Release and Recharge for Mood Improvement

There are two distinct patterns of behavior that improve our mood: “releasing” and “recharging”. Releasing refers to a release of your pent up energy, through exercise or artistic means of self-expressionism. Recharging, on the other hand would be eating food or sleeping. The way your mood changes vary depending on which type of activity we choose.

Further categorization of these activities are listed in Figure 1 below:

The orange highlighted sections are the behavior groups that improve our mood – creativity, improvement, nature, exercise, energy intake, and rest. Mood improvements requires us to act on our appropriate needs and surrounding environments at the time.

For example, if our room is dirty and stressful, we can make improvements by cleaning to restore calmness again. If you’re tired and antsy, exercising, intaking appropriate nutrients, and resting can help restore positivity. If our distress is causing psychological pressure, we can improve your mood by immersing ourselves in nature, creativity, or actively participating in things that feel good and fun.

However, keep in mind that these activities may not address the root cause of the issue, which is always a good way to resolve our discomforts.

Find Mood Boosters Through Daily Routines

There are common tools and routines that can act as mood boosters according to the categories of the above chart.

For example, let’s take brushing our teeth. Typically, many people brush their teeth after they wake up and before they sleep, or perhaps after every meal. It’s a routine grooming act that helps us feel more cleanly, and many of us probably don’t put much thought into it. However, brushing has a direct effect on improving our mood. We use our “toothbrush” as a tool to clean and polish our teeth, and it can feel pleasantly refreshing. Brushing itself can induce our association to pleasant feelings and become a mood booster, as it connects to our sense of “improvement.”

Another routinely act we can take for example, is cooking. The common household item of a “knife” becomes a tool that connects with our “creativity” in addition to fulfilling our huger. A “vacuum” is a tool that helps create a cleaner environment and “improves” our surroundings. These tool-using behavior patterns are supposedly similar to actions we take when we’re displeased. Therefore, the use of a common household tool plays an effective role in boosting our moods. When we combine the six behavior groups from the Figure 1 chart above – creativity, improvement, nature, exercise, energy intake, and rest – there are endless possibilities for activities that could help in improving our mood at any time.

Mood Boosters Are All Around Us

There are a variety of activities and tools we can utilize to help ourselves feel a little better. Many of them are familiar activities within our daily lives. We all have different preferences in how we enjoy our time, whether it’s going for a drive, exercising, playing games, or having a drink. We all want to feel better when we feel distressed. If we look around, there are many ways to feel better within our immediate surroundings. You’d be pleasantly surprised with all the casual activities and tools that can act as an easily accessible mood booster.

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Image: Unsplash
References:

Furusawa, K., Terauchi, F., Kubo, M., & Aoki, H. (2007). Research of Action and Tools to Make Feelings Better. Japanese Society for the Science of Design: 54th Annual Conference. doi: 10.11247/jssd.54.0.A20.0

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How we interact with and wear our clothes can say a lot about us. For instance, how do you choose what you wear? Are you a minimalist who owns a micro-wardrobe? Or do you own many of the same outfits to avoid decision fatigue like Steve Jobs did? Perhaps you’re a fashionista that follows the latest trends; a bold person who loves to express through colors and decorative patterns; a type that just doesn’t care at all for what you wear. Before you go ahead and disregard fashion as an unimportant choice, you may want to reevaluate a wardrobe that will help you become the person you want to be. The power of fashion may have bigger effects than you expect.

Whether we like it or not, every morning, we wake up and put our clothes on. Every item of clothing, from work uniforms, suits, dresses, traditional outfits, casual outfits, gym wears, to pajamas, all make social statements for the occasions we participate in. It’s easy to associate social status with textile materials and brands, but there is more to fashion and its effects than we understand at a superficial level. Above all, it can change our psychological behavior and how we feel.

The Transformative Power of Fashion

We’ve all heard the saying, “dress for the job you want, not the job you have”. In fact, the truth of this phrase is actually backed by science. Furthermore, there are studies dedicated to this idea. In scientific terms, it’s called “Enclothed Cognition”. In simple terms, it is the field of study in how symbolic fashion effects can impact our behavior and moods.

For example, a 2012 study showed that wearing a white lab coat where people associated the coat to scientific or medical professions, increased their performance in detailed oriented tasks. In another 2016 study, people who wore a tunic and associated it with a nursing scrub, showed more empathy and volunteered more hours. Formal clothing has repeatedly demonstrated positive benefits through studies, resulting in increased abstract thinking, feeling of power, and profits in negotiations. Therefore, our personal interpretation of the symbolism in each of these fashion items is what changes our processing and behaviors.

All of these studies point that wearing fashion items associated with certain symbolic meanings have measurable effects on our mental state. So yes, dress not only to impress others, but yourself! For instance, you could wear a sharp suit to work to perform better in business, casual clothes to be more friendly, and sporty gym wears to stay active. Who do you want to be? The person you aspire to be could become just a step closer through the power of fashion effects. To start, you can begin putting your wardrobe together in the direction of your goals.

Color Symbolism in Fashion Effects

The influence of color goes beyond its effects in fashion. Have you heard of color psychology? It’s the idea that different colors hold different meanings, emotions, and power over how we behave. We see this applied everywhere nowadays as a powerful communication tool, especially in marketing, art, and design.

