Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Meaning of the Red Color in the life


Colors greatly affect the elements of a good life in action, mental attitude, a passion to confidence. Use of a specific color for the room, furniture, clothes and even food proved influential to humans. We could even assess an individual's personality through his preferred colors. Interesting right ? Now let's talk about color. This time we are talking about red. Red is the color of the energizing, symbolizes the spirit and action. Due to generate energy, the red will increase the emotion and motivate us to take action. The color red is a warm color and positive if it relates to the basic physical needs and spirit to survive. Although often considered a woman of color, red is actually a strong masculine energy and dominant. Red signifies the pioneering spirit and leadership qualities, show ambition and determination. In our national flag, red a symbol of the courage of the nation to gain independence. GP F1 racing costume and also dominated the red.

A Glimpse of the Red Color in Eastern Cultures

In Eastern cultures like China, red is the color of luck and joy. Although it is now beginning to change, in which many Chinese brides wear white costumes, still, red is the traditional color for weddings. Lunar welcomes all knickknacks ranging from lanterns, lion dance until angpao red envelopes. Even back before the Chinese New Year, many Chinese people paint the door red. On the contrary, forbidden to the color red as opposed to an element funeral grief. Not only China, in Indian culture, red symbolizes purity and is often used in their wedding gowns. As for Indonesia's multi-ethnic, red, black and white almost always be the main color of culture. Toraja wearing the red color in the painting along the wall of the house. Makasarese have traditional dress ladies' clothes Bodo "dominant red. Dayak tribe wear red as one of the elements of color beads. Not counting the Java, Bali, Palembang, etc. Red is predominant.

Positive Nature Red

Red has the positive properties: action, energy and speed, attract attention, assertive and confident, energetic, stimulating, exciting, powerful, vibrant, stimulating and driven, brave and strong, spontaneous and decisive. 
Red is also having a negative nature namely: aggressive and domineering, over-bearing, exhausting, short-tempered, cruel, fear and intolerance, rebellious and stubborn, angry, violent and brutal.

Things That Are at Present in the Red

1. Energy: red increase our physical energy levels, increase heart rate and blood pressure and make the release of adrenaline.
2. Action: red makes us move quickly and pushed to act and move.
3. Lust relates to physical desires - sexual appetite, cravings.
4. Passion: Red excite both positive as well as negative love like hatred.

Effects of Red to Everyday Life

1. Stimulate

Red stimulates sexual desire and other basic physical lust. Therefore, if you have a flagging sex life and want more vibrancy, use red elements to the bedroom (interior space, furniture, bed clothes), but not too much because it will be the opposite effect. Although red is often used to express love, such as Valentine's Day, but actually more precise red symbolizes sexuality and lust, not love. Because color to express love is pink. The red color also can whet your appetite, often used in restaurant or food dish.


Eample : 

• Logos home eating a lot of wear red. 
• a bowl of strawberry ice cream with chunks of red-eye will be more tempting than ice    cream sprinkled with nuts. 
• Balado Shrimp fried chilli red or red color looked very tempting than pale.

2. Attract and Motivate

Red excites our emotions and inspire us to take action. Being the color of physical movement, the red color of awakening of our physical life. Red can give confidence to those who are shy or lacking willpower. Shy children will be more enthusiastic if often wear red color element. Soccer team uniforms are also many wear red elements, as is believed to promote the spirit of play. Ambulance many wore red. Because speed is urgent and requires action.
Police patrol car also started many wearing red. But if in Indonesia seems not ngefek hehehe

3. Draw Attention

The color red has always attracted the limelight. So if you want to disguise, invisible, so avoid red hehehe. Conversely if you want easy to find, use red color. So that from a distance people already see its existence. For example, paint the gas station, terminal, etc. often use red color for the exterior. Red is also the color of universal danger. This is why the traffic light is red as a stop sign. Funnily enough, because the red danger signal to the brain, then the driver tends to spur faster when closer to red, so many red lights interloper. Meanwhile, when green, the driver tends to be more relaxed and slow moving, because green is calming.

