What Color is Your Mood Ring?

Pop psychology was big in the 1970s, and it merged with tacky fashion in the form of the Mood Ring, which supposedly could tell you (or anyone else who cared to look) how you were feeling.

The Mood Ring contained a chemical which would turn color in response to minute changes in temperature. As anyone who took one of the Stress Management classes that were also popular during the decade knows, the human body's "fight or flight" response to stress causes a reduction in the blood supply to the extremities. With less warm blood in them, the hands get cooler. A Mood Ring was supposed to sense these small changes in skin temperature, and they usually came with a little card or booklet that matched color to mood.

Assuming the things worked as advertised, I don't know why anyone would want people to know when their Fight or Flight mechanism was kicking in. Perhaps the idea was to show the opposite - how mellow you were.

"Stress cards" were a related gimmick that were popular at "New Age" and health food stores. These contained a patch upon which you pressed your finger - again to detect skin temperature changes. I once got a catalogue of assorted paraphanalia which shrinks could use to market their professional abilities, one item being a box of stress cards, custom-printed with the therapist's name and address. "Stress sells your business," read the blurb.