Study of 80 Women: Listening to offensive words has negative consequences over long periods of time while praise is soon forgotten
It hurts much more, and longer, to receive an insult than it does to receive a compliment. This is the conclusion reached by a group of Dutch researchers who found the effect of insults and compliments on brain activity and on the electrical conductance of the skin, a parameter, the latter, governed by the autonomic nervous system and which therefore represents an index of the emotional state. Unfortunately compliments are soon forgottenwhen compared to the permanence of the insults and their ability to give a real “jolt” to the brain.
The insults
The research was carried out by placing electrodes on the scalp of 80 women who offered to receive insults or compliments from a virtual person, while their electrical conductance of the skin was also recorded. It was thus possible to discover chand the brain response to insults is primarily activated in the frontal areas in the span of a very short fraction of a second, even when the insult is directed at other people. It is as if in the face of listening to the insults the brain entered a disturbed condition that remains elevated for long periods of time.
The compliments
On the contrary, compliments tend to slip away, as if the mind could easily become saturated with these kinds of expressions. “Our study did not clarify whether it is the specific emotional meaning of words or the reactivation of memories of past experiences that captures the brain’s attention so strongly,” he says. Marijn Struiksmaresearch linguist at Utrecht University who coordinated the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Communication
. “But whatever aspect of the insults that catches attention, it certainly does so in a very robust way.” The study was carried out involving only women, and future research may explore men’s response to insults and compliments, although, according to the authors, there is no reason to believe that the male brain should respond differently.
September 25, 2022 (change September 25, 2022 | 14:58)
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