The Sun Can Produce Feelings Of Anger And Aggression – It Makes Us Frown
Christopher Philip
Turns out that the sun can produce negative feelings and aggression.
Research published in the journal Cognition and Emotion provides more evidence that the body and brain are intimately linked. Daniele Marzoli, Mariagrazia Custodero, Alessandra Pagliara, and Luca Tommasi of the Department of Psychological Sciences, Humanities and Territory, University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy use the effects of the sun to lend more support to the theory that how we manipulate our face influences our mood.
This was one of the first studies to show specifically how the environment, namely, bright sunlight, can cause people to experience negative emotions. According to the “facial feedback hypothesis” our facial expressions regulate our emotional experience.
Much evidence exist that displaying a smile, for example, produces happiness and conversely, displaying a frown, causes us to experience anger. Studies have shown that the mere suggestion of contracting specific facial muscles is sufficient to produce like emotion. This is consistent with neural activation in the amygdale, the limbic area of the brain.
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Injection of Botox, the botulin toxin that cosmetically treats wrinkles in the face by prohibiting their contraction is also supported as a mechanism for decreasing negative emotions. This is the case when patients are prohibited from frowning. Here, specific muscles, the corrugator supercilii, procerus and frontalis muscles are prevented from contracting, thus preventing faces from displaying grief.
In the current research, it was hypothesized that bright sunlight without sunglasses would be enough to produce frowning in the brow and squinted eyes resulting in thoughts of anger and aggression.
It is one of the first research experiments where the environment was the cue to create the expression rather than the suggestion from an experimenter or an internally driven cue – a natural cue of aggression or anger. The experimenters note that the two most involved muscles are the corrugator supercilii, the procerus and the frontalis which are similarly activated in the expression of anger, as well as negative emotion in general.
A total of 296 subjects were recruited at random. One condition surveyed people as they walked on the beach, into the sun or with the sun at their backs as well as other locations as the conditions permitted. The subjects filled out a questionnaire assessing their perceived level of anger and aggression.
The results were consistent with their hypothesis. Subjects that walked into the sun without sunglasses reported as more aggressive than participants walking with the sun at their backs.
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Resources
Daniele Marzoli, Mariagrazia Custodero, Alessandra Pagliara, and Luca Tommasi. Sun-Induced Frowning Fosters Aggressive Feelings. Cognition And Emotion. 2019; 27 (8): 1513-1521.
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