fly through stress...

Many thousands of travellers discovered what it feels like this week to be trapped somewhere that you don’t want to be, through no fault of your own. 

The range of responses to the travel chaos caused by the grounding of Qantas would have been fairly spectacular.  I've recently experienced a long-haul flight with a family and can report that it's challenging enough with the plane in the air uneventfully.

No doubt many people flocked to airport bookshops to find something to deaden the pain, and psychologist Richard Wiseman’s ’59 Seconds’ would have been a great choice.  Wiseman has exposed a number of self-help myths and provides simple techniques on various topics that are not only scientifically peer-reviewed but able to be accomplished in under a minute.

Here are two of Wiseman’s topics - selected especially for Qantas passengers today, with a great message for us all:

Does ‘venting’ anger work?

Some psychologists have argued that punching a pillow or venting anger in a similarly ‘safe’ way reduces stress.  This idea has been countered by various studies, including one in which 600 students were asked to write an essay on an emotionally-charged topic, which was ‘evaluated’ (secretly) by the experimenters, who gave the students bad marks and negative feedback, causing considerable anger.

Half the students were given a punching bag and a photo of the person who allegedly marked their essays, and given time to ‘get it out of their system’.  The other group was told to sit in a quiet room for two minutes.

Both groups were then invited to complete a questionnaire on mood, and participate in some games.  The ‘winner’ in each game was to administer a loud blast of noise into the face of the loser, and could choose how loud and for how long the noise blared. 

Interestingly, those who had ‘vented their frustrations’ on the punching bag, not only reported feeling more aggressive in their survey, but administered louder and longer blasts into their opponents’ faces than those who sat in a quiet room. 

Experiments like this and numerous others have found that venting anger does not extinguish the flame – on the contrary, it often pours fuel onto the fire...

So, how do you deal with stress in a more positive way?

Find happiness with a pencil

Our body language can influence our emotions as well as reflect them.  In one study, participants were asked to add up a list of numbers.  One group was asked to furrow their brows during the task and the other to adopt a slight grin. Afterwards, the frowning group were convinced that they’d expended much more effort on the task than the smiling group.

In a second study, participants were asked to rate how appealing they found products that were moving across a computer screen.  Some items moved vertically (forcing participants to nod their heads while watching) and others moved horizontally, creating a side-to-side head movement.  Participants preferred those items moving vertically, accompanied by their unconscious ‘yes’ head movement.

In the third study, participants were asked to rate how funny they found some Far Side cartoons and how happy they felt in general.  One group was asked to look at the cartoons while holding a pencil between their teeth, ensuring that their lips did not touch it (forcing their mouth into a smile).  The other group was told to hold the pencil with their lips only, causing them to frown.  Those in the ‘smiling’ group reported feeling happier and found the cartoons much funnier than those in the ‘frowning’ group.

And finally...

According to Wiseman, those who use humour spontaneously to combat stress have been found to have healthier immune systems, are 40% less likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes, experience less pain at the dentist and live 4.5 years longer than average.

The key is not to spend that 4.5 years in an airport, waiting to board your flight home...