"Researchers scoured the internet for videos that elicited "wow" emojis or had gone viral. They identified "underdog" narratives, where a person overcomes adversity, such as the real life story of Sean Swarner, a cancer survivor who set out to climb Mt. Everest. He had battled Hodgkin lymphoma, and had only one functioning lung. As part of the study, participants watched a video of Swarner describing his quest, and other videos like it, of people succeeding against the odds."
""We found that people felt more hopeful after watching the inspiring videos, " says study author Robin Nabi of UC Santa Barbara. "And that hope predicted lower stress over the next ten days," she says. The study included about a thousand adults from across the U.S., ages 18 to 86. One group watched an inspiring video, about three to five minutes in length, every day for five days."
"Comedy didn't move the needle much. People who watched comedy did not differ from the control group, but both the inspiring videos and the meditation significantly increased hope. "We were actually quite surprised at how similar the effects of the inspiring videos were to the group that meditated," Nabi says. "Both groups felt more hope," she explains and that predicted less stress 10 days later."
About a thousand U.S. adults aged 18–86 experienced different daily conditions over five days: three- to five-minute inspiring videos, comedy clips, brief meditation, or no media. Inspiring clips emphasized underdog narratives of people succeeding against adversity, exemplified by Sean Swarner’s climb after battling Hodgkin lymphoma with one functioning lung. Both the inspiring-video condition and the meditation condition produced significant increases in reported hope compared with comedy or no media. Increased hope predicted lower stress over the subsequent ten days. Comedy produced no measurable change in hope relative to the control group. Surveys before and after assessed hope and stress changes.
Read at www.npr.org
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