Blog post 3: Secret behind teddy bears

I really love teddy bears because of their fluffiness and cute faces. Whenever I want to sleep, they are comfort pillows. Do you know that there are secrets behind teddy bears? 

There is this article entitled Touching a Teddy Bear Mitigates Negative Effects of Social Exclusion to Increase Prosocial Behavior, it says that there are also negative side effects when you're touching or hugging a teddy bear. First is the social exclusion which is more performed by girls, especially when they're threatened with being rejected themselves. With regard to relationships and human behavior, social exclusion are intentionally harmful. 

It is an act of rejecting someone from interpersonal interactions that can lead to prosocial behavior such as empathy, concern for others and behaving in ways to help or benefit other people.

Enough with the negative side of teddy bears. Let's now talk about the positive side of it. I read another article entitled Could a teddy bear ease your fear of death? Cuddling soft toys can relieve existential angst, says new study. It states that teddy bears have genuine healing powers for those people with low self-esteem. Researchers suggest that touch or even with something inanimate teddy bears may help people in confronting their own mortality. They also made a hypothesis that people with low self-esteem deal with concerns about their own death and the meaning of their life by connecting it with others. 

Their findings show that even touching a teddy bear can soothe existential fears. Interpersonal touch is a powerful mechanism that even objects that simulate touch by another person may help to instill in people a sense of existential significance. 

This only proves that teddy bears are very helpful and useful in treating low self-esteem and other disorders such as depression and anxiety. So let's love our cute and cuddly teddy bears!