Stress helps people focus on brighter side

Stress may be linked with negative experiences, but surprisingly, it helps people focus on the brighter side of things, a study reveals. "Stress seems to help people learn from positive feedback," said Mara Mather of the University of Southern California, who co-authored the study with Nichole R. Lighthall. When people under stress are making a difficult decision, they may pay more attention to the upsides of the alternatives they're considering and less to the downsides, the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science reported. So someone who's deciding whether to take a new job and is feeling stressed by the decision, might weigh the increase in salary more heavily than the worse commute, Mather said, according to a university statement.