Welcome to the Natto Better Show, I'm Paul Vogel Zeng and this is episode number 334.

As part of our Science Literacy Inside Science interview series, we're going to be talking with Dr Douglas Gentile,

research, psychologist about new research, offering a simple way to improve your mood in 12 minutes.

This research is from the Journal of Happiness Studies, which is devoted to scientific understanding of subjective well-being.

We all have a remedy, sunshine, exercise, chocolate, for lifting our spirits when we're in a bad mood.

Rather than focusing on ways to make ourselves feel better,

a team of researchers from Iowa State University led by our guest today, Dr. Douglas Gentile, suggests wishing others

well. Dr. Douglas Gentile says walking around and offering kindness to others in the world

reduces anxiety and increases

happiness and feelings of social connection.

It's a simple strategy that doesn't take a lot of time that you can incorporate into your daily activities.

Dr. Gentile tested the benefits of three different techniques intended to reduce anxiety and increase happiness or well-being.

Dr. Gentile and his research team did this by having college students walk around a building

for 12 minutes and practice one of several strategies. I asked Dr. Gentile about the strategy of turning

outwards, so to speak, rather than inwards, which makes all the difference in the world in reducing anxiety and increases happiness.

Yeah, because not every outward thing that we tested worked.

So in this case we were comparing three different simple strategies that might be used by someone just kind of walking around through their daily life or driving in their car to try to see, you know, does it have any effect on not only mood but also a feeling of social connection? And one of those was kind of a classic social psychology idea that the theory says that

one of the ways we improve our mood, maintain our self-esteem is through

a process called downward social comparison.

And what that is is where we notice that we're better off than other people.

So you might be having a terrible day but then you see a beggar on the street and you say, well,

at least, you know, I'm not in that situation and so you feel better about yourself.

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