Color can be so influential, that swallowing the same pill with different colors show significantly different placebo effects on a patient. Particularly, red has been a high-interest color for scientific studies. For example, in the 2004 Olympics, some scientists noticed that winning combat fighters often wore red more than blue. This led to research in 2013, where 28 athletes were matched with similar age and size opponents, each wearing red and blue jerseys. They then competed against each other while measuring strength and heart rates. Although wearing red did not result in more wins, participants wearing red showed significantly higher heart rates and pre-contest strengths. In other words, we are subconsciously influenced by the color we choose. In this way, color also plays a significant role in the fashion effects that impact our mood.

Different Colors have Different Effects

Although color perceptions are highly subjective, there are some universal and general understandings. For example, warm colors such as red, orange, and yellow tend to side with a range of emotions from warmth and comfort to anger and passion. Cool colors, such as green, blue, and purple, often associates with a range of cold and sad feelings to tranquility and calmness. On the other hand, bright colors are a great choice in giving a boost to your energy and mood. I recommend you look into the effects of each color and use it to your best benefit in fashion. To find out more about the psychological effects of colors, check out the article below.

Be Unique!

It’s pretty common for us to want to wear clothes that best conforms to our societal beliefs, values, and ideals. If a style is not aligned with what we feel emotionally comfortable in, the uneasiness reverts us back to what we feel most familiar with. This is especially true if you are not the type to take risks in fashion. However, it pays off to intentionally risk showing your own unique style that’s different from others.

Researchers at Harvard examined the effects of non-conforming behaviors through fashion. In this study, the status and competence of a professor increased when the professor showed his uniqueness by wearing red Converse sneakers during a lecture. The experiment concluded that unique non-conforming styles that stand out positively influenced us when perceived as styled in a deliberate manner. This interesting phenomenon in fashion effects is called “The Red Sneaker Effect”. In real life, we see this when high-status individuals or successful entrepreneurs choose to dress casually in jeans in formal business settings. Higher status and performance correlates with stronger tendencies to deviate from conforming dress codes. Vice versa, research also suggests that people judge these deviations from the norm as positive because we perceive the individual as powerful enough to risk social costs as a nonconformist.

Use the Power of Fashion to Your Advantage

It can be a simple bright tie, a shoe, a sock, a piece of statement jewelry. You can start with anything small. Show your originality through unique styles! It will not only give you the liberating opportunity to express yourself, but elicits positive impressions from others. If you haven’t tried expressing yourself through using fashion effects to your benefit, now is the time to start experimenting!

Looking to improve your mental wellbeing?

Try the SELF MIND app FREE for 1 week!
If you’re looking for more tips on how to care for your mental health, check out some of our past blog posts!

References:

Adam, H., & Galinsky, A. D. (2012). Enclothed cognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(4), 918–925. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.02.008

Bellezza, S., Gino, F., & Keinan, A. (2014). The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(1), 35–54. https://doi.org/10.1086/674870

de Craen, A. J. M., Roos, P. J., de Vries, A. L., & Kleijnen, J. (1996). Effect of colour of drugs: systematic review of perceived effect of drugs and of their effectiveness. BMJ, 313(7072), 1624–1626. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.313.7072.1624

Dittrich, A. (2019, September 24). Fashion’s impact on mental wellbeing. Retrieved June 16, 2020, from https://www.dw.com/en/how-fashion-impacts-our-mental-wellbeing/a-50562794

Dreiskaemper, D., Strauss, B., Hagemann, N., & Büsch, D. (2013). Influence of Red Jersey Color on Physical Parameters in Combat Sports. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 35(1), 44–49. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.35.1.44

Elliot, A. J., & Maier, M. A. (2014). Color Psychology: Effects of Perceiving Color on Psychological Functioning in Humans. Annual Review of Psychology, 65(1), 95–120. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115035

Hutson, M., & Rodriguez, T. (2016, January 1). Dress for Success: How Clothes Influence Our Performance. Retrieved June 16, 2020, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dress-for-success-how-clothes-influence-our-performance

Karl, K. A., Hall, L. M., & Peluchette, J. V. (2013). City Employee Perceptions of the Impact of Dress and Appearance. Public Personnel Management, 42(3), 452–470. https://doi.org/10.1177/0091026013495772

Kraus, M. W., & Mendes, W. B. (2014). Sartorial symbols of social class elicit class-consistent behavioral and physiological responses: A dyadic approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(6), 2330–2340. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000023

López-Pérez, B., Ambrona, T., Wilson, E. L., & Khalil, M. (2016). The Effect of Enclothed Cognition on Empathic Responses and Helping Behavior. Social Psychology, 47(4), 223–231. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000273

Sarda-Joshi, G. (2016, June 17). 7 ways your clothes change the way you think. Retrieved June 16, 2020, from https://brainfodder.org/psychology-clothes-enclothed-cognition/

Slepian, M. L., Ferber, S. N., Gold, J. M., & Rutchick, A. M. (2015). The Cognitive Consequences of Formal Clothing. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(6), 661–668. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550615579462

Thrive Global, & Carlos, V. (2019, May 30). Why So Many Successful People Wear the Same Outfit Every Day. Retrieved June 16, 2020, from https://thriveglobal.com/stories/why-successful-people-often-wear-the-same-outfit-every-day/

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