Why is it good to do the exercise?

Do you have a complicated problem, a boring task or something that feels difficult and challenging in front of you? Sometimes it can help to start the problem solving or the challenge with watching a fun video clip! It seems that positive emotions can give us a broadened capacity for both general understanding and for taking on different perspectives. A study conducted by Barbara L. Fredrickson and Christine Branigan allowed 104 university students to be divided into different groups before watching short video clips. The different clips evoked different emotions – including pleasure, anger, joy and anxiety. The students then had to solve the same attention-demanding task where they were asked to discover connections between different characters. It turned out that the groups that had seen a video clip that aroused positive emotions solved the task better than the other groups. They had a broadened mindset. If you want to broaden your understanding, perspective, or access to new ideas – it pays to do something that gets you in a really good mood before!