Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity.

Physical activity, both exercise and non-exercise, has far-reaching benefits to physical health. Although exercise has also been linked to psychological health (e.g., happiness), little research has examined physical activity more broadly, taking into account non-exercise activity as well as exercise. We examined the relationship between physical activity (measured broadly) and happiness using a smartphone application. This app has collected self-reports of happiness and physical activity from over ten thousand participants, while passively gathering information about physical activity from the accelerometers on users' phones. The findings reveal that individuals who are more physically active are happier. Further, individuals are happier in the moments when they are more physically active. These results emerged when assessing activity subjectively, via self-report, or objectively, via participants' smartphone accelerometers. Overall, this research suggests that not only exercise but also non-exercise physical activity is related to happiness. This research further demonstrates how smartphones can be used to collect large-scale data to examine psychological, behavioral, and health-related phenomena as they naturally occur in everyday life.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UBhave project (Ubiquitous and Social Computing for Positive Behaviour Change, Grant ID: EP/I032673/1))This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Public Library of Science via https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.016058

Buffering the effects of bad news: Exposure to others' kindness alleviates the aversive effects of viewing others' acts of immorality.

Negatively valenced news dominates the press, with stories of death and destruction gaining significant traction while also negatively impacting people's mental health and perceptions of humanity. Given that horrific acts happen and need to be reported, we examined if news stories featuring others' kindness could undo the aversive effects of news stories featuring others' immorality. In Studies 1a-d we tested whether media exposure to the acts of kindness that occurred in response to a terrorist attack could alleviate the aversive effects of media exposure to the terrorist attack. In Study 2, we examined whether, more generally, the aversive effects of news stories featuring immorality (e.g., homicide, paedophilia, bullying) could be alleviated through news stories featuring acts of kindness (e.g., volunteering, philanthropy, caring for the homeless). In Studies 1 and 2, we found that participants exposed to others' immorality and then others' kindness suffered from less aversive changes to their mood, experienced greater levels of elevation and were more inclined to believe in the goodness of others, than participants exposed only to others' immorality. Given this, we suggest there is merit in journalists shining a light on others' kindness if people's affective well-being and belief in the goodness of humanity is to remain intact

Loosening the GRIP (Gender Roles Inhibiting Prosociality) to Promote Gender Equality

Prosociality is an ideal context to begin shifting traditional gender role stereotypes and promoting equality. Men and women both help others frequently, but assistance often follows traditional gender role expectations, which further reinforces restrictive gender stereotypes in other domains. We propose an integrative process model of Gender Roles Inhibiting Prosociality (GRIP) to explain why and how this occurs. We argue that prosociality provides a unique entry point for change because it is (a) immediately rewarding (which cultivates positive attitude formation), (b) less likely to threaten the gender status hierarchy, and therefore less susceptible to social backlash (which translates into less restrictive social norms), and (c) a skill that that can be learned (which leads to stronger beliefs in one’s own ability to help). Using the GRIP model, we derive a series of hypothesized interventions to interrupt the self-reinforcing cycle of gender role stereotyping and facilitate progress toward broader gender equality

Why do people avoid talking to strangers? A mini meta-analysis of predicted fears and actual experiences talking to a stranger

People are often reluctant to talk to strangers, despite the fact that they are happier when they do so. We investigate this apparent paradox, meta-analyzing pre-conversation predictions and post-conversation experiences across seven studies (N=2304). We examine: fears of not enjoying the conversation, not liking one’s partner, and lacking conversational skills; fears of the partner not enjoying the conversation, not liking oneself, and lacking conversational skills. We examine the relative strength of these fears, and show that the fears are related to talking behaviour. We report evidence that people’s fears are overblown. Finally, we report two interventions designed to reduce fears: conversation tips, and the experience of a pleasant conversation. Ultimately, this research shows that conversations go better than expected

Predicting musically induced emotions from physiological inputs: linear and neural network models

