UC Riverside researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky is among 12 recipients of a grant from the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation for its “Perception Box” initiative.
The $899,232 award is for Lyubomirsky and her Ph.D. students’ research on how attentive, supportive listening can improve well-being and health for both the speaker and listener.
“With so many amazing applicants, my lab was so, so excited to hear we received funding,” Lyubomirsky said. “We are extremely grateful for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation to take a chance on a high-risk project to study the well-being benefits and biological impacts of really good listening on both the listener and the speaker.”
This is the second consecutive year that Tiny Blue Dot Foundation is funding projects related to The Science of Perception Box. “Perception box” is described by Tiny Blue Dot as an “invisible mental box that every human being alive lives inside that distorts their perceptions. It distorts our ability to understand one another and to understand ourselves.”
Lyubomirsky’s funded proposal, “Effects of High-Quality Listening on Psychological and Biological Well-Being Through the Expansion of the Perception Box,” builds on findings that found benefits to high-quality listening, or HQL. A series of four studies will test whether HQL improves psychological well-being and leads to physical benefits such as reduced inflammation and enhanced antiviral defense.
The 12 funded studies, which will be conducted by researchers from countries including the United States, Spain, The Netherlands and Australia, were selected from more than 200 applications during an open call for proposals in October 2023. Judges did not know the identity of the applicants or their institutions, and applicants did not know the identity of the judges.
“The dozen projects that we decided to fund… underscore the scientific community’s desire to better understand how Perception Box affects the brain with an ultimate goal of people living happier lives,” said Christof Koch, the chief scientist at Tiny Blue Dot.