The Caring Catalyst

Who Cares - What Matters

The Luckiest

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My parents would have celebrated
their 69th Wedding anniversary
TODAY
June 7, 2021
I believe they still do
because that
“till death do us part”
never really separates.          .          .
Tomorrow
June 8, 2021
Erin and I are celebrating our
35th Wedding Anniversary.

On June 8, 1986
the odds makers gave us a 35% chance of surviving our second marriage
which blended two families together
and it even went down a few percentage points when we had
o       u       r
two children within the first four years of our marriage.

T     O     D     A     Y:

the odds makers are ruling in our favor.

T     H     E     Y
say
77% of couples married since 1990 reached their 10-year anniversaries according to recent census figures.  It’s a supposed slight increase from 74% in the 80’s when divorces were at an all-time high.

N      O      W

Fifty-Five percent of all married couples have been married for at least 15 years, according to the Census report, while 35 percent have celebrated their 25th anniversaries and a special

S     I     X          P     E     R     C     E     N     T
have made it to 50 years.

The Social Scientists are giving us all kinds of reasons why couples have not only leveled off the divorce train but actually turned it around:

Better Communication

More Equal Rights and Pay

Being Friends First

Compatibility

Financial Stability

Bradford Wilcox, the Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia tells us,

“Marriage is actually becoming more stable in America and divorce is becoming less common.”

He goes on to say,

“There is sort of more of a soul mate model of marriage today. . .50 years ago, this was one of the things you did when you became a young adult.  You found a boyfriend or girlfriend and if you were pretty happy you’d go ahead and get married. . .Today the bar for marriage is much higher because people want a soul mate, not just a spouse.  And a soul mate should be someone who is capable of providing you with emotional fulfillment, an intense relationship.”

What do I know after 35 years?

I know

that I can give the World, but Erin can bring me home.

I know

that we can show each other what we can never see by ourselves

I know

that she’s a beautiful blue ocean and I’m an extensive sandy shore

I know

that her Better

conquers my Worse

I know

that her Richness

obliterates my Poverty

I know

her Health

cures my Illnesses

I know

her Love is my never ending Christmas Day

I most ultimately know

I’m not

the strongest,

the bravest,

the smartest,

the brightest,

the thinnest,

the fastest,

the surest,

the most handsome

but no one can ever convince me

that  I’m  not  the

l       u       c       k      i      e      s      t

The one thing after all of these years

I absolutely-for-the-life-of-me-cannot-figure-out:

Why   she   said

Y       E       S

but I’m in heaven now and forevermore

because she

did.        .        .

Great relationships aren’t  the ones that last a lifetime,

they’re ones that last a second past eternity.

I don’t know what the percentages of

T            H            A            T

a r e.        .        .

but when you have it.           .           .

you no longer care;

It’s a Math
you can’t figure out
but  adds  up
a     n     y     w     a     y

(and we just can’t stop smiling)

THE MORAL OF THE STORY

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Sometimes. . .
there’s no need for the
Moral of the Story
Sometimes. . .
we are the
MORAL OF THE STORY
which is. . .
________________________________________________________________________
(GO AHEAD, FILL IN THE BLANK)
Sometimes. . .
it really is this simple:

OR
(even more simply):

(that is all)

MOVIED OUT

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CUTE AS A BUTTON
and all of the other
sappy stuff
that comes with
CHRISTMAS MOVIES
that has us reaching for the box of tissues
and wiping our eyes
before we remote control
ourselves to the next one
that’ll do the same thing all over again
(but only better)

Just what exactly
LIGHTS UP YOUR CHRISTMAS TREE. . . ?

Sure, Netflix Christmas Movies Are Often Patently Absurd; They’re Also Occasionally Perfect

It’s official: our brains are fried. The holiday season is stressful enough in normal times. But this year, what we wouldn’t give to have that normal level of present-buying, cookie-baking, tree-decorating stress, instead of all this 2020-specific heartache, anxiety and exhaustion. It’s enough to make you want to line up a bunch of Netflix Christmas movies and gaze upon them, one after another, with reckless disregard for alleged quality or degree of believability. In fact, the less realistic, the better. A Chicago cupcake baker—who bears an uncanny resemblance to the duchess of a phony European nation—falling in love with a prince? Calgon, take me away, Right?

