Science
Related: About this forumThe goosebumps test: Science has found the emotion you need to stay healthy
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, set out to discover exactly that when they tracked emotions such as compassion, joy, love, and so on versus the levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6)a secretion which causes inflammation in the bodyin the saliva of 119 university students. The researchers found that those who regularly have positive emotions have less IL-6and they noticed the strongest correlation with one particular emotion.
Awe.
There seems to be something about awe, Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor and the senior author of the study, told the New York Times. It seems to have a pronounced impact on markers related to inflammation. Most of us think of awe as something felt rarelybut we may experience it more than we think. The students reported feeling awe three or more times a week. How great is that? Keltner said. Some people feel awe listening to music, others watching a sunset or attending a political rally or seeing kids play.
http://qz.com/371985/the-goosebumps-test-science-has-found-the-emotion-you-need-to-stay-healthy/
So, that time you spend surfing the net for astronomy pictures is good for you ...
I'm sure it's a lot more complicated than a brief article implies, but still, this make make you feel better. And that might be good for your health.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)Compassionate acts bring their own emotional rewards, for example.
Nay
(12,051 posts)Faux pas
(14,582 posts)silverweb
(16,402 posts)elleng
(130,126 posts)Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)Thanks for posting.
Aunt Bold Ire8
(7 posts)The White Goddess, a rather obtuse and very hypothetical family tree of the linguistic encryption of forbidden knowledge in the mythopoetic roots of Western Literature, inherited from pre-Christian goddess oriented cultures.
Continuing a discussion you'd recognize from the time of Aristotle about aesthetics and what makes good poetry distinct from bad poetry, Graves states that goosebumps, and/or hair prickling in your scalp or on the back of your neck, are some of the effects of experiencing "true poetry" (his term) and this is because a true poem contains "the Mother of all Muses", you could say, in its affect -ive elements.
An interesting concept, given the cognitive issues at least implied by all of the skirmishes between atheism/rationalism and what passes for religion these days.
Thor_MN
(11,843 posts)(Come on, someone had to do it...)