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Purdue Compliments Guys Spread Cheer Across Campus

 

West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. Two Purdue University Students are gaining national attention for their polite, if somewhat peculiar, practice of complimenting complete strangers. Brett Westcott, a sophomore in civil engineering from Plainfield, Illinois, and Cameron Brown, a sophomore in business management from Toledo, Ohio, stand on a prominent walkway at the center of campus every Wednesday and offer compliments to hundreds of passersby. Westcott said he woke up with the idea at the beginning of the school year and quickly recruited his friend Brown.

 

"I love giving free compliments - there's nothing else I'd rather do," Westcott said. "The first day I was a little bit nervous because I wasn't sure how people were going to take it. But we've had a good response."

 

Westcott says the pair has given thousands of free compliments, sometimes requiring quick thinking and rapid delivery during busy passing periods. Typical objects of praise are people's shoes, pants, jackets, hats, sunglasses, scarves, backpacks, hairstyles, and smiles.

 

"These guys brighten my day every Wednesday," said Rachel Taylor, a junior from Fairplay, Colorado, who recently repaid a compliment on her plaid jacket with snack food she had purchased for herself. "They are so much fun!"

 

Some recipients adjust their pedestrian commutes just to receive and return the praise.

 

"Whatever they can come up with at the time they compliment you on," said graduate student Richard Severe. "It feels good. I try to throw compliments back to acknowledge them."

 

They have also been greeted with high-fives, hugs, handshakes, and beverages and snack foods.

 

The "Compliments Guys" are not affiliated with any group, and, contrary to conjecture, are not engaged in a fraternity initiation ritual, a sociology experiment, or an attempt to meet girls.

 

Brown said the pair now are receiving the best compliment of all - other people occasionally join them in dispensing compliments to strangers.

 

"This gets me through my week, and I think if we stopped coming out they would miss us. The whole goal is to brighten people's days," Brown said. "We want people to pay more compliments. Hopefully, people at other college campuses will pick it up and decide that their college needs more compliments."

 

The Compliments Guys are starting to gain regional and national attention for their good deeds. Profiles on them have been published in the Indianapolis Star and Chicago Tribune. 'The Oprah Show' also has expressed an interest in scheduling the duo for an appearance. And, if you are interested, you may contact them as follows.

 

Brett Westcott

bwestcot@purdue.edu

1.815.931.9030

 

Cameron Brown

cebrown@purdue.edu

1.419.261.2297

 

May I say you look marvelous!

For most folks, a nice hug and some sympathy can help a bit after we get pushed around. Turns out, chimpanzees use hugs and kisses the same way.

And it works. Researchers studying people's closest genetic relatives found that stress was reduced in chimps that were victims of aggression if a third chimp stepped in to offer consolation.

"Consolation usually took the form of a kiss or embrace," said Doctor Orlaith N. Fraser of the Research Center in Evolutionary Anthropology and Paleoecology at Liverpool John Moores University in England.

"This is particularly interesting," she said, "because this behavior is rarely seen other than after a conflict.

"If a kiss was used, the consoler would press his or her open mouth against the recipient's body, usually on the top of the head or their back. An embrace consisted of the consoler wrapping one or both arms around the recipient.

The result was a reduction of stress behavior such as scratching or self-grooming by the victim of aggression, Fraser and colleques report in today's edition (17 June 2008) of "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Doctor Frans de Waal of the Yerkes Primate Center at Emory University in Atlanta said the study is important because it shows the relationship between consolation and stress reduction. Previous researchers have claimed that consolation had no effect on stress, said de Waal, who was not part of Fraser's research team.

"This study removes doubt that consolation really does what the term suggests: provide relief to distressed parties after conflict. The evidence is compelling and makes it likely that consolation behavior is an expression of empathy," de Waal said.

De Waal suggested that this evidence of empathy in apes is "perhaps equivalent to what in human children is called 'sympathetic concern.'"

That behavior in children includes touching and hugging of distressed family members and "is in fact identical to that of apes, and so the comparison is not far-fetched," he said.

While chimps show this empathy, monkeys do not, he added.

There is also suggestive evidence of such behavior in large-brained birds and dogs, said Fraser, but it has not yet been shown that it reduces stress levels in those animals.

Previous research on conflict among chimps concentrated on cases where there is reconcilliation between victim and aggressor, with little attention by a third party.

Fraser and collegues studied a group of chimps at the Chester Zoo in England from January 2005 to September 2006, recording instances of aggression such as a bite, hit, rush, trample, chase, or threat.

The results show that "chimpanzees calm distressed recipients of aggression by consoling them with a friendly gesture," Fraser said.

Consolation was most likely to occur between chimpanzees who already had valuable relationships, she added.

The research was supported by the Leakey Trust.

Article by Randolph E. Schmid. 17 June 2008. Associated Press.

When things go bad for a huge inflatable pig, don't expect it to be pretty.

A helium-filled swine, released into the night sky during Roger Waters' headlining set Sunday (27 April 2008) at the Coachella music festival, in the Southern California desert, has been found in pieces.

Two couples found tattered halves of the pig in their yards, a few miles from the festival grounds.

Concert organizers had offered a $10,000 reward for the pig's return. On Tuesday, pieces of the plastic carcass were examined.

"That's definately our pig," producer Bill fold said.

Susan Stoltz found a plastic heap in her driveway Monday, but said she didn't know what it was until she read about the missing pig in the "Desert Sun" newspaper.

"My kids are going to think I'm so cool," she said.

Another resident of the same neighborhood, Judy Rimmer, said she found a piece of the pig draped over a front-yard plant.

The two couples will split the cash reward, Fold said.

As tall as a two-story house and as wide as two school buses, the pig was led from lines held on the ground Sunday as Waters played a version of Pink Floyd's "Pigs" from the 1977 album "Animals."

Then it just floated away.