50 Psychology Classics (59 page)

Have a cigarette.

Eat a chocolate bar or cake.

Drink coffee.

Watch television.

Exercise, the data shows, is the best mood regulator. A brisk walk of 5–15 minutes when we are feeling tired paradoxically restores our spirits and can energize us for up to two hours.

Another excellent, healthy mood regulator is social interaction. Phoning or talking to a friend can lower stress significantly. Another is listening to music, which ranks high on surveys for reducing tension and increasing energy.

The effects of what we eat on our mood are difficult to measure scientifically. However, Thayer published a study demonstrating the paradoxical effects of eating sugary snacks: They improve mood in the short term, but also give us a “letdown” an hour or two later, both in terms of a reduction in energy and a rise in tension.

Mood is connected to overeating and dieting, and Thayer suggests that people who consume a lot of sugar get into further bad eating patterns, because the drops in energy they create lead to the need for more snacks.

Healthy people generally have high energy levels. Ill people have low energy. Research shows that on days when people rate themselves as in a generally negative mood, their immune system response is not as effective as on days when they are in a positive frame of mind.

Mood is significantly affected by how much sleep we have had, to the extent that sleep deprivation over several nights can lead to depression.

Other mood affecters include:

Nicotine—generates calm-energy on a temporary basis, which is perhaps why it is so addictive. Makes us enthused but also relaxed—briefly.

Alcohol—a depressant, but at first provides more energy (parties show this dynamic).

Caffeine—produces tense-energy, but people seem to desire this. Thayer hypothesizes that while calm-energy is the most desirable state, the tense-energy effect that coffee or cola produces is a good alternative.

Weather—SAD (seasonal affective disorder) or winter depression, which can be alleviated by bright light or melatonin.

Thayer did an experiment with people who all had a significant personal problem. He asked them to rate how they saw the problem at five different times in the day. Intriguingly, after a 10-day rating period it emerged that the same problem was perceived as less serious in the morning than in the afternoon. And whenever a person was in a state of tense-tiredness, the problem loomed larger.

Therefore, if at all possible, it is best not to consider your problems in times of tense-tiredness, as they will seem worse than they actually are. At the same time, our thoughts in a period of high energy may make us more optimistic than the reality calls for. Current energy levels do not simply affect our mood, but also what we feel we will be capable of in the future—so we need to be aware of how our energy levels influence our ability to make judgments.

Thayer's remarkable point is that moods are in fact “more important than daily activities, money, status, and even personal relationships,” because we experience all of these through the filter of whatever mood we are in. If we are in a dark mood, none of our achievements or our wealth matter to us; in a positive mood, even the worst circumstances seem manageable.

The Origin of Everyday Moods
provides practical pointers on how to be more self-aware about your moods and vulnerable points of tense-tiredness, and with that knowledge it can help you to choose healthier ways of mood regulation. You may learn that it is best not to make major life decisions at 3 in the morning, a time when notoriously dark thoughts are to be had, or to hold off that confrontation with a co-worker at 4 in the afternoon, when your energy level has dropped and feelings of tension have risen.

More than the actual tips on the danger times for tense-tiredness, the value of Thayer's book is in showing us just how much mood is like an invisible bubble that surrounds us. While on the surface moods are of no great import, Thayer shows how they are in fact basic to our whole being. Other psychological theories may help us to consider our lives as a whole, but the
study of mood is arguably more useful, since it concerns how we are feeling on an hour-by-hour basis—and life, after all, is lived in the present.

Robert Thayer has been a professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach, since 1973. He received a BA at the University of Redlands, and his PhD from the University of Rochester
.

In addition to many frequently cited academic articles, he is the author of
The Biopsychology of Mood and Arousal
(1989) and
Calm Energy: How People Regulate Mood with Food and Exercise
(2001)
.

1
Gordon Allport
The Nature of Prejudice
(1954)

Standard work on the roots of discrimination that inspired Martin Luther King and Malcom X.

2
Virginia Axline
Dibs in Search of Self
(1964)

Bestselling classic of child therapy about a withdrawn boy's slow journey toward normal relations with the world.

3
Albert Bandura
Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control
(1997)

How expectations of what we can achieve influence what we actually do achieve, by a leading contemporary psychologist.

4
Aaron T. Beck
Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders
(1979)

Landmark work on how erroneous thinking can lead to depression, from the founder of cognitive therapy.

5
Ernest Becker
The Denial of Death
(1973)

Pulitzer Prize-winning discussion of the lengths that people go to to deny their own mortality. Very Freudian but still a superb read.

6
Bruno Bettelheim
The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
(1976)

Popular and insightful work into the psychology of fairy tales.

7
Alfred Binet & Theodore Simon
The Development of Intelligence in Children
(1916)