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Mini: Mood Rings · Why We Do What We Do

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  You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome to Why we do
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  what we do. I am your host Abraham, and I'm your host Shane,
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  and we are a psychology podcast and we like to take these bite sized
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  topics of psychological phenomenon, events, things, constructs, ideas, whatever,
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  and we break them down into easy, digestible, understandable pieces. And this
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  is our attempt to do this now, but by talking about things that we
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  were on our fingers. Yes, so we are talking about mood rings.
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  So this is the horror divorce of episodes. If you get that's how you
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  pronounce that, right, That's why I'm gonna go with Yeah, that's right.
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  I read very literally, I think just for people who maybe don't don't
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  get the visual it is or dervs or derves. Yes, yes, yes,
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  yes French. I try to learn in French in college and I took
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  I dropped out of college because of French. Like why did these letters not
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  say there sounds? Yeah, I'm gonna go back to Spanish. Anyway,
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  As you said, we are talking about jewelry that tells us what temperature we
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  are and implied in that, or at least what some people then believe is
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  that indicates what we're feeling. And you know what, to some degree,
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  it's not terribly far off. I mean as far off, but it's not
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  as far off as we might think. Yeah, so you might be going
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  into this episode going clearly mood rings are based on temperature, and yes it
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  is. However, as you'll see and as we unpack, our temperature does
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  change depending on how we feel. Fair, all right, so let's talk
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  about this. What is a mood ring, a mood ring, or any
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  mood jewelry because it does not have to be a ring, but it is
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  a type of jewelry or adornment that contains a mood stone. This is a
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  stone that mood in the past because it is a cawstone. Mood mod or
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  thermochromatic element, which will break that word down because I think implied, I
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  mean, the name kind of gives away what's going on there. Yeah.
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  So thermochromatic, as you can guess, refers to substance that change color due
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  to temperature. So thermo comes from the Greek terms thermos, which means hot
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  or thermae which means heat, where chromatic has origins in Greek, which includes
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  chroma chromat and chromaticose French which is chromatique, and Latin which is chromaticus.
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  So you could see heat and the color and all that stuff, Like all
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  of that together. That's really ultimately what it means, heat and color together.
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  Hot color. Hot color is what we're talking about here, neon color.
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  Yeah, you would have also seen this in the root where we talked
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  about tetrachromats humans. You can see more than the color spectrum that most humans
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  can see, so similar there. Some mood rings are characterized by a few
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  features. One maybe most importantly is there cheap That is a very common feature
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  of mood rings. Huh. These are easily malleable metals with colorful changing stone
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  insets that are supposed to change based on your mood. Therefore sort of allowing
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  someone a visual into your mind, into your state of being via rock on
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  your body, right exactly. During the nineteen seventies, this was a major
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  fashion movement, Like people were obsessed with these things, similar to kind of
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  how pet rocks existed, you know, and I think every generation has that,
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  Like our generation had beanie babies, and we had hit clips. I
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  don't know if you remember those, but so HitClips were the mood rings of
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  the late nineteen nineties. So if you don't remember HitClips, HitClips were like
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  these like weird key chains that had like a sample of a song on it
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  that you would put into this like specific device for it, and it would
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  just play like half of hit Me Baby One More Time or something like that.
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  I mean, that's really the whole song, you just didn't repeat as
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  many times. Yeah, exactly. So they actually cited jeweler Marvin Wernick as
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  the original inventor of the accessory. Supposedly he'd been reading an article about the
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  technology being used, like the specific the liquid being used for medical thermometers being
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  the liquid that's in the stones kind of like measure body temperature, and from
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  there he created a jewelry and began selling these quote magic stones, it called
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  the magic Jewelry magic stones to identify people's moods. You know what they say,
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  observation of medical equipment is the mother of invention. That is, that
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  is the saying yes. Joshua Reynolds then came in as a mass producer of
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  the jewelry of the mood rings. So by the end of nineteen seventy five,
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  mood rings sales had skyrocketed, selling about fifteen million dollars worth of the
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  product. Now that might not be much by today's standards. I mean,
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  everyone's like a poultry. Fifteen million, I've got that all my back pocket,
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  Yeah, of course, But adjusting for inflation, that is about eighty
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  nine million dollars in twenty twenty four money, so not that much. Still
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  still not that much, but but it's still it's still quite a feat for
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  I guess fad jewelry, right, and mood rings can be purchased for so
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  cheap that buy our estimates with mood rings, let's say, costing about three
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  twenty five at the most, close to twenty seven point five million rings were
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  sold in nineteen seventy five alone, So people were really into this. You
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  know that there was somebody who had like ten rings on every finger and three
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  rings on every toe. Yeah, I mean the Mandarin from Iron Man,
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  he had ten rings. So that's right. That is a fact, is
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  what they said. What they say, I mean, that's what happened.
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  So it's indisputable. All right. We should understand how these colors, how
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  the reflection of light off of a stone on your body is the window to
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  our souls after we create a window for the opposite of souls, which is
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  advertisements. Okay, we're back. We're talking about how to feel or how
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  to tell how someone feels using the visible spectrum of light. There are a
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  lot of interpretations for what mood rings mean for us when we wear them.