By no means does Netflix have a monopoly on the brain-candy Christmas movie; these have been Lifetime and Hallmark Channel staples for years, and it’s likely that even people you’d never suspect harbor a secret favorite or two. (Hallmark’s The Nine Lives of Christmas, from 2014, involves cats and a fireman played by Brandon Routh. Probably only about eight people have seen that one.) But Netflix, in addition to flooding the market with original movies, makes it numbingly simple to watch one of these films after another, with barely a flick at your trackpad. You can stack up Holidate (an unsentimental Emma Roberts lines up Australian hottie Luke Bracey as a boyfriend for holidays only), Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (a lively, if overlong, musical fantasy about an eccentric toy inventor played by Forrest Whitaker) and The Princess Switch: Switched Again—a sequel to the 2018 sensation featuring Vanessa Hudgens as the aforementioned duchess-doppelganger baker—all without having to leave the bathtub, unless you need to refill your wine glass. Once you’ve jetted through those, you can shimmy over to Alien Xmas, The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two, or any number of Christmas-themed offerings from earlier years. You could always just watch A Christmas Prince—or either of its two sequels—again.

I know what you’re going to ask next: Aren’t these movies bad? Shouldn’t I be embarrassed about watching them? The answer to the second question is NO, because how we respond emotionally to visual information is not an arena for shame or judgment. Does that mean that there are more beautifully made and wonderfully acted Christmas movies beyond these? Of course. Check out Jimmy Stewart in Ernst Lubitsch’s 1940 Shop Around the Corner—for my money the most beautiful, bittersweet holiday romance—for the lot of them.

It is possible to give yourself over to a movie even when it’s written in lingo you’ve seen many times before—to note how pretty a castle looks when it’s surrounded by snowy trees, to admire a fairy-tale character’s colorful wool coat, to succumb to the unsurprising surprise of two allegedly mismatched characters bumping into each other beneath the mistletoe—without scolding yourself for what gives you pleasure. The line between a cliché and a cherished convention is often so slim it’s almost undetectable.

So what awaits you in the Christmas 2020 Netflix queue? Holidate works too hard at being raunchy, but you may happen to have a soft spot for Emma Roberts and her resolute eyebrows. Plus, you’ve got Luke Bracey as a ridiculously good-looking manly-man golf pro with a surprisingly sensitive side. You may as well be eating ice cream right out of the carton. Jingle Jangle—a holiday fantasy aimed at kids, but not bad for adults—is quietly radical in its mostly Black cast. It’s a switch from the norm that underscores how misguided those norms are in the first place. Plus, the costumes (by Michael Wilkinson) are a delight, a riot of Victorian and steampunk silhouettes rendered in traditional Kente cloth and African wax prints.Madalen Mills as Journey Jangle and Forest Whitaker as Jeronicus Jangle in ‘Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey’ Gareth Gatrell/NETFLIX

But for pure candy-box escapism, the prize goes to The Princess Switch movies, with Vanessa Hudgens playing at least two different versions of Vanessa Hudgens. In the first Princess Switch, she’s the perky Chicago baker, Stacy De Novo, who, while attending a baking competition in the picturesquely phony European nation of Belgravia, discovers that she’s a dead ringer for svelte and elegant Lady Margaret, a royal denizen of the nearby and equally phony European nation known as Montenaro. Lady Margaret is engaged to be married to the Prince of Belgravia, the kind but seemingly bland Edward (Sam Palladio). Unfortunately, she’s just not that into him. Meanwhile, Stacy’s best friend and business partner, the totally hot and adorable Kevin (Nick Sagar), has a crush on her that’s been unrequited for years; Stacy loves Kevin platonically, but doesn’t feel any sparks. Margaret, bound by her royal duties, longs for more spontaneity; Stacy wouldn’t mind being a fancy royal for a day or so. And so the two switch identities, only to discover that one woman’s rejected beau is the other’s dream match. The movie ends with one royal wedding and a hint at a future engagement. Everybody goes home happy.