4. Assertive and Agresif

A small survey once showed that the driver of the red car, including women, felt so aggressive behind the wheel of their red cars. Although this survey is still a lot of pros and cons for another survey pointed to a blue car was actually trigger aggressiveness. Be careful, too much red also trigger negative expressions of anger and aggression that may even trigger a destructive action. Surrounded by too much red can cause us to be upset, anxious, and finally angry. Mass seas wearing red color much more easily persuaded to act destructively because of increased aggressiveness. Well, be careful of the coordinators demo, if you want the action went peacefully, avoid costumes predominantly red. But for soldiers ready for combat, the use of red elements it is necessary to supplement the courage and aggressiveness. As the elite Kopassus, red beret troops, for example. Flag or red banners in the procession of soldiers. Too few red makes us be careful, manipulative and cowardly.



Thursday, June 7, 2007

The Psychology of Coffee

The public coffee drinker is fast becoming ubiquitous in the UK, and approaching US proportions. By ‘public’ I mean people drinking outside of the home or office. Good quality coffee can now be had in the home or office at a fraction of the cost of a coffee shop, yet many choose to go to coffee shops and purchase a coffee in a paper cup with a plastic top and wander the streets drinking it from the little hole in the top. Others sit in coffee shops, alone. The public coffee is fast becoming a psychological crutch to rival the declining cigarette.

The cigarette used to be the best protection against being alone. Standing on a street corner can attract attention. Light up a cigarette and no one gives you a second look. Indeed there is a good chance someone will come up to you, ask for a light, and strike up a conversation. Such is the power of the cigarette, or at least it was. These days a public smoker is likely to attract adverse comment. I have never smoked but I used to envy the power of cigarettes. You were never alone and they evidently had great insulation properties. Smokers used to stand outside in the middle of winter, with little on, and apparently not feel the cold. Today cigarette smokers have been banished from public spaces. Smoking no longer serves as an effective antidote to being alone.

If you go into a restaurant and have meal alone it can attract nervous looks from other diners. It can be an uncomfortable experience for the lone diner. Not so in a coffee shop. Having a coffee alone does not attract a second look. If you attend a public event and stand about with your hands in your pockets you may get querying looks. No so if you have a carton of coffee in hand. Indeed if you just stand in the street drinking coffee it looks and feels fine, in contrast to just standing in the street. It serves the function of giving you ‘purpose’.You stopped to drink your coffee. It also makes the idea that you might be waiting for someone more plausible (though I cannot fathom why). If you feel uncomfortable in public grab a coffee. It will ease your discomfort though it is not yet a cue for striking up a conversation with a perfect stranger.

The modern coffee from a coffee shop has also become a personality statement. The complexity of the available coffee based beverages is astounding. A signature preference now says something about you. Research into what it says would probably make a good Phd topic in psychology. To me it says you probably don’t like coffee and are trying to mask the taste but I suspect the owner of the signature is fulfilling some unconscious identity need. This is who I am.
It is not a new phenomenon but has become a richer activity. Greek (Turkish, Arabic etc) drinkers have three choices; sweet, medium, and plain and the choice sort of reflects your machismo. A plain Greek coffee is an acquired taste and popular after hangovers (though I am sure sugar helps hangovers). I drink it plain but then I like coffee.

The signature coffee can be a bit tricky in social situations. If someone in the office brings you coffee without you asking and knows your precise preference, what does this say? It is a very intrusive gesture. Fine if you welcome the intrusion but what if you do not? The humble (but not cheap) coffee has complex potential social significance. If you have a signature coffee you are putting yourself out there. Be aware.

