Though the winter solstice and Blue Monday have passed, the winter’s midpoint has not. These days you may wake up when it is still dark, or darkness has set in again by the time you leave school or work. Even so, the days are rapidly lengthening. How does this affect your mood?
Negative attentional biases have been linked to depression. The “find the smiling face task” has been shown to reduce these dysfunctional attentional biases. To further validate the task, Thole Hoppen and two fellow students investigated whether the “find the smiling face task” changes attentional biases when people are in sad mood.
You may know an irritable person. But if he becomes friendlier towards you, then you will become friendlier towards him, right? In other words, positive changes in how people interact with others are ultimately good for them, too. This idea underlies a new theory on how antidepressants work.