We can also carefully tailor the way our A-leaf track reacts, adjusting it up or down depending on the degree of emotions we'd most enjoy experiencing. For example, Tamar, like me, isn't a fan of intense negative emotions. So when I watch a horror movie, I actually tend to keep the light on in the room and make the screen quite small so that even as I'm indulging the A-leaf, I have lots of belief pushing in the opposite direction in the background. And that is a tactic you can use if you're somebody who's hypersensitive to the ways in which imaginative emotion affects you.
There is nothing hotter than Puckerbutt Farm’s Carolina Reaper Hot Sauce... and author Leigh Cowart gargles it for FUN!!! Why do we sometimes get a happiness high from painful and scary things? And what if we want to experience the fun of discomfort and danger... but without the risk of coming to real harm?
With the help of Leigh, psychology professor Paul Bloom and the Yale philosopher Tamar Gendler, Dr Laurie Santos finds out how we can fool ourselves into reaping all the benefits of danger without actually being in peril.
For further reading:
Leigh Cowart - Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose.
Paul Bloom - The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning.
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