For the purist coffee drinker, like myself, it is the coffee not the social significance that is important. Black, strong, and no sugar is the preference. There is a physiological effect from the caffeine and it is mildly addictive. There is also a comfort effect from the routine of coffee making and drinking. As the Garfield cartoon expresses so eloquently ” Give me coffee and no one gets hurt”. I prefer to drink at home and only use coffee shops to meet people or when I am out and about and have no other choice. If you rarely drink coffee at home and are always holding a signature coffee from Starbucks you might want to engage in some introspection. Make sure you are saying what you want to say and to whom you wish to say it.
By George Hattjoulis

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Why Does Coffee Make Us Feel So Good?



We all remember that first cup of coffee; it tasted terrible. It was too hot, too bitter and too sweet but it offered the promise of alertness after a night of poor sleep. The wonderful thing about coffee is that it delivered on its promise every time; subsequently, you've never been able to walk away from it. If you've ever faced giving up on caffeinated coffee to lessen the symptoms of fibrocystic breast disease of the tremors associated with Parkinson's disease you know well the craving that can develop. Why does this happen? 
I was recently honored by an invitation to give a TED talk on the benefits of coffee and other drugs upon brain function. 

Two reasons: Scientists have known for many years that coffee stimulates the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine produces the euphoria and pleasant feelings that people often associate with their first cup of coffee in the morning. Many drugs that produce euphoria, such as cocaine, amphetamine and ecstasy, act upon dopamine in the brain. This action by coffee has always been an adequate explanation for why caffeine is the most widely consumed psychoactive substance in the world. 

But do we all really just crave more arousal? Is being more aroused enough to explain why for some people coffee is akin to cocaine – they crave it constantly and will work hard to have a supply always at hand? One of my students decided to test the effects of caffeine on his chronic sleepiness by ingesting a packet of instant coffee, right out of the box. He reported that he enjoyed eating this paper packet of ground coffee so much that he decided to finish off the entire container of 32 packets! Three days later, he stopped having explosive diarrhea and finally fell asleep completely exhausted. Another of my students claimed to consume two full pots of coffee (equivalent to about twenty cups of coffee!) every morning before coming to class. He indicated that he knew it was time to stop when the tremors in his hands became impossible to control.

These students' experience reminds me of the verses of the French novelist Honore de Balzac: "This coffee plunges into the stomach...the mind is aroused, and ideas pour forth like the battalions of the Grand Army on the field of battle.... Memories charge at full gallop...the light cavalry of comparisons deploys itself magnificently; the artillery of logic hurry in with their train of ammunition; flashes of wit pop up like sharp-shooters." To me, these behaviors suggest a level of addiction that goes beyond the simple enhancement of one neurotransmitter system.

A recent report in Molecular Nutrition and Food Research by a group of scientists from Rome explored the possibility that coffee's addictive properties also involve the brain's marijuana-like neurotransmitter system. [I've previously written about the role of this system in control mood and general brain function; here are the links: A, B, C] This is how it all seems to work.



When you first started drinking coffee, the arousal was all you wanted and also all that you got.  Still, being more attentive and vigilant was all you needed to get through the day. As you continued drinking coffee your liver compensated for the additional chemicals in your diet by becoming more efficient at metabolizing the caffeine. Your brain also made some adjustments. Ultimately, you needed more and more coffee each day to achieve the same level of arousal and vigilance. While all of this was occurring, something else far more mysterious was happening inside your brain; caffeine had begun stimulating your brain's endogenous marijuana neurotransmitter system. These biochemical adjustments introduced an entirely new level of pleasure to your morning cup of java.  In addition, it made avoiding that third or fourth cup of coffee even harder to accomplish. 
Coffee makes us feel so good because it is able to tap into virtually every reward system our brain has evolved. Hidden within that hot black silken elixir is a chemical that has taken over your brain by mimicking the actions of cocaine and marijuana. It's too late, go ahead and have another cup; I'm going to. 

www.psychologytoday.com  Gary L. Wenk, Ph.D