By Zaria Gorvett

10 August 2016
On stage he well letGrumpelstiltskinmindfulness over a million
people happiness index though, of course, they sapping your drive,
dimming attention to detail and making you simultaneously gullible
and selfish. Positivity is also known to encourage binge drinking,
overeating and unsafe sex.

Hugh Grant apparently hates every film heve made him $80m (Credit:
Rex Features)
At the centre of it all is the notion our feelings are adaptive:
anger, sadness and pessimism aren they evolved to serve useful
functions and help us thrive.
Take anger. From Newtons tantrums it seems as though visionary
geniuses often come with extremely short tempers. There are plenty
of examples to be found in Silicon Valley. Amazon founder Jeff
Bezos is famed for his angry outbursts and insults (such as m
sorry, did I take my stupid pills today?t stopped him building a
$300 billion company.
For years, the link remained a mystery. Then in 2009 Matthijs Baas
from the University of Amsterdam decided to investigate. He
recruited a group of willing students and set to work making them
angry in the name of science. Half the students were asked to
recall something which had irritated them and write a short essay
about it. t quite driven to full-blown fits of rage, at least to
begin with. Their contributions were also more original, repeated
by less than 1% of the studyif I hear that idea again, I (Credit:
Getty Images)
Anger really prepares the body to mobilise resources
Crucially, angry volunteers were better at moments of haphazard
innovation, or so-called thinking. Letre challenged to think about
possible uses for a brick. While a systematic thinker might
suggest ten different kinds of building, it takes a less
structured approach to invent a new use altogether, such as
turning it into a weapon.
In essence, creativity is down to how easily your mind is diverted
from one thought path and onto another. In a situation requiring
fight or flight, itmad geniusAnger really prepares the body to
mobilise resources re in is bad and gives you an energetic boost
to get you out of it,s going on in the brain. Like most emotions,
anger begins in the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure
responsible for detecting threats to our well-being. It raising
the alarm long before the peril enters your conscious awareness.
Then itre annoyed.
Though it as long as you get a chance to vent your anger by
wrestling a lion or screaming at co-workers. Sure, you might
alienate a few people, but afterwards your blood pressure should
go back to normal. Avoiding grumpiness has more serious
consequences.
The notion that repressed feelings can be bad for your health is
ancient. The Greek philosopher Aristotle was a firm believer in
catharsis (he invented the modern meaning of the word); viewing
tragic plays, he conjectured, allowed punters to experience anger,
sadness and guilt in a controlled environment. By getting it all
out in the open, they could purge themselves of these feelings all
in one go.
His philosophy was later adopted by Sigmund Freud, who instead
championed the cathartic benefits of the therapist while
suppressing it increased the chances of having a heart attack by
nearly three-fold.
It the threat of physical violence loyalty, friendship, or money t
arbitrary movements at all, but specifically aimed at increasing
our physical strength in the eyes of our opponent. Get it right
and aggression can help you advance your interests and increase
your status s just an ancient way of bargaining.
In fact, scientists are increasingly recognising that grumpiness
may be beneficial to the full range of social skills Negative
moods indicate we says Joseph Forgas, who has been studying how
emotions affect our behaviour for nearly four decades. In line
with this, research has also found that feeling slightly down
enhances our awareness of social cues. Intriguingly, it also
encourages people to act in a more fair way towards others.
Harsh, but fair
Though happiness is often thought of as intrinsically virtuous,
the emotion brings no such benefits. In one study, a group of
volunteers was made to feel disgusted, sad, angry, fearful, happy,
surprised or neutral and invited to play the .
In the game, the first player is given some money and asked how
theydictator game they simply receive whatever the first player
decides not to keep. It turns out that happier participants keep
more of the prize for themselves, while those in a sad mood are
significantly less selfish.
says Forgas.

Optimistic newspaper articles have been linked to poor economic

performance in subsequent weeks (Credit: Getty Images)
In some situations, happiness carries far more serious risks.
ItHappiness functions like a shorthand signal that wes not
necessary to pay too much attention to the environment, leaving
them prone to serious errors of judgement.
Those in a good mood were less able to think sceptically and were
significantly more gullible
In one study, Forgas and colleagues from the University of New
South Wales, Australia, put volunteers in either a happy or sad
mood by screening films in the laboratory. Then he asked them to
judge the truth of urban myths, such as that power lines cause
leukaemia or the CIA murdered President Kennedy. Those in a good
mood were less able to think sceptically and were significantly
more gullible.
Next Forgas used a first-person shooter game to test if good moods
might also lead people to rely on stereotyping. As he predicted,
those in a good mood were more likely to aim at targets wearing
turbans.
Of all the positive emotions, optimism about the future may have
the most ironic effects. Like happiness, positive fantasies about
the future can be profoundly de-motivating. says Gabriele
Oettingen from New York University.
Graduates who fantasise about success at work end up earning less,
for instance. Patients who daydream about getting better make a
slower recovery. In numerous studies, Oettingen has shown that the
more wishful your thinking, the less likely any of it is to come
true. dream it and you will get it but that she says. Optimistic
thoughts may also put the obese off losing weight and make smokers
less likely to plan to quit.
Defensive pessimism
Perhaps most worryingly, Oettingen believes the risks may operate
on a societal level, too. When she compared articles in the
newspaper USA Today with economic performance a week or a month
later, she found that the more optimistic the content, the more
performance declined. Next she looked at presidential inaugural
addresses the tendency to believe you and youDefensive pessimisms
Law, the cosmic inevitability that whatever can go wrong, will go
wrong. By anticipating the worst, you can be prepared when it
actually happens.
It works like this. Letre giving a talk at work. All you have to
do is think of the worst possible outcomes and hold them in your
mind. Next you need to think of some solutions.
Psychologist Julie Norem from Wellesley College, Massachusetts, is
an expert pessimist. m a little clumsy, especially when It cords
or other things to trip over. I typically have several backups for
my slides: I can give the talk without them if necessary, I email
a copy to the organizers, carry a copy on a flash drive, and bring
my own laptop to use she says. Only the paranoid survive, as they
say.
So the next time someone tells you to re improving your sense of
fairness, reducing unemployment and saving the world economy? You
even if it is a world-weary, cynical snort.