Saturday, March 12, 2016
Does Color of Ink Affect Anger or Negative Response?
Last week I got an undesired grade on a Chemistry test. When it triggered me to be angry, I immediately thought of this idea (as in the concept established in the TED talk saying that anger only lasts 90 seconds) and decided to test it out. I put a stopwatch on and went on to doing my homework to distract myself from the stimulus that started this anger. Within 2 minutes, I found myself to be completely calmed down and had even forgot why I was mad momentarily. Just like it said in the TED talk video my anger didn't last all that long by itself. It wasn’t until I looked down at terrible score in red lettering on the test again was it that I triggered the anger reaction again. Once again the video's point was proven that I was the one who had to actively retrigger my anger response to the stimulus. I understand this concept, but as I was thinking about this situation, I realized another thought that I had learned about before. The pen that recorded the score on the test had red ink. Before I even saw the numbers in the score, the negative response was triggered within me. Do you think it was just me predicting that I got a bad grade because I felt bad about the test after taking it or could it be the color of the ink? Another thought popped into my head at this time. The last two tests before this one had not been as bad as this one, but I had not gotten the grade I wanted. Do you think it could also be me just associating bad test scores with this class, the color of the ink, or my gut instinct as in the previous question? Thoughts? If anyone finds any articles or would like to respond, please feel free to do so.
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I've had similar experiences with that. One time, I found that I had a bad grade on SIS, and whenever I saw it, I became angry. However, as soon as I left the page and began to think about something else, I generally stopped being unhappy. While it helped me to temporarily avoid SIS, I eventually became desensitized to it, and it no longer triggered a negative response when I saw it.
ReplyDeleteI think it is possible that you associated unsatisfactory grades with the red ink, and thus a negative emotional response was triggered. Red ink alone does not have any negative connotations, but is made to be a negative symbol when it is associated with something, in this case it may be test scores.
Wow that is very interesting experience. I had a similar one with the getting over things in 90 seconds. My mom was angry at my dad and I was in the car with her and I told her about the concept that we will calm down as long as we don't remind ourselves why we are angry, with in a few minutes she had forgotten about it. I am pretty proud of myself, I prevented a fight between my parents. She was not angry about it at all after that.
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