Two researchers, in their daily work and life, one is not ridiculous, one is smiling, who is more likely to make influential results? In our stereotype, the answer is without a doubt the former. In many TV dramas and movies, unspoken, old-fashioned and serious is the orthodox image of scientists. It seems that only such talents may make the best science. After all, scientific research is the most rigorous and serious work in the world.
The Journal of Positive Psychology recently published an interesting study that somewhat overturned this stereotype of scientists. Lukasz D. Kaczmarek, from the University of Poznan Mickiewicz, Poland, studied the relationship between the intensity of laughter on scientists' social network photos and their scientific achievements and found that the more brilliant scientists, the greater the impact of their research work.
This puts scientists and research into the same rules that other ordinary people and ordinary work follow – people with positive emotions (such as laughing at life) are better at work and life. Of course, usually not laughing or rarely laughing does not necessarily mean that the emotions are negative, but the emotions are negative, in general, rarely see a smile.
Using the so-called thin-slicing research methodology , the researchers examined whether scientists' true positive emotional expression is related to bibliometrics (such as citations) and social measures (such as followers of the latest academic results). Or the number of fans) The work achievement defined by the indicator is positively correlated. The thin-slice study uses publicly available real-life data with specific psychological significance, using a very thin slice of a person's behavior (such as choosing a profile photo) to assess the person's mood: a smile on the profile photo Abominable people are more likely to be happy people in their daily lives. Previous studies using thin sectioning have shown that this method is surprisingly accurate.
The researchers extracted photos and published papers of 440 scientists (half of men and women) from a vast collection of research social service website ResearchGate , asking multiple evaluators to laugh at the photos of publicly available scientists. Coding, these scientists are divided into three groups: people who are not smiling, smiling people, and those who are partially warmed up, and those with a full-on smile .
The study found that people with the same number of papers have the same number of papers, but with higher quality, such as more papers cited each time , and their latest information attracts followers or fans. More; after controlling for age and gender factors, the results are still the same. This shows that people who are smiling and more likely to write influential papers are more likely than unspoken people.
As with all other psychological studies, the repeatability of this research is a challenge. For example, can I get the same results using the Google Scholar database? In addition, the degree of happiness of personal photos is consistent with the size of their academic achievements. This only shows that the happy emotions of scientists and the influential science are related, and the correlation is not related to causality, which means that we still cannot determine whether happiness can bring achievements. Whether achievements can bring happiness, or both. Nevertheless, the results of this study are still reasonable and instructive. Previous studies of the relationship between positive emotions and performance have shown that success at work affects people's happy lives, while personal happiness promotes more productive work.
Obviously, a person with a full smile is most likely to make the most influential research results, and does not mean that only those with positive emotions produce the greatest science. However, positive emotions are an additional resource for all work (especially complex labor such as scientific research) and should be self-evident. It is worth mentioning that positive emotions related to scientific achievement should be positive emotions towards scientific research itself, not positive emotions caused by happiness in life. Throughout the history of science, great scientific discoveries are all made by people who are happy to invest in scientific research (although life may be hard ) and who are happy from scientific research.