Prepping your taxes? Feeling sad? Wait, that’s a GOOD thing!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Adam Anderson, from the University of Toronto, wondered how mood affects concentration. To make two dozen university students happy, he played them a quote, “jazzed-up version of Bach’s Brandenberg Concerto No. 3.” To bring them down, he played “Russia Under the Mongolian Yoke.” At half speed.
The students then completed two tasks while both happy or sad: one task measured creativity, the other, focus.
Happy students—as determined by a mood test—excelled creatively, but couldn’t focus. When sad, the same students easily achieved a trance-like tunnel vision, but showed little imagination.
Which explains, given the joyous creativity of my career, my perpetually grim accountant. Ba dump bum.
Reference: Anderson, A. K., Wais, P. E., & Gabrieli, J. D. (2006). Emotion enhances remembrance of neutral events past. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103(5), 1599–1604. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0506308103