In The Princess Switch: Switched Again, Lady Margaret is about to be crowned Queen of Montenaro. Sadly, her acquiescence to royal duty has broken up her romance with Kevin (though you know that’s not going to stick). Enter Margaret’s bad gal cousin Fiona (played by—surprise!—Hudgens again), a party girl with a peroxide tumble of tresses, who favors tacky clubwear and faux furs in tones not found in nature. Fiona hatches a scheme to impersonate Margaret and thus become Montenaro’s monarch. Chaos ensues, though romance prevails.Vanessa Hudgens and Vanessa Hudgens in ‘The Princess Switched: Switched Again’ Netflix

If nothing else, how can you not love the idea of fictional countries with names that sound borrowed from 1960s sportswear companies? The Princess Switchand its followup are so indefensibly enjoyable they need no defense. Recently, over socially distanced lunch with a friend, I found myself regaling him with a highly animated summary of the first movie’s plot. “Oh. It’s Shakespeare,” he said, between bites of sandwich. (It’s also a device Mark Twain put to use in The Prince and the Pauper.) Stories of swapped identities, of one character being mistaken for another and causing mischief, or falling in love, are nothing new, and they were invented by people with good instincts for what human beings like. Our consistencies unite us across eras.

If you were to break the Princess Switch movies down to their barest elements, they could almost be performance art—big squares, circles and triangles that speak in ways that defy words. These are movies written in flag language, semaphore that can be read clearly from a great distance. Switched Again ends with (spoiler alert), a wedding, a reconciliation and a coronation, all of which tap out a code that our wilted minds receive gratefully. We may think our brains aren’t working, but they are; they’re experts in the art of the busman’s holiday. Love, forgiveness, the beauty of a sparkly gown: These are oversized signals, easy to read and comprehend from a great distance, reaching out to us as we watch from our respective isolated islands, or bathtubs. If they were good enough for the Elizabethans, they’re good enough for us. . .

So let’s have it:
WHAT ARE YOUR GO-TO’S
WHAT ARE YOUR TOP-FIVE-GOTTA-SEE-THEM-AT-CHRISTMAS-MOVIES:
A CHRISTMAS STORY
HOME ALONE
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE
WHITE CHRISTMAS
CHRISTMAS VACATION
LAST CHRISTMAS
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING
HOLIDAY
LOVE, ACTUALLY
If there was ever a year
to gush
to be sappy
to go all comedy
to reach far for the box of tissues
2020
is THAT year. . .
so pop some corn
get the fire crackling
turn on the Christmas tree lights
turn off all of the other lights
bundle up with your favorite blanket
and ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
e n j o y
(and be the better for it)

H O M E

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I’ve long believed that
H O M E
is never a Street Address
A P.O. BOX Number
A GPS Destination
H O M E
Is not ever a place
so much as a
F E E L I N G
If COVID19
hasn’t taught us anything else
over these past long months
it’s not so much how
c o n t a g i o u s
it happens to be
but how
I N F E C T I O U S
our love
our sense
our longing
our need
to be
TOGETHER
to be in
COMMUNITY
with each other. . .

hands heart love
Photo by ATC Comm Photo on Pexels.com

What do you call
H O M E
. . .better still:
WHO BRINGS YOU THERE. . . ?

P R O V E
I T
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
It’s time to
P R O D I G A L
U P
and get
H O M E
(And most of all to PROVIDE IT)

Behind the Mask

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I have said for a long time now
the only day we celebrate 365 days a year
or for that matter;
E N D L E S S L Y
is Halloween
and now for the past few months
(literally and figuratively)
it feels worse than
Halloween gone
Bill Murray’s GROUNDHOG’S DAY
which makes us all begin to
wonder:

What We Lose When We Hide Our Smiles Behind a Mask

Illustration by Nathalie Lees for TIMEIDEASBY; It seems that we may not be the only ones
W O N D E R I N G
BELINDA LUSCOMBE  is an editor-at-large at TIME and the author of Marriageology: The Art and Science of Staying Together has pondered a few of these thoughts as well. . .

Miss Belinda shares, “I miss smiling. I don’t miss it in the inspirational poster “the whole world smiles with me” way. I don’t miss it, as another poster says, because I can no longer “intimidate those who wish to destroy me.” I don’t miss it because “happiness looks gorgeous on me,” although I did put in three very formative years of hard time in the orthodontia trenches–20 months of braces and six retainers–so it looks at least marginally better than it used to. . . .”

