Study Reveals Negative and Positive Moods can Boost Performance
November 10th, 2009
A GoodTherapy.org News Headline
Participation in competitive athletics is typically seen as an undertaking that requires a great deal of confidence and positive perspective in order to be carried out successfully. But a positive mood may not, in fact, be essential. New research from University College London has suggested that when in both good and bad moods, people may experience equally powerful performance boosts. Exposed to emotion-arousing or neutral images, participants were then asked to squeeze a hand grip to imitate the action of heavy weight-lifting. Grip strength improved for both positive and negative stimuli as opposed to the neutral pictures. The research hints at an ability of stress or other unpleasant feelings to help fuel physical prowess.
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4 comments so far
I have to agree with this…because I have heard of many incidents wherein a person has been able to overcome physical odds due to being subjected to a problematic or negative situation.
I second this opinion because there are instances wherein discouragement pushes a person hard to achieve things that he would not have probably, if not for the negative feedback from others.
Negativity and discouragement might not be such a bad thing after all… maybe just any kind of persuasion is good enough to push a person towards achieving his target…
I have been in this kind of a situation before… there was this group of people at my workplace who had a little something against me and even opposed it when the boss appointed me the head of a particular project… all their protestation and cursing actually drove me to strive harder towards making the project a success and successful it was, and very big at it! The same people talk of my great abilities and are very good to me today !