Living With Flowers - Adding a Little Flower Power

Flower Power! 

We all know that flowers are pretty but did you know that studies have shown that flowers are a very potent mood enhancer? Well, a study done by Rutgers University by Jeannette Haviland-Jones Professor of Psychology and her husband Terry McGuire, Professor of Genetics offer convincing evidence that flowers may be  potent mood elevators. I know my opinion might be suspect because I'm surrounded with beautiful flowers every day but it's fun knowing that the product that I petal, that provides my livelihood can be so powerful in making folks so happy!

Quoted from a Rutgers Blog called "Flower Power" this is what they found out during the study!

"In the first of several double-blind studies performed in 2005, Haviland-Jones and her team presented participants with one of three gifts—a decorative candle, a fruit basket, and a floral bouquet—­supposedly as a thank-you for taking part in a study on mood. The delivery people were really out to measure the recipients’ facial expressions in response to the gifts; the research was then analyzed and coded by Haviland-Jones in her Human Emotions Lab at Rutgers. In every case, the recipients responded to the flowers with what is known as the Duchenne smile—a heartfelt “true smile” involving the mouth, cheeks, and eyes; neither the candle nor the fruit elicited that kind of across-­the-board positive response. And three days later, the flower recipients were still feeling happier than their cohorts in the study. Clearly, something about flowers was uniquely moving them, and Haviland-Jones didn’t think it was simply that “we’re socialized to like flowers.”

To read more about this study feel free to link over and read the whole article!