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Does Christmas music turn you into the Grinch?

Does Christmas music put you in the spirit of giving or turn your heart two sizes too small?

If you find yourself relating to a hairy, green, holiday-hating beast known as the Grinch when your ears are filled with the sounds of the season, you’re in good company.

A 2011 Consumer Reports poll found that almost 25% of Americans picked seasonal music as one of the most dreaded aspects of the holiday season, ranking just behind “seeing certain relatives.”

A survey this fall of 2,000 people in the US and Britain by Soundtrack Your Brand, a Spotify-backed company that says it’s on a mission “to kill bad background music,” found that 17% of US shoppers and 25% of British shoppers “actively” dislike Christmas music. Bah! Humbug!

Health benefits of music

When it comes to your health, science says music is good for you. Studies show that music can treat insomnia; lessen the experience of pain (even during dental procedures); reduce your heart rate, blood pressure and anxiety; boost your mood and reduce depression; alter brainwaves and reduce stress; help you slow down and eat less during a meal; help your body recover faster; and engage the areas of the brain involved with paying attention, remembering and making predictions. Many studies say the best type of music for health is classical in nature, full of rich, soothing sounds.

With all those positives, what’s the problem with Christmas tunes?

One reason you might find yourself cringing is oversaturation. Due to “Christmas creep,” music and decorations seem to go up earlier each year, much closer to Halloween than Thanksgiving. That gives you ample time to hear Mariah Carey’s hit “All I Want for Christmas is You” for what seems like the googolplex time before you get far on your shopping list.

It makes sense that too much of anything can cause annoyance, even stress, and put a damper on your holiday spirit, much like a certain famous “nasty, wasty skunk”: “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch … you have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile … ”

That’s certainly the case for retail workers who are forced to listen to holiday tunes on a seemingly endless loop in the workplace. Soundtrack Your Brand’s survey found that one in six employees believe Christmas music repetition negatively affects “their emotional well-being,” while a full 25% said they felt less festive.

Or … more Grinchy?

Putting aside the auditory attack on holiday retail workers, there’s another way to look at survey statistics: About 75% of us enjoy listening to Christmas music. And it’s not just baby boomer nostalgia that fuels those facts. According to Nielsen’s 2017 Music 360 report, millennials are the biggest holiday music fans (36%), closely followed by Generation X (31%) and then the baby boomers (25%).

Stores use music against you

Retailers are quite aware of those statistics and have learned how best to use our emotions to tap into our wallets.

Studies show that Christmas music, combined with festive scents, can increase the amount of time shoppers spend in stores, as well as their intentions to purchase. It turns out that the tempo of Christmas music plays a role as well.

Faster-paced pieces like “Jingle Bells” will energize shoppers and move them more quickly through a store than retailers might like. That’s why many rely on slower-tempo tunes, like Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song,” to relax shoppers and entice them to spend more time and money.

That makes sense to University of Cambridge music psychologist David Greenberg, who studies the relationship between our cognitive styles and musical preferences. He believes that how you think is an excellent predictor of what music you will like.

According to Greenberg, if you like to analyze rules and patterns in the world, like those that apply to technology, car engines and the weather, you’re probably a “systemizer.” If instead you enjoy focusing on understanding and reacting to the feelings and thoughts of others, you’re likely an “empathizer.”

Want to know your personal thinking/musical style? Take Greenberg’s in-depth quiz 

If you found yourself scoring somewhere in the middle, Greenberg says you’re a “balanced” thinker, and your musical choices will probably contain a mixture of high- and low-energy pieces.

“About a third of us fall into each grouping: systemizer, empathizer and balanced,” Greenberg explained. “But it also depends on gender. Females score higher on empathizing and males on systemizing.”

Just how does that apply to holiday music?

“Empathizers prefer mellow styles of music, soft rock, R&B and soul, music that is slower,” Greenberg said. “It can be sad or nostalgic and certainly has an emotional depth to it. That profile that matches many Christmas songs such as ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,’ songs with features that get you in the Christmas mood.”

A “systemizer,” he says, will like more complex, high-energy music. Examples include hard rock and heavy metal, such as Metallica, The Sex Pistols and Guns N’ Roses. It’s safe to say that most holiday tunes don’t fit into that category.

