FLOWERS WORLD

Study 1 – Immediate Smiles and Long Term Mood Change
To test the effects of flowers, we compared the immediate and long-term emotional behavior of participants who received floral bouquets to the behavior of participants who were presented with flower-irrelevant control stimuli.
Method
Participants
The participants were 147 adult women evenly distributed across three age groups (20-39; 40-59, 60+). Nearly all participants were white (n = 137); 2 were “African Americans”, 5 were “Asian Americans”, and 3 were “other”. Women were chosen for several reasons: (1) they are more facially expressive, making the coding of their immediate emotional response more reliable; (2) they are more likely to report shifts in moods, especially negative moods (Brody and Hall, 2000) and (3) women are the more common recipients of flowers in the local culture. The participants were recruited through alumnae newsletters, newspaper advertisements and postings in grocery stores and churches in the New York-New Jersey Metropolitan Area.
Stimuli
The mixed-flower bouquet (including roses, lilies and stocks) was chosen after consultation with the Society of American Florists about the most popular bouquets. A mixed-flower bouquet has a variety of colors and odors and should maximize the effect across a diverse group of participants. An initial focus group of 15 women, ages similar to those of the experimental participants, listed stimuli that could substitute for flowers. This initial group was joined by an additional 15 women and these 30 women rated all the stimuli on similarity to flowers. The focus groups selected (1) a fruit and sweets basket (food) and (2) a large, multi-wicked candle (light, heat) on a stand. The selected stimuli had some of the traditional traits of domesticated plants -- food and fuel. Chocolate sweets were not selected because ratings were split, either very high (desirable) or very low (undesirable due to allergies or weight consciousness). The selected stimuli were uniformly rated high. The stimuli all had the same economic value, had some pleasant odor, had variation in color, and were wrapped similarly for presentation in clear plastic with colorful bows.
Measures
Mood Measures. The 24-item Differential Emotion Scale (DES)-long form (Izard, 1971) is divided into 8 subscales representing 8 primary emotions. Each item expresses a feeling, such as "felt like what you're doing or watching is interesting." The DES was developed to measure changes in normal moods rather than dysfunctional ones. A participant was asked to indicate how often she had felt "each of these feelings" in the past 2-4 days, ranging from "0" (Never) to "4" (very often). The Life Satisfaction Scale (LSS; Diener and Larson, 1984) is a 5-item scale including statements such as "So far, I have gotten the important things I want in life." The participant was asked to indicate the extent of her agreement with each statement on a 5-point bipolar scale ranging from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree."
Assessment of Secondary Behaviors. A series of open-ended questions assessed the possible influence of the floral bouquets on secondary behaviors. During the last interview, participants rated the extent and type of social support they had experienced within the last 2-3 days. These included questions about intimate contacts (i.e., people with whom participants had close relationships such as family or friends), relaxation activities, creative activities, and amusements. This interview also included questions about the placement of the stimulus in the home and the use of the stimulus.
Coding the Immediate Positive Emotion. In the first 5 sec after presentation of the stimulus, the coder recorded the presence of (a) the Duchenne smile (zygomatic and orbicularis oris movement), or (b) the zygomatic smile alone (no movement of the muscle orbiting the eye) or (c) no smile. The duration of the
muscles are easily discerned and coded even by untrained people. With training, the coding is highly reliable (Ekman, Friesen, and Davidson, 1990; Frank, Ekman, and Friesen, 1993).
Procedure
Participants were recruited for a study about normal daily moods. At initial contact, participants answered demographic questions and scheduled the delivery of the stimulus to their homes. They were told they would receive a gift for their participation, one of 10 possibilities, but were not told which one. All participants agreed to be interviewed by phone three times, including the initial contact. Both interviewers and participants were blind to the stimuli.
Initial Interview Prior to Stimulus. About 10 days before the presentation of the stimulus, the participant was interviewed by an experimenter who had no knowledge of which stimulus would be given to that participant. The experimenter asked the participant to respond to items on both the DES and the LSS.
