EMOTIONS ARE TRENDING NOWADAYS.

EMOTIONS ARE TRENDING NOWADAYS. The appeal of social media as an opportunity to share everything should come as no surprise considering a series of 1990s European studies led by Bernard Rime with the University of Louvain, which reported people share nearly 90 percent of all emotional experiences. The publication of this phenomenon was recently name-checked by social media expert rbb Public Relations to attempt to validate the proliferation of Facebook, Twitter and other online networking options.

 

A particular value of social sharing appears to be that it is an efficient means to ensure emotional events are not forgotten, according to the researchers who explained, “By talking about an emotional event, people gradually construct a narrative and a collective memory.”

 

Whether good or bad, happy or sad, the attention to emotions is expanding.

 

IN TIME: A recent Time magazine article “The Pursuit of Happiness” (10-22-12) emotes, “The Gross National Happiness Index represents the most comprehensive effort yet to devise an alternative to GDP.” The report details how the tiny Buddhist kingdom of “Bhutan has begun to use GNH as a broader and more nuanced measure of national progress than gross domestic product.” Other governments around the world also are exploring the benefits of identifying, “operationalizing” and measuring the components of happiness, according to Time. Physical and mental health, governance, ecology and living standards are among the commonly referenced components of gross national happiness.

 

IN TEXT: Also, fresh off the presses, the new text Independent for Life features a sidebar on Stanford University professor Laura Carstensen’s research study, “The Influence of a Sense of Time on Human Development.” The amount of time remaining in an individual’s life motivates goals and desires, according to the socioeconomic selectivity theory referenced in the article. About the aging process, Carstensen notes, “When time horizons are expansive, people lean toward gathering new experiences ... When times horizons are short, people choose to spend time on pursuits that matter most to them, which tends to make them happy.”

 

Incidentally, the 1990s research on sharing showed that “The rate of social sharing increased with age,” noting further, “These findings are not easily reconciled with traditional stereotypes stressing the poverty of affective life in the elderly.”

 

IN TEST: Eskaton is testing the agelessness of happiness. Separate groups of memory care residents and first-graders will be sharing their creative, artistic interpretations of happiness through a series of guided workshops. Tilted In the Mind of the Beholder™, the resulting artwork will become an intergenerational exhibition created to demonstrate that basic human desires -- such as happiness, among others -- transcend age and life experiences.