I miss smiling because it’s one of the handiest utensils in the communication drawer and my mask has locked it away. Yes, it’s just a facial expression: a deployment of the zygomaticus muscles, sometimes authentic, sometimes a placeholder because the real emotion we’re feeling is best not expressed. But as humans, we learn at the age of approximately 42 days that smiling is a useful way of getting people to feel good about themselves and therefore us. (The “world smiles with you” thing actually works–for babies.)

We continue to refine the way we use that smile to communicate information–from “you’re here!” to “you’re cute” to “you’re not meant to take that seriously, although you also kind of are”–until we no longer have teeth. And now, suddenly, those skills, all that practice, are useless. We have lost our favorite communication gizmo just when we need more ways to connect than ever.

Trying to interact with other humans without being able to smile is the facial equivalent of communicating via text message; it’s easy to be misunderstood. Your expression and words lack context. People wonder: Are you wincing at me? Are you grinding your jaw? Do you just have a lot of crow’s-feet? Was what you said an insult or a joke?

According to Paula Niedenthal, a psychologist who heads up the Niedenthal Emotions Lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has studied facial expression extensively, there are three types of smiles: those that express pleasure at a reward or surprise, like when you get to see your friends in person after a prolonged separation (soon, please); those that convey a desire to be friendly, or at least non-threatening, which she calls smiles of affiliation; and those that show dominance, like the one Dirty Harry gives when he asks a certain punk if he feels lucky.

Her studies have shown that it’s harder to tell the difference between affiliative smiles and dominant ones if you can’t see the lower half of the face. In those situations, people have to rely on other clues. She gives the example of walking a dog that suddenly barks at a passerby. A quick look at an unmasked person’s face will confirm whether the passerby is smiling because he thinks he’s much better with his dog than you are or smiling because his dog is also occasionally silly. Behind a mask, this distinction is not so clear.

Niedenthal predicts that as mask use stretches on, people may rely more on the context of the situation to tell them how to interpret an interaction. “They will imagine that the context confers a reaction that is obvious, which of course will get everybody into a lot of trouble, because people in our culture respond with high variability to the same context,” she says.

BUT I have tried to compensate 
for the communication gap by enhancing my other gestures. Upon approaching strangers in the street, I want to let them know that I am harmless and wish them well. In hard times, this message feels particularly urgent. Not being able to smile at them has forced me to wave or do a weird fighter-pilot-style salute. If I’m pulling aside to let them pass and can no longer offer an encouraging “you first” smile, I am reduced to airport-marshal gesticulations, which are about as effective as talking more loudly to someone whose language you don’t speak.

But it’s not just the recipient who gains from a grin. Smiling affects the smiler too. Studies have shown that it enhances the mood that produced the expression and helps us recall happier times. “Facial expression is not just out-put from the brain but also feeds back to the brain and has some consequences for subjective experience,” says Niedenthal. “There is good evidence that smiling naturally has some effect on your ambient emotional state.” In other words, masks may be making us more morose.

It almost never helps a situation to tell people to smile, so I won’t, but I’m going to keep beaming, even if it can’t be seen and sometimes is not entirely authentic. A fake smile, after all, is often given with good intentions, just as a mask is sometimes worn not to hide but to protect.

And then there’s
Steve Wilson and The World Laughter Tour. . .
when I went to his two day workshop a few years ago
and became a Certified Laughter Leader
I still remember
one powerful lesson
that even a fake laugh
is a beneficial laugh;
a FAKE SMILE
still,
physiologically
is immensely beneficial
by relieving stress and enhancing
a calm, creative, good mood. . .
So here’s the deal:
(ESPECIALLY)
BEHIND THE MASK
the best way to assure a smile
IS TO
(CREATE)
GIVE ONE

YES. . .I AM COLOR BLIND

A LOST GIFT

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Like most film clips, this one found me
and more than just finding me
it’s message pierced my heart
and when your heart gets pierced
most of the time 
it beats differently
(at least for a short amount of time)
until it gets pierced again
(and again, and again:
AND IF YOU’RE TRULY ALIVE
countless more times)

