Flowers & Psychology from a Rangiora Florist - part 1

An interesting read was given to me the other day and I'm further considering flowers in life and society. Flowers evoke positive feelings, they make me smile and I know there are follow on benefits from that. Well it turns out psychologists claim the secondary benefits can be anything from helping us think, remember things and recover from stress, to actually making us appear more attractive (I have a lot of flowers around me right now = winning!) due to positivity. Positive emotions enhance feelings of security with one and other which is known to keep social bonds strong and the goodness flows on and on.

I've written previously about the warmth I feel when working with Freesias as a Rangiora Florist and how they remind me of my Nan and Grandma when I was growing up. I related the warmth I felt with them to the Freesias in their gardens. But while emotions from flowers can be a learned behaviour like mine here, it could also be more unique. After all lots of things make us feel good but there's something about flowers that appears to cut across societies. It turns out its fascinating!

So intermingled through my normal blogs I'm going to drop in the odd one about Flower Psychology. I'm not a Psychologist, the hint is in my business name, I'm a Florist (Phloristogistian?). Don't be expecting anything academic here, it's not academic, it's pure interest and entertainment for me, parroting the stuff I read and my take on it. I'll try to name the sources I've been reading at the time. I'll name each of these blog posts 'Flowers & Psychology (something something) so you can skip it if you're not interested.

lets get to it:

Does it have to be a flower?

". . .the ubiquity of flower use across culture and history and the lack of easy substitutes for the many uses of flowers suggest that there may be something other than this simple association. Flowers may influence social-emotional behaviour more directly or may prime such behaviour . . ." (Haviland-jones et al, 2005)

What an opening statement aye. Haviland-Jones and friends, researchers at Rutgers University set up studies to measure the effect of flowers on people compared to other gifts. They took a bunch of participants and told them they were going to receive one gift out of ten possible items. They even told them all the ten possibilities so participants knew what might be coming their way. The gifts were like baskets of fruit, lollies, candles, and somewhere in there, a flower bouquet. Questionnaires measuring emotions and satisfaction in life were then completed.

Ten Days later two experimenters turned up on participant's doorstep's. One presents the participant with the gift (one of the ten options available) and the other watches carefully for the changes in the receivers expression. They're after a particular sign, the mid nineteenth century famed French Neurologist Guillaume Duchenne's "Duchenne Smile". It's claimed this is a genuine smile composed of raised corners of the mouth, raised cheeks, crows feet around the eyes, and all formed from contractions of the zygotic major and orbicularis oculi muscles in the face (ah ha!).

As expected most participants flash this glorious smile to most of the gifts BUT ONLY the flower bouquet receives 100% Duchenne Smiles every time. The flower bouquet is a hit.

All participants then re-took the questionnaires to see if there was much movement from their initial life satisfaction and emotions after their gift. Anyone who got a gift showed a rise in life satisfaction (a win for gifts in general) but only the participants that received the bouquet showed a significant rise in positive emotions (extra credit for flowers).

Later the researchers learned that receivers of the flower bouquets had became more socially active. They spoke more of getting in touch with others and having deeper conversations since receiving the flowers. This was great news driving the team to take it further.

Memory

Charged with their previous results, Haviland-Jones & crew took the study to a different group, rest homes. They made a few changes to the study. Firstly there weren't ten types of gifts anymore, you either got bouquet of flowers or nothing (sad, no flowers!). Deliveries could come early or later in the experiment and even a second delivery for some. All participants were given a log book to journal their social activities.

As expected, the participants getting flowers had a rise in positive emotions and increased life satisfaction but a new finding was that getting a second lot of flowers equaled more happiness again. Researchers claimed this was stacking more happiness on the original effect which was still present. But the best was yet to come.

Participants were tested on their memory of recent events. They were asked to remember what was written in the social logs they were keeping. Those who received flowers were significantly better at recalling events that those who hadn't. While I'd be pretty unmotivated to engage if I hadn't received flowers, the results still supported that being given flowers increased positive emotions that appeared to help memory.

Oddly flowers didn't to have much social effect this time. The team thought this due to the environment where socialising was fairly organised and regular. But they wanted to be sure.

I feel sorry for the group that go no flowers

Friends in Elevators

Towards more insight into social effects of flowers, Haviland-Jones and friends set their sights on that ever socially awkward territory - The Elevator. They simply wanted to see what effect a stranger with a flower had on another person in an environment known to psychologists for measurable social distances.

Two experimenter turned up again, they stood in an elevator, one recorded the reactions again and another was "the giver" holding a basket of flowers or a basket of pens. They waited until someone came into elevator and then at some point in the ride the giver either gave the person a flower from the basket, stood there doing nothing with a basket of flowers, gave the person a pen (university logo pen!) from the basket, or stood there doing nothing holding a basket of pens.

And people got more sociable....when given a flower.

Turns out If you receive a flower from a stranger in an elevator you are more likely to flash that big Duchenne Smile. You are significantly more likely to give up your safety distance and move closer to the giver and you are going to look at the giver a lot more. You're significantly more likely to break that cardinal of social sins and actually start a conversation with the flower bearing stranger. While its a practical and perfectly nice gesture of good will, you're not as likely to do that if given a pen, its got to be the flower. Also it doesn't matter if you're male or female the results are the same.

But what about just standing holding a basket of flowers, maybe just being in the presence of flowers is enough. Nope, standing holding a basket of flowers didn't do much good at all and If anything it was more likely to draw some negativity. People commented that they were a bit sad when they weren't offered one. Some even went back and asked for a flower, which i guess is still one way of getting a conversation going. The team had found further support for social effects of giving flowers.

Concluding Thoughts

So I think the moral of the story is clearly that you should buy more flowers, buy them from me, its science!? The other conclusion is that researchers found support for flowers having a unique place in making people happy over regular type gifts its just still unclear how or why. That's for another blog down the track.

Here's the research paper if anyone's interested

Haviland-Jones, J., Rosario, H. H., Wilson, P., & McGuire, T. R. (2005). An Environmental Approach to Positive Emotion: Flowers. Evolutionary Psychology, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/147470490500300109 (Original work published 2005)

Bye for now

Laura