While flowers originally came on the scene to attract potential pollinators like bugs and birds, it is their appeal to humans that accounts for the incredible variety of shapes and colors we see in domesticated flowers today. McGuire suggests that nature's prettier flowers got to survive and thrive because people didn't destroy them when they cleared land for agriculture. Instead, they cultivated them and have been doing so for more than 5,000 years.
Ironically, many domesticated flowers have been so selected by humans that nature's pollinators the bugs and birds no longer find them attractive. So the job of propagating the species depends mainly on us.
A recent article in the journal "Evolutionary Psychology" by McGuire; Jeannette Haviland-Jones, a professor of psychology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; and others, states that in spite of some basic survival uses such as edible or medicinal flowers, most flowering plants grown in the flower industry today are not used for any purpose other than emotional satisfaction.
"Our hypothesis is that flowers are exploiting an emotional niche. They make us happy," McGuire says. "Because they are a source of pleasure a positive emotion inducer we take care of them. In that sense they're like dogs. They are the pets of the plant world."
Psychologist Haviland-Jones had conducted three studies that tested the ability of flowers to induce positive emotion. The objective was to demonstrate the immediate, long-term and powerful effects of flowers on emotional reactions, mood, social behaviors and even memory in both men and women. The results
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Contact: Joseph Blumberg
blumberg@ur.rutgers.edu
732-932-7084 x652
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
25-May-2005