An article on Social Intelligence – Observing Nonverbal Behavior and Understanding Emotions – by Dr. Sandeep Atre.
Yes! It was a mouse who had pulled the Mickey out of us
Our story starts in late 1930s in a lab in Montreal where a young assistant professor Hans Selye was looking for some topic to begin his research career. Incidentally, in the same building, a biochemist had obtained some extract from an ovary and he and his colleagues were wondering what it did to the body.
Keen to do something, Selye brought that extract and began injecting it into rats – so that then he can observe the effects. After some months, Selye examined the rats and found that rats had stomach ulcers and shrunken immune tissues. Selye was overjoyed, as he thought he had discovered a new hormone.
But then as the tenet of science goes, a researcher has to run an experimental group (group which is exposed to experimental conditions) and a control group (group which is observed without applying experimental conditions to it). So, Selye injected new set of rats with only saline for the same duration.
What he found surprised and saddened him at the same time. The rats injected with only saline also had stomach ulcers and shrunken immune tissues. So, it wasn’t the ovarian extract at work, but something else! He found that it was the… ‘Process’.
Yes! The unpleasantness of the whole process of ‘grabbing, chasing and injecting’ was making rats sick and causing those problems in the body. He borrowed a term from physics – ‘stress’ – to characterize this effect. Yes! Plain generic unpleasantness can make rats sick…
……….
And it is no different for those who are in a rat race – us! 
Dr. Sandeep Atre
Founder Director, Socialigence – Developing Social Intelligence
www.socialigence.net – Specialized Online Courses and Customized workshops on Observing Nonverbal Behavior and Understanding Emotions (Now our courses are at a discount – Checkout in the menu)