Writing in his journal 9 year old Abeer
speaks of his frustrations 
with having to always prove himself
at home
at school
at playtime with friends
never really ever being allowed to 
just be himself

His heartfelt
and eye-opening words
remind us that each child is 
wonderfully and awesomely 
u  N  I   QU  e
and should not just be 
S  E  E  N
as such
but most especially 
cherished
treated
as such

The right-between-the-eyes-straight-through-the-heart-message:
DON’T LOOK AT WHO YOUR CHILD COULD BE
BUT WHO YOUR CHILD IS

As Abeer 
points out so powerfully:
IF CHILDREN TRULY ARE THE BEST GIFT
YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSE TO FIX THE BEST GIFT;

It shot me back to a powerful scene 
from the movie
G L  A  D  I  A  T  O  R

When Joaquin Phoenix’s character, Commodus
is crying for the approval/acceptance of his father,
Richard Harris’s Marcus Aurelius
at which time Aurelius 
sushes his son and says,
“YOUR FAULTS AS A SON IS MY FAILURE AS A FATHER.”

I have had so not proud moments
with each of my children
and when I have blatantly known them
(mostly at that very moment)
I have apologized

I know the greatest blessings of my life are 
my family;
My wife
my children
my grandchildren
my sister and brothers
my parents
my nieces and nephews
my cousins

For me.          .          .
some of the worst moments in my life
is when I have not noticed 
T     H     A     T
Or Worse. . .
when I’ve tried to tamper
TO FIX
what’s ultimately
never been broken
IN THEM
(but not always in me
(FOR, OR BECAUSE OF ME)
Maybe the truest GIFT 
now
is knowing it
and never knowingly do it
a g a i n. . .
To make my love less of a Roller Coaster
and more like the greatest
AMUSEMENT PARK
any person who knows me
(especially children)
could ever visit and
(. . .and better)
NEVER LEAVE

Hap Hap HAPPIEST TIME OF THE YEAR

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Happy?

It’s not a hard to ask question.         .         .

It might be the toughest one to answer

or at least to try and understand

TO  ANSWER:

Are you HAPPY?

Brian Rea)

Johnny Mathis and a host of others have been singing for the 6 weeks IT’S    THE    MOST    WONDERFUL    TIME    OF    THE   YEAR

Charles Dickens wrote:
IT’S  THE  BEST  OF  TIMES, IT’S  THE  WORST  OF  TIMES

and even though it was from a TALE  OF  TWO  CITIES

and not

THE  CHRISTMAS  CAROL

it somehow seems that it could well fit,
doesn’t it?
The World is a huge

M   A   G   N   I   F   Y   I   N   G          G   L   A   S   S  

about now.          .          .

E        N        L        A        R        G        I        N        G

especially those things that make us the most unhappiest:Loss
Disappointment
Unmet
Expectation
DeathIllness
Job Security
Money Woes
Health
Family
Distances
or
anything else you might want to place in this:_________________________________________________________________________

HAPPINESS has traditionally been considered an elusive and evanescent thing. To some, even trying to achieve it is an exercise in futility. It has been said that “happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”

Social scientists have caught the butterfly. After 40 years of research, they attribute happiness to three major sources: genes, events and values. Armed with this knowledge and a few simple rules, we can improve our lives and the lives of those around us. We can even construct a system that fulfills our founders’ promises and empowers all Americans to pursue happiness.
Psychologists and economists have studied happiness for decades. They begin simply enough — by asking people how happy they are.

The richest data available to social scientists is the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey, a survey of Americans conducted since 1972. This widely used resource is considered the scholarly gold standard for understanding social phenomena. The numbers on happiness from the survey are surprisingly consistent. Every other year for four decades, roughly a third of Americans have said they’re “very happy,” and about half report being “pretty happy.” Only about 10 to 15 percent typically say they’re “not too happy.” Psychologists have used sophisticated techniques to verify these responses, and such survey results haveprovedaccurate.

Beneath these averages are some demographic differences. For many years, researchers found that women were happier than men, although recent studies contend that the gap has narrowed or may even have been reversed. Political junkies might be interested to learn that conservative women are particularly blissful: about 40 percent say they are very happy. That makes them slightly happier than conservative men and significantly happier than liberal women. The unhappiest of all are liberal men; only about a fifth consider themselves very happy.          .          .

