Complex Emotional States and Perceptions Drive Healthy-Unhealthy Choices

If you're sad you're more likely to choose unhealthy foods compared to when feeling happy (1) ; that is unless of course you're feeling happy about the present or past.  If you're feeling happy about the present or past you're more likely to make the unhealthy choice, compared to having positive hopeful feelings about your future, in which case you're more likely to make a healthy choice. (2)

If only it were that simple.  If food is advertised as being organic or some other health inspiring description we're more likely to believe the positive suggestion and perceive we can and should, eat more of the food, regardless of whether it is factually healthy or not. (3) In fact you may actually perceive being more hungry later after having consumed food you were told was healthy, but if you freely choose to eat healthy you will feel satisfied and not feel more hungry later. (4)

Clenching your fists, grit your teeth, and flex your muscles!  A new study suggests doing so may stimulate a more potent burst of will power allowing one to overcome a food temptation or cope with an unpleasant situation. (5)

Umm.. can't I just eat and not worry about all this academic mumbo-jumbo? Of course!  Err.. if you're emotionally calibrated and aware of how your emotions drive food decisions, otherwise you may blindly eat, and eat, and eat..

Obviously if we eat too much we'll gain fat.  Clearly if we keep this up we put ourselves at significant risk of becoming unhealthy.  Common sense right?

So.. why is our population becoming more overweight every year?  Where is the application of this common sense?

Researchers are showing that despite the obvious negative effects of overeating most people feel compelled to overeat most of the time.  We have to move beyond talking about the latest diet and exercise scheme and become more aware of our habits, our social norms (overeating is celebrated), environmental cues, and how our emotions and sense of reward, risk, and harm affect our healthy, or unhealthy decisions.

Let's stop being eating automatons and start feeling good about mindful, healthy choices.



(1) Food-mood Connection: The Sad Are Twice As Likely To Eat Comfort Food

(2) https://www.jcr-admin.org/pressreleases/041711162837_Winterichrelease.pdf

(3) Health halo effect: Don't judge a food by its organic label

(4) JSTOR: The Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 37, No. 3 (October 2010), pp. 357-367

(5) JSTOR: The Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 37, No. 6 (April 2011), pp. 1046-1064

The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence, which arguably can be interpreted in a few different ways, has generally been accepted as referring to the ability to be self aware of our own thoughts and feelings, as well as being astute and sensitive enough to correctly interpret the emotional state of others.

A benefit of having a higher emotional intelligence is the ability to be more empathetic towards others when they're feeling down (or up), and having a greater ability to understand ones own feelings and make better decisions with this insight.

A new study carried out at the University of Toronto and published in the journal Psychological Science (1), suggests emotional skills can be used for good or evil.

(Cue Darth Vaders breathing sounds)

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"In one study, the researchers had participants fill out a survey on how strong their “moral identity” is—whether it’s central to their sense of self that they treat other people with kindness and compassion. Then they had people take part in a game that tests how their behavior benefits the group. (Each person chose how many points to take from a pool; the more points you take, the better your chance of winning a lottery, but if everyone takes the maximum points, there will be no lottery.) People who have a high moral identity were kinder to others in the group—even more so if they were good at emotional regulation.

In another study, they did much the same, but for the dark side; they asked people how Machiavellian they are—for example, if they agree that “anyone who completely trusts anyone else is asking for trouble.” Then the participants answered questions about a number of behaviors, for example if they’d ever publicly embarrassed someone at work. People who were Machiavellian were more likely to have treated their coworkers badly—particularly if they were good at emotional regulation.

“Emotional intelligence is not character,” Côté says. “It’s like any set of skills that we have—verbal, mathematical, analytical—these are skills that can be used to promote moral goals or selfish goals.” Some employers are training people in emotional intelligence with the hope that it will make employees beneficial to the group. But, these results suggest, better emotional intelligence can also help people treat each other badly if they are inclined to do so. The results also suggest that training employees on emotional intelligence or EI may be a good thing as long as it is combined with enforcing guidelines for ethical conduct in the workplace."

That bully who knows how to push your buttons? You might begrudge their seemingly ignorant behaviour, but chances are they're actually pretty bright but choose to use their insight to make you feel like crap and therefore carry out their evil sith-like schemes.

So work on being more in tune with human emotions, but beware the power of the dark side.  Use your new power for good : )

Yes, I am a sci-fi nerd.  No apologies.

(1) Press release:  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Two Sides of Emotional Intelligence - Association for Psychological Science (Authors, Stephane Cote, Katy DeCelles, Julie McCarthy, Ivona Hideg- University of Toronto, and Gerben van Kleef- University of Amsterdam).

Watching Your Brain Helps Control Thoughts

All those mirrors in gyms; proof that regular gym goers are narcissistic?

Or could there be a more practical reason?

Using a mirror to watch yourself during strength training helps with visual feedback so you can correct your form in real time, improving and maintaining good technique.

Now researchers at the University of British Columbia (1) have used functional MRI to do much the same thing in getting people to observe their own brain patterns while learning to be more introspective.

Why do we need this?  Don't we know when we're being introspective?

The results of the research are hoped to be put into practical use by helping people who may struggle with depression, anxiety, or trauma who may have negative thoughts they are not completely cognizant of.

It's true; we can have automated emotional and thought responses to things and just accept these feelings and thoughts as normal and respond to them as such.

For instance, the notion, "today is a really crappy day, just like every day", may be taken literally, but in reality to overcome the negativity associated with this negative thinking a person who improves their introspective skills would be able realize, "that's just a thought, and isn't necessarily true."

In the study, subjects were able to see a computer screen image that showed brain activity in the part of the brain used for self reflective thoughts, the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex.  The real time feedback allowed them to see whether their thoughts were the correct thoughts to achieve the goal of being self reflective, or if their thoughts were non-related to the task.

The tasks were completed in a similar fashion to interval training commonly used in physical exercise.  For this brain exercise the intervals were 30 seconds of raised or lowered mental introspection spread over four six minute sessions.

(1) ScienceDirect - NeuroImage : Improved modulation of rostrolateral prefrontal cortex using real-time fMRI training and meta-cognitive awareness

People control thoughts better when they see their brain activity | PsyPost