3 pm: In need of some cheering up? Simple tricks that really work
Smiling and thinking of something nice: it can be as ridiculous as that, a British mass experiments shows. The psychologist Richard Wiseman tested 26,000 people.
Wiseman separated the the participants into five groups and had them do simple tasks to tighten their mood for a few minutes over the course of five days. The results show:
- The ones who thought about a positive experience of the day before improved their mood by 15 percent.
- The ones who thought about things they were thankful for improved their mood by 7 percent.
- The ones who just simply smiled for a litte bit improved by 6 percent.
- There was less improvement in mood with the ones who thought about the day before in a neutral manner.
- The ones that performed random friendly gestures almost didn’t improve at all.