Why shopping when you’re sad is dangerous

If you’re feeling blue, you might want to think twice before you head out for a little shopping.

That’s because research shows sad people are willing to pay significantly more money for everyday items such as a water bottle.

Cynthia Cryder, a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, recently explored the issue of emotion and spending in a simple experiment. She got some young people to come into the psychology lab, then showed film clips.

Manipulating Emotions
For one group, she played a teary scene, “one of the classic methods of inducing sadness,” says Cryder. She chose a clip from the 1979 movie The Champ, in which a boy weeps inconsolably over his dead father’s body.

Afterward, participants were asked to write an essay about what it would be like “if they had lost a mentor in a similar way,” Cryder says.

Another group saw a clip from a more emotionally neutral movie: a National Geographic documentary about the Great Barrier Reef. It features a beach, underwater scenes and shots of the reef and fish. The essay assignment for these viewers was to write about their daily routine.

Study participants were paid $10 for their time. Cryder told them they could use part of the money to buy a really nice water bottle. She asked how much they’d be willing to spend.

Sadness Induces Spending
It turns out, Cryder says, “the people in our study who are induced to feel sad are willing to pay more for the same item than are people who feel neutral.”

It wasn’t just a little more. Those who watched the documentary scenes paid an average of 56 cents. Those who watched the tearjerker paid an average of $2.11.

When Cryder and her study co-authors looked closely at the people who watched the sad scene, they realized something. Their essays were more self-focused, containing more words such as “I,” “me” and “myself.”

Self-focus is “a necessary condition for the influence of sadness to carry over to our decisions,” Cryder says.

The findings will appear in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science.

The study builds on work by Jennifer Lerner of Harvard University, who has been studying how emotions influence economic transactions. People deny that watching a sad movie affects their spending decisions, Lerner has found, suggesting no conscious awareness.

Symptom or Cure?
Other experts say the study raises some fascinating new questions. Nicholas Epley, a researcher at the University of Chicago who has looked at the psychology of spending tax rebates, says the experiment doesn’t show whether this buying behavior is an effective mood enhancer for sadness.

“We don’t know if people who bought the water bottle actually were happier then,” Epley says. “Did that wipe out the initial mood manipulation?”

It’s not yet clear what this study means for consumers, Epley says. “Do you not get in your car and go to the mall when you’re sad? Or do you especially go to the mall when you’re sad?”

by Nell Greenfieldboyce

Children’s book on why mommy got a boob job

Ever wondered how will you react to your child’s incessant queries about your latest boob job or tummy tuck? Well, a leading US plastic surgeon has come to the rescue of all the mums, by releasing a new book, which aims to explain kids why their mom is going under the knife.

Dr. Michael Salzhauer is set to release his controversial book My Beautiful Mommy, the first book to describe cosmetic surgery to children, this Mother’s Day.

Dr. Salzhauer revealed that he had the idea after seeing women bring their children with them to consultations.

“Parents tend to go into this denial thing. They just try to ignore the kids’ questions completely. But kids fill in the blanks in their imagination. With the tummy tucks, mums can’t lift anything. They’re in bed. The kids have questions,” The Sun quoted him, as saying.

The book, aimed at kids under seven, features a superhero surgeon called Dr. Michael and a girl whose mother gets a tummy tuck, nose job and breast implants.

Before she goes for the chop, the mum tells her daughter: “As I got older, my body stretched and I couldn’t fit into my clothes anymore. Dr Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better.”

Her nose surgery, she explains, will make her look “not just different, my dear — prettier!”

After the operation, mum emerges “even more beautiful” than before.

Reported by ANI

How to tell allergies from a sinus infection

Sinus infections sometimes happen on top of allergic sinusitis. When inflammation swells the nasal passages and fills them up with extra mucus, the sinus cavities get blocked and can’t drain effectively.

Bacteria and viruses love this kind of closed-off space. However, even when sinusitis is due to infection, the cause is often a virus, not bacteria, so antibiotics still may not help.

