Feeling swindled? Feeling a bit “explain to me, one more time, why we’re bailing out the banks, again?” A bit, “Afghanistan”, perhaps, or a bit “I cannot believe we weren’t insured” (from the beleaguered residents of Stonehaven). If so, here’s some better news: being in a bad mood is good for you. Or, as a scientific study announced last week (in the Australasian Science Journal), being in a bad mood gives you a psychological advantage and possibly makes you smarter – by boosting memory, improving judgement, making you less prone to snap decisions and more prone to critical astuteness.
Jollier sorts, on the other hand, tend to be inclined to believe everything they’re told (like the gullibly winsome hello-sky muppets they’re too cheery to realise they are, as the miffed would probably say).
“A positive mood is not universally desirable,” announced the study head, psychology professor Joseph Forgas. “People in a negative mood are less prone to judgemental errors and are better at producing effective and persuasive messages.” The irascibly quarrelsome malcontents, he carries on, are more adept at “processing strategies (for) demanding situations”, which promotes “a more concrete and ultimately more successful communication style”. All of which is excellent news for the dolorously dismal and vengeance, indeed, on the happiness industry.
Every year, another professor of happiness informs us that permanent joy can be ours, so long as we inject considerable amounts of joy into their coffers by buying their books. The underlying assumption is that being more inclined towards the irksomely splenetic means your life is barely worthwhile. From this week forth, however, being born truculent has been proved to be a vital boon, a natural propensity towards cynicism, pique and lugubrious contempt a searchlight through life’s baloney, without which the permanently chuffed (and the world at large) would be sold even more pups than ever. Anger, after all, as the querulous John Lydon said, is “an energy”.
The successful everywhere, meanwhile, are often prone to building exceptional lives upon pyres of negative vengeance, turning the molten lava of a lifelong huff into a towering sculpture of achievement.
For the grumblers, then, who may be in a reasonable mood by now, another new study might tip them over the edge into the realm of useless jollity. “Depression,” according to a Newsweek report, “might be evolution’s way of fixing what ails us.” As evidence, we are bombarded with bewildering scientific theory involving a brain molecule called the 5HT1A receptor (which serves as a docking port for serotonin). What we really need to know, however, is that clinical depression is also an advantageous function, vital for those who experience true depression to think their way back out of it, nature’s cunning ruse to provide the “focused, analytical thinking” which keeps the neurons firing, which in turn creates the solutions and so leads us out of depression – and towards, perhaps, a considerably more healthy, purse-lipped annoyance instead.
London, meanwhile, was particularly annoyed last week when mayor Boris Johnson brought the run-up to Christmas forward by a fortnight, to coincide with Disney’s London premiere of A Christmas Carol. Jim Carrey, who plays Scrooge, was the switcher-on of the lights. “I want to thank the people of Britain for the legacy of Charles Dickens and the chance to tell this story,” announced Carrey, gravely. “This story couldn’t be more important now – it’s about the immorality of greed.” Colin Firth, meanwhile, was asked his opinion of the lights. “Well, I think it’s all a bit tacky and over the top, quite frankly,” he averred, grimly. “But that’s what Christmas is all about.”
At this rate, by the end of this miserable year, our collective bad mood will have saved the environment, caused an outbreak of world peace and maybe even caused Jedward to win the X Factor, just to annoy Simon Cowell, who in all his inherent splenetic grouchiness is pretty much always right. (As annoying, of course, as that is.)
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