Stimulus Delivery. Two experimenters delivered the stimuli to the homes of the participants on a prearranged schedule. One presented the stimulus and the other coded the type of smile. The presentation was double blind -- blind to the participant until the moment of presentation and to the coder before and during the presentation. The person holding the box with the stimulus had her entire upper body and face blocked by the box so she was unlikely to give any cue as to the contents. The stimulus was in a large box with one open side. This side was turned away from the participant and from the coder. When the participant had her attention on the box, the open side was turned towards her but the contents were still not visible to the coder. This method of presentation allowed us to focus on the response activated by the stimulus rather than the response to the delivery people. The coder noted the type of smile in the initial 4-5 seconds after the stimulus was uncovered.
Follow-up Interviews. The second interview occurred 2-4 days after the delivery of the stimulus. The interviewer was neither a coder nor a presenter of the stimuli and remained blind to which stimulus the participant had received. The participant again responded to the DES and the LSS. This interview also included open-ended questions to assess social support as a possible secondary effect and to determine use of the stimulus.
Results
Immediate emotional reaction
In the 5 sec following the presentation of the stimulus, 100% of the participants in the flower group responded with the Duchenne smile indicating happiness. The Duchenne smile was common in response to all the stimuli but there
was some variation in response to the other stimuli; 10% of participants receiving fruit and 23% of participants receiving the candle did not respond with a Duchenne smile. The differences between the groups is very significant (χ2 (2, N = 147) = 14.21, p = .007). There were age-related preferences to the control items. Older participants were more likely to display the Duchenne smile when presented with fruit baskets than the younger (χ2 (4, N = 98) = 9.74, p = .045). For the candle, age differences were marginally significant. Younger participants were more likely to smile than the older ones (χ2 (4, N = 98) = 8.99, p = .061). In a few cases, we became aware during interviews that some participants preferred another stimulus. However, stated preferences apparently had no effect on the universal Duchenne response to the flowers.
Mood Interviews
All groups of participants showed an expected decline in the intensity of emotions from the first interview to the second. All ts on negative emotion were greater than 2.02; all ps were less than .05; there were only marginal effects for positive emotions (see Diener and Larson, 1984, on retesting moods). Only the Participants who received the flowers reported an increase in positive emotion on the DES inventory (i.e., enjoyment, M = 0.22, -0.44, and -0.54 for flowers, fruit, and candle respectively; F(2, 139) = 3.95, p = .02).
All three groups had higher scores on the LSS at the second interview than at baseline (t(146) = -4.32, p = .001). This is an overall study effect and there was no significant interaction by stimuli.
During the second interview we also asked questions about the use of the stimuli. The flowers were at least twice as likely to be placed in communal space, that is, places such as the foyer, the living room or dining room. Flowers were not very likely to be placed in the most private spaces such as baths, bedrooms or inside cupboards, whereas the other stimuli were more likely to be in private space than in communal space (χ2 (2, N = 147) = 20.35, p < 0.001). Participants who received flowers were more likely than those receiving the other stimuli to answer positively to social support questions (e.g. contacting people, talking intimately) after they received the flowers than before (χ2 (2, N = 147) = 7.35, p = .05). On the other hand, there were no changes in responses to questions about engaging in amusements or relaxation. These results from the interviews suggest that the flowers influence secondary socio-emotional behaviors as well as having a strong effect on immediate emotional behavioral expression. However, these were post-hoc analyses requiring further study.
Discussion
The Duchenne smile is common on the presentation of all the stimuli as
expected; however, the highest (100%) response rate occurred to flowers. The only longer term increase in positive moods reported was for those who received flowers. There were additional indications that flowers were different from other stimuli. Follow-up interviews indicated that people who received flowers placed them in communal spaces more often and slightly changed their social behavior