Mind you.        .        .

This story was op-ed was written by

Albert C. Brooks

in the New York Times

DECEMBER 13, 2014

but it could be

TODAY’S  HEADLINES

o r

T         O         M         O         R         R         O         W  ‘   S

So.          .          .

what      makes      you      happy?

It’s   not   answering

the   opposite   of

WHAT    MAKES    YOU    SAD?

Is  it  the  Hap

H  A  P

HAPPIEST   TIME  OF  THE  YEAR ?

Could it be?

Something tells me

you won’t need to consult the

Social Scientists

or house up in their

respective labs to

F I N D     O U T

and better.        .        .

provide that illusive feeling

for another.        .        .

Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:

You’re   the
R  e  a  s  o  n 

for      the
S   e  a  s  o  n

.          .          .Share   Excessively

(o   f   t   e   n)

BE    A    Producer    of    Smiles

infest

infect

others with

J          O          Y

Make it a neverending

incurable

epidemic.         .        .

E        X        C         E        S        S        I        V        E        L        Y

YOUR DANCE

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https://youtu.be/Ok0IzCapyJ0

I love this short video

that many people have brought to my attention

for the past couple of weeks for 

TWO  REASONS:

  1. You don’t need to speak a foreign language (or any language to understand it)
  2. I could embarrass any one of my kids/grandkids or all of them at any given time just by breaking out in 

D            A            N            C            E

It didn’t matter if it was in the middle of an amusement park

It didn’t matter if it was in the middle of a restaurant 

It didn’t matter if it was in the middle of Church

It certainly didn’t matter if it was a Father/Daughter Dance

It didn’t matter if it was at a concert

My moves are drop dead

L            E            T            H            A            L

and I believe,

highly CONTAGIOUS

Maybe there was a not-so-small-

T H I R D     R E A S O N :

I’d do anything to connect 

F O U R T H     R E A S O N

Make them laugh

F  I  F  T  H     R  E  A  S  O  N

Make sure that the attention was never put on them in an uncomfortable situation.          .          .

Did I always achieve my objectives.          .          .

Not always;
Sometimes not even close to SOMETIMES

But no language was ever necessary 

TO  SHOW

I      l o v e     y o u

.          .          .that’s a MOVE

that needs no DANCING AROUND

and it’s COMMUNICATED

p           e           r           f           e           c           t           l           y

Every Time

Hey.          .          .

Can I have this Dance?

No Big Deal.          .          .

I’ve got a MOVE for you, too

Cue the Music
 ( or.       .       .n o t )

Mister Rogers’D

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It was a staple in most households when we were growing up and there were literally only three (4) channels on your tv set:
NBC
ABC
CBS
PBS
and most often I was a human remote control
changing the stations
upon request. . .

We’d tune in just about every early evening while my mom was finishing preparing dinner and it would be my job to watch my younger brothers; we’d watch MR ROGERS and though I acted like it was for little kids, this not-so-little-kid got a lot out of it, but maybe not as much as I got this past Friday when I went to see Tom Hanks in
A BEAUTIFUL IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Thanksgiving is just a few days away
and maybe we’ve already snuck a piece of pumpkin pie
or some fruitcake
or a slice or two of turkey. . .

I have a request for you this Thanksgiving:
If you haven’t already
sometime over this holiday weekend, maybe even
T H A N K S G I V I N G
itself,
I want you
I’m literally begging you
TO BE SELFISH
P L E A S E
be selfish enough to go see this movie. . .

I’m so glad that this small Trailer showed my favorite thing in the movie:
THE ONE MINUTE OF SILENCE SCENE
with the powerful
the most awesomely powerful message:
“LET’S JUST TAKE A MOMENT AND THINK ABOUT ALL OF THE PEOPLE WHO LOVED US INTO BEING. . .JUST ONE MINUTE!

Mr Rogers was one special person because it was his life’s mission to make everyone he met feel
SPECIAL;
he was
COMPASSION IN ACTION
KINDNESS ENACTED
and more:
He’s inspired us to be the same. . .
Join me in doing
JUST THAT. . .