It can be very hard to figure out if sinusitis is due to allergy or an infection, but the treatments are different, so it’s important to try. Here are some of the clues:

Time of year. If sinusitis happens around the same time or times every year, allergy is more likely.

Environmental differences. If the symptoms are due to allergy, they may get better or worse as you move between different environments: indoors vs. outdoors; home vs. work; weekday vs. weekend; going away on vacation.

Fever. A normal temperature or low grade fever (less than 100.5F) is more likely to be allergy. Higher fevers are more consistent with viral or bacterial infection. However, chronic infections don’t always cause fever, and the inflammation from allergies can cause fever.

Mucus color. Clear or light colored mucus is more likely allergy and darker is more likely infection. However, color alone isn’t enough information to make a diagnosis. It’s also pretty common to have some streaks of blood in the mucus, due to the inflammation and frequent nose-blowing, regardless of the cause.

Antibiotic failure. If one or more courses of antibiotics doesn’t cure the problem, then allergy is much more likely.

Coexisting conditions. People with asthma and/or eczema (a dry, scaly, itchy rash) are prone to developing allergies, too.

Infections often last from one to three weeks, while an allergic reaction will continue as long as the trigger is present. If over-the-counter remedies don’t help you enough with your symptoms, or if you’d like increase the intensity of your treatment, then it’s time to see your doctor for additional advice.

America’s favorite books

When it comes to literary pursuits in the United States most people agree on at least one thing — the most popular book is the Bible, according to a new survey.

It came in first in a Harris Poll of nearly 2,513 adults but the second choice in the survey was not as clear cut.

“While the Bible is number one among each of the different demographic groups, there is a large difference in the number two favorite book,” Harris said in a statement announcing the results.

Men chose J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and women selected Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind” as their second-favorite book, according to the online poll.

But the second choice for 18- to 31-year-olds was J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, while 32- to 43-year-olds named Stephen King’s “The Stand” and Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons.”

Picks for second-favorite book also varied according to region. “Gone With the Wind” was number two in the southern and midwestern United States while easterners chose “The Lord of the Rings” and westerners opted for “The Stand.”

Whites and Hispanics picked “Gone With the Wind” as their second-favorite book after the Bible, while African-Americans preferred “Angels and Demons.”

“Finally, they may not agree on candidates, but one thing that brings together partisans is their favorite book. For Republicans, Democrats and Independents, the top two books are the same — the Bible followed by “Gone With the Wind.”

Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, “Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown, “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand and “Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger rounded out the top 10 favorites.

(Reporting by Julie Mollins; editing by Patricia Reaney)

Global warming starts here

Just where is all that global warming pollution coming from?

The Northeast pumps out an awful lot of carbon dioxide, but the Southeast, Midwest and Southern California are also responsible for voluminous pollution that billows out each day.

The precise sources of carbon dioxide have now been mapped, with 100 times more detail than was previously available, by Vulcan project researchers at Purdue University.

The high-resolution, interactive maps combine emissions data from power plants, factories and vehicles. The maps and movies compare the relative contribution of pollution from various parts of the country on an hourly basis. One of the most striking things one sees when watching the animations is the day-night “breathing” cycle of our pollution, with a long exhale of pollution all day, followed by a sharp decline each night. Seasonal spikes – such as those when hot days prompt millions of Americans to turn up their air conditioners – are also evident.

The maps also highlight an important political reality: While states in the Northeast, upper Midwest and West have agreed to state-level compacts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the nation’s pollution won’t be significantly cut until the South joins in. Depending on the estimate, the U.S. is the world’s biggest, or second-biggest (next to China) producer of greenhouse gas emissions; it produces 25% of the world’s carbon dioxide pollution, the key ingredient in atmospheric change fueling global warming.

“Before now the only thing policy-makers could do was take a big blunt tool and bang the U.S. economy with it,” said Kevin Gurney, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric science at Purdue University and leader of the project. “Now we have more quantifiable information about what is happening in neighborhoods, on roads and in industrial areas, and track the CO2 by the hour. This offers policy-makers something akin to a scalpel instead.”

By Dan Shapley