Many women are worrying for all the wrong reasons. What a waste of energy that could have been spent for more beneficial purposes!
Many people already know that females of all ages tend to worry more and have more intense worries than males. Women also tend to perceive more risk in situations and grow more anxious than men.
Now two new studies explain why women behave this way.
Both studies say women tend to worry more than men because they, more than men, tend to believe that past experiences accurately forecast the future.
The researches, involving both 3- to 6-year-olds and adults of both genders, tested the extent to which participants’ thought that worry can be caused by thinking that a bad event that happened in the past could happen again in the future.
For the first study, the subjects listened to six stories that featured characters harmed by another person or animal in the story. Many days later, the character felt worried or changed their behavior when confronted with the same wrongdoer who had hurt them before. (For example, if one little boy stole a toy from another, the child might be worried when he saw that boy again and hide the new toy he was playing with.)
The second study was the same, except that the person or animal the character ran across later only looked similar to the one that had harmed them before.
At the end of each story, the participants were asked to explain why the character was worried or changed their behavior.
Females, both children and adults, were more likely to use uncertainty to explain the character’s reaction, that is, they tended to explain the reaction in terms of events that might happen versus those that will happen, the researcher reported.
The women also tended, more than men, to predict that the characters who encountered the new character who looked similar to the wrongdoer would feel worried because they thought the new character would also do them harm.
The studies, detailed in the Sept./Oct. issue of the journal “Child Development,” also found that children increasingly made these kinds of past-to-future connections as they got older, which yields insight into their cognitive development.
“These results are significant because they reveal that knowledge about the impact of past-to-future thinking on emotions and behaviors develops during the preschool years,” said study author Kristin Lagattuta of the University of California, Davis.
Oh well, this is something I find unique among women: They tend to confuse the past with the present and the future as well. What they regard as a past offense committed against them by a person lives on in the present, and into the future as well. They find it difficult to forgive, much less to forget. To them, it seems time is just a dot, not a line, where the past, present and future happen all at the same time!
Whew! Is that quantum physics?
What people, both men and women, should know is that worrying, or harboring a grudge, or feeling bitter, is like euthanasia – you’re simply bringing harm to yourself since your negative thoughts make all your worse fears come alive.
The solution is simple: Don’t worry, be happy! : ) If you’re not in the mood to smile or feel happy about anything, at first fake it. Try to smile, even a fake one. Eventually the act itself would make you smile the real one. And then you would feel happy.
Or go watch a funny movie. Laugh your blues away! And start channeling your mind waves to more beneficial purposes. Think good health, bountiful wealth, excellent relations with all people around you, lots of joyful moments — and eventually all these will come true!