How certain words can lift the mood

Words have great power, not only to change our minds, but also to change our mood. This can occur directly, by reading mooddefining words such as “happy” or “terrorised”, or indirectly, by noting what a word suggests – for example, “puppy” or “tarantula”.

Cognitive behaviour therapists encourage clients to change the way they describe what’s happening around them, substituting negative words with positive to encourage a more positive mood.

However, many find it difficult to accept that it’s “safe” to stop worrying. They’re often convinced they need to remain constantly fearful, because that way they’ll notice threats to their wellbeing more quickly.

Fortunately, a study by Sara Sereno and colleagues at Glasgow University can now counter this reluctance.

They recruited 144 students and assigned them randomly to one of three groups: controls, negative or positive mood. They then induced the relevant mood by asking them to listen to music that either produced negative feelings (for example, film scores from

Hannibal and War of the Worlds) or a positive state of

mind (Pride and Prejudice and Chocolat). The control group heard no music.

Everyone was then shown a list of words. Half were real words that had been carefully chosen for length, emotional colour, emotional power and frequency. There were equal numbers of words in each of three categories: positive (“success”, “holiday”); negative (“pain”, “death”); and neutral (“chin”, “lamp”). The remaining items were non-words (“bruddle”, “wid” and “slamperic”). Participants were asked to press a key as quickly as possible to register whether they thought each item was a word or a non-word.

The results surprised everyone. Previous research had established mood congruency – that is, we notice and remember most readily the words and events that match our current mood state. Therefore, the researchers expected negative words to be processed faster by participants in a negative mood and positive words to be recognised more quickly by those in a positive state of mind.

What they found instead was those feeling negative behaved like the controls, taking longer to recognise negative and neutral words compared to positive ones. Participants in a positive mood, on the other hand, recognised negative and positive words equally quickly. Furthermore, those feeling negative were no quicker to recognise negative words than those feeling positive.

The researchers suggest this is because when we’re in a positive mood, we don’t slow down to process potential threat when we’re presented with an emotional word. Little, it seems, is gained by searching for threats or for maintaining a negative state of mind. You’ll be just as quick to recognise verbal negativity if you’re feeling positive – and you’ll feel a great deal more satisfied with your life.