Being exposed to fast food symbols makes it harder to appreciate everyday joys
Source: rawstory.com
Success, in the Western world, means “gaining time,” according to French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard. The faster we do things — work, eat, sleep, read — the more time we “gain.”
But this focus on time efficiency could be making the small things in life harder to enjoy.
A trio of Canadian researchers have discovered that simply being exposed to symbols of Western society’s culture of convenience can undermine people’s ability to find pleasure in everyday joys.
“It is ironic that technologies designed to improve well-being by minimizing time spent on mundane chores may ultimately undermine the surplus leisure time they permit. By instigating a sense of impatience, these technologies may prevent people from savoring the enjoyable moments life offers serendipitously,” doctoral student Julian House and professors Sanford E. DeVoe and Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto wrote in the study.
The research, published online in Social Psychological and Personality Science, found people exposed to fast-food symbols were less likely to find pleasure in beautiful pictures and music. The research also found those living in neighborhoods with a higher concentration of fast-food restaurants were less likely to savor pleasurable experiences.
House and his colleagues decided to examine fast food — and McDonald’s in particular — because it “has arguably become the ultimate symbol of time efficiency.”
In their first analysis, which included 280 participants from the United States, the researchers found greater fast-food concentration in one’s neighborhood was associated with reduced savoring of emotional responses to enjoyable experiences. The researchers controlled for age and wealth, but noted that other confounding variables could have skewed their results.
In a second experiment, the researchers had 250 participants rate the advertising suitability of five promotional pictures. Three of the images were neutral, while two of the images showed fast food from McDonald’s. Half of the participants saw the fast food in standard McDonald’s packaging, while those in the control group saw the exact same food with generic ceramic tableware.
In addition, half of the participants viewed ten pictures of scenic natural beauty while the others did not. All of the participants then rated their happiness.
The researchers found those who viewed the beautiful pictures tended to self-report a higher level of happiness than those who had not.
But being exposed to the fast-food symbol appeared to hamper this effect. Participants who viewed the beautiful pictures and viewed the McDonald’s symbol reported a significantly lower state of happiness than those who viewed the beautiful pictures but didn’t view the McDonald’s symbol.
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Read the full article at: rawstory.com
For more information on symbols and how they manipulates and control, watch
Red Ice TV - Episode 4 - Symbolism in Logos :
