59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot Read Online Free PDF Page A

cash, remember that carrying out five nonfinancial acts of kindness on a single day also provides a significant boost to happiness.
    THE ROOTS OF MATERIALISM
What makes people materialistic? Is a love of possessions the result of personality, childhood experiences, or events later in life? According to research by psychologists Lan Nguyen Chaplin and Deborah Roedder John, materialism takes root in early childhood, and is driven mainly by low self-esteem. 26
In a two-part study, the researchers first arranged for a group of children between the ages of eight and eighteen to complete a standard self-esteem questionnaire (rating statements such as “I am happy with the way I look”). Next, they presented the children with display boards containing lots of images relating to five general topics: hobbies (such as “camping,” “skateboarding”), sports (“soccer,” “tennis”), material things (“new shoes,” “my own computer”), people (“friends,” “teacher”), and achievements (“getting good grades,” “learning to play an instrument”). The children were asked to look at the boards and use any of the images to create a collage around the theme “What makes me happy.” This fun task allowed the researchers to calculate each child’s level of materialism by counting the percentage of images that each child took from the “material things” display board. The results revealed a strong link between self-esteem and materialism, with children who were low in self-esteem being far more materialistic than their friends.
But could the cause and effect be the other way around? Could materialism cause low self-esteem? To test this possibility, the researchers had a group of children write nice things about one another on paper plates, and then they presented each child his or her very own plateful of praise and positivity. This simple “nice things about me” plate significantly increased the children’s self-esteem and, more important, subsequently caused them to halve the number of materialistic images that they used when creating their “What makes me happy” collage. All of these results add up to compelling evidence that low self-esteem causes materialistic tendencies and that such tendencies take root at a very young age. The good news is that the work also demonstrates that just like spending a small amount of money on others or carrying out a few acts of kindness, it takes only a few seconds and a paper plate to change the way people think and behave.
    HAPPINESS IS A PENCIL
    People behave in highly predictable ways when they experience certain emotions and thoughts. When they are sad, they cry. When they are happy, they smile. When they agree, they nod their heads. So far, no surprises, but according to an area of research known as “proprioceptive psychology,” the process also works in reverse. Get people to behave in a certain way and you cause them to feel certain emotions and have certain thoughts. The idea was initially controversial, but fortunately it was supported by a series of compelling experiments. 27
    In a now classic study, people in one group were asked to furrow their brows (or, as the researchers put it, “contract their corrugator muscle”), while those in another group were asked to adopt a slight grin (“extend their zygomaticus muscle”). This simple act of facial contortion had a surprisingly large effect on participants’ moods, with the grinning group feeling far happier than those who were frowning.
    Participants in a different study were asked to fixate on various products moving across a large computer screen and then indicate whether the items appealed to them. 28 Some of the items moved vertically (causing the participants to nod their heads while watching), and others moved horizontally (resulting in a side-to-side head movement). Participants preferred vertically moving products without being aware that their “yes” and “no” head movements had