bad moods are better

next time you're making a critical decision, try to work yourself up into a really foul mood (from Yahoo! News):

"A positive mood is likely to trigger less careful thinking strategies,' Professor Joseph Forgas said in a prepared statement. He said the findings make evolutionary sense. 'This supports the idea that mood states are evolutionary signals about how to deal with threatening situations. That is, a negative mood state triggers more systematic, more attentive, more vigilant information processing,' Forgas said.

studies indicate that depressed individuals tend to see the world - and themselves - in a more realistic light, whereas happy folks tend to have inflated ideas of themselves and unrealistically optimistic views of the world around them. a negative mood perhaps works in the same way to not only allow better critical thinking skills, but also to assess the situation more accurately to begin with.

via amanda brand

Labels: decision making