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  And I'm gonna go ahead and go with the chart that I found that had
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  similar or consistent report outs for the colors. And so this is going to
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  kind of harken back to the color Psychology episode two and what that kind of
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  So like, we're going to get into that a little bit. But if
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  you want to know what your mood ring means, here is a nice easy
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  way to interpret it. First. If your mood ring is red, then
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  you are either feeling intense, feeling angry, or feeling passionate. Sure,
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  that's all intuitive. Yeah. If your color is orange, then you are
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  feeling orange. Oh sorry, I mean you're feeling aggressive, irritated, and
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  impatient, which is subtly distinct from intense, angry and passionate. Yes,
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  yes, yes, yes. Yellow is nervous, unset, or distracted.
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  In the Green Lantern comics, yellow is fear. Oh, green is envious.
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  Actually, it is fresh, amused, and active. Uh huh,
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  which I thought fresh was a funny one. I've never described my mood as
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  fresh. Yeah, I also don't think that I have. I thought it
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  was a fun one. I want to now I'm gonna start using that.
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  Yeah, I'm feeling fresh today. Blue is calm, peaceful, and content.
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  This is not to be confused with royal blue, which is passionate,
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  love and romantic. I'm not sure if he showed me blue and showed me
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  royal blue, if I'd be able to tell you which one was royal blue
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  versus regular blue. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. And then there's dark blue,
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  which is happiness, joy and optimistic, which I thought was interesting because
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  blue was equated often with depression and sadness, So I thought that was kind
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  of a fun little play on that. Blue is like really heavily represented in
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  the color scheme of the Stone. I feel like there's probably a level where
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  they went, I don't know that most peop book can identify indigo. Sure,
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  so they went, Okay, we'll just do a lot of blue.
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  Then we have purple, which is balanced, tranquil and satisfied. Yes,
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  And then there's black, which is stressed, overworked and tired. That seems
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  like a big jump from one to the other when I feel like those should
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  be much further apart. But if you're having trouble remembering the order of those
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  colors, you can think of the rainbow where you have roy g Yeah,
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  that's that's uh, that's perfect. I'm so glad that you gave us that.
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  I was not gonna remember it until then. All right, let's talk
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  about how this works or does it work? Okay, So your body temperature
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  can change based on blood flow, So there is the connection we see here
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  in terms of like how warm you are, how much blood is flowing that
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  can then show up as warmth, and therefore that could certainly be registered as
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  something different than how you would be in a different state. That implication is,
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  does your body temperature change based on your mood? Specific like if I'm
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  feeling unsettled or joyful? Is that reliably and demonstrably measured via my body temperature
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  in a way? First of all, your body temperature does change on your
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  mood. Yes, that's the thing. It is, correct, is the
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  mood ring changing based on your mood? Only in like this loose correlational sense,
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  If any if we can make that jump. Right. So basically,
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  like, yes, your body, like your physiology does change depending on your
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  mood, and we'll talk about that in a second. But the mood ring
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  is not changing because you're feeling angry. It's changing because maybe your blood is
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  flowing faster in your body, and like that's your temperature is higher as a
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  result, Like you would get the same effect from being really really really angry
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  and also jogging right exactly, you know, So like that's kind of how
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  that works. Now. The molecules in the stone or the crystal that are
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  in set in the jewelry are highly sensitive the temperature changes. And when I
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  say highly sensitive, I simply mean when the temperature changes, they will change.
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  They're not sensitive to mood, right, They are sensitive to the temperature
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  changes in your body. And when the temperature changes, the molecules themselves will
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  either change position or they'll twist. And what I mean by that is essentially
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  the actual molecules inside of the in the liquid crystal that's in there, they
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  will position or twist, and then that affects how the wavelengths of light are
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  absorbed and reflected through those different molecules. And that's why you see the changes
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  because the molecules themselves are changing, but depending on heat. So the mood
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  ring crystals are inset in a metal alloy that help conduct heat directly into the
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  liquid. So it's important that like they be able to detect temperature to be
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  able to change. So the alloy is set up so that heat does conduct
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  through it and depending on the temperature, will then alter those colors. Right,
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  so you very rarely see a mood ring that's plastic, is all I'm
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  saying. Fair Green is the middle ground. They say green is like the
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  temperature that's like kind of the standard fare. The liquid for the color green
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  approximately sits at eighty two degrees fahrenheit or twenty eight degrees celsius. And if
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  your body temperature is at eighty two degrees fahrenheit, if you're wearing a mood
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  rate and it's green, you need to call a doctor. So our body
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  does not sit at that level. That is a weird thing to pick.
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  Now we're in the nineties, we're in the high nineties, and it does
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  not alter much between being like normal and being sick. So right eighty two
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  is someone who is like cooling from a recent death. Right Anyway, remember
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  when we said back, we said a black mood ring means that you're stressed.