Listening to music often leads to physiological responses. Do these physiological responses contain sufficient information to infer emotion induced in the listener? The current study explores this question by attempting to predict judgments of ?felt? emotion from physiological responses alone using linear and neural network models. We measured five channels of peripheral physiology from 20 participants?heart rate (HR), respiration, galvanic skin response, and activity in corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major facial muscles. Using valence and arousal (VA) dimensions, participants rated their felt emotion after listening to each of 12 classical music excerpts. After extracting features from the five channels, we examined their correlation with VA ratings, and then performed multiple linear regression to see if a linear relationship between the physiological responses could account for the ratings. Although linear models predicted a significant amount of variance in arousal ratings, they were unable to do so with valence ratings. We then used a neural network to provide a non-linear account of the ratings. The network was trained on the mean ratings of eight of the 12 excerpts and tested on the remainder. Performance of the neural network confirms that physiological responses alone can be used to predict musically induced emotion. The non-linear model derived from the neural network was more accurate than linear models derived from multiple linear regression, particularly along the valence dimension. A secondary analysis allowed us to quantify the relative contributions of inputs to the non-linear model. The study represents a novel approach to understanding the complex relationship between physiological responses and musically induced emotion

Brief exposure to social media during the COVID-19 pandemic: Doom-scrolling has negative emotional consequences, but kindness-scrolling does not.

People often seek out information as a means of coping with challenging situations. Attuning to negative information can be adaptive because it alerts people to the risks in their environment, thereby preparing them for similar threats in the future. But is this behaviour adaptive during a pandemic when bad news is ubiquitous? We examine the emotional consequences of exposure to brief snippets of COVID-related news via a Twitter feed (Study 1), or a YouTube reaction video (Study 2). Compared to a no-information exposure group, consumption of just 2-4 minutes of COVID-related news led to immediate and significant reductions in positive affect (Studies 1 and 2) and optimism (Study 2). Exposure to COVID-related kind acts did not have the same negative consequences, suggesting that not all social media exposure is detrimental for well-being. We discuss strategies to counteract the negative emotional consequences of exposure to negative news on social media

Parasocial relationships on YouTube reduce prejudice towards mental health issues

Intergroup contact has long been established as a way to reduce prejudice among society, but in-person interventions can be resource intensive and limited in reach. Parasocial relationships (PSRs) might navigate these problems by reaching large audiences with minimal resources and have been shown to help reduce prejudice in an extended version of contact theory. However, previous studies have shown inconsistent success. We assessed whether parasocial interventions reduce prejudice towards people with mental health issues by first creating a new PSR with a YouTube creator disclosing their experiences with borderline personality disorder. Our intervention successfully reduced explicit prejudice and intergroup anxiety. We corroborated these effects through causal analyses, where lower prejudice levels were mediated by the strength of parasocial bond. Preliminary findings suggest that this lower prejudice is sustained over time. Our results support the parasocial contact hypothesis and provide an organic method to passively reduce prejudice on a large scale

People perceive parasocial relationships to be effective at fulfilling emotional needs

People regularly form one-sided, “parasocial” relationships (PSRs) with targets incapable of returning the sentiment. Past work has shown that people engage with PSRs to support complex psychological needs (e.g., feeling less lonely after watching a favorite movie). However, we do not know how people rate these relationships relative to traditional two-sided relationships in terms of their effectiveness in supporting psychological needs. The current research (Ntotal = 3085) examined how PSRs help people fulfil emotion regulation needs. In Studies 1 and 2, participants felt that both their YouTube creator and non-YouTube creator PSRs were more effective at fulfilling their emotional needs than in-person acquaintances, albeit less effective than close others. In Study 3, people with high self-esteem thought PSRs would be responsive to their needs when their sociometer was activated, just as they do with two-sided relationships

It's the Recipient That Counts: Spending Money on Strong Social Ties Leads to Greater Happiness than Spending on Weak Social Ties

Previous research has shown that spending money on others (prosocial spending) increases happiness. But, do the happiness gains depend on who the money is spent on? Sociologists have distinguished between strong ties with close friends and family and weak ties—relationships characterized by less frequent contact, lower emotional intensity, and limited intimacy. We randomly assigned participants to reflect on a time when they spent money on either a strong social tie or a weak social tie. Participants reported higher levels of positive affect after recalling a time they spent on a strong tie versus a weak tie. The level of intimacy in the relationship was more important than the type of relationship; there was no significant difference in positive affect after recalling spending money on a family member instead of a friend. These results add to the growing literature examining the factors that moderate the link between prosocial behaviour and happiness