On March 17, 2010, ScienceDaily published a story about an intriguing report investigating the connection between stock-market activity and the frequency of heart attacks. The researchers, a team from Duke University Medical Center, discovered an increased incidence of cardiac arrest in the United States between January 2008 and July 2009, precisely when the stock market showed a clear decline in the midst of a massive economic crisis. Although the scientists determined in subsequent tests that this inverse relationship wasn’t quite as pronounced as they believed initially (due to seasonal fluctuations in heart attack rates), their study remains groundbreaking in terms of its efforts to explore a rarely covered topic: the impact of economic patterns on cardiovascular events.
It may come as no surprise to some that heart attacks go up when the NASDAQ goes down—after all, a great deal of circumstantial evidence suggests that stress is associated with heart disease and early death. But your ticker isn’t the only thing those negative shifts in the ticker tape affect. As it turns out, economic strain manifests itself in all kinds of subtler ways as well.
The Hemline Index
One of the first individuals to start paying attention to the far-reaching implications of financial trouble was American economist George Taylor, who in 1926 developed a theory that the length of women’s skirts and dresses was directly related to the state of the U.S. economy. Taylor’s hypothesis, which he coined the “hemline index,” postulated that short skirts mean boom times and longer ones equal falling markets.
Since then, his prophecy has proven eerily accurate time and again, most recently in 2008, when Claire Brayford, writing for the U.K. Express, remarked, “Anyone applying this theory to the New York autumn/winter 2008 shows … would predict that we are hurtling towards a recession. Hemlines … were all resolutely below the knee—a clear indication of belt tightening, both fashionable and not so fashionable.” Brayford’s astute analysis of this connection was that “a glimpse of leg gives a sense of independence and confidence; a sweeping skirt is a sign of modesty and austerity.”
Smoke, No Joke
Also in 2008, the American Legacy Foundation, a prominent anti-tobacco institution, hired Harris Interactive to poll cigarette smokers in the United States regarding their nicotine intake during the financial crisis. Seventy-seven percent of the respondents stated that they were more stressed because of the economy, and of these individuals, an alarming two-thirds claimed their smoking habits were impacted as a result. Thirty-one percent of the female smokers surveyed and 17 percent of the males were smoking a greater quantity of cigarettes each day; 20 percent of middle-income smokers had put off quitting; and, ironically, smokers in the lowest income bracket reported smoking more than individuals in the higher brackets.
Shape Shifters
When psychology professor Terry F. Pettijohn II and his colleague Brian J. Jungeberg set out to analyze the physical characteristics (both facial and bodily) of four decades’ worth of Playboy Playmates of the Year in conjunction with U.S. social and economic factors, they uncovered an astonishing link between the two sets of data. Based on Playmates from 1960 to 2000, the researchers’ Environmental Security Hypothesis states that in dire financial times, men prefer older, taller women who appear sturdy and capable, with larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios, and lower body mass indexes. On the other hand, when money is no object, men’s ideal female is younger, shorter, and curvier, with larger eyes, features that connote more, well, playful qualities.
Musical Mutations
Another research endeavor Pettijohn spearheaded, this one with Donald F. Sacco Jr., compared the Billboard No. 1 songs for every year between 1955 and 2003 with the changing U.S. social and economic climate during those years. Published in Psychology of Music and focusing on the specific characteristics of songs, this study revealed that the most popular tunes during tough times were longer, slower, and more romantic, comforting, and meaningful. As Pettijohn explained to New York Times writer Tamar Lewin in 2008, “it’s ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’ and ‘That’s What Friends Are For.’ In better times, it’s more likely to be faster, more upbeat songs like ‘At the Hop’ or ‘My Sharona.’”
