澳大利亚新南威尔士大学心理学教授约瑟夫•弗格斯新近的一项研究发现，负面情绪能够提高人们的判断力，让他们少受骗；同时还能增强记忆力。这项研究显示，处于负面情绪中的人对周围环境关注更多，也更具批判性；而相比之下，开心的人们不太注意周围环境，而且很容易相信别人对他们说的话。弗格斯教授在研究论文中表示，处于负面情绪中的人不太会有判断上的失误，在回顾自己目睹的事件时也较少会出错。负面情绪激发出的这种信息处理技能能够帮助他们应对很棘手的状况。

Bad moods can actually be good for you, with an Australian study finding that being sad makes people less gullible, improves their ability to judge others and also boosts memory.

Bad moods can actually be good for you, with an Australian study finding that being sad makes people less gullible, improves their ability to judge others and also boosts memory.

The study, authored by psychology professor Joseph Forgas at the University of New South Wales, showed that people in a negative mood were more critical of, and paid more attention to, their surroundings than happier people, who were more likely to believe anything they were told.

"Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation, and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world," Forgas wrote.

"Our research suggests that sadness ... promotes information processing strategies best suited to dealing with more demanding situations."

For the study, Forgas and his team conducted several experiments that started with inducing happy or sad moods in their subjects through watching films and recalling positive or negative events.

In one of the experiments, happy and sad participants were asked to judge the truth of urban myths and rumors and found that people in a negative mood were less likely to believe these statements.

People in a bad mood were also less likely to make snap decisions based on racial or religious prejudices, and they were less likely to make mistakes when asked to recall an event that they witnessed.

The study also found that sad people were better at stating their case through written arguments, which Forgas said showed that a "mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style."

"Positive mood is not universally desirable: people in negative mood are less prone to judgmental errors, are more resistant to eyewitness distortions and are better at producing high-quality, effective persuasive messages," Forgas wrote.

The study was published in the November/December edition of the Australian Science journal.

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(Agencies)

（英语点津 Helen 编辑）