GUEST POST: Can Math Make You Feel Better?
By Brian Bean
Brian Bean is an award-winning teacher who has been an educator for over 15 years at the secondary and collegiate levels. After being victimized by a Ponzi scheme, he spent ten years developing the real-world teaching model to help students better develop and internalize personal financial skills. Mimic Personal Finance is based on this innovative model, and students, parents, and administrators love it. Brian has presented his teaching model at conferences and workshops across the country and been featured on the NGPF Tim Talk’s podcast, the CoolCat Teacher podcast, the Ed Tech Update website, and many other forums.
As a former high school math and science teacher, one question drove me nuts: when will we ever use this again? According to researchers Kron et al. (1), it turns out the stuff you learned in school just might be the kind of cognitive exercises that are the keys to influencing your feelings and emotions.
We've all had those moments where we just felt down, or something really made us sad, and we couldn't seem to shake it. Enter the Mere-Resource Hypothesis. The idea is that emotions require mental resources to experience them (a.k.a. feelings) and that these same resources are used for cognitive tasks such as thinking and problem-solving. Consequently, if you try to do them simultaneously, the resources used for cognitive tasks will not be available for feeling emotions. The result: thinking while experiencing feelings can actually lessen the intensity of those feelings.
While considering the validity of the mere-resource hypothesis, two questions must be addressed above all. Does it, in fact, require mental resources to experience feelings? Will taxing a person's cognitive load have an effect on the intensity of their feelings? These questions are precisely what the researchers set out to answer.
Image from Pixabay
The methods used by the researchers were reasonably straightforward. Over a series of nine experiments, they introduced participants to affect stimuli (pictures and videos chosen to elicit emotions that were either negative, neutral, or positive). Each set of experiments randomly put participants into one of two groups. The first experienced cognitive tasks referred to as a "load condition." The other groups acted as a "control condition" and experienced no cognitive load tasks.
Participants recorded how they felt while being exposed to the affect images, and researchers analyzed any changes that occurred. While exposed to the stimuli, load group participants were asked to do various mental tasks such as counting backward by fives or even simply focusing on their feelings. After each trial, participants completed recognition tests to measure their recall of the images.
This research approach is a classic example of an experimental study as participants engaged in a series of tests to determine the role of mental resources in the ability to experience feelings subjectively. The researchers sought to determine if there is a causal relationship where manipulating a cognitive load can measurably reduce the intensity of feelings. Researchers paid undergraduate students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem approximately four dollars to act as study participants. In total, they used over 300 participants in the study, with slightly over 60% being female.
So what did the researchers find? Can engaging in a mental exercise while experiencing negative feelings actually lessen their intensity? Five major findings resulted from the study answers these questions and more:
Processing Effect. Although a cognitive load reduces feeling intensity, it doesn't diminish our ability to process information. In fact, load participants experienced virtually no effect on their abilities to recall the stimulus images.
Varying Instructions. The instructions themselves were not influencing the intensity of feelings. Whether participants were exposed to various levels of cognitive tasks with the same instructions or were literally told to expect the opposite effect, the ultimate results of the tests were the same.
Developing or Mature Feelings. Now that it has been determined that cognitive tasks can impact feeling intensity, does it matter if we are in the midst of feelings already established, or will it only work on feelings as they develop? This study suggests cognitive load even impacts the intensity of feelings we are already experiencing.
Positive and Negative Feelings. Experiments showed that cognitive tasks use resources that otherwise would be used to experience positive feelings as well as negative ones. Maybe this explains why so many teenagers don't like math class after all!
Image from Pixabay
Distraction vs. Drain. Wouldn't working on a mental exercise simply distract you from your feelings? As you would expect, the researchers had the same thought and tested it thoroughly, and were able to show that the possibility of lessening feelings as a result of distraction is unlikely. In one experiment, they instructed participants to focus on their feelings as the mental task, and the outcomes still confirmed their hypothesis. Even thinking about your feelings as you experience them drains resources and results in less intensity!
Based on the researchers' findings, there appears to be a clear-cut relationship between the mental resources used in cognitive tasks and those used in feelings. As a result, it seems likely that a person could use this information to manipulate their own feelings in positive and productive ways. So, odd as it may sound, the next time you find yourself feeling down, maybe try doing some basic math or ponder about physics for a while. According to this research, it will actually lift your spirits.
References:
(1) Kron, A., Schul, Y., Cohen, A., & Hassin, R. R. (2010). Feelings don't come easy: Studies on the effortful nature of feelings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139(3), 520.
