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Teens love to be miserable: Study |
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December 14th, 2009
In trying to better understand why teens and youth experience more emotional outbreaks than their older counterparts, researchers set out to understand how individuals directly influence their own emotions.
Researchers found that youth, primarily under the age of 18, are likely to try and maintain or induce a bad mood, on average, about 25% of the time.
By contrast, individuals over the age of 18 are more likely to seek and reinforce pleasure and happiness, while those over 60 show the highest rate of reinforced pleasure and happiness.
Michaela Riediger of the Max Planck Institute said, “our study suggests that some of the age-related differences in everyday emotional well-being may be brought about by differences in how individuals wish to influencer their feelings... Part of the negative emotionality that’s characteristic for adolescence, and part of the positive emotionality that’s characteristic for older adulthood, appears to be intentionally sought and maintained by the individual.”
The study saw 378 participants aged 14 to 86 carry mobile phones for a period of three weeks. Over that time, they were randomly signalled to answer questions about their mood in an average of 54 different situations around their daily routines.
They indicated their current emotional state, the activity in which they were engaged at the time, who was with them, and whether they wished to dampen, enhance, maintain or not influence each of the following six feelings: joyful, content, interested, angry, nervous or downhearted.
In about a quarter of these situations, young adults and teens expressed a desire to either maintain or enhance negative emotions, or suppress positive ones. People over 60, by contrast, reported such motivations only one tenth of the time.
There are a number of possible explanations, including the idea that teens are more interested in negative emotions for the same reason people like horror films. Alternatively, it could be because it is an important part of the teenager’s socio-emotional development and independence-building.
This is a helpful discovery for parents to keep in mind. A student who seems to be constantly moody and miserable could be reinforcing it in themselves and may not be a direct product of their surrounding environment.
Students who reinforce negative emotions could be causing needless stress and illness to t hemselves, so parents might want to consider ways to emphasize the positive experiences a youth experiences over their negative ones. Alternatively, if you have done everything you can to emphasize the positive things they experience, and they still continue to wallow in negative feelings, it could just mean they are doing it entirely to themselves and will likely grow out of it.
For more information about this study, visit http://www.canada.com/life/parenting/Teens+love+miserable+Study/2247664/story.html.
In trying to better understand why teens and youth experience more emotional outbreaks than their older counterparts, researchers set out to understand how individuals directly influence their own emotions.
Researchers found that youth, primarily under the age of 18, are likely to try and maintain or induce a bad mood, on average, about 25% of the time.
By contrast, individuals over the age of 18 are more likely to seek and reinforce pleasure and happiness, while those over 60 show the highest rate of reinforced pleasure and happiness.
Michaela Riediger of the Max Planck Institute said, “our study suggests that some of the age-related differences in everyday emotional well-being may be brought about by differences in how individuals wish to influencer their feelings... Part of the negative emotionality that’s characteristic for adolescence, and part of the positive emotionality that’s characteristic for older adulthood, appears to be intentionally sought and maintained by the individual.”
The study saw 378 participants aged 14 to 86 carry mobile phones for a period of three weeks. Over that time, they were randomly signalled to answer questions about their mood in an average of 54 different situations around their daily routines.
They indicated their current emotional state, the activity in which they were engaged at the time, who was with them, and whether they wished to dampen, enhance, maintain or not influence each of the following six feelings: joyful, content, interested, angry, nervous or downhearted.
In about a quarter of these situations, young adults and teens expressed a desire to either maintain or enhance negative emotions, or suppress positive ones. People over 60, by contrast, reported such motivations only one tenth of the time.
There are a number of possible explanations, including the idea that teens are more interested in negative emotions for the same reason people like horror films. Alternatively, it could be because it is an important part of the teenager’s socio-emotional development and independence-building.
This is a helpful discovery for parents to keep in mind. A student who seems to be constantly moody and miserable could be reinforcing it in themselves and may not be a direct product of their surrounding environment.
Students who reinforce negative emotions could be causing needless stress and illness to t hemselves, so parents might want to consider ways to emphasize the positive experiences a youth experiences over their negative ones. Alternatively, if you have done everything you can to emphasize the positive things they experience, and they still continue to wallow in negative feelings, it could just mean they are doing it entirely to themselves and will likely grow out of it.
For more information about this study, visit http://www.canada.com/life/parenting/Teens+love+miserable+Study/2247664/story.html.
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