Think Broadly. You’ll Be Happier.

I like to carry my own reading with me. At doctor’s offices and various other places where you’re left waiting for unknown periods of time, I’d rather consciously dive into something I’ve been meaning to read anyway than waste time catching up on the latest American Idol and Dancing with the Stars drama. So when I sat down to wait for my car’s oil to be changed, I pulled out the latest issue of Psychology Today and settled in.

I’d originally purchased the issue because of the two big features: a piece on love and expectations and a piece on sexual fantasies. Things that are pretty up my alley, for personal and professional reasons. And yet, I found myself, before even getting to the big two, completely hung up on a tiny write-up not that far from the editor’s note. A tiny write-up telling me that thinking broadly will make me a happier person.

There’s (apparently) substantial evidence that being happy leads to “broad associative activation of related concepts” — a.k.a. being in a good mood helps you think, learn, problem solve and generate new ideas more clearly and effectively.

A new paper from Harvard cognitive neuroscientist Moshe Bar, however, proposes the reverse is also true: “whereby broad activation of associations results in improved mood” — that the mere act of associating can make you happier. You don’t have to be in a great mood to begin with.

When we think about learning and about education, society so often regards it as ceasing after college, or after our last degree. But what I think gets so easily lost in the day-to-day routines of going to work is our natural ability to think: to think beyond the scope of the immediate, to connect concepts, to make predictions, to see how uncensored ideas and fantasies might actually connect up to reality — you know, just for the hell of it.

Now we know that it’s GOOD FOR US.

Image courtesy of Pink Sherbet Photography via Creative Commons