Please, won’t you be my neighbor?

Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
It won’t guarantee you a
HAPPY THANKSGIVING
It’ll give you a most
Enchanted Life. . .

Are You Contagious?

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When Are You Most Likely to Catch Other People’s Emotions?

Researchers discovered an important factor that influences how contagious emotions are.

In a new study, Stanford psychologists examined why some people respond differently to an upsetting situation and learned that people’s motivations play an important role in how they react.

Their study found that when a person wanted to stay calm, they remained relatively unfazed by angry people, but if they wanted to feel angry, then they were highly influenced by angry people. The researchers also discovered that people who wanted to feel angry also got more emotional when they learned that other people were just as upset as they were, according to the results from a series of laboratory experiments the researchers conducted.

Their findings, published in June in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, reveal that people have more control over how their emotions get influenced than previously realized, the researchers said.

“We have long known that people often try to regulate their emotions when they believe that they are unhelpful,” said James Gross, a professor of psychology at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. “This set of studies extends this insight by showing that people can also regulate the way they are influenced by others’ emotions.”

How do other people influence emotions?

To learn how people react to upsetting situations and respond to others around them, the researchers examined people’s anger toward politically charged events in a series of laboratory studies with 107 participants. The team also analyzed almost 19 million tweets in response to the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.

In the laboratory studies, the researchers showed participants images that could trigger upsetting emotions—for example, people burning the American flag and American soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The researchers also told participants how other people felt about these images.

The researchers found that participants who wanted to feel less angry were three times more likely to be influenced by people expressing calm emotions than by angry people. But participants who wanted to feel angry were also three times more likely to be influenced by other people angrier than them, as opposed to people with calmer emotions. The researchers also found that these participants got more emotional when they learned that others also felt similar emotions to them.

“The degree to which people said they were motivated to feel or not feel certain emotions predicted how much they would be influenced when they were exposed to emotions from other group members,” said Amit Goldenberg, the lead author on the study and a Stanford doctoral candidate in psychology.

Emotional influence on social media

The researchers also looked at social media, where they could see how emotions played out in real time. They focused on the unrest that emerged on Twitter following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.

After analyzing almost 19 million Twitter posts, the researchers found that Twitter users were more influenced by stronger emotions expressed by people in their social network compared to weaker and calmer reactions. They also found that when Twitter users responded to tweets that were similar in emotional intensity to their earlier reactions, the users amplified their emotions to express stronger outrage than others in their social network.

“The social dimension of emotions, particularly in response to socio-political events, is becoming increasingly important with the use of social media and people’s constant exposure to the emotions of others in online platforms,” wrote the study’s authors, who also included Jamil Zaki, assistant professor of psychology at Stanford.

Emotions as tools

Researchers have largely assumed that people’s emotions get influenced automatically—in an unconscious, immediate response to other people’s emotions, said Goldenberg. His team’s new research challenges that perspective.

“Our emotions are not passive nor automatic,” Goldenberg said. “They are a little bit of a tool. We have the ability to use our emotions to achieve certain goals. We express certain emotions to convince other people to join our collective cause. On social media, we use emotions to signal to other people that we care about the issues of a group to make sure people know we’re a part of it.”

Further research needs to be done in order to understand the relationship between people and their emotions. One of the next topics Goldenberg says he wants to examine further is whether the desire of people to want to see and experience certain emotions lies at the core of how they choose their network of friends and other people around them.

“It seems that the best way to regulate your emotions is to start with the selection of your environment,” Goldenberg said. “If you don’t want to be angry today, one way to do that is to avoid angry people. Do some people have an ingrained preference for stronger emotions than others? That’s one of my next questions.”

So just how Contagious are you?

If people were around you
in close corners for any part of any day
would they catch a good case of anger

H A P P I N E S S

I N D I F F E R E N C E

Just how
CONTAGIOUS ARE YOU ?
When People are in your midst
Do they come away
INFECTED
with your best
or. . . ?

Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:

GET CAUGHT

Start an incurable epidemic
of your glorious self
with no hopes
or no need
of an
a n t i d o t e

This article was originally published on Stanford News. Read the original article.

BY ALEX SHASHKEVICH | JULY 23, 201

Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man