicals. It's not being happy all the time, it's just trying to be a productive member of society and not suffering for it.
Nathan's blog