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  Well, when you're stressed, your body reallocates blood flow to major muscle
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  groups and essential organs. Your fingers aren't essential in a crisis, so they'll
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  get less blood flow. So the idea than being that if we are to
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  correlate these together, the idea is it's going to be colder. If your
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  body's going to be colder when you're you're more stressed, and if that's the
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  case, then their mood ring is going to show up as black. Right,
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  So basically, all this boils down to is blood flow equals temperature change.
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  Temperature change equals color change. That's all that happens. There is no
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  mood in the equation. You know, there's lots of different variables that equate
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  to temperature change in your body. Mood could be one of them, but
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  it's not the thing that always changes in your body to change temperature. And
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  ultimately, the only thing that happens is temperature changes around is conducted into the
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  liquid in the mood ring, and that's why we have those. Yeah,
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  just unpacking this skeptically, there's just so many steps removed from measuring mood right,
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  First of all, like we have to assume that our body temperature is
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  reliably correlated with specific moods, which I don't think that we can say.
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  We have to then say that, like the color that we get from those
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  temperatures is a reliable interpretation of what those temperatures are, and that means that
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  they're therefore insightful way to looking at someone's mood. I mean, it's so
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  many steps to get to, like, is this reliable and consistent? No,
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  therefore the rest of it fails. But let's say it was reliable and
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  consistent. Can we be confident that each mood measures it as relevant to that
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  person for their basal temperature, for their moods, for their relative like blood
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  flow. No, we can't say that, So then the rest of it
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  falls apart. And it's sort of like at every step, if it did
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  work, the rest of it, like if the previous step did work,
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  then the subsequent step would fall apart, because none of this really does anything,
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  like and I think if we look at why people got so wrapped up
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  in this, the idea of like short cut like little tips and tricks,
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  something that you can buy that will give people sort of this magical insight into
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  the inner worlds that are our lives. That's always been something that's fascinated people.
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  Sure, I mean definitely being able to more easily interpret someone else's body
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  language, to be able to interpret more easily like their experiences without trying to
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  make a lot of inferences and guesses, has I think general social value as
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  well as it could have useful forensic value. Let's say, like if they
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  could slap a mood ring on a criminal and determine whether or not they're lying,
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  they would one hundred percent do that, right. Sure, the appeal
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  has been there for a long time for a lot of reasons to try and
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  have a window into the internal workings of another person. So that's I think
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  why these were successful in appealing to a lot of people. But can we
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  actually use these reliably and meaningfully to understand how someone feels, not even kind
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  of a little bit like now, the best we get like what their ambient
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  temperature seems to be, which all is also going to be by the way,
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  include room temperature, Like it's not only conducting temperature from their skin,
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  so whatever is the temperature around them, plus whatever is going on in their
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  blood. I mean, really, you have essentially like a linear scale on
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  this right, So, like they're basically saying, like a couple of degrees
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  up is what temperature looks like for this mood or not even a couple maybe
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  a half a degree up, And like, I think those kind of fluctuations
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  are things that we cannot reliably associate it with any kind of state of mind,
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  let alone something as like distinct as blue to royal blue to dark blue,
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  span calm to joy from three almost indistinguishable colors. Well, even a
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  manta strip can't, who has more cones and rods in its eyes and is
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  supposed to be able to see a much more distinct and discriminative color spectrum,
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  cannot distinguish between blue and royal blue. Like, let's not pretend for a
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  second, you know, I think with all that being said, because I
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  think one of the things about being a skeptic sometimes is that it takes the
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  fun out of things. I think mood rings are still really fun. They're
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  still really fun to play with. It's fun to mess with that material and
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  experiment with it and kind of just see something that you can actively and scientifically
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  change in your world. Like, I think it's fun and mostly harmless.
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  It's they're fairly cheap in general. You can win them at Chuck E Cheese
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  when you have enough tickets if you want to. I mean not saying the
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  Chuck e Cheese isn't harmless that that entertainment rat is like kind of like the
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  CD underbelly of rat entertainment, and so, you know, but I think
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  I think being able to get enough tickets to get a mood ring, I
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  think it's perfectly fine personally, no qualms with mood rings whatsoever. Sure,
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  yeah, I think that's fair. You know, as you said, it
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  is just it is doing the skeptics work. It is understanding this from the
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  psychological perspective. But anyway, I think that's what we have to say on
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  moodrings. We've gone a little bit long. Is there anything to add or
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  anything you'd like to say before we wrap up? No, feeling pretty green
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  right now. Feeling real fresh, feeling real fresh. If you'd like to
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  tell us about your mood rings or comment on anything that we've discussed in this
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  episodes, you should email us directly at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com or post
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  the social media on the normal social media sites. We can totally reach you
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  there. If you are interested in supporting the show, you can go to
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  patreon dot com where you can become a patron, tell a friend, like
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  and subscribe, leave a rating and review, and otherwise. Thank you so
• 16:44
  much for listening today. Thank you for recording with me. Shane. This
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  is Abraham and it's a Shane. We're out. So yeah, you've been
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  listening to Why We Do What We Do. You can learn more about this
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  and other episodes by going to WWD wwdpodcast dot com. Thanks for listening,
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  and we hope you have an awesome day