Was: Family Banned Is: Scientist: Smiling can hurt your health

[Guest guest]

said:

"I'm not sure what to make of this study."

Tom says:

The article in question can be found here:

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/05/16/scientist_smiling_can_hurt_your_health/2772/

The article says:

"FRANKFURT, Germany, May 16 (UPI) -- A German scientist has proved that people forced to smile and take on-the-job insults suffer more and longer-lasting stress that may harm their health."

Tom says:

From what I have been able to gather over the years, it is true that any time real feelings are squashed and fake feelings put in their place, people suffer stress. Conversely, it helps OTHER people to be less stressed when one smiles more at them...supposedly.

I personally hate smiling when I do not feel like it, and I do not trust people who smile too much. I am going to post this article in the FF to see what the parents there make of it. I am sure some will quit over it. Whenever I post anything that says "What's socially acceptable is shortening your life" they hate it.

The article says:

"Dieter Zapf of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in furt studied 4,000 volunteers working in a fake call center. Half were allowed to respond in kind to abuse on the other end of the line while the other half had to suck it up, The Telegraph reports.

"He found that those able to answer back had a brief increase in heart rate. Those who could not had stress symptoms that lasted much longer."

Tom says:

What I find satisfying about responding in kind is that it teaches the person on the other end of the line an immediate lesson.

What I find dissatisfying about responding in kind is that certain rude and/or ignorant people do not know that they are being rude or ignorant and so they automatically assume I am the one who is being rude and ignorant.

One example was that I had to explain to a 16 year old Orthodox Jew what the word "swine" was because he had never heard the term before. When I explained that it was another world for pork or pig, he told me I was making fun of him and his faith. He said that being a Jew, he knew any and all terms associated with pigs so that he would never eat it and go against his faith. From my point of view, I did not see why it was that I, a Christian, had to be forced to lecture an orthodox Jew on what swine was before I could finish one sentence. When I stated this opinion, he accused me of being rude and left the conversation.

The article says:

"Every time a person is forced to repress his true feelings there are negative consequences," Zapf said. "We are all able to rein in our emotions but it becomes difficult to do this over a protracted period."

"In an interview with the German healthcare magazine Apotheken Umschau, Zapf suggested that people who must keep smiling on the job should get regular breaks to let it out."

Tom says:

I agree with this.

I would have to see the real study results before I could say whether or not they were valid, but my OPINION is that it carries some weight.

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