It’s possible, says Greenberg, that those of us who don’t like Christmas music from the start of the season might fall into the “systemizer” category. Or that you might prefer listening to the more upbeat hits on Billboard’s Holiday 100, such as this year’s No. 2, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee, or No. 4, “A Holly Jolly Christmas” by Burl Ives.

So the next time the sounds and smells of the holiday season start to overwhelm you at your favorite retail store, relax. Understand that it’s all about personal style. Take a tip from the Grinch and let your heart grow – three sizes, perhaps?

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN     Fri December 15, 2017
source: www.cnn.com
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Fun Fact Friday

  • The type of music you listen to can change the way you think.

  • It’s possible for a male to have an erection for up to 3.5 hours while sleeping.

  • An Indian airline only hires female flight attendants because they weigh less, saving up to $500,000 a year in fuel.

  • Graham crackers were invented to stop kids from masturbating.

 

Happy Friday!
source: faccccct


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Fun Fact Friday

  • Hitting snooze on your alarm can make you more tired than if you had gotten up right away.

  • We are subconsciously more attracted to people who have the same taste in music as we do.

  • Warm colors such as yellow, orange and red make you hungry – Which is why many fast food restaurants are yellow, orange and red.

  • Couples who spend at least 10 minutes a day laughing together are more likely to have a stronger relationship.

Happy Friday!
 source:   factualfacts.com   https://twitter.com/Fact   @Fact


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26 Mind-Blowing Psychology Facts That You Never Knew About People

Learning something new about yourself is always interesting and entertaining. And understanding the psychology behind the way we behave, treat others, and express ourselves can be even more appealing.

Today, we have compiled a list of the most surprising psychology facts that can help you better understand yourself and others.

Our emotions don’t affect the way we communicate.
In fact, the very opposite is true:

 

  1. Any friendship that was born in the period between 16 and 28 years of age is more likely to be robust and long lasting.
  2. Women generally prefer men with deep husky voices because they seem more confident and not aggressive.
  3. The people who give the best advice are usually the ones with the most problems.
  4. The smarter the person is, the faster he thinks, and the sloppier his handwriting is.
  5. Our emotions don’t affect the way we communicate. In fact, the very opposite is true: the way we communicate has an influence on our mood.
  6. The way a person treats restaurant staff reveals a lot about their character.
  7. People who have a strong sense of guilt are better at understanding other people’s thoughts and feelings.
  8. Men are not funnier than women: they just make more jokes, not caring whether other people like their humor or not.
  9. Shy people talk little about themselves, but they do this in a way that makes other people feel that they know them very well.
  10. Women have twice as many pain receptors on their bodies than men, but they have a much higher pain tolerance.
  11. Listening to high-frequency music makes you feel calm, relaxed, and happy.
  12. If you can’t stop your stream of thoughts at night, get up and write them down. This will set your mind at ease so you can sleep.
  13. Good morning and good night text messages activate the part of the brain responsible for happiness.
  14. Doing things that scare you will make you happier.
  15. The average amount of time a woman can keep a secret is 47 hours and 15 minutes.
  16. People who try to keep everyone happy often end up feeling the loneliest.
  17. The happier we are, the less sleep we require.
  18. When you hold the hand of a loved one, you feel pain less keenly and worry less.
  19. Intelligent people tend to have less friends than the average person. The smarter the person is, the more selective they become.
  20. Marrying your best friend eliminates the risk of divorce by over 70%, and this marriage is more likely to last a lifetime.
  21. Women who have mostly male friends stay in a good mood more often.
  22. People who speak two languages may unconsciously shift their personalities when they switch from one language to another.
  23. Being alone for a long time is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
  24. Travel boosts brain health and also decreases a person’s risk of heart attack and depression.
  25. People look more attractive when they speak about the things they are really interested in.
  26. When two persons talk to each other and one of them turns their feet slightly away or repeatedly moves one foot in an outward direction, this is a strong sign of disagreement, and they want to leave.
Based on materials from 8FACT 


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Fun Fact Friday

  • Depressed people are likely to get colds more often while happy and energetic individuals get sick less often.

  • Listening to music for at least 5-10 minutes a day strengthens the mind, making it easier to deal with emotional stress.

 

 

  • Smiling, even in a bad mood, can immediately improve your mood because these muscles are enough to trigger happy chemicals in the brain.

  • When people talk to themselves in the third person, they are able to better control their thoughts, feelings, and behavior, a study found.

