Feeling grumpy “is good for you” – well not exactly

I do wish the BBC didn’t feel impelled to always take scientific research, simplify the findings until they lose any meaning and then try and find an amusing way to spin the story.

This is exactly what they did wit the research by an Australian psychologist who claimed that feeling grumpy ‘is good for you’.

What the guy actually says is a little more nuanced. This posting gives a much more detailed analysis of his claims that there are some advantages to negative moods, just as there are to positive moods.
For instance, negative moods foster these sorts of effects:

• attentiveness
• careful thinking
• paying greater attention to the external world

Positive moods are valuable to promote:

• creativity
• flexibility
• co-operation

However, from a zero base of research I reckon that moaning is a very beneficial, for the 50-plus, for reasons not considered by the learned academic. One of these fine days I will commit my thoughts to a book and explain all. Dick Stroud