 

Happy Friday!
 source:   factualfacts.com   https://twitter.com/Fact   @Fact


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Personal Music Playlists May Reduce Medication Use With Dementia

Nursing home residents with dementia who listen to a personalized music playlist may need less psychotropic medication and have improved behavior, a recent study suggests.

The individualized music program designed for nursing homes, called Music and Memory, didn’t improve mood problems, but patients who listened to music tailored to their tastes and memories did need less anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic medication, researchers found.

“Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias can result in aggressive or other difficult behaviors, which affect people’s lives and take a toll on their caregivers,” said lead author Kali Thomas, an assistant professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
“We think that familiar music may have a calming or pleasurable effect and reduce the need for caregivers to use medications to control dementia behaviors,” Thomas told Reuters Health by email.

The potential of this kind of intervention was illustrated in the 2014 documentary “Alive Inside,” which shows nursing home residents with dementia moving, singing and engaging with others while listening to their favorite music, the study team writes in American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

But the effects have never been tested to see if the intervention is evidence-based, the authors write.

To determine what the program accomplishes, the researchers implemented Music and Memory in 98 nursing homes with a total of about 13,000 residents with Alzheimer’s disease or non-Alzheimer’s dementia and followed a roughly equal number of residents with dementia in 98 nursing homes without the program for comparison.

In the Music and Memory program, nursing home staff are trained to create music playlists for residents based on each patient’s personal history and music preferences.

At the start of the study in 2012, the researchers used records to assess patients’ behavioral problems, depressed mood and their use of ant-anxiety and anti-psychotic medications. The same assessments were done in 2013, after the experiment was over.

Among the facilities included in the music program, the typical proportion of residents who discontinued anti-psychotic medications in a six-month period was 17.6 percent prior to the program’s implementation, and rose to 20.1 percent after the program. In the comparison homes without the program, this proportion remained stable at about 15 percent.

Similarly, the proportion of people discontinuing anti-anxiety medications rose from 23.5 percent to 24.4 percent, while in the comparison group discontinuation rates dropped from 25 percent to 20 percent over the same period.

Nursing homes using the music program also reported greater improvements in residents’ behavior. The proportion of residents with reduced dementia-related behavioral problems rose from 51 percent to 57 percent, while the comparison group remained the same.

The cost of the program depends on the size of the facility and ranges from $250 to $1,000 for staff training, plus $200 per year for program support, the authors note. Some participants also receive a “starter kit” including an iPod for their music, or ask family members to provide them with an iPod to use in the program.

The benefits of music for people with dementia go beyond behavior management, said Orii McDermott, a senior research fellow at the University of Nottingham in the UK, who was not involved in the study.

“Sharing favorite music or taking part in music activities offer social opportunities for people with dementia,” said McDermott, adding that social interaction is extremely important because the progression of dementia often leads to isolation.
“For busy care home staff, finding out each resident’s preferred music may feel like a time consuming task,” McDermott said. However, “people with dementia find individualized music interventions meaningful and improve their quality of life – so it will be a time well spent in the long run,” she noted.
“The population of older adults with dementia, in particular those residing in nursing homes, is large and is growing,” Thomas said. “This study suggests that Music and Memory may be one intervention that holds promise.”

By Madeline Kennedy     Fri May 19, 2017     Reuters Health
SOURCE:    bit.ly/2pEIEhN       American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, online April 14, 2017          www.reuters.com


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Fun Fact Friday

  • People who enjoy helping others and or spending money on others tend to be less stressed, happier and live longer.
  • Extroverted people are likely to overlook typos and grammatical errors that would cause introverted people to negatively judge the writer. 
  • Studies show those who don’t eat breakfast, or eat it only sometimes, are twice as likely to be overweight as those who eat two breakfasts.

 

  • Women cry on average between 30 and 64 times a year, while men cry between 6 and 17 times.
  • Left-handed people tend to have more emotional and behavioral problems than right-handed people.
  • Listening to music at high volumes can make a person calmer, happier and more relaxed.
  • The more stressed you are, the slower your wounds and illnesses heal.
  • A recent study shows that exercise alone doesn’t help with weight loss. It’s your diet that should be the main focus.
Happy Friday  🙂
 
source:       factualfacts.com       https://twitter.com/Fact       @Fact